Irish Photographer John McHugh Injured In Afghanistan Shooting

deegs

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003590103

Photojournalist John D. McHugh is recovering after being shot last week while working in Afghanistan.

McHugh, a freelancer based in London who shoots for Agence France-Presse, was embedded with a coalition of American and Afghan forces.

On May 15, his unit responded to support another unit that had been ambushed. The unit McHugh was in also came under attack.

"I was shot through the stomach, lower left abdomen, and the bullet damaged my colon and spleen before exploding out through my back. Ouch!," McHugh wrote in an e-mail to friends this week.

"We were in the middle of a big fight, so I think it was 10 or 15 minutes before the soldiers managed to get a dressing on me and get me into a Humvee, at which point we drove out of there, all guns blazing," he wrote. "I remained conscious the whole time, and once back at the base, maybe 20 minutes over the worst roads in the world, I was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital, where I was operated on."

McHugh said he was writing from a military hospital in Germany, and was waiting to return to the U.K.

McHugh wrote that he considered himself lucky to be alive, and that others were killed in the attack. A U.S. Military news release says a servicemember died after being wounded in an attack in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, on May 15, though it is unclear if that was the same incident in which McHugh was shot.

This was McHugh's third trip to Afghanistan since 2006, according to a post on his blog. He arrived in April and planned to stay for several months as part of a long-term embed with U.S. forces.

Masada

thats a nasty story, but i can never understand why people sympathise with others that get shot/killed in this situation., He did know the risk when he went there and took his chances but lost,. theres thousands of natives there that loose friends and family all the time and they never get noticed.,

Calina

The world is richer for the risks some of these reporters and photographers take.

I saw some of the war photography from WWI in Belgium. It is sobering. I also saw a lot of photographs from the Palestinian Conflict in the news journalism section of the World Press Photography which touched down where I was rather frivolously taking sports photographs on my holidays last year. If we had no people willing to take risks to get those photos and those images, how much do you think people would care about those conflicts? I know he was an embedded photog which allows a certain amount of sanitising - but still...

It's disingenuous to claim no one takes any notice of locals who die in these conflicts. There are people who have been fighting for years to get the numbers into the news.

Masada

Maybe i came across a bit strong.,lol,
As an exampe i was thinking of Ken Bigley and the fuss over him, he wasnt doing anything heroic for the country he was just there to make money and knew the risks.,
another point is Benazir bhutto was killed yesterday and its all over the news but there was a lot of other people killed along side her and there has been hardly any mention of them.,

shepthedog

If you look at Johns Blog he is now back in Afghanistan doing what he does best.. His bravery manages to tell stories we would otherwise not see by means of censorship.

Calina

I think you are looking at things a bit simplistically to be honest. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto will have major political ramifications in the area. You can't discount that. Yes some of her supporters got killed, particularly at that first rally and that is entirely reprehensible. But what is most reprehensible is that they got killed in the first place, not that that their deaths were ignored, or that they somehow got bunched into a statistic.

Regarding Ken Bigley regardless of his motivation of being in the country, the way he died was newsworthy from a western point of view because it was felt to be so barbaric. But you also have to bear in mind that being British, and us getting so much UK media, we got coverage of it that would not have been to the same extent in other countries.

For a key example of your point you need to look at the story of Tony Bullimore who was hailed as a hero in the UK for surviving in an upturned boat in the southern Ocean - and yet to my mind the heros in that story are the Australian Navy who saved his life.

In any case, there used to be a time that news journalists and photographers were off limits - much like the Red Cross - in conflicts. Now, no one is.

ThOnda

Well, Calina, we are talking about two different things.
Stories to be told - yes, it is more than important.
To put myself into considerable danger only to get the story - nope.

I think that everybody has this limit a little different. However knowing, that I'll be shot in one of five trips to the country, I would prefer doing different stories about people living and suffering in that country to stories about soldiers on their duty called "shoot at me, I am your target". But all media pay more for shot soldiers. People don't want to see suffering and hungry people. Those are green, humanitary, arty shots to be in exhibitions and in books, not pictures to be sold to masses in newspapers.

One Czech photographer ran across the minefield when a kid stepped on the land mine and lost his leg. But he didn't run there to help the kid. He ran there to take photos.
Do I have to say that I just can't like this kind of person?

PeakOutput

ThOnda wrote: »

One Czech photographer ran across the minefield when a kid stepped on the land mine and lost his leg. But he didn't run there to help the kid. He ran there to take photos.
Do I have to say that I just can't like this kind of person?

although you reigned in on what you originally said i would still like to comment on it.

katy french knew the risks she was taking by doing coke and yet she died from it and the there was/is public outcry. the reason for this is like it or not she didnt deserve to die.

now change the stupid act with going to a warzone and you have a "brave" person instead of a stupid one. what makes them brave and not stupid? the fact that what they are doing has a benefit to mankind. the photographer knew the consquences but still did not deserve them and therefore i dont see any reason not to sympathising with him. the same way id sympathise with, for example, a skydiver who has been seriously injured in a skydiving accident.

i can understand the argument from both sides with your minefield story tbh. the "greater good" was potentially served by the photographer photographing the child and then helping(i assume they did) rather then helping and missing the photo. on an individual, personal level its a seemingly abhorent thing to do but when you consider how many lives the picture could save by waking people up the horrors of mines then (to me at least) it can be seen as a very necessary evil. i dont know if i could of done what that photographer did but i certainly dont think less of him coz he did it.

/rant over

alot of ranting going on today

deegs

if someone wanders into a minefield then a bystander is better off staying on the sideline till "experts" come to help, and then helping them any way possible. I would be surprised if an experienced war photographer "wandered" into a known live minefield for any reason.

No comes the ethical issue of turning away and being decent, or cataloging the truth of the matter.

My 2 cents, worth about as much as you paid for them