World's Untold Stories

A Forgotten People

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:11:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

They are one of the world's most persecuted people. According to the United Nations, the Rohingya have been oppressed for centuries, living in one of the poorest and most remote regions of Myanmar or Burma. They have been fighting an endless battle to be recognized as a distinct ethnic group and even struggling to gain basic citizenship for decades, despite living there for centuries. Facing everything from land confiscation, to rape, forced labor and murder, the Rohingya have sought safe havens abroad. Now, CNN's Dan Rivers tracks their story from the islands of Southern Thailand, where new harsh allegations of abuse have surfaced, to parts of Indonesia. Rivers uncovers exclusive photos showing these boat refugees being cut adrift, far out at sea. He speaks to the refugees themselves, hearing their stories of abuse and neglect. And he talks to shocked tourists who witnessed and photographed hundreds of Rohingya being detained and abused on a popular beach in the Similan Islands. He hears the concerns of the UNHCR and the response from the Thai authorities, as this scandal continues to dominate the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

One Woman's War

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:03:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

LONDON, England -- When I got off the Eurostar train I’d taken from London to Brussels there was nothing to suggest I was in a city that has ties to radical Islamic terrorism.

Quite the reverse, the very nature of Euro train terminus at the Gare du Midi is, dare I say it, quintessential busy modern Europe. Neat Euro bistros bustle with a cosmopolitan collection of travelers from as close as the suburbs to people like me who’ve taken the short two-hour ride from Britain.

So I suppose it felt a little strange to be here in a city that on the surface doesn’t have a terrorism problem.

Indeed, compared to many places I travel like the Middle East or Afghanistan, it felt positively tame.

I’d come to tell the story of Malika el Aroud, a 49-year-old Belgian-Moroccan woman who had one husband killed in a high profile al Qaeda suicide attack and has herself been convicted in Switzerland of running a Web site promoting terrorism.

Somehow I felt in the wrong place. Not so, when barely an hour later we are being accosted by a bunch of angry young men while filming in a neighborhood barely five minutes' drive from the station. I was coming face to face with an undercurrent that passes most people by. It was to be an undercurrent I would come across again and again during my stay.

The Belgian police chief told us that because of high levels of immigration, seven out of 10 children at schools in Brussels cannot speak either of Belgium's mother tongues -- French or Flemish. He explained that Brussels' immigrant population has become segregated, in some places physically, from the rest of society.

That segregation has heightened resentment over poor housing, poor education and poor job prospects for many immigrants and their children.

When I met Malika el Aroud’s family they gave me a more nuanced understanding of what makes young Muslim men and women angry and why their sister’s angry postings on her jihadi Web site resonate with so many.

At first, Malika’s sister Saida and brother Mohammed were reticent about opening up to us.

Slowly they understood we’d come to hear their story, understand more about Malika, who she is and what motivates her. They don’t buy the police account that their sister is tied to al Qaeda. What they see is a woman who is angry enough and strong enough to express here feelings. They concede she has never been very diplomatic.

But as I listened to Saida and Mohammed I realized the anger we’d seen and felt on streets had its roots in something much bigger than social marginalization in Belgium.

Saida is not like her sister -- she is secular, doesn’t cover her hair. She runs a business employing more than 40 people. She says she hasn’t read Malika’s Web site diatribes calling for death to U.S. soldiers but she, her brother, and her young nephew and niece whom she brought to meet us, all agreed that they still feel frustrated when Muslims are killed.

I’d just come back from covering the situation in Gaza and we talked at length about it. They were very sympathetic to the hundreds of Palestinian families who’d lost children and loved ones during Israel’s three-week offensive. They admit they don’t agree with everything Malika has written, but they do think she is right to speak out.

As they explained how they felt, I realized how Malika’s family, apart from their ties to her, are like so many other Muslim families living not just in Brussels but in Europe.

By the time we ready to board the Eurostar train back to London I’d learned a lot. Not least, according to the police, the most radical mosque in the city, the Tawhid Mosque, was in fact barely a stones throw from the cobbled taxi rank at the Gare du Midi.

Sinking in to my seat as the train pulled out of the station I was struck by the scale of the task Europe’s police forces face.

-- By CNN Senior International Correspondent, Nic Robertson

Massacre in Mumbai: Moshe's Tale Blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2

History of the Chabad-Lubavitch

I truly did not know what to expect when I entered the Chabad House in Mumbai. To be honest, like most people in Mumbai, I hadn't even heard of it and I certainly didn't know where it was -- until November 26th last year. A day still etched in my mind.

For hours at a time, I reported live for CNN on the situation at Chabad House. Like the hundreds of journalists standing outside, I wondered just what was going on inside. Who did that last gunshot kill? Is there anyone left alive? Have the commandos gone in? By the time the siege had ended, a number of people were dead, including Rabbi Gavi Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka. But their baby son Moshe had survived, saved by an unselfish act of heroism by the couple's Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel.

In December, I returned to the now-wrecked Chabad House. As soon as my cameraman Sanjiv Talreja and I entered the building, we had to stop in our tracks. We literally did not know where to put our feet: the floors had big gaping holes, there was rubble everywhere, slabs of concrete lying around, parts of the ceiling on the floor -- and bloodstains almost everywhere I looked.

We were told we had just a few minutes to film. I looked at a clock that had fallen off the wall. 11pm. That must have been soon after the terrorists entered the house.

Sanjiv got to work. With the camera hoisted on his shoulder, he began filming furiously. We first filmed the store room, where Moshe's nanny hid. The shelves were stacked with rotting food and the stench was unbearable.

We got on with the job. We made our way through the five floors of the Chabad House. We saw a prayer cap on the floor; half-drunk bottles of water and Limca, a local lemonade; the bloodstained tie of Rabbi Holtzberg. We saw baby wipes in the middle of the rubble. A toy car under shattered glass. Shoes, clothes and toys in baby Moshe's colorful room.

Sanjiv and I barely spoke. We've worked together so often before, we understand each other well. I knew he was shocked, he knew I was numb.

Being a mother of a little boy myself, I simply couldn't bear to be in the Chabad House. I kept thinking about the prayer service held at a Mumbai synagogue days after the attacks. It was there that Moshe burst into tears and screamed for his ima, the Hebrew word for mother. It was the most chilling sound I've ever heard -- and it was chilling to be in his room.

I know Moshe's now safe and well. But I'll never know how human beings can inflict the kind of carnage they did on the Chabad House on that tragic November night.

For more information on the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, go to www.chabad.org/mumbai.

-- From Mallika Kapur, Mumbai Correspondent, CNN International

Mexico Narco Wars Blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:24:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2

On my first day in Mexico city I was amazed to see people stroll past news stands with barely a glance at the gruesome colour pictures splashed on the front pages. For me, 14 headless bodies piled on top of one another in a field was a graphic image. It certainly caught my attention.

For the first few days, breakfast felt like a macabre ritual. I would sit down to coffee and pastry and read the papers. Police killing gangsters, gangsters killing police, gangsters killing gangsters, kidnap, torture, assassination, mass killings, decapitation …

It was all there, including of course, the collateral damage: Innocent people caught in the crossfire. Within a short time I had become as accustomed to this horror as the Mexicans around me. Of course deep down people despair at what is happening in their country.

Like their contemporaries elsewhere, older Mexicans reminisce about the good old days when life was simple and community and church was strong enough to sort out social problems.

Now, the warring parties are so well armed and the violence so extreme that people don’t know what to think. I spent a lot of time wondering what I would do if I were president of Mexico.

Would I do as President Calderon is doing and take on the cartels in the hope that voters don’t tire of the slow progress and outrageous body count? Or would I have left things as they were… very little violence but with the tentacles of organized crime reaching right into the heart of my government?

It’s a hard choice. In Sinaloa state in the north, which has seen fierce battles between cartel members and police as well as between rival cartels, everything seemed eerily calm on the surface.

I learned from local journalists to eat lunch quickly in case we had to rush out to film another dead body on the roadside.

It’s a surreal job at times. At all the different crime scenes I film, information is very hard to come by. Witnesses who saw everything, saw nothing. Trust appears to be in short supply around here and nobody believes they have anything to gain from talking to a journalist.

I was told over and again that one of the answers lies over the border in the world’s largest drug market … that the U.S. should be working harder to reduce domestic demand. They say it is only logical that by doing this, you attack supply.

To me, It feels a little too late for that now. But that’s another story.

-- From David O’Shea

Galileo Blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:40:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 / Part 2

“Welcome Belgium TV Crew.” That’s what I read on an illuminated news trailer when we drove into the Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. My camera crew and I were being escorted to one of the most important places for airplane pilots, sailors, car drivers and many others all over the world: the operations center of the Global Positioning System, aka GPS. It took me several months to get permission to go and film there, so I was glad to see that we were welcome.

Why would a journalist from Belgium and a TV-crew take 4 connecting flights and travel 20 hours from Brussels to Colorado Springs to see a room full of computers, something you can see in any other office?

I got the idea when I was doing research on Galileo. Not the 16th century Italian astronomer. Galileo is also the name that was given in 1999 by the European Commission to an ambitious project: the Commission was proposing to build a European satellite navigation system to rival the American GPS, and they named it Galileo. One of the main arguments was that GPS is built and controlled by the US Army. Europe no longer wanted to be dependent on the US for such a vital infrastructure.

It is true, I saw it with my own eyes. The people behind the computers in the GPS Operations Center were wearing military uniforms. They are the people who make sure that the GPS-satellites are sending signals down to earth, for millions of users around the globe. The same signals are used by the troops in Iraq. When Al Qaeda terrorist Al Zarqawi was killed by a US-missile, the GPS Operations center in Colorado Springs played an important role in getting the missile to its target, the commander Lt Col Kurt Kuntzelman told me.

Galileo, on the contrary, will be run by civilian authorities, the European Commission said in 1999, not soldiers. And it will be up and running in 2008, they promised. And it will be better, because it will give users a more precise location.

It didn’t happen. What did happen with the project was symbolic for many European projects: big ideas, but bad management. And member states fighting to get the best part of the cake: who should build the satellites, which country should get the control center. By now, the best guess is that Galileo will be ready by 2013.

Meanwhile, I am very happy with the small handheld GPS-device I bought last year. It makes travelling by car a lot easier. The signals it receives are sent by American (military) satellites. But the digital maps inside the device are made by the Belgian company Tele Atlas, one of the most important digital map makers in the world.

-- From Rob Heirbaut, EU correspondent for VRT

Colombia Frontline Blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:28:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2

Colombia is like a gold mine for reporters; it had been my long-time ambition to make a film there.

It was a lonely and time-consuming process that required a lot of patience. Once I made the contacts, it took me almost two years to really gain their trust and be able to use them for my investigation.

There were very tense moments of fear and adrenaline during the shoot. I was filming with a hidden camera and I knew that I was lost if I was exposed.

I didn’t have fancy equipment at my disposal. I just put together a basic device with a small mike and a Webcam lens attached to the inside of my shirt. It was connected to the mini dvcam hidden underneath my coat. Sometimes, I’d have to shift the lens while filming. To get this right, I trained for hours in front of the mirror, learning how to frame almost blind. I would film myself and adjust the system to get it as perfect as possible. (I also wanted to leave evidence in my hotel room before each trip.)

I made sure I knew my way around the location before each appointment.

I was obsessed about the way my interviewees looked at me. I was nervous about the smallest details. I think it was the scariest time in my entire career because there was no way out if anything had gone wrong. I believe I was extremely lucky.

I only fully realized the risks I’d taken once I started the edit.

From Producer, Thierry Gaytan

Tipping Point blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:14:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2

On the evening of Friday, July 11, I get a close up look at the barren Arctic landscape.

Chris, the chopper pilot, is doing some forward reconnaissance before the Louis arrives at Resolute Bay tomorrow morning. The captain agreed to let Neale, Doc and me go along for the ride.

To our incredible delight, Chris tells us he is going to briefly land at Beechey Island, the spot where Sir John Franklins’ doomed Artic expedition spent their last winter all together in 1845.

When we touch down, we step out onto a place so desolate it defies belief that anyone could stay here a day, let alone a year or more. It is just a mass of broken up shale rocks. I couldn’t see even a speck of lichen although there may have been some further down the beach.

The graves of three of Franklin’s crew are marked with wooden crosses and plaques that were put up during the big commemoration in 1995. It is a bleak, sad sight, perhaps in part because so many accounts of the expedition today seize on Franklin’s folly, not his heroism.

Franklin’s final resting place is still a mystery. We know his ships, the Erebus and the Terror, left Beechey in search of the Northwest Passage but were trapped by the sea ice and ultimately Franklin and 129 men died.

It feels bizarre too, coming here reporting a story about perils of the sea ice retreating only to be so starkly reminded of how these early explorers feared the sea ice as a deadly force that could crush their boats like a nut in a cracker.

Just before midnight, the Louis is pushing its way through the sea ice, headed for Resolute Bay. The big melt, the focus of our story, has got a way to go yet. It’s still only July and we won’t know until September if this year the sea ice will shrink so much it matches last year’s record. But every experienced Arctic watcher we have interviewed tells us to look at the long-term trend – and that shows sea ice is shrinking at a rate that they never thought possible.

-- From producer, Marian Wilkinson

Tomb 33, an Egyptian Mystery

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:23:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

One day, a couple of years ago, Alexis Metzinger (a young author and director I am working with,) went from researching in Strasbourg to a film project about literature.

He was very excited about his discussion with the professor for Egyptian antiquity from the university of Strasbourg. They were supposed to open the biggest tomb of Death valley in Egypt. I didn’t even know at that time that there were scientists of international level working on old Egypt in Strasbourg, France!

Then a few days later we had a meeting with professor Claude Traunecker and his assistant Annie Schweitzer. They were so sympathic so communicative and passionate, and also able to explain in simple but poetic words the life of the ancient Egyptians, that I was convinced they were great protagonists for a documentary.

After a second meeting with them, we wrote a first script and presentation of the film and went to the European channel ARTE, to know if such a story could be of interest. They were almost from the beginning keen on the story and moreover on the protagonists. We met once again all together along with the well experienced German director Thomas Weidenbach. Everyone was on board after this last meeting and we decided to do the film.

The big deal was to be able to have the authorisation from Zahi Hawass, the famous and very mediatic president of Antiquity Service in Egypt … I decided to make the trip with the two archeologists, while they were preparing the opening of the tomb 33.

We had an appointment for a meeting with Zahi Hawass. As we were entering the rooms before his office in the Antiquity Service Building in Cairo, we were received in a room with a whole army of secretaries, maybe 10 women! I was quite under pressure because the whole film was depending on this meeting.

Finally, I met a very polite and intelligent person, understanding both my producers contingency and the need of the two archeologists to make their research known in order to raise funding for the future. He accepted directly our project and made us a very fair price for the fees to get the authorisation to shoot on ancient sites in Egypt.

After this meeting we were very happy, we had the feeling with the two archeologists that we were really belonging to a team, and that as everyone who is really believing in his dreams they were going to become true : for us a great film on a marvelous archeological project, for them the opening of the biggest tomb in Egypt, a consecration of their career.

I hope that the film is giving, beyond an untold story of ancient Egypt, a bit of the very human feelings of two wonderful scientists reaching their dream.

-- From Cedric Bonin, Producer

Dangerous Ground

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:43:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 Part 2

We set out to do this story after hearing anecdotal accounts of a rising sense of alienation and resentment among young Australian Muslim men, a result of the fallout from September 11 and the Bali bombings, and the subsequent "war on terror."

Their typical experience is being yelled at in the street: "Go back to where you came from. We don't want you here."

But the fact is 40 percent of Australian Muslims were born here. They have nowhere else to go.

I felt this story was important, not just because everyone deserves to feel at home in the country of their birth, but because I know from my own research on terrorism that alienation is a key factor in the evolution of disillusioned individuals toward terrorism.

The first obstacle we faced in making the program was getting anyone to talk to us. Muslim groups and communities are deeply suspicious and resentful toward the media, which they feel has stigmatised them.

Many groups and individuals we approached refused to co-operate, out of (an often legitimate) fear that they would be typecast as "the bad guys" or potential terrorists.

Thankfully some of them decided it was worth taking the risk, in order to have their say.

Another difficulty was distilling the historic and political complexities of the current global Islamist insurgency into a 45-minute television program. We think the results are revealing and disturbing.

-- From reporter Sally Neighbour

Bangladesh: The Drowning Country

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:43:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

Bangladesh is a drowning land. The last major cyclone killed 3,000 and left millions living in tents, with barely any food or drinking water. With the land literally disappearing beneath the feet of the ever increasing population, it’s a problem that shows no sign of easing. Discover an extraordinary and devastated landscape that’s on the front line of climate change, with water levels rising inexorably and floods that once occurred every 20 years now happening every five.

The Ice Storm blog

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:33:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

“You may find they want to sing for you.”

Those words from the director of Montana’s first ever rehabilitation prison for “meth” or crystal methamphetamine users could not really prepare me for the sound of 60 meth addicts, all dressed in prison issue sweat suits belting out, a rather forced version of “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey, you’ll never know dear, how much I love you, Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

This was my welcome to the Lewistown Treatment Centre. At the time its doors opened, it was an American first. Montana had decided the traditional response to drug users was having no impact and a specialist program was needed.

So two facilities for the treatment of meth addicts, one for men and another for women, were opened. Neither is called a prison, But no one is allowed out until there time is done. It’s a nine-month program.

I had travelled to Montana to see how the community was responding to what it called a "meth" epidemic and to see what impact it was having.

Driving across the state and through the many small towns in summer time, the only real indication that there was a problem came from billboards warning of the dangers of using the drug.

But it was meeting families who had lost children to the drug, or were fighting to save them that was the most telling about the addictive nature and chemical qualities of "meth" itself.

-- From Ginny Stein, SBS TV

For a Better Life?

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:08:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

Troubles in Zimbabwe have caused large numbers to seek a better life in South Africa. However, the journey is perilous and the reality migrants face when they arrive often comes with bitter disillusions. Most see this as their only chance to make a living, but endless bureaucratic hurdles keep them in precarious circumstances.

Brazil: The Amazon’s Golden Curse

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:41:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 Part 2

When most people think of carnival time in Brazil, they imagine rowdy music, cachaça and near-naked samba dancers. This year, I spent carnival weekend smothered in insect repellent in an emergency camp deep in the Amazon rainforest. My satellite phone wasn’t working, our food had run out, and my director was dangerously ill in the hammock next to me.

The plight of the Amazon’s Yanomami people had never looked like an easy story to cover. From London, it would take five separate flights and a trek through the jungle for our three-man crew to reach the tribe. Even after we arrived in Brazil, getting to them wasn’t assured: we were hoping to hitch a ride with a Brazilian Air Force mission, and they hadn’t yet decided if they wanted to take us.

Still, I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d studied the Yanomami at university, and now there was a chance that I was actually going to meet them myself. The tribe were very remote, but that hadn’t stopped prospectors from illegally venturing into their reserve to hunt for gold. Spurred by record gold prices, miners were turning Yanomami land into vast brown craters, bringing malaria, viral infections, sexually transmitted diseases, alcoholism and prostitution in their wake. It was this story we’d come to tell.

We had a thorough medical check up to make sure we wouldn’t bring the Yanomami the very diseases we’d come to report on, and after days of biding our time in the northern town of Boa Vista, we finally got the green light from the Air Force.

They flew us for two hours over miles of what looked like densely-packed broccoli. The Colonel warned we had an arduous trek ahead of us. It could take more than four hours, he said, and we’d need to keep food and equipment to a minimum. But for three excited journalists on our way to an exclusive, four hours of discomfort seemed reasonable.

It was only after seven hours of hacking through the forest that the Colonel admitted it was actually a 25km trek. Most people walk at 6km an hour, he’d reasoned, so four hours had sounded like a sensible estimate. He hadn’t accounted for the weight of our cameras, our trepidation in wading through the murky, frogspawn-filled rivers, and the fact that pale, unacclimatised Brits might be stifled by the heat and humidity. Even members of his own team who’d enjoyed a bit too much of carnival the night before were waning.

We reached the Yanomami village just before nightfall. We’d made it, but our camera had not: the humidity had been too much. It was a sight I’d never thought I’d see – a huge, bustling, roofless hut where 150 Yanomamis lived together under the Amazon’s incredible stars – and we couldn’t even film it.

But by dawn, our camera has spluttered back to life. Illegal gold mining had meant a third of the villagers had been struck down with malaria a month before, and we were grateful to be able to talk to them on camera. By mid-morning, our filming was over, and the Colonel was eager to arrive back to the plane before sunset, so we headed into the forest once again.

Three hours into the return journey, we had to stop. Heat affects people differently, and while I was feeling a bit tired and thirsty, my director, Paul, was beginning to suffer from severe heat exhaustion. He was staggering. His clothes were drenched in sweat and his eyes were hollow and grey. He couldn’t remember where we were, why we were there, and he had no idea who I was. Within minutes, he was convulsing, and then unconscious on the jungle floor.

We had to act quickly. The Colonel poured water over Paul’s chest and mouth and we fanned him until he gradually came round. He was better, apart from a thundering headache, but too exhausted to move, so we set up camp around him. I have never been more grateful of bug spray and earplugs than I was that night, as we tried to get to sleep in the menacing darkness of the Amazon.

When we finally arrived back at the plane the next morning, I thought about what could have happened to us. If we’d known how difficult the trek would really be, we would never have ventured into the jungle. But by doing so, we got to tell a completely unique story, and to show how some of the most remote people on earth are being affected by the world financial crisis.

Making the film was an unrepeatable experience. I’d love to go back to Brazil. But next time, I hope I’ll be having caipirinhas at carnival, and staying clear of the jungle.

-- From Jenny Kleeman, Reporter, Unreported World

Trial of a Child Denied

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:30:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 Part 2

My interest in the project started in 2003 with the publication of the Body and Soul report, which revealed that more than a hundred Roma women in 40 settlements in Slovakia had been coercively sterilized.

As a freelance photojournalist in Prague at the time, I pursued the story. I traveled to eastern Slovakia and met women living in ghetto-like conditions outside Presov, the third largest Slovak city.

In Svinia, a Canadian anthropologist introduced me to villagers and various NGO workers involved with trying to improve dialogue between the local Roma and Slovaks. I had never been in a Roma settlement before and was in awe of the conditions in which they lived as well as their hospitality and sense of community, the raw humanity largely untouched by globalization and technology.

Then events unfolded before me across central Europe. In 2005, Roma women started coming forward in the Czech Republic and in early 2007, the first of these women, Helena Ferencikova, looked set to win what would be a landmark case against the hospital that allegedly sterilized her without consent. I decided it was time to look into this case and discover what exactly was nagging me about it.

Filming began with Helena Ferencikova’s court case and continued through the course of the year as we gradually got to know the other people involved and started documenting the actions of a group of women in the eastern part of the Czech Republic who had initially come together for emotional support but eventually progressed into political activism.

As non-Czech speakers, director Michelle Coomber and I were reliant on translators, who happened to be two incredible journalists. Jan Stojaspal, a former Time Magazine correspondent, was able to interview politicians and medical staff involved while Karolina Ryvolova, a Roma studies major, deftly yet delicately approached the subject with the women.

These sterilized Roma women and their husbands were wonderfully accommodating. They allowed us into their homes and their lives and really opened up about their experiences and the long-term affects the surgery had on them.

This "Group of Women Harmed by Sterilisation," led by Elena Gorolova, were fairly media savvy and comfortable in front of our cameras, presumably because Czech news crews had been interviewing Gorolova and her colleagues for years about their plight. This was in contrast to Helena Ferencikova, who was extremely sensitive about talking with us. The charms of an American associate producer and his elementary Czech however, allowed us unprecedented access to both her and her husband in their home.

Although the documentary highlights the women, we also interviewed the doctors and governmental bodies principally involved in the majority of Czech cases, who were also very open in discussing the particulars of the Ferencikova case.

I had been advised by several journalists that the fundamental issue here was informed consent, albeit informed consent intrinsically linked with antiquated remnants of the Communist regime. Regardless, questions remained over the extent of modern-day eugenics and the spokesperson of the health ministry admitted that had this occurred in a country like the UK, medical staff would have been terminated. The issue is not simple however, and has many sides, as the personal opinion of a nurse regarding the Czech social benefit system reveals.

Michelle and I have been repeatedly told this isn’t the most glamorous topic for a debut documentary but the uniqueness of the women’s actions and the courage necessary to stand together against the authorities in a world where Roma are still marginalized, is very compelling, and strikes a chord at the fundamental essence of womanhood.

-- From producer Dana Wilson

Greenland Goes Green

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:12:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

As the tractor went round and round the field cutting grass, that small nugget of anxiety that always accompanies a foreign filming trip was rapidly approaching a full on panic attack.

Day three of the shoot and we hadn't filmed anything interesting.

Had we really outlaid a small fortune and crossed continents to film a taciturn farmer doing pretty much what taciturn farmers in Australia do -- drive a tractor around a paddock?

"Are we making a story for Landline or what?", muttered the reporter -- referring to a popular ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) current affairs television program in Australia about, well, farmers.

The point was, in editorial terms, what the farmer was doing was actually pretty interesting -- since up until recent years, he couldn't have grown grass as lush as this, certainly not for as many weeks in the year. An increase in temperatures due to global warming was changing that. But how to convey the story visually?

We needn't have worried. The next day we filmed another farmer down on his hands and knees whispering sweet nothings to his cows -- Greenland's first commercial herd, if you can call 16 a herd -- and it just got better from there.

Soon we were on a boat negotiating the incredibly beautiful fjords of Southern Greenland, dodging icebergs and meeting a bunch of people as wonderful, funny, and down to earth as you could ever imagine.

There was our Innuit skipper, Carl, who barely uttered a syllable for the whole shoot, until the last night, when he brought out his piano accordion. A few whiskies and many songs later, he became positively loquacious (for a Greenlander). It turns out his dad was a well known musician.

There was Kenneth, our local guide and agricultural expert, whose passion for trees, indeed anything that grows in the ground, leaves Aussie greenies looking like a bunch of half-hearted losers.

There was farmer Ferdinande Egede, who, true to type, was a climate change sceptic despite all the evidence in his own fields -- Greenland's first commercial potato crop. His kids were watching cartoons on a massive widescreen TV in his living room bought from the profits, but farmer Egede thought global warming was a media myth.

And finally there was the bloke we christened "Mountain Man" -- the remarkable Stefan Magnusson, a reindeer farmer originally from Iceland.

Stefan had run away to Greenland when he was 14 and he had a fascinating life story, too long to tell here or in the film. Suffice to say that when you meet a character like him, you know you can stop worrying about how to tell your story.

One of the few people I've ever seen taller than the reporter, Eric Campbell, the multi-lingual Stefan kept a few knives tucked handily into his belt, drove an old Norwegian army ambulance around his property and was learning to pilot an ultralight so he can use it to round up his reindeer.

He can't use snowmobiles anymore because the ice is melting.

And he can cook a mean pot of porridge. He's also hosted a Yugoslav war criminal on a hunting trip in Greenland -- but that's another story.

-- From Eric Campbell, of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The ABC Foreign Correspondent Web site

PNG Babies

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

Papua New Guinea is facing a crisis of the young and innocent. The country's morgues are filling up with tiny abandoned corpses. For every one thousand babies born in PNG, more than seventy will die before their fifth birthday. "We're hitting our head against a brick wall" says one distraught community worker. But some unsung heroes are giving the babies dignity in death and teaching young women about the threat of disease and malnutrition.

The Coldest Winter

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:01:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

Back in January 2004, when I first went to report in Iraq, I was one of those reporters who believed embedding with friendly forces was a lazy and one sided way to report a conflict. Embedding only led to “cheerleader” reports that simply showed what the military wanted the public to see. In the course of writing a book and filming reports that year I only rarely accompanied US troops in Baghdad and preferred to travel to places like Fallujah, Basra, Kerbala, Kirkuk and the Kurdish north, unarmed, and only with a translator. I believed that it was essential that journalists appear strictly neutral and even travelling with a weapon in the vehicle would jeopardize that neutrality.

It was a point I remember arguing with my Australian colleague Michael Ware (then TIME bureau chief, now with CNN) one night in October 2004. I remember that discussion well because the very next day I was kidnapped outside my hotel along with my driver and translator. Thankfully we were all released 24 hours later after convincing our captors I was indeed a journalist and not employed by the coalition as they had believed. Grudgingly I had to admit Mick had been right. The situation in Baghdad had become that bad that our position as impartial observers was no longer tenable.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still had to be covered so the embedding system become one of the few options for reporters to get out in to the field in these conflicts.

Embedding and getting a story is a tricky business. The military does try to control what embedded reporters see and it does try to impose its own views on reporters, as it does to its own men and women. Sometimes though the military also reveals its own mistakes. In August and September 2005 I was in Afghanistan and another Australian colleague of mine, Stephen Dupont, was embedded with the US Army 173rd Airborne Division near Kandahar. The footage that Stephen brought back of US soldiers burning Taliban corpses and taunting Taliban soldiers over a loudspeaker caused widespread condemnation of US military tactics when we aired it as part of my report. All US psychological warfare operations were immediately halted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the soldiers involved reprimanded and new codes of conduct issued to troops. Then US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said of the incident, “It’s always disappointing when there are charges like that. It’s particularly disappointing when they are true”.

Unfortunately for me in January 2008 in Afghanistan it was the 173rd Airborne based in the northern Afghan-Pakistan border province of Kunar where I requested an embed. Because of my 2005 report that request was refused. But in testament to the fairness of some of the US Army the 82nd Airborne Division agreed to my request to compile a report in their section of the border in Paktia province, which is where I filmed this report. I had done an embed with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq in 2007 covering operations in the province of Diyala and filmed exhausted men struggling with the searing heat and the insurgent threats. This year in Afghanistan it was the extreme cold that was as much as an enemy as the Taliban. That was what I wanted to capture.

Back in Australia I was asked on breakfast radio by an insistent interviewer why on earth I kept going back to these places after being kidnapped in Iraq in 2004. I deflected the question a few times but in the end just blurted out “look there are two massive wars going on in the world at the moment and someone has to cover them”.

I do believe that, as journalists, we have to try and show what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and if the only way we can do that is to be embedded with US or NATO forces then so be it. It is up to us as journalists to maintain our distance and impartiality and to try and reveal what is actually going on in these conflicts. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of these wars, there are large parts of Afghanistan and Iraq where western journalists cannot go, and it is to access and show what is happening in those places that it is necessary, to sometimes, do an embed.

-- From John Martinkus

Malawi Brain Drain

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Watch the show: Part 1 | Part 2

The idea for the documentary "The Heroes Are Tired" came from old conversations with a dear friend, Mr Amir Syed. Ten years ago he and I used to sit around and chew over the news, digesting some stories, spitting out others. This issue of rich western countries 'poaching' Africa's doctors was one issue that stuck in his gullet. Amir and I were young hot-blooded idealists and this seemed a fundamental injustice.

In truth, having seen things now with my own eyes, and with a slightly (if only slightly) more mature understanding, I can see that the issue is far more complex and almost intractable. I'll always remember a few days into the shoot, asking Robert Ayella, a Ugandan doctor who features in the documentary, what he thought of the term "poaching." "We are not animals," he said. "we can't be poached." He's right. Africa's brain drain is at least in part the story of doctors exercising their undeniable right to migrate. Moreover, many of these doctors have already served a number of years working smack in the middle of hell. Because a pitiably under-resourced rural hospitable at the centre of an HIV/AIDS and TB explosion is about as close to hell as I've ever found on earth.

There was one thing I was never sure came across strongly enough in the final film. I personally don't blame any individual doctor for leaving for the "greener pastures" of the west. While filming I came to understand that in their place, I would do the same thing. I'm no saint, and most of us aren't. But that realization gave me all the more reverant respect for the tiny handful of people like Dr Robert Ayella who remain behind on the battlefield and work tirelessly to heal the people who need it most.

The world needs heroes. My own cynical heart needs heroes. And I found a few in Malawi while filming this documentary. But those heroes are tired, and they are few and far between: most of us wouldn't last a week in Dr Ayella's blood-stained, white, soft-soled shoes.

In many ways, this subject and it's people were strangely familiar to me. I grew up as the son of a nurse, and spent my fair shair of time in hospitals until my adolescence. The strong graceful smiles of the nurses here were the same ones I remember; as was that dynamic where terribly ill patients seem to comfort their family's grief more than the other way around; the pace was the only thing that had changed. While I remember taking a brown bag lunch to my mother on the obstetrics ward, and sitting with her while she ate, here in Malawi there was no rest for anyone. For instance, in a small clinic outside Thyolo, nurse Grace Makhembera told me that in her life, she had delivered more than 10,000 babies.

As filmming went on I began to hope that the international community will learn that the only way to keep a healthy number of doctors in Africa is to offer them what most of the world's medical community want: A high caliber of medical training in their native country, top research opportunities, and salary support to stay at home where they're needed and understand the local communities needs.

There is a quiet crisis at work here. It's one I hope we wake up to before it's too late.

-- From Aaron Lewis, Filmmaker/Journalist, SBS Dateline

Trapped

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 3 | Part 4

"Injustice anywhere creates injustice everywhere" -- Martin Luther King

I am writing this to make sure people do not think that these two womens' stories are rare.

The latest reports from Nigeria claim that over 50,000 women and girls have been transported to Europe just from the Edo state, to feed the growing sex industry and supply cheap domestic work.

Seventy percent of the world's poorest are women and girls, and despite the fact that they produce two-thirds of all work globally, they derive less than 10 percent of the profit.

The Union of Hopenow has a special focus on this group, but also on an increasing number of women from other African countries including Kenya.

People often ask me how do you do this work, day in day out with trafficked women, hearing their tragic stories and fighting the system. You must be such an optimist? I am sure someone has said this before, so my apologies for this plagiarism. My answer is that I am not an optimist but rather a prisoner of hope. I have faith that the goodness of the human heart will always prevail in the end, despite all the suffering and evil in the world.

In my everyday work with trafficked women I am privileged sometimes to be a witness and gentle guide, marveling at the ability traumatized individuals have to restore their equilibrium and at times even undergo a profound transformation. The ability for the nervous system, given the right environment, time and space to heal, is truly remarkable.

I wish to thank the people who trained me in Somatic Experiencing® (SE), a short-term, naturalistic approach to healing trauma developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, and I now integrate the SE approach into my psychosocial work. However, I am still confronted by chaos, despair and how the relentless stress of been denied residency, a safe haven, can eat away at an individuals nervous system like a hungry cancer. There is often so much beaurocracy, indifference and ignorance.

I provide assistance and trauma therapy to a wide group of women and try to treat each case as unique. One of my roles as a voluntary, consultant for the Red Cross, has been to coordinate various actors involved in trafficking cases, in order to try to develop methods that can be used as models for best practices

People can fall prey to trafficking at any point in the migration process. I have an increasing number of cases which reveal that rejected asylum seekers in the country of destination, for example Denmark, are contacted by traffickers who have patiently "groomed" them while they waited for an answer from the authorities.

The moment they receive deportation papers, the traffickers offer them the possibility of flight to a new country. Vulnerable people, then enter into a new spiral of debt that will often include forced prostitution or other forms of forced labour in a new country.

Human trafficking is very lucrative, because human beings can be sold many times by criminal networks and described as "High profits but low risk." Unlike other commodities like drugs or weapons, it is often impossible to prove that trafficking has occurred.

Victims of trafficking, often deny having been trafficked, as they are frightened of what the consequences will be when they are deported. They therefore often decide, that protecting the people who have smuggled or and trafficked them, is the best survival strategy in the long run. This is just one of the reasons, why it is notoriously difficult to gain solid convictions in this area and why the organization, union I have set up -- Hopenow -- supports a change in the law, to provide long-term protection and even residency, in cases of trafficking where the country of origin cannot guarantee protection from the criminal network which trafficked the person.

In the last 11 months having receiving an award for voluntary work in Denmark, I have provided a service to over 50 trafficked women, and over the years, hundreds more.

I cooperate with a wide group of partners N.G.O.s in Denmark and Africa, hospitals, the Red Cross, researchers, government organizations, prisons and the immigration services in order to achieve a professional service.

I want to thank all the people who have supported my work and all the new members and the members to come in Hopenow. Our task lies ahead and although it seems overwhelming I have faith that together we will succeed.

It is up to us to make Hopenow grow into a dynamic, alternative organization that strives to provide a professional service for trafficked women, working together with other dedicated people and also forging links with people and organizations in Europe and the rest of the world; doing what I call the blood, bones and flesh of the social work.

In my opinion too much money is often frittered away on vast administrative costs and governments have far too much emphasis on the façade of help but do not employ enough workers, providing direct, action and strong interventions to help these women and girls.

I really hope that we can all be more informed, reflect and take part in an ongoing debate as a result of this excellent film that Anja Dalhoff risked so much to make. Truly independent, documentary film makers are essential in a democratic society and unfortunately are a dying, breed in an increasingly commercial world.

It was a great privilege to be consultant and narrator for the film and I am glad that my decision to go to Nigeria was correct, despite massive opposition that resulted in dismissal from my work. This struggle and conflict, I am now deeply grateful for, as I would never otherwise have formed the union of Hopenow, which I believe will grow and flourish.

"The greatest tragedy is not the brutality of the evil but rather the silence of the good" -- Martin Luther King.

-- From Michelle Mildwater, psychotherapist and project leader for www.hopenow.dk/
Consultant and narrator, Trapped

Trapped

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:44:00 +0000

Watch: Part 1 | Part 2

Making the film "Trapped" was a shocking experience for me. I spent two years observing the trafficking enviroment in Denmark and other parts of Europe, researching for the film.

I met Michelle Mildwater, a British psychotherapist working with these women in the streets and brothels of Denmark. Together we roamed the red light areas and witnessed the growing group of African and Eastern European women standing on the ice-cold streets, forced by the criminal network to prostitute themselves in order to pay off their debts.

Through Michelle I got in contact with the two Nigerian women, Anna and Joy. I felt really priviliged when they agreed to cooperate with me to make the film. They said they wanted people in the world to know about their suffering at the hands of pimps, madams and the legal authorities in Denmark.

I was deeply affected when I visited Joy month after month, imprisoned as a common criminal and was witness to her tears and desperation. She said to me so often: "I only asked for help and now I have ended up behind bars. Why am I being punished like this?"

Anna and Joy were deported to Nigeria and Michelle and I followed them home.

Nigeria was a great challenge -- the grinding poverty, the polution and the constant danger were overwelming and made filming very difficult.

I was hardly ever able to film in an open way and I had to improvise by placing a hidden camera in a shoulder bag with a hole cut in it, so I could film on the streets of Lagos and Benin city.

In Nigeria, Joy and Anna encountered new problems every day and I followed their
struggle for survival. I realized that the traffickers do not just give up their victims easily and I also discovered the cruel way their families were threatened. And the psychological terror of voodoo.

It was terrible to see how a womam returning to her own country, remained a fugitive and had to live underground moving from place to place.

We had hoped an organization would be willing to protect and rehabilitate these needy women but without funding there was no possibility for this to occur and it was clear to me that there was no well organized, coordinated support provided for trafficked women.

Despite this, Joy and Anna were determined to stay in Nigeria and resisted being trafficked again Anna had said once that I would rarther eat sand in the desert than stand here on the ice cold streets of Copenhagen.

Many women, however, succumb to the intolerable pressure put on them and return to the streets and brothels of Europe. My question is: When can we ever hope to end the cycle of trafficking and retrafficking? When if ever will we put a stop to 21st century slavery.

-- From Director Anja Dalhoff

Carteret Islands: That sinking feeling

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:50:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

A week on a tropical island in the South Pacific? It sounded like the job of a lifetime.

But in reality my crew and I were about to experience first hand what life was actually like for the Carteret Islanders.

The Carteret Islands are sinking into the ocean. The locals blame global warming for the rising sea that has swallowed their food crops. Soon they’ll be forced to leave their idyllic home and live in Bougainville, an island still troubled by a civil war that claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Like most assignments the plan was to visit the location for five days, gather elements for the story and bid farewell.

We left Bougainville Island on the 100km trip east onboard the MVSancamup, a rusting freight and passenger ship that limped across the ocean on one engine.

The ship was making an emergency rice drop to the Carteret Islanders who had once again run out of food.

Stepping foot on the Carteret Islands was like stepping onto the front page of a travel magazine. Pristine white sands, topped with coconut trees amid an aqua blue lagoon.

However a different picture soon emerged as the locals showed us their home.

They had built sea walls with giant clam shells in a futile attempt to beat back the rising ocean. Coconut trees lay fallen at the water's edge.

If the sea wasn't breaking over the clam barriers then it was rising up through the sand and swamping gardens. It was a haven for malaria carrying mosquitos.

After five days, the MV Sancamup arrived at the outer reef. But word soon reached us that the ship was not returning to Bougainville and instead was heading east for a medical emergency.

We decided to stay on the Carterets and wait for the ship to return.

One day turned into two, two into three and it soon emerged the ship was not coming back.

We too were living off the relief rice shipment supplemented by the odd fish and drinking from coconuts.

After six days things hit rock bottom when the island ran out of drinking water. Coconuts used to be a treat, now it was the only source of re-hydration. This was life on the Carteret Islands.

We had no option but to use local banana boats or 20 foot dinghies to make the 100km journey across open seas to Bougainville.

After a four hour bone-jarring journey we arrived in the Bougainville capital, Buka.

In coming years the Carteret Islanders will also be forced to make the same journey as their home disappears into the ocean.

-- From Steve Marshall, PNG ABC Correspondent

Darfur Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:18:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

I've covered hundreds of stories over the last 40 years to do with refugees around the world; but this was one of the most difficult to do because of the bureaucracy. It look me at least eight months to get the visa approval, and once I got it, the Sudanese Embassy in Paris was very helpful to me.

But that was just the start.

When I got to Khartoum, I had to get a travel permit, which took me another week through the bureaucracy.

As you'd imagine, Sudanese officials are extremely wary of letting foreign journalists into the country, as past stories haven't portrayed the Sudanese in the best light. I wanted to cover the story from a unique angle, about what's really going on in Darfur – how the aid agencies and governments are dealing with the unrest, not what caused it.

Having all the correct paperwork, accreditation and stamped documents didn't always get me past the many checkpoints that popped up throughout Darfur. Certainly, my accreditation as a journalist wasn't always helpful. At times, it was made clear to me that journalists were not welcome. And being one of the few white-skinned people in the region made me stand out in a crowd.

On one occasion I was stopped by a man who at first glance looked harmless, but threatened me with a rock if I didn't put my camera away. He clearly didn't want me filming in any of the refugee camps.

The situation was more or less under control until his shirt flew open and I saw a pistol tucked into his trousers.

Darfur has become a huge disaster and there seems little hope of a simple resolution.

Everywhere, there was evidence of low morale and a growing anger in Darfur. And what I saw was just a small part of a much bigger problem of social dysfunction and unease amongst the thousands of displaced people.

It's believed over half a million people are housed in hellish conditions in refugee camps and visiting these places was no easy task. If you didn't get stopped by the guards at the entrance, you were swamped by refugees. Women and children were putting their fingers in their mouths and then rubbing their stomachs – signalling they were hungry, desperate and frustrated. Some of these people have been in these camps for five years.

Huts are made from tree branches, discarded garbage bags and hessian cloth leftover from bags full of rice. Even the Secretary General in charge of the camps said that camps are the worst place to live in the world. People living besides each other and lack of toilets and basic necessities.

In 2003, the conflict flared in the impoverished region after a rebel group began attacking government targets, saying the region was being neglected by Khartoum. Some rebel groups allege the government was oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. The two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), have more or less split into several new groups, some along ethnic lines. Traditionally there were just fewer than 10 tribes, however now they've broken into around 40 fractioning groups.

What really struck me by the end of my trip was that the people of Darfur are extremely proud. They hold a lot of dignity and self respect.

There's nothing worse than a refugee camp and not knowing their future. I can't see any end to this disaster for many years to come. It's overwhelming, and unless the international community gets serious about Darfur – the situation will only deteriorate. It's too huge for the government of Sudan and the NGOs to solve it. Particularly with the suspicion of all concerns.

The reason I wanted to do this story for Dateline, is that we cannot ignore this huge humanitarian problem. The world is a very small place and it will eventually affect us as well unless we find a way to help these people. And by watching this program, I hope it makes us feel a little bit more humble about how fortunate we are in Australia.

-- From David Brill, assisted by Debs Majumdar

Gaza Tunnels

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:19:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

I first met Saïd and Hamdam in Rafah, two years ago, during the shooting of my first documentary about the Gaza Strip. It was just after the Israelis pulled out. I wanted to see how the situation would change for the town and its inhabitants. Rafah has always been the center for arms smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip: A city cut in two by the border between the two territories. Since the end of the second Intifada, a good many tunnels have been dug in order to reach Egypt, and to bring back weapons.

The first time I saw Saïd and Hamdam, they were 12 years old. They were fooling around, digging a small tunnel. The tunnel entrance looked pretty realistic. It was quite an amusing scene, and I filmed them and did an interview. Hamdam told me they were training, so that one day they'd be able to dig a real tunnel. I never thought they'd actually do it so soon.

In July 2007, Hamas had just taken control of the territory. All the border posts with Israel and Egypt had been closed down as a reprisal for the Islamists' coup. The tunnels now played a vital role in providing supplies for the Gaza Strip. It was at that moment that Saïd and Hamdam became professional tunnel-diggers.

They insisted on showing me their first tunnel. I could only be impressed by these 14-year-old kids who were committed to such dangerous work. As I talked with them, I came to understand that they did not at all take part in the actual trafficking. Since the Gaza Strip blockade was imposed, the traffickers were no longer digging their own tunnels. They asked kids like Saïd and Hamdam to do the work for them. Once the tunnel was dug, they were paid off and asked to leave.

I wanted to both tell this story, and to film the two teenagers, for whom I felt a genuine affection.
I wanted to show these kids’ daily lives, and how they are obliged to spend many long nights digging a rat hole in order to make a living.
I spent the whole of December and part of January alongside them. I was interested in their lives as teenagers in the Gaza Strip territory as much as in their work in the tunnels. For them, and for myself, there was never a question of hiding their faces. They are not wealthy traffickers, but simply two kids with no alternative, if they want to put food on the table.

During the night of January 22-23, Hamas men had just blown up the wall marking the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. The next day, I met my young diggers. In just a few minutes, they were able to cross the border on foot, whereas they had spent months digging a tunnel to cover the same distance. They were gutted. They were out of a job ...

Over the next two weeks, when the border remained open, I stayed with them. When the border was once again closed down, I went back to the tunnels with them. Just like before. And as long as the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt stays closed, they will continue to dig.

-- From reporter Stephane Marchetti

Romania's Lost Children

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:43:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

The little baby boy lay awake in his cot. He was bound in swaddling, as is the tradition in these parts, and I was aching to pick him up. The doctor told me his name: Emanuel Bizgan. He was five months old, the son of a homeless woman, and had been abandoned at the hospital.

Emanuel is one of a new generation of orphans in Romania. These days babies abandoned at hospitals are likely to stay there until their second birthday. New laws banning the institutionalization of children under two have backfired for them. Only when they turn two will they be legally allowed to go to a children's home. Not that that would be much better.

The doctor in charge, Dr. Monica Nicoara, has become a babysitter for dozens of newborns and toddlers. There's nothing medically wrong with the children – they've simply had the misfortune of being given up by their parents.

"They have no affiliation, no stability; 'that’s my mummy, I go to my mummy, I am safe with my mummy. I have many mummies – anyone is okay, but which is mine?,'" she tells me. "It is not a personal relationship here."

We filmed Dr. Nicoara and her charges at the Baia Mare hospital in northern Romania. Some of the older babies who could sit up were rocking – child welfare experts say that's a sign that they’re suffering from a lack of stimulation. I noticed something else odd about the ward – the babies weren’t crying. There were a dozen little ones there and they were all quiet. They'd given up on crying. That above all was hard to learn – the best way babies can communicate their needs and these ones had given up. They had learned that crying didn't get them what they wanted. How could it – when their were 23 of them to care for and just 3 nurses on the ward?

The babies didn't cry but by the end of this shoot I think our entire crew was holding back tears. We knew that this was going to be an emotional story to tell. By the time we finished filming, we'd all had a cuddle of Emanuel and some of his friends in the ward. We really wanted to take them home (wryly joking that they'd fit in our backpacks). But even if we were serious, it would have been impossible: International adoption has been banned in Romania.

The story became personal for me later that same day. I received an e-mail from a dear friend in Australia who was desperately trying to get pregnant and having all sorts of problems. She really wanted a child and it was painful to think that here I was meeting so many unwanted children. It brought home the tragedy of this story and the importance of telling it. Romania has made great strides in its child welfare system since the horrors of the Communist regime – but there are still too many babies here who may never know a mother's love.

-- From Emma Griffiths, Moscow Correspondent, ABC Australia

Harsh Beauty

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:10:00 +0000

Watch the show: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Making Harsh Beauty was a challenge from the very first moment I set my foot in India.

Although my films have taken me to a few corners in the world, my time in India was a life changing experience like no other.

It all started as a visit to a Eunuch festival in a town called Kovagam. I heard about this celebration and I wanted to make a short film not even really knowing what a Eunuch is or what it means to be born in the wrong body.

What was supposed to be a three-week trip became almost a two-year journey.

The hardest part in making this film was to gain access to the community, often misunderstood and ostracised in general. The community I met in Mumbai was weary of white women pointing cameras at them, so for the first few weeks I would just spend time with them, preparing food, going shopping, drinking whisky late at night and singing songs to the moon.

My translator and I spent time just sharing daily life with them, building trust. Once the novelty of "the foreigner" wore off, I started to bring my camera around.

Soon two characters began to emerge, Usha and Jothy, and the story took a life of itself. It went beyond stereotypes. Often Eunuchs in India are marginalized and work in the sex trade, entertainment or they give blessings to newlyweds and newborns believing Eunuchs will bring good omen to their marriage or to their child.

After a year, I heard about Hira Bai, an elected politician who was respected and loved in her community, and she became the third character in the film.

Finally I would like to say that the more I got involved with them, the more I realize that gender identity is like an ocean in which we are only drops of water.

From Alessandra Zeka, Director