She believed that bearing witness and giving the victims a voice mattered. Marie Colvin cared

By RUTH SHERLOCK
Published on Thursday 23 February 2012 01:12

THE day before her death, Marie Colvin sent a message to a war reporters’ Facebook group, urging colleagues to break her newspaper’s online paywall and repost her remarkable report from inside Homs.

“I don’t often do this but it is sickening what is happening here,” she wrote. “I cannot understand how the world can stand by … Watched a baby die today. Shrapnel, doctors could do nothing. His little tummy just heaved and heaved until he stopped. Feeling helpless. As well as cold! Will keep trying to get out the information.”

Spending time with Marie was a reminder of what journalism is about. Her choice to live so much of her life in the world’s worst conflict zones was born from the belief that what she did mattered; that bearing witness to some of history’s darkest moments and giving a voice to its victims could curtail the perpetrators of such brutality and spur the rest of the world into action.

Marie and her photographer Paul Conroy, who was injured beside her in Homs, spent three months living in the Libyan city of Misrata witnessing the heavy, indiscriminate rocket fire from Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s forces, and the ensuing battle with rebel fighters.

While the rest of us would venture to the front line for a brief look before a quick retreat, Marie would disappear into the haze of battle in a rebel commander’s vehicle. Sometimes she would be gone for days, embedding herself with the rebel troops.

Her tremendous courage was complemented by a great humility and spontaneous wit. She treated those she worked with and wrote about as equals, and refused to source friendship only from the press pack in the area. In Misrata, her Libyan fixer and translator became one of her closest companions.

They sat together in his car one sunny afternoon, the doors open to let in the breeze, giggling about the day before, when they had accidentally driven so far through the front lines that Nato bombs aimed at Gaddafi loyalist targets were falling behind them.

Her work was inspirational in its bravery, thoroughness, compassion and honesty. She cared, and it showed.

• Ruth Sherlock covered the Libyan revolution for The Scotsman