Japanese journo tweets from captivity
If you’re a journalist being held against your will in a war-torn country then access to a mobile phone must seem like a Godsend.
It’s hard to conceive of the possibility that there are people out there who haven’t a clue about the Internet. But that is the reality, with many people in developing countries not even knowing of its existence, let alone how it works.
This is unlikely to cause problems for the majority, but when you’re in the business of abducting journalists and holding them in captivity, it may do. As one of the captors keeping Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka is now no doubt aware.
Tsuneoka went missing on April 1 while reporting on the continuing conflict in Afghanistan. Nothing of him was heard for five months, with even his Twitter account falling silent. Tsuneoka was rightly assumed to have been abducted by Muslim extremists in the country, with many fearing he had already been killed.
He hadn’t. Instead, he’d been held captive in a jail cell all that time by local militants posing as the Taliban.
We know this because he was freed on Monday (Sept. 6) supposedly because he was a Muslim, having converted in Moscow in the year 2000. But his release coincidentally came the day after he posted to his Twitter account while still being held captive.
As PC World reports, Tsuneoka struck lucky when one of his captors decided to show off his new Nokia N70, advanced compared to the cellphones used by most of the Afghan population.
The foot soldier asked him how to use the phone, and Tsuneoka gladly showed him. He was also eager to learn more about the Internet, something he’d merely heard about. Tsuneoka phoned customer care and activated the phone, giving him access to the Internet for the first time in five months.
The canny journalist told his captor about Twitter, which he explained would be a good way of tracking and capturing fellow Japanese journos. Tsuneoka then used the phone to send two tweets, one assuring his followers he was alive, another specifying where he being held and by whom. 24 hours later and he was free and on his way back to Tokyo.
Even if Twitter cannot claim responsibility for freeing him, it still enabled Tsuneoka to assure family and friends he was still alive and well. Aided by ignorance, obviously.
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