Jonah Hull

Jonah Hull's picture
Jonah Hull
Roving Correspondent | United Kingdom
Biography
Jonah Hull is a roving correspondent based out of Al Jazeera's London broadcast centre. He has extensive experience covering breaking news, conflict and natural disasters around the world. In his previous role as Al Jazeera English's Moscow correspondent, Jonah covered the final years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, the election that installed his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008.

Latest posts by Jonah Hull

By Jonah Hull in Europe on April 19th, 2012
[Photo: AFP]

It is an odd experience live-tweeting a mass murder trial, as I have been doing for the past couple of days in Norway; it's tough to get the hang of it.

You have to consciously divide your brain into different yet simultaneously working parts, as I'm told drummers and fighter-jet pilots do: listen with half an ear; watch with half an eye; process what you're hearing and seeing into tiny tweet-sized bites; tap them super quickly into Twitter and send, while listening, watching and processing without pause. At the same time, take written notes that will become a TV script and lend coherent direction to live reports during court breaks.

Somewhere in the midst of it you've got to sit back and form some sort of analytical overview of where the legal argument is going, look around the courtroom and get a sense of how relatives and survivors, psychiatrists, lawyers and judges are reacting to events.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on March 22nd, 2012
Photo by EPA

In resisting two previous United Nations resolutions on Syria, Russia's position was that the texts were unbalanced and aimed at regime change. It insisted both sides should cease fire and begin negotiations, without preconditions or ultimatums.

Western powers, demanding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, lambasted Russia for this. It cost them a show of diplomatic unity against Assad, in the absence of will to take concrete steps on the ground.

Wednesday's presidential statement includes calls for both sides to cease fire and engage in negotiations. It includes the Russian position that these should occur with no preconditions, timelines or ultimatums.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on March 2nd, 2012



Driving through the city that I lived in a few years ago, I was amused to see a poster advertising a summer concert by 1980s rock outfit, the Scorpions.

The Scorpions, I remember, were always turning up in Moscow. They even played at Mikhail Gorbachev's 80th birthday shindig.

Russia must surely be among the last places on Earth where this aging band can still gather an enthusiastic crowd, enough to keep the wrinkly rockers in orange juice and Old Spice.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on March 1st, 2012



The wisdom of the pundits, the free-thinking ones, seems to be that while Vladimir Putin has succeeded in alienating the big city middle classes in Russia, he still confidently holds the support of the regional masses, the workers who make up the electoral majority.

The polls, at time of writing, seem to suggest likewise having risen sharply in Putin's favour, suggesting he will win in the first round and avoid a humiliating run-off.

Having travelled back in real time for days, crossing time zones from east to west that made each day longer than the last, I took a step back into history in the oil town of Tyumen.

I visited a Soviet-era factory to find out if the pundits were right about the workers.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on February 29th, 2012

We have clipped along by train for two days now across the unrelentingly white landscape of frozen southern Siberia.

It's an agreeable way of getting from place to place if, like me, one is lodged in a private first class compartment with a kindly provodnitsa (attendant) like Vera who delivers sweet, black tea and freshly made pancakes before first light.

The majority of my fellow travellers are stacked up on bunks in the very clean but open-plan third class carriages. Many are making the whole six-day journey from Vladivostok to Moscow, though a fair number get on and off at stops in between.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on February 27th, 2012

You'd need many weeks of travel to get the true feel of a country the size of Russia. Even then, you wouldn't be anywhere close to understanding it.

By Jonah Hull in Europe on January 17th, 2012
Garzon, who tried to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, sits in the dock with his lawyer [Reuters]

Those who have claimed Judge Baltasar Garzon is the victim of a judicial witch-hunt by colleagues jealous of his fame, might have been surprised to see the top investigative judge arrive at Madrid's Supreme Court flanked by six of his fellow judges showing their support.

The group walked towards the courthouse through a throng of demonstrators calling for justice in Garzon's name.

One told me, "This is a democracy and this judge is being judged by corrupt people. The hunter has become the hunted."

Inside, Garzon was met by applause from members of the legal fraternity. It's clear, Garzon has plenty of support, but plenty of enemies as well.

The darling of human-rights groups - and victims - in Spain and around the world, Balthasar Garzon stepped on many toes in his long career.

Arch-conservatives in Spain are angry at his attempts to dig up Spain's wartime past.

Plenty of enemies

By Jonah Hull in Africa on December 7th, 2011
Environmental activists with flags on their backs bury their heads in the sand on Durban's beachfront [Reuters]

Let's call it "Day One" of the Durban climate change talks.

Ministers and heads of delegations are now engaged and they'll make decisions where their minions could not over the past week and a half.

In truth, even the ministers must take instructions from their capitals - instructions that, I'm told, sometimes come down after high-level pressure has been applied by one powerful country or another (I couldn't possibly say who) along the lines of, "back off" or "support our position, or you'll lose your aid funding next year."

I couldn't possibly say for sure. But let's not be cynical.

Let's say instead, as Britain's man here Chris Huhne did, that there's everything to play for. He's right because there's nothing of any substance on the table. Yet.

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By Jonah Hull in Africa on March 1st, 2011
Photo by Reuters

At the time of writing it appears as though calls to join a Million Citizen March in Harare on Tuesday have gone unheeded - for now.

People I’ve spoken to in the Zimbabwean capital describe calm and relative normality.

By Jonah Hull in Africa on February 20th, 2011
Photo by Reuters
On Monday, Zimbabwe's president Robert Gabriel Mugabe turns 87.
 
It will be a birthday marked by rumours about his failing health. Any appearance the apparently ailing Mugabe makes will be closely watched for signs of sickness that give the lie to his spokesman's claim that Mugabe's only problem is a gammy eye.
 
Mugabe has just returned from Singapore, a trip officially acknowledged as his annual holiday, slightly extended to accommodate post-operative treatment following eye surgery.
 
Zimbabwe's non-government media isn't buying it. One newspaper contains reports that he in fact received cancer treatment, arriving back in the country looking frail, allegedly in a wheelchair.

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Biography

Jonah Hull's picture
Jonah Hull
Roving Correspondent
Jonah Hull, based in London, covers stories around the world.

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