Do you want to be a journalist? Talk live to Jo Wilding, the British activist, on January, 21, 2007 at 21:00 GMT.
Jo Wilding was one of the most famous foreign activists in Iraq during the period from November 2003 to May 2004.
A human rights campaigner, writer, and trainee lawyer from Bristol, UK, she first came to Iraq in August 2001, with Voices in the Wilderness, to break the sanctions as an act of civil disobedience and to get a perspective on what was happening for the purpose of advocacy work in the UK. In November 2002, she forced the UK Customs and Excise to take her to court for breaking the sanctions. It was the first time that the legality of the sanctions had been considered directly by a British court. (Wilding also appeared in court in March 2001 for throwing fruits at Tony Blair in a protest against the sanctions.)
She returned to Iraq as an independent observer in February 2003 and stayed for the month before the war and the first 11 days of the bombing as a human shield, before being expelled by the Iraqi foreign ministry as part of a purge of independent foreigners. She returned to Iraq again in November 2003 — after the US-led invasion in March of 2003 — and left in May 2004.
Her writings about Iraq and its ordinary people were published in the Guardian, the New Zealand Herald, Counterpunch, and many other media outlets.
