Elizabeth Puranam is an Indian New Zealander journalist and news presenter works for Al Jazeera. She was born in Mahatma Gandhi Hospital of Hyderabad in India. But her parents migrated to New Zealand when she was only 10. Elizabeth Puranam didn’t study journalism; instead she studied politics and media. Later she joined captioning department of TVNZ, state owned television network of New Zealand. There she received offer from TV3 and very soon started to anchor news on that channel.
Puranam was very keen to work at Qatari TV Al Jazeera, which is one of the three biggest news organizations of the world. She studied Arabic and wrote essay on the channel. She got in touch with the channel expressing her interest to work with the channel. Eventually Al Jazeera invited her for screen test and offered her to work as an anchor there. Since then she covered many stories including Gaza wars of 2012 and 2014, Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre in Egypt and terror attacks in Paris.
Sharing her experience in Qatar Elizabeth Puranam says, she learned Arabic to work in Al Jazeera. Though she can read and write Arabic but usually she doesn’t need to use that, because locals show very little interest on short term immigrants. As Qatar is a Muslim majority conservative country women needs to be little cautious about dress up, but anything is acceptable in clubs- says Puranam.
While reporting on disputed Kashmir.
Reporting on Kashmir
Kashmir is a longstanding disputed territory between India and Pakistan. Both countries claim this territory and control some portion of this Muslim majority territory. In recent years many people of India administrated Kashmir have started demanding for independence and some groups have started armed struggle for independence from India. On the other hand India considers these armed groups as Pakistan backed terrorist groups. Human rights organizations have continuously alleged that Indian armed forces are violating human rights there.
So in 2016 Al Jazeera decided to report on Kashmir. But Indian government denied visas for Al Jazeera reporters. India born journalist Elizabeth Puranam traveled to Kashmir. Kashmiris were very happy to have an international media which gave them an opportunity to express their grievances. But Hindu fundamentalist and nationalists were angered by this report. Puranam was bombarded with trolls by nationalists and also threatened to rape her if she go back to her birthplace India.
