Julian Gearing is an award-winning British journalist who has been covering conflicts, politics, social issues, religion and the environment in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe for over 25 years. He has worked for newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Independent, South China Morning Post, The Middle East Magazine and Jane’s Defence Weekly and worked for seven years as Bangkok staff correspondent for Asiaweek Magazine. He has worked for radio and TV, including assignments for CBS TV News and BBC Newsnight, and Al Jazeera. He is also a book researcher and accomplished photographer.
In 2000, he won a Hong Kong Press Association and Amnesty International award for his story in Asiaweek entitled, Struggle for the Highlands, which examined in depth the problems Thai hill tribes face. Over the decades, he has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir and southern Thailand. He is a specialist in covering Tibetan political and religious affairs. During the Soviet war and ensuing civil war in Afghanistan, he warned of the dangers of U.S. policy in supporting the Pakistan line on which guerrilla groups to support and warned of the dangers of invading Afghanistan in 2001, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
He has worked as a managing editor and assistant editor for news agencies and is a respected journalism trainer. He has also worked with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation training journalists in Asia. In addition, he runs an environmental website.
He has travelled extensively in four of the world’s seven continents including cycling across the Sahara desert alone, a year walking most of the length of the Himalaya mountain range, a journey on foot with a Tuareg salt caravan across the Tenere desert, and months at a time walking the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan during wartime.
Such is the nature of a journalist’s life that he is so busy with various projects, including leading a team running an environmental website Earth Tribe that he has little time to devote to his personal blog – other projects and websites take precedence.
On a pass in Ladakh in India, 1979
