Tariq Saleh

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Tariq Saleh
Born	September 16, 1974 (1974-09-16) (age 33)
Nationality	Brazilian
Occupation	Reporter

Tariq Mohd Hassan Saleh (Beirut, 16 September 1974) is a Brazilian journalist and a BBC correspondent in Beirut, covering mainly the Middle East and Africa. He is best known for his coverage on international news, documenting on conflicts, human rights, refugees and cultures.

[edit] Biography

Tariq Saleh was raised in Sapiranga, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. He is the son of Mohamad Hassan Saleh, a businessman and teacher of Arabic literature, and Hayat Ibrahim Masri, a historian, both Palestinian immigrants. He always had a special interest for history and geography at school. He graduated with a BA in journalism at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), an university in southern Brazil. Since young he already was speaking fluently English, Arabic and Spanish.

[edit] Career

Passion for journalism started when at the age 14 years old he watched Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields (1984). Before journalism he had studied civil engineering, however his destiny was indeed to be a reporter.

After studying photography he joined the journalism school in Unisinos university and his interests soon became the Middle East, Africa and Latin America issues, reporting on politics, conflicts, human rights and social stories in those regions.

In the journalism school he worked as a reporter and photographer at his university news agency. One year later, his obsession for international coverage gave him a period of time as a reporter of world affairs at the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora of Porto Alegre, where he helped in the coverage of the Iraq War in 2003. For a short period, he had worked as a director of the communication department in Sapiranga municipality, though a work he disliked and hadn't had any love for it. His vocation and desire was to be a reporter.

He always ambitioned to report conflicts and its consequences over the civilians, the violation of human rights and show the diversity of cultures around the world. His desire was to be in the 'hottest zones' of the planet and to develop a project about the child soldiers and the illegal arms trafficking in Congo and other Western Africa countries.

Between 1992 and 1993, he lived in England (visiting Scotland and Wales). As a journalist, he had been in Angola, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Egypt, Syria, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Tariq Saleh currently lives in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, where he works as a foreign correspondent for BBC Brasil. He is a regular contributor to Folha de S.Paulo, other Brazilian and foreign publications and a freelance TV producer. His reports, photographs and audio bulletins are published and broadcasted in many Brazilian newspapers, websites, TVs and radios. He also have a weblog of international news called Le Indepéndant[1].