International Reporting Award
Posted on June 4, 2009, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
I won InterAction’s 2009 Award for Excellence in International Reporting in recognition of HuffPost World’s fabulous international coverage. Thank you and congrats to all the HuffPost World bloggers, reporters and photographers! Great work!!
Here is what the award letter says:
You have been selected to receive the award in recognition of your organization’s outstanding coverage of international news. Our members see The Huffington Post’s World News section as a true leader among the ever-growing list of online news outlets that cover international development and humanitarian action news.
As you probably know, InterAction is the largest alliance of U.S.-based international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working to overcome poverty, exclusion and suffering by advancing social justice and basic dignity for all. Last year’s Forum attracted leaders from member organizations, NGOs in the developing world, representatives from USAID, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, World Bank and other international institutions.
Previous awardees include Femi Oke of WNYC Radio (formerly of CNN International), John Donnelly of The Boston Globe, and noted “solo journalist” Kevin Sites.
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Obama, Burmese Monks Call For Release Of Suu Kyi
Posted on May 26, 2009, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Immigration, International.
Check out my story in today’s HuffPost.
On a recent trip to New York City, three Burmese monks who helped lead the 2007 protests known as the Saffron Revolution also called for the immediate release of Suu Kyi.
“For Burma to gain democracy without Aung San Suu Kyi is impossible,” U Pyinya Zawta told the Huffington Post through a translator.
The monks, who fled Burma (also known as Myanmar) after a government crackdown on protesters and were resettled in upstate New York as refugees, said there have been no significant protests inside Burma against the trial, but that is only because people are fearful of being arrested. Burmese have shown their solidarity with Suu Kyi by gathering outside Insein Prison, where her trial is now taking place.
“People feel very strongly about the government trying to imprison Aung San Suu Kyi. They are holding back [from protesting] because of the government repression against them,” U Pyinya Zawta said.
Continue reading here.
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Between Iraq And A Hard Place
Posted on May 21, 2009, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Immigration, International, Politics.
The ongoing violence in Iraq has forced 4 million people to flee their homes and communities in search of safety elsewhere. About 2 million remain displaced within Iraq, whereas the other 2 million or so have fled to neighboring nations. In countries like Syria and Jordan, these Iraqis, many of whom were professionals back home, now live a life of poverty and fear. They struggle to find jobs to feed their families and can get kicked out at any time.
For years the Bush administration refused to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. After significant political pressure, the administration began to allow a limited number of Iraqis to resettle in the United States. President Obama, who made it a campaign promise to help displaced Iraqis, has acknowledged that the United States has a moral responsibility and security incentive to help people displaced because of a war the United States started.
However, despite the apparent political will in the Obama administration to help those Iraqis still in danger, the United States now faces a massive financial crisis. The economic downtown threatens to derail Obama’s efforts to resettle more Iraqis and provide more aid to the countries that harbor most of the refugees. The crisis has also caused a financial nightmare for the Iraqis who have already resettled in the United States. Struggling to compete for a limited number of jobs with laid-off Americans who speak the language and have experience working in this country, these Iraqis face a dire situation. Many Iraqis, who came to America in search of safety and a better life, now live on the brink of homelessness.
Read my LA Weekly cover story about the Iraqi refugees who have resettled in El Cajon, California. Most are Chaldean Catholics who fled religious persecution in Iraq.
If you weren’t paying close attention, it would be easy to mistake Main Street, El Cajon, for any other Main Street across the USA that has been transformed by its immigrant population. Kebabs and falafel are on the menus of most of the restaurants, and the local supermarket sells green olives, hummus mix and a wide assortment of olive oils. The television in one café shows a woman in a head scarf delivering the news in Arabic. Outside another, 2-foot-high hookahs sit on a table, ready to be smoked. These are sights we’ve become accustomed to in many California neighborhoods. But there are other details that make this street a little different. The word Babylon, for instance, is all over the place. There’s Babylon Hair Style, Babylon Restaurant, Babylon Jewelry, Babylon Hookah Lounge. And inside a small deli, where a clerk’s computer screen saver shows a photograph of men in traditional turbans and robes gathered on the floor around a feast of Middle Eastern delicacies, Iraqi flags are for sale near the lamb shanks and the ground meat preferred for a certain type of kebab favored in Iraq.
Where most of Los Angeles’ Middle Eastern neighborhoods are dominated by Armenian and Lebanese shops and restaurants, El Cajon, just two hours south of L.A., is the epicenter of Iraqi relocation in the Western United States. With tens of thousands of Iraqis living in San Diego County, El Cajon is home to the second-largest community in the U.S., after Detroit. The neighborhood Catholic church, St. Peter Chaldean Cathedral, with its distinctive domed roof and large cross, boasts some 37,000 Chaldean Iraqi members. A sign outside the church lists the times for mass in English and Aramaic. And one of its walls is dominated by a stone replica of Iraq’s famous winged Khorsabad bull sculpture.
Continue reading here.
See a slideshow of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan by Jessica Malter with the IRC here. And one with Iraqi refugees in Syria by Erika Solomon here.
If you would like to find out how to help Iraqis displaced in Southern California, please contact Catholic Charities, Department of Refugee Services, 4575-A Mission Gorge Place, San Diego, CA 92120. You can call Lejla Voloder, their Resettlement Program Manager, at 619-287-9454.
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Egan Award For Journalistic Excellence Coming Up
Posted on March 1, 2009, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
I have been asked to be a judge for the 2009 Eileen Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence. The award is sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world. From their website:
The Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence recognizes journalists who demonstrate excellence in reporting on humanitarian and social justice issues. The award was named after Eileen Egan, who devoted four decades of her life to assisting refugees and helping the poor.
If you write about humanitarian issues, take a moment to look at their submission guidelines. You could win a free trip overseas. Deadline is April 15th.
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Back To Mapquest
Posted on December 14, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Crime.
My car was broken into this weekend. Glass everywhere. For a GPS system. Thoughts while sitting on the street, in the cold, waiting for two hours for police to come: Jerks. Violated. Pissed. Annoyed. Not excited about waiting for police, filling out report, dealing with GEICO, finding a glass repair shop on a Sunday night, buying a new GPS stysem because now I am dependent on it to get anywhere. At least I have something interesting to write on my Facebook status. But so not fun.
Update: Passers-by very sympathetic. One gave me suggestions for glass repair shops, and offered me cashews. The police eventually came, after I called three times. Not so sympathetic. They said no, they haven’t seen more theft because of the economy. Not yet anyway. GEICO was rather helpful and will be here tomorrow. I parked it in a garage over night. The garage man said they have seen a lot of these GPS-thefts. The kids who steal them sell them for five, ten dollars, according to the garage man. I would have given them five dollars. I didn’t even have the GPS visible, but the suction thing was on the windshield. The garage man said the kids see the charger and know it’s there. Oh Brooklyn.
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HuffPost World Launched!
Posted on December 4, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
We launched!! The Huffington Post has a new section dedicated to world news and opinion. We had our official launch today — check it out: www.huffingtonpost.com/world
Today we had opeds from Queen Noor of Jordan, Sen. John Kerry, Francisco Toro on Chavez, Virginia Moncrief on the Mumbai attacks, Andi Friedman on women’s equality in Rwanda, and many other fabulous writers based all over the world.
Plus, I did an interview with Christiane Amanpour on her genocide documentary (which airs tonight on CNN at 9PM), international reporting, and the role of new media and citizen journalists. She said this about bloggers:
Sometimes it is incredibly useful, for instance, in closed societies such as Burma. Some of the images, some of the stories that have come out have been by the Internet and by citizen journalists. And that has been indispensable in terms of knowing what is going on when journalists like myself and others cannot get visas to get in there and cannot operate. … In that regard I think the bloggers or the citizen journalists are very brave and very useful.
I think that in the West sometimes blogging is an excuse for sitting back and just commenting on life as it passes by and putting out your opinions on what is happening. Sometimes those are interesting, but not always. And the truth of the matter is I do not believe, no matter how sophisticated the delivery platform, I don’t think there is a substitute or should there be a substitute for professional journalism, which comes with training, with experience, with credibility, with developing trust based on the accuracy of your record in the field. I think that is an absolute must. That must stay with us so that people have an accurate and objective reference point for their information.
I am the editor of the section and will always be looking for great writers who want to contribute interesting, insightful commentaries on important global issues. Get in touch with me at hingber@huffingtonpost.com.
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Blogger Detained at JFK
Posted on November 16, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Immigration, International, Media.
Three Egyptian bloggers spent a week with us at the HuffPost’s OffTheBus. One of them, Ahmad, got detained at JFK airport as he tried to leave New York for his next stop in Austin. He did nothing wrong, other than have an Arabic name. Once the U.S. officials freed him, and he bought a new plane ticket with his own money since he missed his flight, he wrote about the experience:
The place perfectly resembled any Egyptian police station, except for the picture of Mr. George Bush handing on the wall in place of Mubarak’s, and that the officers’ clothes were blue rather than white. The American officers had the same cold, dumb faces of their Egyptian counterparts. I told the officer at the beginning about my flight leaving in two hours, but he told me to sit waiting until they called my name.
Continue reading here.
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I Heart Goshen
Posted on November 7, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Politics.
Check out The Goshen Chronicle …
Goshen — The Orange County Board of Elections was singled out for kudos in the national media this week, when a columnist for the Huffington Post commended election commissioners for going the extra mile to get her an absentee ballot.
Hannah Ingber Win was working on election coverage for the Huffington Post, the most famous and influential liberal blog in the nation. But she procrastinated when it came to getting her absentee ballot.
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New Yorkers Count Too
Posted on November 2, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Politics.
This was cross-posted on the Huffington Post.
I was so close to writing a post explaining why during this historic election I wasn’t going to vote. Well, I wanted to write about it but didn’t because of all the potential finger-pointing. (Not that I tend to be one who shies away from controversy.) Our society does not look favorably on those who don’t vote. The people in my world look at those non-voters like they are irresponsible, uneducated, apathetic jerks who take their democratic rights for granted.
I’d likely get twice the finger-pointing because I am working on election coverage right now for the Huffington Post. I enjoy my job, love the Huffington Post, and figured that it would not look good if an employee who works on election coverage wasn’t a good enough person to vote.
Luckily, I don’t have to write that post. I am going to vote tomorrow.
I am registered at my parents’ address in upstate New York. I spent two years living in Los Angeles and kept my New York State registration primarily because I wanted to keep my New York driver’s license and plates. If I ever got pulled over by a cop, I was prepared to explain that I had NY plates because I was a New York resident — hey, I’m even registered to vote there! I never had the opportunity to use that line. But I was prepared.
Sure if I had attended graduate school in an important state like Ohio or Florida, I would have changed my registration. But since my vote in neither New York nor California matters, I figured I should prioritize my license plate. Yes, I have New York pride.
I voted by absentee from LA in the primary. Then I moved to Brooklyn and was too busy working on election coverage to think about changing my registration, so I planned on voting again by absentee. But then the days went by. Day after day. I kept reminding myself — to do lists, sticky pads, knots on fingers — to print out that absentee ballot application. But I was too busy thinking about voting and editing voting stories and reading about voting problems and following all those polls.
At this point, it was days before the election, and I still hadn’t printed out the application form to receive an absentee ballot. I was sure I had missed the deadline. I knew my ballot wasn’t going to swing the election, but the guilt built up inside of me. Here we have an historic election, historic election, historic election, how many times do we need to remind ourselves it’s an historic election — and I wasn’t voting? Here I was working on campaign coverage, and I wasn’t voting?
What really got me was imaging my grandchildren asking me about this election. Could I say that I didn’t cast my vote in it?
In an attempt to alleviate some of the guilt, I finally printed out the absentee ballot application and put it in the mail. I knew that it wouldn’t make the deadline and I’d probably never receive the actual absentee ballot let alone mail it back in time. But I figured I could try to convince myself that I did my civic duty. If I just pretended it got there in time, that’s enough, right? I mean, this is New York. Not like we’re going to be staying up all night waiting for our results.
But then…lo and behold…my step-dad called on Saturday morning. It turns out the Orange Country Registrar in Goshen, New York, had tried sending me an absentee ballot in Los Angeles plus got my application from Brooklyn. I had thoroughly confused them. Luckily, no Acorn accusations.
Goshen is a rather small town, and someone working at the registrar’s office recognized either my name or my parents’ address. She cared so much about my ability to vote in this election that she tried calling my parents all week. We may live in New York, but that is real America. (Update: She also tried calling my dad’s house in the next town. Now that is real real America.) She finally reached my step-dad, who explained what had happened, and he is going to bring my absentee ballot to the city on Monday. Just in time for me to vote.
When my step-dad told me this, I was surprisingly thrilled. I still am.
All along I thought my need to vote was just about appearances. I thought I wanted to participate not because it mattered to the electoral count but because not voting would look bad.
But now that I actually can vote, it feels so good I want to brag about it. I too can cast my ballot. I can be part of something much bigger than me. There has never been an election in my lifetime that I have worked so hard on or followed so closely (and I spent the summers of 2000 and 2004 working for campaigns). Now, in 2008, I finally have the opportunity to choose a candidate who truly inspires me, who gives me hope and confidence. If my candidate wins, I can stop cringing during State of the Union addresses. If he wins and I travel abroad again, I won’t have to explain to every foreigner I meet that I do not agree with my government. I can be proud again to be American. And if he wins, I will have helped get him there.
I keep thinking about those photos of men and women in Iraq who voted for the first time. I feel like dipping my finger in ink and waving it in the air for all to see. My voice might not swing the election, but at least it will be counted.
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Powell Takes a Stand Against Anti-Muslim Bigotry
Posted on October 19, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Media, Religion.
Colin Powell devoted almost two minutes of his seven-minute explanation for why he has endorsed Barack Obama to denouncing leaders in the Republican party and others who have spewed anti-Muslim hate speech throughout this campaign.
It’s a shame that it has taken this long for such a prominent Republican politician to weigh in on this issue. For about two years now, we have been hearing the word Muslim used as if it were a slur or accusation. Obama has been labeled a Muslim by his critics, who operate on the assumption that Muslim Americans have no right to run for the presidency of the United States. I blogged about this issue last Saturday, and all week other commentators have discussed the issue. And now a man in power (well, a man who used to be in power) has spoken up. As Mr. Powell made clear, the line has been drawn in the sand: Enough!
Good work, Mr. Powell. That was one large step toward redeeming yourself.
