- Allan Nairn
Allan Nairn (born 1956) is an award-winning U.S. investigative journalist who became well-known when he was imprisoned by the
Indonesia n military while reporting inEast Timor . His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries asHaiti ,Guatemala , Indonesia, and East Timor.Nairn was born in
Mobile, Alabama to a Puerto Rican mother. In high school, he got a job with consumer activistRalph Nader , working for him for six years.In 1980, Nairn visited Guatemala in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic
counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas active in both urban andrural areas. He interviewed U.S. corporate executives there, who endorsed thedeath squad s, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and inEl Salvador , also in the throes of civil war.Subsequently, Nairn became interested in East Timor and helped found the
East Timor Action Network (ETAN), which was instrumental in bringing the independence movement in East Timor to international attention.In 1991, covering developments in
East Timor , Nairn and fellow journalistAmy Goodman were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after they witnessed a mass killing of Timorese demonstrators in what became known as theDili Massacre . He was beaten with the butts of M16 rifles and had his skull fractured in the melee. Nairn was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from East Timor, but he re-entered several times illegally, and his subsequent reports helped convince the U.S. Congress to cut off military aid toJakarta in 1993. In a dispatch from in East Timor onMarch 30 ,1998 , Nairn disclosed the continuing U.S. military training of Indonesian troops implicated in thetorture and killing of civilians. In 1999, Nairn was detained briefly by the Indonesian Army.In an article published in "The Nation" in 1994, Nairn revealed the U.S. government's role in establishing and funding the Haitian paramilitary
death squad ,FRAPH (the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti).Nairn is also author of the "The Reign of ETS: the Corporation That Makes up Minds", an investigation of the
SAT I exam and its creators,Educational Testing Service . It was printed as part of theRalph Nader report in 1980.Awards
In 1993, Nairn and
Amy Goodman received theRobert F. Kennedy Memorial First Prize for International Radio award for their reporting onEast Timor . [http://www.rfkmemorial.org/legacyinaction/1993/]In 1994, Nairn won the
George Polk Award for Journalism for Magazine Reporting. [http://www.brooklyn.liu.edu/polk/prev/prev90.html]Also in 1994, Nairn received the The
James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing on Haiti for "The Nation" magazine. [http://filmmedia.hunter.cuny.edu/aronson/pastwinners.html]Quotation
:"The United States has no monopoly on the abuse of power. But since I am an American this is where I have some influence and responsibility." [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/17/nairn/index1.html]
External links
* [http://newsc.blogspot.com/ Allan Nairn's blog - "News and Comment"]
* [http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/AllanNairn_page.html Allan Nairn page] (Links to various articles by Nairn)
* [http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19990927&s=nairn "U.S. Complicity in Timor"] ("The Nation",September 27 1999 )
* [http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/east_timor/evidence/nairn.html "Witness to the Santa Cruz Massacre"] (excerpt from Nair's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations onFebruary 17 1992 regarding the Dili massacre)
* [http://www.theharbinger.org/xviii/000425/nairn.html Interview with Allan Nairn] (Mobile, Alabama,April 25 2000 )
* [http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/june95arnove.htm Interview With Allan Nairn] ("Z Magazine", June 1995)
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