By Murali Krishnan. Europe, 05:31 PM IST

From the power of Chinese bloggers to disturbing trends affecting journalism after 9/11 to the plight of Myanmarese dissident journalists will undergo international media scrutiny at the fifth Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) that got underway here Thursday.

Over 500 journalists from 84 countries have gathered in this small Norwegian Olympic city, 184 km north of capital Oslo, the largest journalist gathering here since the Winter Olympics in 1994.

'Our hope is that this conference will inspire, enlighten, educate and even provoke you. This is a venue to adjust your compass, to chase the real important stories that are still uncovered,' said Jan Gunnar Furuly, chairman of the GIJC which will be held from Sep 11-14.

Several puzzling subjects such as how to investigate the international oil and gas industry, uncovering the secret services as well as how to expose political parties and their strategies will be discussed.

This time around, the organisers have managed to get several keynote speakers who are expected to give first-hand accounts of the complexities and even hardships they had to endure while chasing down a story.

The star attraction will be Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj, 39, who was released four months back after being kept in isolation without charge for six years in Guantanamo Bay.

'I will try to expose the multi-faceted suffering of hundreds of human beings and the inhumane conditions they live in in that remote part of the world,' says al-Hajj.

In May, a US air force plane landed in the airport of Sudan's capital Khartoum. Guantanamo internee number 345, Sami was carried off the plane on a stretcher, and brought straight into hospital.

'He was a free man, but hardly recognizable. He was ill, and had lost more than 20 kg from a 17-month-long hunger strike. He had been force-fed through his nostrils, twice a day,' says Furuly.

The 16 days he later spent at Bagram has been described by Sami as 'the worst of my life.'

A group of Myanmarese journalists are also expected to speak on how they operate from a peach-coloured concrete building in Oslo, sending news updates and stories about their country back home country and to the world.

'Khin Maung Win and his 15 colleagues report the news from a land without press freedom in a studio in Norway, struggling to provide accurate and unbiased news to the people of Burma. That is a tough call,' says Bibiana Pienne, another organiser.

Also on call are Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel who wrote a comment on Prophet Mohammed and a beauty pageant. Little did she know that her articles would change her life.

That resulted in violent riots and a death threat from the Muslim community. At the conference, Daniel, who now lives in Norway, will share her experience of having a fatwa issued on her life.

Celebrated British journalist Robert Fisk, who spent around 30 years living and reporting in the Middle East and is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden thrice, will share his experiences of war reporting.

Film director Line Halvorsen will detail her experiences of how she found it difficult to get past her latest documentary, 'USA v. Al-Arian', a movie about a Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, who is imprisoned on terrorism charges.

By Murali Krishnan (Staff Writer, © IANS)