World's Untold Stories

Dangerous Ground

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:43:00 +0000

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

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

Costa del Con

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:11:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

I thought they might have reached saturation point on the Costa del Sol by now -- after all, they've been at it for years.

In 1986 I was here as a tourist and even then was struck by the overwhelming concentration of concrete; of the endless apartment blocks rising up from the skinniest beaches, the water almost lapping the foundations.

You know the scene in the movie Planet of the Apes? Where the top of the Statue of Liberty's sticking out the sand? That's how I imagine generations to come will finally uncover the story of the Costa del Sol -- and the Costa del Con that went with it.

This stretch of the Spanish Mediterranean coast has already spawned a thousand parodies from Monty Python's travel sketch to the Fast Show's weather forecast -- where everyday was "scorchio."

A land of territorial German beach towels, baking Brits and Swedes so sun-struck they look like blushing lobsters.

This blessed strip of all day English breakfasts and mini-Munichs with an eternal Oktoberfest.

But the place has changed dramatically since I first saw it 2 decades ago -- it's much, much bigger.

Less will never be more on the Costa del Sol. In fact, more can never be enough.

There's really serious money here now, some of it Russian, so little places that were once fishing ports now hold giant motorboats the size of small villages.

And when the owners and their guests step ashore they can do that essential holiday shopping, like buying a mink coat or a very, very, very expensive diamond.

Twenty-one years ago, I felt like the token Australian on the beach -- I probably was
-- after all, we don't really rate the Costa del Sol beaches -- they're not big enough for us -- call this a beach? Hell, I can count the grains of sand.

Now I feel dwarfed by the sheer change to the landscape.

It feels like half of Europe's decided to move south, spreading back up the hills in huge apartment blocks, sorry, villas, yes villas because they sound much more luxurious, don't they?

Life as one long holiday.

My God, what a place.

From Chris Clark, Correspondent, ABC Australia

Female peacekeepers

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:06:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

When I heard about the decision to send an entirely female peacekeeping unit to Liberia, my first reaction was -- why didn’t anyone think of that before? It’s obviously a good idea.

For so many years the woman of Liberia had paid a very high price for the cruel civil wars of this country, and this might be a very important step in the right direction, why not let the woman take the lead in a country where 73 percent of all women have been raped.

For me, as a director of documentary films, it was also obvious that it would be interesting to do a film about the world's first female U.N. peacekeeping unit.

Millions of people have met or seen television footage of soldiers at war, almost all of them, men. The image of men killing each other in ugly wars comes very easy, but the picture of a female soldier doesn’t readily appear when we think of war.

Can women fight a war at all? And will they be better at making peace than men? They are for me two very interesting questions. For many years we have discussed if women are better leaders than men, and here was the chance to make a debate of an equivalent topic, are women better to make peace than men?

I went to Liberia this spring -- a fragile and war torn country. At peace, yes, but where tensions were lurking under the surface. The scars of war are everywhere.

Everyone I met told me the most horrible stories of what happened during the 13 years of civil war. Very little is working, and the people are desperately poor. Walking around the capital Monrovia, would very quickly leave you sad, but for me that picture changed when I met the women that are trying to change it.

It was fantastic to meet the Indian contingent commander, the Liberian female police students and not least of all the chief of police, Beatrice Mona Sieh. They were all so dedicated to their task, and worked with such an enthusiasm, professionalism with a female touch, and confidence that convinced me this will work out, even though it's going to take a long time.

The question of whether women are better to make peace than men is probably not one to be answered yet, but I doubt that this will be the last time we see an entirely female peace keeping unit.

-- From Søren Bendixen, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

Vesuvius

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:57:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

When I was inside the crater of Mt. Vesuvius in Naples, I was less alarmed by the smoking fumeroles that were expelling clouds of gas around her, than the ground giving away beneath me.

I was there with a scientist from Naples University, Professor Benedetto de Vivo. He was so intent on pointing out the intricacies of the inside of the crater that he wasn't looking at the ground beneath him.

There was an enormous drop in front of us and the ground wasn't that stable. He told me there's a lake of magma about 12 kilometers beneath us, but at that point my main concern was falling rather than the thought of a massive eruption.

Cameraman Louie Eroglu and I filmed the mountain from all sides, including the towns in the so-called red zone that are at risk.

They say a volcano is only dangerous if there are people around it. In this case there are three million people and the major problem is that it so congested that if there is an eruption with little warning, it will be impossible for people to escape.

Unfortunately, there is a major disagreement among scientists, with some saying there will be several weeks' warning while others say it could be as little as a day. In spite of this, the authorities have allowed lots of high-rise buildings and have now given permission to build the biggest hospital in southern Italy, right in the path of the last lava flow from Vesuvius.

We've looked at what might happen if there is an eruption with a pyroclastic flow like the one that killed everyone in the Roman town of Pompeii in 79 AD. It's a terrifying proposition.

From Anne Maria Nicholson, Reporter

Escape from North Korea

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:14:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

In May 2006, I read a fascinating article about the man (“CK” aka Kim Sang Hun,) who is credited with running the North Korean "underground railroad." The article names CK as one of Asia's heroes -– I decided to try get in touch with him.

Although I realized that making contact with someone like this is normally very difficult, I got in touch with a contact in Seoul, and he in turn used his own contacts to connect myself and CK through e-mail.

When I initially spoke with CK about my interest, he was uncertain about how we cover this story without putting the refugees about greater risk -- but through further e-mail exchanges, he agreed to meet me ... at a coffee shop in downtown Bangkok a few weeks later. A place so filled with crazed tourists, that a meeting like this would not draw any attention. This coffee shop is where we would have many subsequent meetings, all of them short and to the point. Each time we would discuss the logistics of our involvement with his operation, and we would then leave separately and go our own way.

The more meetings I had with him, the closer I felt myself getting to understanding how the railroad works –- and although I thought I was getting inside the operation, I did not yet have CK’s trust, and it would take many more months of meetings with CK, his counterparts, and North Korean refugees before I really understood the intimate details of how the network operates.

For the refugees, getting caught in China means getting sent back to North Korea to a certain prison term, and a possible death. For the aid workers, getting arrested in China means a lengthy jail term.

CK eventually agreed on the merit of our project, and agreed to help find a group that would allow themselves to be filmed. I took two initial trips up to China, in an attempt to meet the group we would travel with, and also to get an idea of the type of filming I would need to do. Security precautions start to become serious in China, and the humanitarian workers act very much like spies would -– codewords, fake names, no checking into hotels together, etc.

My first two trips took place in the middle of winter, and as Northeastern China borders Russia, it was very very cold. On my second trip, CK introduced me to a man who was trying to get his family out, a North Korean escapee himself, he was coming back to try to rescue his family.

But his family was still in North Korea, and as he was a former State Security Agent himself (SSA agents are the top level government security forces inside NK,) he was able to meet with some of his old colleagues, current SSA agents, and asked for assistance.

I was in the car for one of these meetings -– and the current agent, agreed with the relatives idea of trying to bring in a camera phone and get out video of the family. Cameras are banned inside, and the only way this agent was able to get the video back out, was to remove the memory chip from the phone, and tape it under his watch, it’s the only place security forces don’t check. The risk for him to do this was immense, getting caught would have likely meant a lengthy jail sentence for him, and his family.

I was filming in China as a tourist, as I never would have been able to get a journalist visa to cover a story like this. And I played the tourist, walking around in a sweatshirt and hat, as I filmed with a small consumer camera.

I waited in China for about three weeks –- but the family never came. We heard countless updates about their imminent arrival, but they never showed up.

As I waited, I had to keep changing hotels every two days for security precautions. Eventually I had to pull out of China and go back to Bangkok. I was still very interested in continuing with the story, but I had to understand the reality that family might likely never show up.

Over the next few months, I continued to hear updates about the family. I was told on countless occasions that "D-day is tonight," but for a variety of reasons they never showed up.

But one day in early May, I got a call from CK, "believe it or not, half of the family has arrived, and the other half will be coming soon," he said. I packed my bags and flew back up to Northeast China.

The family had in fact arrived, and we spent the first night filming with them in a hotel room from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. They were painfully nervous about the trip, and told me very quickly that if they caught they will be executed -- Instead of getting sent back to North Korea, their plan was to commit suicide. This immediately brought the reality of the situation to the forefront. These people wanted freedom, and they were risking their lives to get it.

I spent the next three weeks on the underground railroad with them, a journey of roughly 5,000 miles -- traveling by bus, train, taxi, motorbike, and by foot. We went from safe house to safe, from border to border. I was lucky enough to be able to film the entire journey -- speaking with them about their feelings at each moment, filming them getting sick along the way, and rejoicing when they got onto Thai soil.

Bolivia Meltdown

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:11:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

La Paz, Bolivia. Altitude: 3,800 metres. When your hotel offers both llama burgers and bottled oxygen on room service, you know that the assignment is going to be a little different.

We stumble gasping, jet lagged and unacclimatised off the plane at La Paz after a two-day journey from Australia, to film a story on the latest casualty of climate change - Bolivia’s rapidly melting glaciers.

Having digested the llama, sucked on some O2 and drunk copious amounts of coca tea - which every Bolivian insists is the best cure for altitude sickness - I contemplate our next move.

If nearly two million Bolivians can happily live and work at this altitude, then so will we.

The only problem is getting to the story. We’ll have to go even higher, ascending to a dizzying 5,500 metres - where there is only half the oxygen of sea level.

This may be regarded as a mere warm-up session for your average mountain climber, but they spend weeks acclimatising, whereas we’ve only two days to catch our breath.

We meet up with local glaciologist Edson Rameriz, our guide up the Chacaltaya Glacier, which stands within sight of the city. Edson says the high altitude glaciers around La Paz are melting at an unprecedented rate.

He predicts they will all disappear within 20 years.

It’s a crisis in the making for La Paz and the twin city of El Alto. The glaciers act as giant water reservoirs - providing up to 60 percent of the drinking water. Hydroelectric plants rely on water-run off to generate nearly 80 percent of the cities’ power.

Chacaltaya was once billed as the world’s highest ski run, but as we ascend the 5,500-meter mountain it looks more like a ski resort on the moon. An old European-style ski lodge sits atop the rocky lunar landscape.

Edson leads us scrambling across the precariously steep slope towards the Chacaltaya glacier, now reduced to a sad sliver of ice.

We stumble past the remains of the ski lift that stopped operating in 1998. Loaded up with camera gear, it’s hard enough just breathing at this altitude, let alone imagining a downhill run.

Edson scratches at the black ice, exposed to the sunlight for the first time in 18,000 years. This is ancient history melting before our very eyes. In two years, says Edson, it will all be gone, and with it will go the precious water vital to sustaining life on the arid western side of the Andes.

The high altitude has its compensations. The thin air makes visibility perfect. We stand on the dripping ice awed by the spectacular vista of the Andes range. But all Edson sees is a bleak, very dry future.

He views Bolivia as the first country to encounter a disaster that will eventually confront tens of millions of people across South America. "It’s a critical problem - it’s the same problem for Peru, Ecuador and Colombia - all the Andes," says Edson. "It’s very sad."

-- From Producer Mark Corcoran

Gay conversion

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:55:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

To some Christian groups in the United States homosexuality is not only a sin, it's a mental disorder. As such, they feel it can be cured. More than 100 camps have been set up to administer "re-orientation therapy" with the intention of turning gay people straight. The programs are big business and highly controversial. Those running the camps say they have a 30 percent success rate. Opponents believe re-orientation therapy is dangerous, sometimes leading to attempted suicide by those who feel that they have failed God.

Congo's tin soldiers

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:40:00 +0000

Digging for cassiterite

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

It doesn’t glitter like a diamond or burn like oil but cassiterite is another natural resource that is causing more pain than profit for the majority of Africans that try to extract it from their soil.

Demand for cassiterite -- a tin ore used in computer circuitry -- is on the rise. So too is illegal mining of the ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo where militias are forcing laborers to work in atrocious conditions with little or no pay.

Reporter Jonathan Miller treks deep into the jungle to see how it works.

Bangladesh: The forgotten people

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:32:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

Decades after Myanmar’s (formerly Burma) military junta forced the Rohingyas into exile, their suffering still continues. Trapped in displacement camps, they survive on starvation rations in constant fear of abuse.

"My people are rotting," despairs one refugee. The Bangladesh government classes the Rohingyas as illegal immigrants. According to the UNHCR, guards at the displacement camp are accused of forcing refugees into prostitution, extortion and stealing food. Thousands more live in slums along the Naj river without the basic protection of the U.N. "We survive by collecting leaves and boiling them," says one woman. "No-one cares about us."

State of Despair

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:53:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

I went to Iraq in 2003, soon after the invasion, and spent six weeks there on my own filming stories for Australian TV. For half the time I followed an Iraqi exile who was returning for the first time in 25 years. It was one of the most interesting and stimulating times of my life and I got to see a country at a major turning point in its history.

In that post invasion "honeymoon period" Iraq's future was a tumult of conflicting possibilities. In awe of this beautiful, complex and richly historic desert paradise I naively hoped for the best. It didn't take long for things to seriously unravel and Iraq became too dangerous for me to return to.

I kept thinking about how ordinary people in Iraq would get by day to day in such a hellish environment. How do they do simple things, like buy tomatoes? How do the kids get to school, if at all? What is it like to live in a place where violence, death and hatred have permeated everyone's lives?

In 2005 and 2006 I did a series of stories on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, talking to both the Iraqis who were detained and tortured, and U.S. soldiers who witnessed or carried out some of the abuse. The Iraqis I met were in Jordan and Syria, and it was then I got a sense of the scale of the exiled Iraqi community. Returning to Jordan and doing a portrait of the Iraqi community in exile seemed like a good way to find out more about what was happening on the ground in Iraq.

I met up with Alia Hamzeh, my Jordanian fixer and translator I had worked with on the Abu Ghraib story, and we set about tracking down Iraqis to interview. It was hard to convince some of them to talk. The fear and threats that had come with them across the border were too hard to shake, and the trauma these people are living with is inconceivable to someone like me.

It was a very bleak experience, and there was no real sign of hope. It was depressing to hear officials say that the only real future for these people will come with a political "solution" in Iraq. It is unimaginable right now.

The only uplifting moment was when I followed a couple of the kids –- asking them to show me how they get by and entertain themselves. They pulled out all the toys they'd found in the garbage and repaired, games they had made up to entertain themselves, and were keen to impress me with their inventiveness. Their resilience was so inspiring, but it was also bittersweet as their life in Jordan is seriously limited. I only hope they find a better place to be able to deal with the terrible things they've known in their short lives.

From Olivia Rousset, SBS Reporter

Ahmadinejad's Iran

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:21:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

For two years I'd been trying to get a press visa into Iran. Downloading the application form, filling it out, attaching the passport photos. It was all so routine and always so unsuccessful that when I did it halfway through the Australian summer of 2007, I really wasn’t expecting a result.

A few weeks later I was driving down the East Coast on a glorious, sunny day when I got the call, I was in. I had to pull over I was so excited.

But then came the bad news. It's a 10-day visa and your time starts now.

Now?! I was five hours away from Sydney, no flight booked, no interviews lined up, no cash ready, nothing. I managed to plead an extra five days from the Embassy but still, I had to scramble.

I heard later from other journalists that this "instant visa" that makes it nearly impossible to plan your interviews and filming in advance is common practice. My first lesson on the difficulties of working as a journalist in Iran.

Part of the reason I was so excited was that I'd been to Iran seven years ago, not as a journalist but as a student and traveler. I had fond memories of friendly, curious people and that famous Persian hospitality.

I quickly realized that turning up as a journalist was a whole different story. It's not that people weren't friendly, but they were cautious, and very wary of me. A common refrain was "I don’t want trouble."

Once I pulled out the camera people would literally turn around and walk-away. Getting "ordinary" Iranians on tape was incredibly difficult, and those who did talk would do so briefly and often with their eyes darting around to see who was watching.

Usually, someone was watching. There was one man I met who was happy to talk to me and help me out. A conservative, deeply religious man who supported his country and didn't have a dissident bone in his body, he took me one night to a mosque to film a meeting of the Basiji –- Iran’s voluntary militia force.

The group read the Quran and did a few exercises, all very patriotic behaviour, yet before long a serious looking official in plain clothes turned up with a notepad and wanted all my details. As I left he was taking down the details of the friendly man who'd taken me to the mosque. By simply trying to help me better understand his country my new friend had managed to get himself placed on the security/intelligence radar.

But being the country of contradiction that it is -– I was also given freedoms as a journalist that surprised me. Requests for all "official" interviews had to be submitted through the Ministry of Culture and Guidance. I did this, and was granted permission to interview people who were openly critical of the government.

Ebrahim Yazdi for example, who appears in my story, is a known critic of the government and indeed the entire system, yet my request to interview him was quickly and easily approved. I also interviewed academics and economists who spoke out against President Ahmadinejad. The government owned and run media agency who helped "fix" my interviews seemed only too happy to help me get what I needed.

Despite the challenges it is a fascinating country to work in and there are so many interesting, unreported stories there. It's not all politics and nuclear programs either! My next visa application will be going off again soon ...

From Bronwyn Adcock, Reporter, SBS Dateline

Surfing Soweto

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:59:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

In South Africa it’s illegal to film on the urban trains. The government agency that runs this service is very worried about the public seeing what actually goes on. So when we had the idea to make a film on this subject we were not sure we would ever be able to get any actual footage of kids surfing trains.

Then as luck would have it, just when we were doing research, the private security guards, who are responsible for policing the trains and the stations, went on strike. At that time, however, we had not yet secured any commission or budget for the film. It was a tough call because we knew it was a perfect opportunity, or maybe the only opportunity as it turns out, to film freely on the trains but we had no money at all.

This documentary was made with no budget and deferred payments. It was made only because we knew train surfing would tell an important story about the youth of Soweto.

With no guards or private security people on the trains to prevent us from entering the stations at will with our camera we were able to film some of the only footage ever shot of train surfing in Soweto. The disadvantage of this however was we ourselves had no protection at all. And South African trains are a well known hang out for criminals and gangsters so filming was quite a nerve-wracking experience.

At one point while we were filming with one of our main characters, Lefa, the police actually stopped the train while it was between stations and locked all the doors so they could conduct a carriage to carriage search. This was right at the height of the strike when criminal activity on the trains had reached epic proportions. Lefa reacted immediately when this happened and disappeared into another coach leaving Dimi alone with the "illegal camera." Luckily she looked respectable enough and her bag wasn’t searched on this occasion.

The other nerve wracking part of shooting this documentary was the constant terror that the boys would be killed during filming. It is one thing to be making a film about such a dangerous activity but all together another to be causing it. We were as careful as we could possibly be in terms of ensuring that no harm came to anyone participating in the film. But accidents do happen and each day we came home from filming we both silently said prayers thanking whatever power there is from giving us another accident free day. Luckily no one was hurt or injured during our filming.

One of the funniest things that happened on the shoot was the day when we were filming with Prince. From the time we met him early in the morning at his house he carried a grey briefcase, which he was at great pains to ensure was looked after at all times while he surfed. At the time we didn’t know he was a hairdresser. We asked him what was in the case. It was funny watching a hardened train surfer open his briefcase and reveal hair brushes and a hair dryer.

Since the documentary has been aired on South African television there has been extensive interest in our characters and their antics. Metro Rail, which is the government agency that runs the train service, has now hired Mzembe and Lefa.

Today they work as consultants whose job it is to go around and persuade vandals and train surfers not to embark on such dangerous activities. Prince has opened a number of hair salons around Soweto and is building himself to be quiet a successful businessman. When Lefa’s girlfriend Nhlanhla’s parents saw the documentary on TV they were horrified to learn of her relationship. She has been suspended from the church youth group. She has since broken up with Lefa.

From Sara and Dimi.

Love and betrayal in the West Bank

noreply@blogger.com (World Untold Stories Producer) — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:51:00 +0000

Watch the program: Part 1 | Part 2

When Israeli troops are on a combat patrol on the outskirts of town, the Islamic Jihad men of Jenin become night walkers, nervous about putting their heads down for too long in one place.

This journey to the core of their cell revealed a calculating leader, sworn to resist Israel’s occupation of the land, committed to killing civilians to achieve his ends. But we also found a tail of three people whose lives had been tangled and mangled together on a trail of violence and relentless sorrow.

As I stood amidst the din in Tel Aviv, the glass and debris from the bomb blast crunched beneath my feet. I wondered, yet again, how this could possibly have happened. It was a beautiful sunny day, but windscreen wipers were scraping backwards and forwards, across a blood spattered windscreen. Cell phones were ringing, unanswered, somewhere in the rubble.

I found and interviewed the father of the bomber, the Islamic Jihad cell that sent him to Tel Aviv and the wife of one of his victims. And as the Israeli military planned their own attack on Islamic Jihad they found their collaborator. He would be dead within months.

Bassem Maleh’s father hasn’t come to terms with his son’s death, or the wrenching circumstances. As he stood, mucking out the small stable beneath his home, I could see his shoulders sag for a moment, and he let out a sigh with sorrow. His son was gunned down in the street, accused by Islamic Jihad of collaborating with Israel.

The whole episode, including his son’s confession to his Islamic Jihad captors, was filmed and it is horrible. The father still can’t believe his son would get mixed up in such a mess. And he can't admit it, in any case. He has already been ostracized by his neighbors and a big emptiness is opening up: The no man’s land inhabited by those stained by the accusation, "you helped the occupation." His life seems to him to be falling apart.

Across the rolling farmland, the rugged rock outcrops and beautiful hills and gullies of the West Bank, on the other side of Jenin, another father is having similar feelings. Sameeh Hamad’s, son Samer, was the bomber who struck in Tel Aviv. He can’t believe it and can’t explain his son’s connection with this group, just about the most radical of all the Palestinian militant groups. He breaks down in tears when he tells me that, if he could stop his son from killing the Israelis he killed that day, he would do anything for the chance.

In her small, neat Tel Aviv flat Mia Anibjar can’t take that deep regret at face value. Her new husband Lior was one of those murdered by Samer Hamad and his Islamic Jihad bomb and she is still obviously struggling to come to terms with his death. She seems detached but speaks with straight forward, honest love for her man. After he was killed in Samer Hamad’s attack Islamic Jihad handed out sweets on the street of Jenin.

For a while, the producer on this story, Wayne Harley, nicknamed it "the ghost story" because so many of the characters have been killed. But their bereaved and bewildered loved ones and the Jihad cell leader, Walid Ubeid, tell their tales with gripping clarity.

We were always a little more worried than usual about safety while we were filming this story. After all, there’s a steady stream, of new entries on Islamic Jihad’s list of martyrs, thanks to Israeli hit squads and airstrikes. And since we filmed the story several of the militants involved have been killed in Israeli incursions. Walid Ubeid says: "We know our destiny, because this is the way we have chosen: We will be martyrs or we will be in prison and we don't have any other choice."

From Matt Brown, Middle East Correspondent, ABC Australia TV