The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
July 9, 2013

Journalist, Media Activist Sputnik Kilambi Dead at 55 
------------------------------------------------------


 
The journalist and media activist Sputnik Kilambi has died at the age of
55 after a battle with liver cancer. Kilambi was often the only woman
reporting from war zones. She was known as a mentor to other journalists
who reported from the ground rather than from the press office. She
worked for more than a decade at Radio France Internationale, and her
voice was regularly heard as a correspondent for Free Speech Radio News,
which she helped found. In 2002, she worked to expose sexual trafficking
in the Balkans, where international peacekeepers hired by companies like
Dyn Corp were contributing to the very crimes they were there to combat.

Sputnik Kilambi: "Estimates suggest more than 700,000 people, especially
women and girls, are trafficked across the borders worldwide. Almost
one-third of this figure concerns the Balkans, which has become a major
transit and destination point. And one reason for this clearly is the
huge international presence in the region."

Kilambi also worked with the United Nations to establish media outlets
and trained journalists dedicated to peace in countries ravaged by
violence, including in Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Côte d'Ivoire,
where the U.N. radio station she helped found is known as "the peace
frequency." She worked most recently in Rwanda, helping to create the
country's first independent television news station.

 

.