James Kokulo Fasuekoi
James Kokulo Fasuekoi, Publisher/Editor of Global Ekklesia, is an author and journalist.
A native of Liberia, he’s an award-winning reporter/news photographer, and a documentary writer. He covered civil wars in Liberia and later Sierra Leone, during the 90s for several local and international news agencies including The Associated Press.
He is an experienced newspaper journalist who worked for most of Liberia’s leading independent dailies before war broke out in 1989. Some of his works have been published by the BBC, CNN, New York Times, AFP, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, plus news magazines and books companies worldwide.
Fasuekoi’s book on the war in Liberia, Rape, Loot & Murder-Liberian Civil War: A Journalist’s Photo Diary became a key reference material for both prosecution and defense teams during several major international war crimes trials held a few years ago related to Liberia’s first civil war.
He’s knowledgeable of the war in that he traveled with guerrillas of all sides during the war-NPFL, INPFL, Mainstream ULIMO, ULIMO-J, ULIMO-K, LDF, AFL, LPC, CRC, and IGNU’s led Black Berets-filming and reporting on combat, captured rebel-territories, as well as starving civilians, mainly women, children and old folks, displaced by the conflicts.
His journalism career kicked off rather in a very bizarre manner in 1985, just after he finished his first training in print and broadcast journalism in Liberia. Fasuekoi found himself covering a military invasion that nearly toppled Doe’s Government; he was arrested by Doe’s men who almost had him executed when they launched a counterattack against the invaders.
In yet another coup in 1994, he together with two colleagues of The Inquire made their way into the presidential palace, interviewed the coup leader before ECOMOG troops moved in to arrest Gen. Charles Julue. For that coverage, he and his colleagues won the national journalist union’s “Reporter of the Year 94” award.
Over the decades he received accolades from distinguished personalities for his professional works, particularly, in the visual, paintings and performing arts. They include: former Liberia’s First Lady, Mrs. Jewel Howard Taylor (now Vice President of Liberia); Mrs. Susan Hardy Twaddell, wife of U.S. Ambassador to Liberia; Mr. Christopher J. Nippy, a diplomat at the Liberian Embassy in Washington D.C., and Shefiu Dabiri, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Cuttington University, Bong Co., Liberia.
Fasuekoi first learned story-telling while in his teens in his father’s village in northern Liberia. He and his peers sat around the fire at bedtime with their grandmother and took turns narrating tales. Most of their stories personified animals and often centered on “rabbit” or “deer”- rabbit portrayed as the clever animal while deer as the victim of wild animals.
And like most African tales, their stories had one thing in common, a lesson embedded in WISDOM-they would all help to shape his life. Thanks be to God Almighty, and all credits go to Him.
He holds diplomas in creative writings from Stratford Career Institute, Washington D.C., and digital photography from Penn Foster Career School in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He possesses a certificate in radio broadcast, plus several in print journalism.
He attended colleges in Pennsylvania and Arizona 2008-11, majoring in Journalism/Communications and was listed on his college Dean’s List for academic excellence.
He studied mass communications at the University of Liberia in the early 90s, majoring in print journalism. He’s currently studying Biblical Theology in Minnesota.
He became a Bush Foundation Scholar twice in 2017. He once headed the Midwest chapter of ALJA, an association of active and retired African journalists residing in North America and abroad.