Pim de Kuijer, a fellow Babelian died in Malaysian Airline MH17 air crash over Ukraine
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Sometimes front-page news reach you directly via your Facebook private messages. Yesterday, we learned through Thamar Zylstra, a former Babelian from our local team in Amsterdam, that Pim de Kuijer was reported dead after the crash of the MH17 airplane shot in Ukraine.
Pim was a long time author of cafébabel. He started writing for us back in 2005 and published a total of 13 articles for cafébabel, including one feature report he wrote on Barcelona street performers in 2007.
Pim was a passionate and idealistic person, involved in human rights and engaged in promoting peace and democracy. Paradoxically his plane crashed in Ukraine, a country he knew as he went there on a mission to inspect elections in Ukraine a few years ago. Until July 2014, he worked for MEP Emine Bozkurt and he died while on his way to an Aids conference in Melbourne where he was involved as an activist for the Stop Aids Now campaign.
Pim was 32 years old. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and colleagues who were shocked by this terrible news.