Australian journalist Peter Greste is not ready to quit his job, despite the ill feeling he could be arrested and taken back to an Egyptian prison cell.
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The 49-year-old was speaking ahead of a lecture to sociology students at the University of Wollongong on Thursday, and said he is still passionate about his work and by talking about his experiences people would think more about the freedom of the press and the role it plays.
‘‘What we tend to forget is that democracies that have made places like Australia safe, stable and prosperous for the past 200 years is the ability of journalists to work freely to interrogate governments and political ideas and extremists with equal force,’’ he said.
‘‘So if we’re starting to limit that I think we do real damage to the work, not just of journalists but to the way democracy works itself.’’
Just over a week ago an Egyptian court handed down a three-year jail sentence to Mr Greste and his two al-Jazeera colleagues, for operating without a press licence and broadcasting material harmful to the nation.
Under Egyptian law Mr Greste is not allowed to appeal the terrorist conviction as he is not physically in the country, but said he is going to take every step he could – legally and politically – to have it overturned.
‘‘We might still appeal anyway just to have a go at it, but if that doesn’t work or we decide that really isn’t an option for us then I’ll appeal to the president for a pardon,’’ he said.
Mr Greste said you can’t live in a ‘‘constant state of anxiety’’ and not travel for fear of being deported back to Egypt, but instead will get on with life and deal with things as they come.
What really concerns him is the way in which conflict in the Middle East has changed the face of journalism, and how in general it has posed an ‘‘assault on the freedom of the press’’ and the ability of journalists to work with integrity because they themselves have become targets.
‘‘We’re not reporting on war zones or physical things anymore, we’re talking about a war over an idea [where] the battlefield itself has become the media – the place where those ideas are fought out. So journalists are targets whether it’s by governments or from the extremists,’’ he said.
‘‘The last three years have been the worst on record for journalist casualties.’’
Social transformation was the big topic presented to UOW students, with the aim of helping them understand what’s happening in the real world.
‘‘I don’t mean that in a cynical sense I don’t want people to be frightened or intimidated by what I went through, it’s just there are some very serious issues we need to come to terms with. So if I can help them understand and make it more real rather than abstract ... then I think it will have achieved something.’’
Mr Greste was originally arrested in December 2013 while working for the Al Jazeera network and charged with assisting the banned Muslim Brotherhood. He spent 400 days in jail, with convictions overturned in January 2015. He was sent back to Australia in February, though soon afterward a re-trial was ordered.
His work as a foreign correspondence has been greatly affected, as it stops him from travelling to any country with an extradition treaty with Egypt.
