LETTER FROM DERNA
Information is only arriving in trickles from the regions affected by the passage of storm Daniel on the eastern coast of Libya, on the night of September 10 to 11. A month after the disaster, the official death toll of which was set at nearly 4,000, most of the journalists who went to the site left the area. The hope of returning to Cyrenaica is slim, as eastern Libya remains difficult to access for the press.
The fault of “permissions” which must first be requested from the military authorities of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, in power since 2018 in the region, for whom “every journalist is a potential spy”, summarizes a local photographer, on condition of anonymity. The current national context is not favorable to the exercise of this profession: the country, ravaged by more than a decade of armed conflicts, is described as a “a real black hole of information” by the NGO Reporters Without Borders.
The day after the tragedy, when images on social networks began to reveal the extent of the damage caused in Derna by the rupture of the two dams upstream of the city, journalists wanting to try to reach the scene of the disaster thus encountered by the distrust of the authorities and the multiplicity of administrations. With two rival governments vying for the legitimacy of power but having in common that they do not facilitate the work of the press, finding the procedure to access the country is an administrative headache. At the airports of Tunis, Istanbul and Cairo, the three cities with regular air connections with Libya, journalists gathered while waiting for the green light to be obtained.
Turned away at airports
Discussions between media professionals were created on WhatsApp to share the latest news. To support them in their efforts, Libyan volunteers, activists or themselves journalists, tried as best they could to direct the requests. “Obtaining a visa in Libya is extremely difficult. So people contacted me to tell me that they were having difficulty entering the country”says Nour Moman, a woman with multiple hats, including those of translator and fixer, who tried to connect the international press with the Libyan foreign and internal affairs services.
His benevolence, like that of the other volunteers, however, had little weight in the face of the recalcitrance of the authorities. The requests piled up, with random responses. Result: many journalists were never able to board a plane to the country while others were turned away at the airports of Tripoli and Benghazi.
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