Reprinted: https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1606025085720459642
According to statistics from the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, since 1992, a total of 1,303 journalists have lost their lives in reports. Among them, the most legendary and widely reported is a woman stationed abroad-Marie Catherine (Marie Catherine). Colvin, 1956-2012).
Those who prefer lace underwear
"Blindfold Woman"
Someone once asked Colvin’s partner Paul Conroy: "Do you like working with Mary?" He replied, "Are you kidding? She is a legend!"
Colvin and partner Paul Conroy
What kind of woman has become a legend? To give Colvin a footnote, the keywords might look like the following figure:
The first thing that casts the goddess' aura is her undisputed hard power. With her rich experience in battlefields and sharp reporting, she has become a well-known "veteran" in the journalist industry. In the 26 years from 1986 to 2012, she appeared in almost all war zones on the planet, from East Timor, Libya, Kosovo, Iran, Chechnya to Iraq, from the Philippines to Sri Lanka, from Egypt to Syria, and in the vast areas of the southern tip of Eurasia. , She provided countless war reports for the British and American mainstream media, and therefore became friends with many political figures. There are more than 150 visa stamps in Colvin’s passport, recording political events including the election of Ahmadinejad, the rise of the Taliban, the Arab Spring, the arrest of Gaddafi, and the conflict in Syria. The stamps of contemporary war history have been collected.
Colvin passport page and visa stamp
In fact, the public's unforgettable memories of Colvin are attributed to her unique "blindfold woman" image. In 2001, in a grenade explosion in Sri Lanka, she injured her left eye. After that, she wore a blindfold all the year round, like a female heroine walking around the rivers and lakes, as if a cloak could save the world. The photos taken by the famous photographer Brian Adams in 2008 fixed her as a fierce and tough female fighter. Through the rain of bullets and witnessing the cruelty of war for a long time, all her eyes showed sharpness.
Mary Colvin, taken in 2008 by photographer Bryan Adams (Bryan Adams), is now in the British National Portrait Gallery.
However, what is unexpected is her preference for luxury underwear brand La Perla, especially lace and satin underwear. She has expressed this preference in public many times, and she must bring it to the battlefield. "Under the heavy body armor, I often wear lace underwear", she once joked with the editor of British "Vogue" magazine. In Sri Lanka, the militia broke into her hotel and did not take her satellite phone, tape recorder, or even her body armor. Instead, they stole all of her La Perla underwear. Although both parents are teachers, Colvin seems to have a natural aristocratic temperament and love beauty. She often wears big red nail polish, wears a Burberry coat and Prada coat, wears a pearl necklace, and often wears a pair of pearl earrings even in war zones. However, this earring is not ordinary, it is a gift from Arafat to her. Strong appearance and sexy temperament is probably the best description of Colvin.
In the eyes of friends, Colvin is a woman who is smart, alert, humorous, brave and charming. She has a sip of whiskey (American) accent, even though she has been in London for more than 20 years, she has not changed her American accent. Her laughter is very magical, and the frankness and informality in her life have allowed her to make many friends, from refugees to writers, from movie stars to guerrilla fighters. She has also established long-term friendships with many politicians. For example, she conducted 23 interviews with Yasser Arafat, accompanied him to the White House, accompanied him to sign the Oslo Peace Agreement, and produced the documentary "Arafat "Arafat: Behind the Myth" (Arafat: Behind the Myth).
Colvin and Arafat
Group photo with the Libyan armed forces in Misutara in 2011
"I'm Gaddafi, no kidding"
Colvin doesn't like to talk about his personal affairs. Someone asked her hometown of Oyster Bay (Oyster Bay), she said: "It's just a fishing village." Later when the person discovered that Oyster Bay was a gathering place for wealthy upper-class people, she just smiled. In fact, Colvin is from East Norwich, a middle-class town on the edge of Oyster Bay. She was not confident when she was in high school. She once worked for a tanker club to earn money.
Her father is a passionate intellectual and Democrat. He will read Dickens and Cooper to the children in the evening and take them to political rallies on weekends. Colvin is a complete "dad treasure". Her father dotes on her very much. All four younger siblings listen to her. There are her things everywhere in the house. Colvin and her father had a very good relationship until she entered a rebellious period. She often jumped out of the window to smoke and drink with friends at night. Her father had nothing to do with her, and they began to quarrel fiercely. Soon after enrolling at Yale, her father checked out that he had passed away in terminal cancer. The failure to reconcile with his father and apologize became her lifelong regret. Since then, all the memories of Dad have been sealed in her heart and rarely mentioned again.
Colvin in high school
However, her grades were very good, all of her classwork was A, and she also competed for national scholarships and flew to Washington to participate in the anti-Vietnam War demonstration. Later, she told her husband that "I once eloped to Brazil". In fact, she went as an exchange student in high school and lived in a wealthy family, but she liked to make jokes on her own. Coming back from Brazil, Colvin became fashionable and beautiful, and declared "I don't want to live at home, I want to go out and have a look." However, she had long missed the university application. She said to her family, "I'm going to Yale," and then took her high school transcript and test scores (two of them were above 800) and drove to New Haven. When she came back the next day, she said: "I'm in."
Soon after entering Yale, she became a man of the world because she often "voiced" on current events. At the same time, she became fascinated by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey's writing course, influenced by it, began writing for the Yale Daily, and embarked on the road of journalism. After 1995, he also wrote articles for the famous "Foreign Affairs" (Foreign Affairs), which is sponsored by an American think tank and is considered to be the most influential foreign policy magazine in the United States.
Colvin in college
Hessie is also a famous war correspondent. He was born in Tianjin, China, returned to the United States at the age of ten, and successively completed his studies at Yale and Cambridge University. In the fall of 1937, he joined Time magazine and was sent to the Chongqing branch two years later. He traveled to and from Eurasia during World War II. , Wrote articles for "Time", "Life", and "The New Yorker". He was the first reporter to practice the "new news" writing technique and had a great influence on American news reporting. His work "A Bell for Adano" (A Bell for Adano) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945; another "Hiroshima", which records the survivors of the atomic bomb, has become a widely circulated public book. Since 1965, he has taught at Yale University and taught writing courses for a long time, which has influenced a generation of students such as Colvin.
Colvin has always dreamed of settling in Paris. After graduating from university, she began to work for the United Press International (UPI). Her outstanding performance made her highly regarded, so she negotiated with the editor-in-chief and asked to be transferred to Paris, otherwise she would resign. The editor-in-chief agreed and allowed her to form a one-person Paris branch, and Colvin led a fashionable Parisian life.
However, after reading more reports about the Vietnam War and the Watergate incident, she became dissatisfied with the status quo, feeling that she was missing the big event at that time. Muammar Gaddafi, a mob who was sitting on an entire desert oil, was planning a terrorist attack. , And she wants to report. Judith Miller of The New York Times told her: "Go, Gaddafi is crazy, but he must like you." The 45-year-old Gaddafi has an endless love for beautiful women.
Colvin in Jordan in 1991
Colvin not only went, but also entered the house where Gaddafi never saw the newspaper. One night, Colvin was summoned to the basement. Gaddafi wore a red silk shirt, white loose silk pants, and a large gold chain. He stepped on a cloth tow and walked in. In particular, some gangsters said: "I am Ka Zafi, no kidding." UPI reported the interview with a headline. However, in the next few interviews, Gaddafi liked the sexy Parisian girl more and more. He began to make Corvin wear his favorite green high heels and wanted to find a nurse to give her a blood test. Colvin cleverly refused, and ran away in a hurry the next day.
Colvin and Gaddafi shaking hands
However, their relationship was not interrupted. In 1986, after the United States carried out the "Operation El Dorado Canyon" (Operation El Dorado Canyon) air raid on Libya, Colvin became the first reporter to interview Gaddafi. Gaddafi told her: "(The attack) I was at home at the time and personally rescued my wife and children from the collapsing house. As long as Reagan was in the White House, we would not be able to reconcile with the United States."
A bumpy marriage and poor life skills
Legendary women never lack admirers, and Colvin, who has been on the battlefield for a long time, has a rough marriage.
In 1987, when Colvin first arrived in Iraq, he attracted the attention of the foreign affairs reporter Patrick Bishop. His predecessor’s identity was approached actively and taught her to listen to the voice to judge the direction of the shells, "Listen, this is The shells shot out, this one was flying towards us..." He put his head on his knees for a moment, and after a while, he found Colvin standing behind him, staring at him and smiling. The two married in 1989. In the eyes of outsiders, they are particularly good-matched. Both come from middle-class families and their parents are Catholics and intellectuals. In fact, the same is true. The two have maintained a very good relationship for many years to come.
Patrick Bishop
But their marriage didn't last long. Soon after marriage, Colvin discovered that Bishop was flirting with other female reporters. She was very sad when she was in Iraq. The two divorced because of this. She was proud to devote more energy to reporting on the battlefield. In 1991, when the Gulf War broke out, she was the first British journalist to enter Iraq. Bishop asked her friends to help stop her. The reply she got was: "She didn't plan to come back." In 1999, Colvin was going to the dangerous Kosovo. Bishop made a special trip to Albania to dissuade her. She didn't care, and she still told other reporters about the dangers of war in the bar. But the two reconciled, got married again, and went to East Timor together. There, she rescued 1,500 women and children from an armed siege supported by Indonesia and won the International Women’s Media Foundation Award for this.
Coming back from East Timor, Corvin went to Chechnya. When the plane landed, she was still drunk, and the Chechens who picked up the plane were shocked because it was the Muslim month of Ramadan and drinking was prohibited. Female identity is also troublesome. The local male leader refused to shake hands with her. She told the person: "There are no women in the house, only reporters." There, she saw drunk Russian soldiers shooting children for fun, and then her car was bombed. , Fled into a beech bush, with a plane hovering above her head, dropping a bomb from time to time, she was trapped inside and could not escape, staying in the minus bush for 12 hours. The only escape route was to climb over a four-kilometer snow-covered mountainous area. When crossing the ice, a dozen kilograms of luggage became a burden, which not only seriously slowed the progress, but also caused her to fall into the water several times. In order to lose weight, she threw away her body armor, leaving only the necessary satellite phones and computers. It took four days to enter Georgia and find an abandoned sheep hut to rest. The food was almost finished, so she used only the remaining three bottles of jam and flour, added water, stirred it alive and ate it. A few days later, Bishop found her with the help of the American Embassy.
Colvin in the mountains of Chechnya in 1999
In 1996, between her two marriages with Bishop, she met a Bolivian journalist with good background, Juan Carlos Gumucio (Juan Carlos Gumucio), who was forced to go into exile for reporting on political crimes in her country. Knowing how to tell dirty jokes and being good at sharp reports, Colvin fell in love again and wanted to have a baby. But she suffered two miscarriages, her husband suffered from depression, often alcohol, and quarreling with her, the two chose to divorce soon after being together.
Photographed when Colvin married his second husband, Gumu Kio, in 1996
Until I met the businessman Richard Frey, her last lover in his lifetime, Colvin said that he had found "the love of this life." Frey grew up in Uganda, with colonial masculinity and gentlemanly demeanor. He is also a fierce navigator. When sailing, he will irritably order her to do things. Colvin doesn’t mind, and does it calmly and docilely. Up. Perhaps it is because she needs to be tenacious all the time on the battlefield, but she is very docile and naughty in love. Frey said: "I warned her, I am a spotted jaguar (with shortcomings), she said she is very independent, and should be my independent space." The two reached an agreement to only work for half a year and spend the rest of the time sailing and playing, which also helped relieve her symptoms of alcoholism.
Colvin and Richard Flaye sailed out to sea
Colvin’s life skills are worrisome. She once went on a business trip because she didn't put the phone in place. After returning, she paid $3,7000 in telephone bills. She also invited friends to dinner, and found that the oven was not turned on until the serving time. But she has many beautiful ideas for the future, preparing dinner for her partner and his children at home, and designing her own kitchen and garden. Two days before the bomb, she wrote to Frey:
It's so cold, there are no windows where I live. I climbed two stone walls today. The second one was almost two meters high. Someone bent over and let me step on his shoulders. He might think I was heavy. After I went up, he threw me over the wall with great force. , Gnawed a mouthful of mud.
However, the letter has not yet been sent, and she has been shot.
Cry when you bleed
Colvin always remembered his mother's words, "Crying when you bleed".
In April 2001, 44-year-old Colvin went to Sri Lanka to report on the civil war. In order to avoid the Tamil government forces, she hiked 30 miles in the tropical rainforest north of Vanni. When she heard that 340,000 refugees did not have access to food, water and electricity, she wanted to find out, but was found on the way through the plantation. She struggled with whether to hide or shout out her identity, and finally shouted: "Reporter! American!" This became one of the decisions she regretted the most, because in the next second, a grenade exploded beside her, fragments. Embedded in her lungs and wounded her left eye. For a long time in the future, she often dreamed back to this moment, awakened in profuse sweat, still wondering whether to show her identity in her dreams.
In 2001, Colvin was treated at the local hospital in Vavuniya after being injured.
This thrill caused a great psychological shadow on Colvin. She fell into panic and was afraid of blindness. When the doctor went to pluck her eyeballs, she cursed the doctor, but eventually lost her left eye. She revealed that the Sri Lankan government seized food and medicine and prevented international journalists from reporting, forcing the other party to change its attitude and begin to admit journalists.
After recovering from the injury, Colvin began to wear a blindfold, which became her unique personal identity in the future. Her story and photos made the headlines of the media, and the newspaper held a heroic return ceremony. She received more public attention than ever. However, I was troubled by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a long time, started drinking heavily, and later had to see a psychologist. She told a friend: "I have seen more wars than soldiers, and I have seen a lot of horrible pictures, such as a child being burned alive. It is really horrible. Sometimes I seem to lose consciousness, and I can't extricate myself from the boundless darkness. "
year 2011,
Colvin
In Cairo, Egypt, Tahrir square (Tahrir square) reported on the Egyptian revolution that was empty
I want to know what happened
On February 20, 2012, just after back surgery, the 56-year-old Colvin went to Syria with his companions. Bashar al-Assad’s troops are massaging the city. In the ancient city of Homs in western Syria, 28,000 people are surrounded by troops. The entire city has become a ghost town. In order to enter the war zone, they found a long, narrow, dark, damp flood drain sewer. When the people travelling with him hummed "Allah is the greatest", she and her companions have a bad premonition.
Colvin's last visa page to enter Syria
Because, as the radical jihadist forces gain the upper hand, the situation of reporters and cameramen has become dangerous and passive. For jihadists, reporters are spies who obtain intelligence; for criminal organizations, they are hostages for ransom. Therefore, both parties are very unkind to reporters.
Colvin conducts interview recording in Holmes
Prior to this, Colvin had already known that he would become Assad's target, so he wore a different Prada black nylon cotton coat as a disguise. The battle at the time was the Siege of Homs (Siege of Homs), with intensive fighting, with 45 bombs per minute. In Muslim countries, in order to follow the customs, Colvin always took off her shoes and put them in the corner. When she heard the shells coming, she wanted to get the shoes and escape. At this moment, a bomb exploded not far away, and Colvin was not spared. Her camera partner, Rémi Ochlik, was also killed. Before being rushed, the Red Cross transported her body to Damascus and then to New York.
The building where Colvin was killed and the final report fragment: "I hope to see you soon."
Uncrowned queen
From 2011 to 2014, about 63 foreign journalists were killed in Syria. Among them, the death of Colvin was the most widely reported. In 2016, her family sued the Syrian Arab Republic, accusing the Syrian government of "directly ordering" the assassination of Mary Colvin. This was the first time that the government directly ordered the killing of a foreign journalist. The British government also ordered an investigation into the cause of Colvin's death and accused Assad of war crimes. The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies deliberately bombarding reporter stations, claiming it was an accident, and warning foreign journalists not to enter war zones and turbulent areas illegally. Not long ago, the United States used chemical weapons as an excuse to bomb Syria again. The BBC also took this opportunity to repost the news that Colvin was killed that year, or to warm up the deployment of missiles.
Corvin's mother holding her picture
Others condemned the newspaper's irresponsibility. I think the editor has urged frontline reporters too tightly and should wait until her own safety is guaranteed before posting news. Others questioned why the newspaper allowed her to sneak back again even though she knew she was being targeted by Assad? Although Colvin said that “to be brave is not to be afraid of your own fears”, the public still disagrees with the 56-year-old who has war trauma and alcoholism to report on the massacre. The newspaper's official explanation was that it is illegal to prevent people with PTSD from working in the UK.
Colvin's funeral
Two hundred citizens attended Colvin’s funeral, including the media tycoon Murdoch, because Colvin’s 27-year “Sunday Times” was a newspaper under his media group. The Scottish bagpipe sounded amazing grace, and a group of Sri Lankan immigrants held posters calling her the "Uncrowned Queen." However, all this couldn't stop the tears in her mother's eyes. She said: "I just want her back." After working in the press for 27 years, Colvin's death was fully consumed by the press and politics.
After Colvin's death, her battlefield report was compiled and published under the title "On the Front Line: News Reports of Mary Colvin", "Vanity Fair" (Vanity Fair) opened a memoir column for her, and several friends published memoirs. Her very story-telling life attracted documentary director Matthew Heineman (Matthew Heineman), who wanted to make Colvin’s experience into a documentary called "A Private War" (A Private War), actor Rosamund Parker will play Colvin. This ups and downs of life is not an epic of a woman?
For related information, please refer to:
MARIE COLVIN'S PRIVATE WAR: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/08/marie-colvin-private-war
'Marie Colvin: Syria assassinated reporter, court told' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43711617
Colvin, Marie (2012) On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin (London: Harper Press).
Conroy, Paul (2013) Under the Wire: Marie Colvin's Final Assignment (New York, NY: Weinstein Books).
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