Reza's story

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A death-defying migrant's story... Said Reza Adib was a TV journalist in Afghanistan. In 2016, about to break a story about the sexual abuse of children by Afghan men in authority, he received a threat to his life. Reza fled across the border to Iran. But journalism was in his blood, and in Iran he began to investigate sensitive stories related to the war in Syria. When Iranian authorities confiscated his laptop, he knew his life was again in danger. That same day, with his wife and two small children, he began a perilous journey to safety in Finland – an odyssey that would last four years. The family would survive shooting on the Turkish border, a voyage across the Aegean Sea on an overcrowded makeshift vessel with fake lifejackets, and then the nightmare of refugee camps in Greece. It was here that Chloe Hadjimatheou met Reza, and for Assignment she tells the story of a remarkable journalist who’s continued to ply his trade - in spite of the odds stacked against him.

Producer: Linda Pressly

(Image: Said Reza Adib. Credit: Sayed Ahmadzia Ebrahimi)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for assignment on the BBC World Service.
0:04.0	I'm a journalist and I really care about uncovering wrongdoing,
0:08.0	but the truth is I've never really had to risk everything
0:11.0	in order to expose corruption or harm. If push came to shove,
0:15.4	would I still pursue a story if it meant me and my husband and my children had to leave our
0:20.0	whole lives behind and become refugees? The truth is I don't know, which is why I was
0:26.1	so interested in the story of an Afghan journalist I met in Greece. Okay now is ruling. I want to talk to my wife about her feeling. This is
0:38.7	Saeed Reza Adeb. He and his wife Fatma Musavi are Afghan refugees.
0:44.0	They arrived in Greece two years ago
0:46.0	and today he's recording her as they prepare to leave the country.
0:50.0	Hello, my love.
0:52.0	Hi, my love. Hi, my darling.
0:55.0	What is your feeling now?
0:57.0	Yes, sir story alone.
0:58.0	I'm nervous and happy because I will leave Greece. I want to go to Finland.
1:08.0	Finland is very good country for my children, for our future, for everything.
1:15.0	Fatima, do you like that me as your husband, I am journalist, do you like journalist or not?
1:27.0	This question is very complicated. Complicated. I like journalists and I don't like journalists because journalists job is very dangerous.
1:40.0	I mean chimney that's it.
1:42.0	That's it. That's it.
1:46.0	It may sound odd to hear Reza ask Fatma her opinion of journalists,
1:50.0	but it's Reza's investigative journalism that's shaped their lives.
	...

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