Mellissa Fung speaks at UBC Journalism Nov. 14, 2014.
Mellissa Fung doesn’t know why she keeps going back to Afghanistan.
“What happened should have scared me from that country forever,” the former CBC journalist told a packed room at UBC’s Graduate School of Journalism on November 14 at an event sponsored by Aga Khan Foundation Canada.
Six years ago, while reporting for CBC, she was kidnapped by bandits and detained in a tiny, dark cave. It took nearly a month for Canadian and Afghan authorities to negotiate her release.
“I didn’t think then that I would ever, ever want to set foot back in Afghanistan again,” she said.
But Fung has, many times.
Each time she goes back, surrounded by “more security than the Prime Minister,” she finds more stories about women and girls who are reclaiming many of the rights they lost under the Taliban.
She has spoken with young women who escaped marriages in which they were beaten and sexually assaulted for years.
Now they are going to school, learning to read and write.
She has met former child brides who were once illiterate and are now teaching girls to read.
‘Shocked’
During her talk, she spoke about profiling girls who dream of becoming politicians — a dream that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago.
Fung described visiting pediatric hospitals that are as clean and welcoming as a Canadian children’s hospital, and are training a new generation of Afghan doctors. Twelve years ago, women would have had to leave the country to receive that kind of treatment. “I was shocked when I walked in that this was Afghanistan,” she said.
One student asked Fung if the invasion of Afghanistan was worth it.
“I don’t like that question, and the soldiers don’t like that question,” Fung said, going on to explain that journalists often look at only the military successes or failures, and neglect the humanitarian victories for the people of Afghanistan.
“If they have hope,” she said, “who are we to doubt that.”
