Courtesy of the Gillis family
Two New Haven parents are waiting for word from their daughter, a journalist who went missing in Libya last Tuesday and hasn’t been heard from since.
Clare Morgana Gillis, a freelance journalist working in Libya, was apparently detained by government forces last Tuesday, according to The Atlantic, one of several news outlets Gillis works for.
Clare, now 34, graduated from high school in New Haven. Her parents still live here.
She’d been reporting on the Libyan war for The Atlantic and USA Today. According to an article posted Sunday by The Atlantic, she was last seen Thursday in a government facility in the nation’s capital, Tripoli, along with two other journalists.
They’ve been allowed no outside contact, according to The Atlantic, and the Libyan government hasn’t acknowledged their detention.
Reached at her New Haven home Monday afternoon, the journalist’s mom, Jane Gillis, said she is waiting for news.
“She left for Libya about 5 weeks ago,” said Jane Gillis, rare serials cataloger for the Beinecke Library on the Yale campus. Jane Gillis said her daughter was also reporting for The New Republic, Christian Science Monitor and Slate.
Jane and her husband Robert got news of her daughter’s disappearance when the advocacy organization Human Rights Watch reached out to them on Facebook, she said.
“We’ve been in regular touch with Human Rights Watch and The Atlantic,” she said. She’s also scanning online news sites for reports on her daughter.
Both news organizations are working with the U.S. State Department and the Committee to Protect Journalists to secure the journalists’ release.
Four New York Times journalists were detained by Libyan government forces just three weeks ago, and were released March 21.
Clare Gillis graduated from the Hopkins School in New Haven and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. She had recently completed a Ph.D in medieval history at Harvard University, according to her mother. She developed an interest in journalism before she finished.
“She never did journalism in high school or college,” Jane Gillis said of her daughter, “but a couple of years ago she decided she wanted to go into it.”
Asked what she thinks of her daughter’s journalistic work, Jane Gillis acknowledged her bias. “You’re asking her mother,” she said.
“But I think she writes very well. She takes a historical view to what’s happening now,” she said. And her editors at the Atlantic and USA Today have really liked what she’s done, Jane Gillis said.
Click here for an example of Clare’s writing. She has a blog, which was last updated February 25.
There’s also a Facebook page calling for her release.
Jane Gillis said it is becoming tough to distinguish between fact and fiction. “There are a lot of rumors flying around the Internet and a lot of speculation,” she said. “So the most difficult thing is picking out the things that are true.”
“We’re just taking it hour by hour, day by day now,” she said.
“I can’t even think that far ahead,” Jane Gillis said about her daughter’s return. “Right now it’s just hour to hour, day to day.”
My heart goes out to the Gillis family. Eleanor and Claire were childhood friends and my schoolmates at Hopkins.
Thanks to the New Haven Independent for covering this and thanks to journalists covering war around the world.