Determination and drive has characterized life of missing Al-Jazeera reporter Dorothy Parvaz

Dorothy Parvaz called her fiance on April 28 and told him something he didn’t want to hear: She was going to Syria to report on the uprising and the government’s ruthless efforts to quash it.

The Iranian-born Al-Jazeera reporter, who spent her teen years in Canada and studied and worked in the U.S., had been in challenging situations before, including returning to the land of her birth to report on changes there for a U.S. newspaper. But nothing in her reporting history compared to the crackdown in Syria, where many reporters had already been detained or expelled by the time she set off.

“Nothing I could say would change her mind,” said her fiance, Todd Barker, who was driving from Arizona to Los Angeles that night. “I could tell by the tone of her voice that it was gonna happen. She is very committed. She believes reporting the truth is a force to make people’s lives better and she lives and breathes that.”

The next day, Barker heard nothing from his fiancee, whom he normally communicates with several times a day.

“I went to bed on the 29th and I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. And then I got the call from Al-Jazeera at 3 a.m. It was like a nuclear bomb exploding in your life.”

Parvaz hasn’t been seen or heard from since she left Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, on April 29. On May 4, Al-Jazeera said Syrian authorities confirmed she was detained.

On May 10, Syria said she had not been in the country for more than a week. A day later, the government said she had been deported to Tehran, Iran, following her detention in Damascus, the Syrian capital. There has been no comment from Iranian officials.

Parvaz has Iranian, Canadian and U.S. citizenship. She used her Iranian passport to enter Syria because she couldn’t enter with either of the others.

“The details of what’s happened to her are not clear at all,” said David McCumber, who worked with Parvaz for more than 10 years when he was the managing editor at the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “But Dorothy is enormously resourceful. If anyone could handle a situation like this, it would be her.”

Parvaz, 39, is among at least five journalists Syria is holding, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Others include Ghadi Frances, who writes for the Lebanese daily As-Safir; Al-Arabiya correspondent Mohamed Zayd Mastou; and freelance photographer Akram Darwish. Sara and Mastou were first detained more than a month ago, CPJ said.

“Damascus must account for all detained journalists and release them immediately,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the group’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.

CPJ said that since the social unrest erupted in Syria in March, about 20 local and international journalists have been physically assaulted, detained or expelled.

Syria has imposed a media blackout intended to limit coverage of the unrest by refusing to issue visas to foreign journalists and preventing access to trouble spots. President Bashar Assad — and his state-run media — have blamed the unrest on terrorist groups and foreign agitators.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/determination-and-drive-has-characterized-life-of-missing-al-jazeera-reporter-dorothy-parvaz/2011/05/14/AFsJ9I3G_story.html