14 May, 2014

Death in Centrafrica of an Angers born photoreporter "worthy of the name"

Mort en Centrafrique d'une photoreporter "digne de ce nom".- Une photoreporter angevine, Camille Lepage, a trouvé la mort en Centrafrique, où elle couvrait la guerre civile entre Catholiques et Musulmans de ce pays. Peu connue dans sa ville natale, ses clichés avaient été pourtant publiés par les plus grands titres de la presse française et étrangère. 

Camille Lepage
An Angers born photo reporter, Camille Lepage, 26 years old, has been killed in the Centrafrican Republic where she covered the civil war between Catholic and Muslim inhabitants. The French republic president, François Hollande, announced that the body of Mrs Lepage has been found by French militaries during a security check on a vehicle driven by elements of a self-defense militia, the "anti-bakala", hostile to Muslims populations. Camille Lepage was working in a territory where fights between "anti-bakala" and "ex-selekas" guerilla, a Muslim militia, are continuous. Ten persons were in the vehicle, where the French militaries discovered the bodies of four villagers and of Mrs. Lepage.

Camille Lepage Facebook page
That one, born in Angers, had studied at Southampton Solent University in England then in Hoger-school Utrecht, in Nedelands. After an internship in Rue 89, a French news website, Camille Lepage then worked for a news pictures agency and covered the Sudan secession war, the Centrafican conflict. She lived since July 2012 in Juba, the South Sudan capital. Many tributes have been paid to Mrs Lepage who neverhteless was largely unknown his home town. Some of her pictures had been exhibited at the Bouchemaine abbey in September 2013 while famous French and foreign newspapers had published her work like Le Monde or The Times.

Mrs Lepage's mother described her daugher as a "willful person. She was body and soul involved in her projects. The photojournalism was her life. On May 6th, she told me that she would prolong her staying in Centrafrica but she would be back in Angers next Thursday. I always asked her to be cautious and she answered me 'Don't worry Mum, I'm going away to give evidences, not to get a bullet in the head'. But she was alone those last days".

On behalf the city council, the Angers mayor, Christophe Béchu deplore "that the very energetic woman was murdered in a country in the grip of a violent civil war". Mrs. Lepage choose to be a freeelance reporter "because it is, according to me, the only one worthy of the name", she wrote in a covering letter for an internship. Last December, an Angers born military, Antoine Le Quinio, was killed in the Centrafica capital, Bangui. In May 2010, another young Angers inhabitant, herself student in journalism, Emilie Poucan, was killed in plane crash in Libya.

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