Unreported World — Season 13

Apr 2012

As George Clooney campaigns against the atrocities being committed in Sudan, Unreported World has filmed extensive documentary footage from the war zone. Aidan Hartley and Daniel Bogado gained rare access to the Nuba Mountains to film the heroic doctors who are saving children in a largely hidden war being perpetrated on civilians by one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. The Nuba Mountains region, in the South Kordofan oil fields upriver from Khartoum, is a troubled part of Sudan where a civil war has continued since the 1980s. Nuba always fought alongside its southern black African Christian neighbours against the Arab Islamic regime in Khartoum, but the region was left behind in the peace accord that led to the independence of South Sudan in mid-2011. In June 2011, President Omar al-Bashir's forces launched fresh attacks against opposition supporters in Nuba, many of them Christians and black Africans. The Unreported World team highlights how government forces are carrying out almost constant aerial bombardment of civilian settlements, driving them from their fields so they cannot grow crops, while banning relief deliveries by international agencies. As soon as they arrive in Nuba, Hartley and Bogado are caught in an air raid by Sukhoi ground attack jets firing rockets as terrified families dive into foxholes while explosions rumble in the surrounding villages. In another incident soon after, the team films traumatised children running into caves to hide from Antonov bombers. The impact of Khartoum's refusal to allow medicines into Nuba is clear as doctors are forced to carry out operations on shrapnel-wounded children without anaesthetics and almost no medicines apart from traditional herbs. Hartley and Bogado visit the Catholic Mother of Mercy hospital, the only functioning hospital for a million civilians trapped by the war. Made for 80 beds, it has 500 patients. The situation is so dire that even the medical staff are not eating as they tend the wounded and sick. Teenage mother Alawiya tells Hartley how her new-born baby was killed in her arms by a blast that also claimed the lives of her mother and sister and tore off her right arm. One doctor claims that 80 per cent of all victims are civilians: the result of deliberate targeting. An estimated 350,000 civilians have been driven from their homes by fighting and many have fled to live in the caves. The team travels with a local doctor to caves in the mountain of Tungule, where thousands have been forced to live. In one clinic hidden among the rocks, Dr Alamin examines a seven-month-old baby, who he says has severe pneumonia and will die as Khartoum has banned the delivery of vaccines for children as well as supplementary foods for starving babies, and the United Nations, which evacuated in 2011, has delivered no supplies for a year. The team stays with Mansur and his family in one cave overnight to shelter from aerial attacks, and as the sun goes down he cooks what food he has been able to buy that day with the last of his money: a few handfuls of sorghum grain that went cheap because it was contaminated by petrol. The next morning the team films at a school the cave dwellers have set up under the canopy of tall trees. As the children attend their morning assembly, a bomber circles overhead and hundreds of children run screaming in fear to take cover in the nearby caves. Their teachers tell Hartley that the schools have no pens, no books, nothing with which to learn, due to Khartoum's attacks. As he unleashed terror last year, Bashir declared: 'There will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity... Islam [will be] the official religion and Arabic the official language... we will force them back into the mountains and starve them.' As Unreported World shows, this is exactly what he has done, and unless action is taken, the horn of Africa faces another terrible man-made famine.

Apr 2012

nreported World gains unprecedented and exclusive access to the Baghdad Bomb Squad. Nine years after the invasion and with the British and the Americans gone, Iraq still faces almost daily attacks from those trying to foment political chaos and sectarian hatred. Reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and director Alex Nott spend time with a small band of brave Iraqi officers trying to prevent further murderous attacks. With modest resources and great courage in the face of terrible danger, four 12-man squads work around the clock defusing bombs or investigating crime scenes where a device has detonated. The Unreported World team joins one team as they begin a morning shift, when the bombers are at their busiest. Twenty-nine year old officer Rawad Yassin, who has already spent six years in the bomb squad, tells Guru-Murthy that his family have urged him to leave the unit but he feels a responsibility to his fellow officers. Travelling in convoy they are called out to the suburb of Karrada. They believe they are heading to an unexploded device but on arrival find the aftermath of detonated device. The target was a senior military commander in charge of the Ministry of Communications Protection Force. Several of his staff have been killed, and more than a dozen injured. As the team head off, reports come in of other bombings around Baghdad. Another unit finds an unexploded device right outside Iraq's Oil Ministry. Unreported World reveals extraordinary footage showing how a 'sticky bomb', which is fixed under the car of a Brigadier General, is made safe. In the last two years more than 30 bomb disposal experts have been killed across Iraq. Guru-Murthy speaks to someone close to one of those killed trying to defuse a vehicle bomb. Ali Hameed shows Guru-Murthy video footage of the incident which left his partner Ali Latif with terrible injuries. Hameed says since the incident he's been living with severe psychological stress. The bomb squad believes Sunni extremists known as 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' are behind most of the bombings. The violence is deepening the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Most targets are Shia, and Shia leaders including the Prime Minister accuse Sunni politicians of complicity. In turn Sunni leaders claim Shia are blaming them so Iraq can be dominated by the Shia. Guru-Murthy highlights how Sunnis feel wrongly blamed and persecuted. They want nothing to do with Al Qaeda but feel cut out of power by the Shia led government. The team speaks to one of the most powerful Sunni tribal leaders - Sheikh Ali Al Hatam. Five years ago he ordered his men to stop fighting the Americans and turn on Al Qaeda. Now he feels betrayed and believes the Shia government is using the current bombing campaign as an excuse to increase discrimination against Sunnis. He fears the result will be further terrible sectarian violence. In the week Unreported World is in Baghdad the bomb squad save many lives but across the country some 30 bombs explode and more than a hundred people are killed. When US troops withdrew in December, President Obama said they'd left Iraq stable and democratic. The Bomb Squad know that stability is still elusive. As Lieutenant Jassim Hamad Saleh says over shocking footage showing when he was injured in a bomb blast... 'Our work is a sacrifice, dealing with bombs means going to meet death. Death normally comes to people, but we go to death'.

Apr 2012

The team begin their journey on set with Saba Sahar - an actress, screenwriter and Afghanistan's first female film director. In a country where few women work at all, Saba is directing her sixth production - a TV series about the Afghan police force. The only woman on set, Saba has complete authority, even over the real policemen who are acting as her extras. As well as directing, Saba is playing the heroine, who's a female cop succeeding in a man's world. Saba's high-profile job is provoking some of the most dangerous people in the country. The drug lords and the Taliban have threatened her life. 'Each morning when I leave the house I think I'll never see my family again. I might be killed,' she tells Kleeman. Kleeman and Lang meet Salim Shaheen, Afghanistan's most prolific film director. He's directed and starred in over 100 low-budget, high-octane movies over three decades. With a large fan base, Salim has a huge influence on ordinary Afghans. He takes Kleeman on to the film set where he's in the middle of directing a fight scene. Salim fears the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan could mean the end of his career. 'There's going to be a civil war here,' he warns. 'If the Taliban come back, films will be banned. I'll have to leave the country.' Like Saba Sahar, Salim's life has been threatened. 'Every second we are under threat,' he tells Kleeman. 'Every minute our lives are in danger.' The team meets a Taliban fighter. He tells Kleeman that cinema goes against their interpretation of Sharia law and should be outlawed. He has a warning for Salim and Saba: 'They should be told that what they are doing is wrong first,' he says. 'If that doesn't stop them, we will punish them according to Sharia law.' The punishment, he says, is death. Everyone the team meets is convinced the Taliban will soon be back in power, and Afghanistan will soon return to fundamentalism. But Kabul's DVD bazaars are booming. Salim takes Kleeman into a market where one trader says he sells up to 1400 copies of a newly released film per day. There's a huge appetite for home-grown cinema. Salim and Saba have already paid a high price for making films: Saba has been rejected by her wider family, and Salim lost eight crew members in a rocket attack on one of his sets. He shows Kleeman footage of the aftermath. 'I'll continue in their name,' he says. 'I'm prepared to sacrifice myself. I'll never give up making films.' Salim and Saba have more sacrifices ahead: the Taliban want them to suffer for believing in the freedoms promised by the west.

May 2012

Wrestlers are superstars in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this vast and troubled country, wrestling is a passion, allowing fans to forget the poverty, violence and ongoing civil war for the duration of a bout. Contests are televised and reported on the sports pages and attract thousands of fans. In the capital, Kinshasa, Unreported World reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Wael Dabbous find some of the superstars of the sport practising 'black magic', and uncover allegations that many fighters are involved in gang violence and political intimidation. Like other countries where wrestling is popular, there's a tradition in Congo of fighters wearing masks and customised costumes. But alongside the theatrics common to wrestling elsewhere, Congo's version has incorporated the belief in black magic, or fetishe, which is genuinely feared by many. The film begins with an amazing scene. Rhodes and Dabbous visit a wrestling match in Kinshasa to watch Congo's champion wrestler, Nanga Steve, taking on Super Angaluma, a fetishe wrestler famed for using black magic to defeat his opponents. The street bout is held in a ring surrounded by hundreds of spectators, many of them young men. To the crowd's delight Super Angaluma uses fetishe to try and defeat Nanga Steve, sacrificing a chicken to help him unlock supernatural powers. Despite this, in a classic denouement, good triumphs over evil and Nanga Steve is victorious. In this city of eight million people - the third largest in Africa - Steve and the other star wrestlers aren't just celebrities: they're figures of power and influence. Steve tells Rhodes that some wrestlers are major forces in gangs called 'Kuluna' that are terrorising the city. While some fighters like him are celebrities, others struggle to make a living, which he says explains the attraction of the gangs. The team also meets Armand Lingomo, a veteran wrestler who's watched as his sport has become entangled in criminality and Congo's violent politics. Rhodes and Dabbous investigate allegations that the government uses gangs of wrestlers and other combat sportsmen to crush opposition protests. A local cameraman shows them footage of sportsmen, including a champion wrestler, physically assaulting opposition MPs during a crucial debate. The team also meets one of the most famous Congolese wrestlers, called Zombi. At his large house he boasts of his riches and influence. Zombi takes Rhodes to his power base in an area known as 'The Kingdom of Zombi'. Here the team find a dedicated group of young followers - would-be wrestlers - who regard him as their 'master'. Zombi reveals this group is in fact 'Kuluna' but denies they are criminals. However, it's clear that he has a huge amount of control over them as he hands them cash. Critics from the political opposition allege this money comes from the government, keen to buy the gang's loyalty. Zombi denies this. As well as champion fighters, the gang has someone who further intimidates their rivals - a fetisheur. This sorcerer tells Rhodes 'I give them magical medicines so they can demonstrate their strength, cut off their opponent's head, drain their blood and pull out their intestines.' The team find the huge popularity of wrestling has spawned violent and dangerous gangs. But the sport also provides a way for millions of people to escape the violence and poverty of everyday life.

May 2012

UNICEF estimates that there may be as many as 100,000 street children in Ukraine. Marcel Theroux and Suemay Oram go underground in Kiev to meet some and find out what their life is like. Ukraine has invested billions in infrastructure projects for the 2012 European football championships. While the fans will enjoy the facilities, most of them won't know that living around them - and beneath their feet under the country's cities - are thousands of young people left on their own to survive dangerous, subterranean lives. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, years of economic hardship have hurt Ukraine. The result has been a lost generation of teenagers who have run away from broken families, alcoholism and abuse. They suffer awful living conditions and embarrass the Ukrainian government, which in June will host the European Championships as part of its efforts to project a modern, European image with luxury shops and a thriving culture. Many of the teenagers inject drugs or sell sex, and face serious health risks including syphilis, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. In some cities, close to 20 per cent of youngsters living on the streets who were tested were HIV positive. Theroux and Oram journey underground through pitch-black basements and passageways under the streets of Kiev. Their guides are a group young people who have made their home at the end of a warren of dark corridors. Outside, the temperature is below minus 20 degrees. Underneath the city's Soviet apartment buildings, hot water pipes are helping keep the street children alive. The team finds 13 who have set up home together, surrounded by mounds of rubbish, which indicate they've been living rough for some time. They've been sniffing glue to take away the feelings of cold and hunger, and the effects are starting to become obvious. Longer-term use causes brain damage. The leader of the group is Vanya, a 29-year-old ex-prisoner. He tells Theroux he can't work because he has no identity papers. They have been stolen and he can't afford the bribes to get new ones. Alongside him is Vova, who has been stabbed but can't afford a doctor. Medical treatment is meant to be free, but hospitals routinely demand payment. Above ground, Kiev's Central Station is a focal point for the city's homeless, who sleep in the waiting rooms and beg outside. Kiev does have shelters for homeless children but many don't want to use them. Theroux meets 14-year-old Dima and his 18-year-old girlfriend Clara. They are living on a set of pipes that carry hot water to nearby apartment blocks. Clara tells Theroux she'd got pregnant from a previous partner, but social services had taken the baby. The spiral of street life is hard to escape, but some do make it out. An hour outside Kiev, Theroux and Oram meet Oksana, who was raised in a state orphanage. After she left it, she lived on the streets and began to drink heavily. She fell pregnant and her daughter was taken away. Then she got pregnant again. But somehow, Oksana tells Theroux, she found the strength to stop drinking. She kept her baby and was eventually reunited with her eldest child. But if she hadn't had help, her children might have ended up on the street themselves. As the Unreported World team leaves Ukraine, Theroux feels like he has witnessed a side of Ukraine that the football fans will never know about: a generation of children who have got lost on the journey from the country's Soviet past to its European future.

May 2012

In Cameroon there are fears that the practice of eating bushmeat - wild meat hunted in the rainforest, including endangered gorillas and chimpanzees - could trigger a new global pandemic of viruses. Unreported World investigates. Reporter Evan Williams and director James Brabazon also meet the British woman battling the trade and looking after the animals orphaned by the slaughter. Eighty percent of all meat eaten in Cameroon is bushmeat. To understand how the trade works, the team travels to the Dja Reserve in the south east of the country, where the tracks and clearings created by logging companies have opened up the once-impenetrable jungle to bushmeat poachers. Williams meets some of the wardens trying to combat the poachers. There are only 60 wardens to cover the 2000 square miles of the Dja Reserve. Until 2009 they were funded by the EU. Now they're on their own and it's dangerous work. One warden has already been killed by poachers this year and many have been injured. Williams and Brabazon walk into the forest with the wardens and meet a group of indigenous Baka people, the so-called pygmies. They tell Williams that people come four or five times a week looking for all sorts of bushmeat and hire locals to go and hunt for them. One warden tells Williams that the local hunters get around 25 to 30 Euros for a chimpanzee. But the Baka have something even more shocking to reveal. Eating gorilla meat has wiped out one of their neighbouring villages: 25 men, women and children died. There was only one person who survived, and that person didn't eat the meat. The team heads back to the capital, Yaounde, to meet Professor Dominique Baudon at the Pasteur Centre. He's on the frontline of protecting both Cameroon and the world from the threat of new viruses emerging from man's contact with apes and in particular the preparation and consumption of bushmeat. He tells Williams he believes within the next 20 years new viruses, possibly similar to HIV or Ebola, will definitely appear. And this isn't just a problem for Africa. At least 11,000 tonnes of illegal bushmeat - including ape meat - are smuggled into Britain every year, much of it from Central Africa. The team travels to Yokadouma, one of the most remote areas in Cameroon. Filming secretly, Unreported World meets a man with contacts to commercial poachers specialising in gorillas and chimps. He sets up a meeting with an ape hunter. Shooting, eating or possessing part of a great ape can lead to three years in jail and a hefty fine in Cameroon, but in exclusive footage and access, poacher 'Frankie' tells Williams that just a few days before he had killed a female gorilla and her baby. He has brought with him the severed arm of an adult gorilla, which is now a delicacy in Cameroon's big cities. The team is forced to leave by villagers angry that Frankie has revealed ape hunting to outsiders. As demand for ape meat soars, so does the number of orphans created. Unreported World visits Rachel Hogan, who came to Cameroon from Birmingham 11 years ago. She has set up Ape Action Africa. Rachel tells Williams she has seen an explosion in the numbers of orphans coming into the sanctuary in the past five years. There are currently 324 orphans at the centre in Mefou. They include 22 Western lowland gorillas - now a critically endangered species - and 107 chimpanzees. Rachel is doing the best she can but the sad truth is that the apes she looks after can almost certainly never be returned to the wild; Cameroon is just too dangerous

Jun 2012

Six months after its revolution, Libya is still riven by factionalism, militias and violence, as the armed groups who overthrew Colonel Gaddafi cling to territory and power. Tripoli's streets are ruled by the gun. The police have tried to remove roadblocks manned by militiamen and have been driven off in a hail of gunfire. Reporter Peter Oborne and director Richard Cookson talk to fighters from the powerful Zintan militia who have controlled the country's main airport since they seized it from Gaddafi forces. They've been involved in tense negotiations with the government about handing it over but the talks appear to have stalled. Across town, the team finds militiamen streaming into a government compound. The government is offering payments of £10,00 to each fighter in an effort to persuade them to return to civilian life. It has reportedly already paid out around a billion pounds in this way, but that hasn't bought stability. At another roadblock, furious militiamen say they haven't been paid yet and vow to fight on. In the coastal city of Zuwara the team finds another gun battle taking place between two rival militias, with constant gunfire and artillery overhead. One fighter says the battle has been going on for three days and claims his militia are the true representatives of the revolution and are battling Gaddafi loyalists in the militia from the neighbouring town of Regdalin. By dawn, the battle has claimed more than 20 lives, with hundreds wounded. The two sides arrange a truce and Oborne and Cookson cross the line to enter Regdalin. The man in charge of the local military council that rules the town - like most other towns in Libya there is little government authority - denies the townsfolk are Gaddafi loyalists. The conflict, he tells Oborne, is about territory, while others say battles like this are really about who controls nearby smuggling routes. The team moves on to the town of Gharyan, where civilians have formed another private army. A compound built by Gaddafi has been turned into a detention centre. More than 1000 black workers and suspected illegal immigrants are housed in the camp. There has been no functioning court system in Libya since the revolution and many of those locked in the metal cells face the prospect of being detained indefinitely. When western governments backed the revolution in 2011 they hoped to replace the barbarism of Gaddafi with democracy and the rule of law. The revolution freed millions from fear and terror but in the new Libya many of those Unreported World meets have lost everything.

Jun 2012

Honduras: The Lost Girls. Ramita Navai and Talya Tibbon investigate the disappearance of hundreds of young Honduran women who have been enticed over the Mexican border and forced into the sex trade.

Nov 2012

In the run-up to the 2012 US election, Krishnan Guru-Murthy meets the talk-radio hosts broadcasting to a country more polarised than ever before.

Nov 2012

Indonesia is in the grip of a smoking epidemic with the proportion of child smokers rising dramatically. And Unreported World reveals how young children are risking their health further by harvesting and processing tobacco bought by one of the UK's biggest cigarette companies. Aggressively targeted by global tobacco giants and with minimal controls on advertising, Indonesia is the world's fastest growing cigarette market. Ninety million people smoke; smoking-related diseases kill 200,000 Indonesians a year and the numbers are rising. In 2011, tobacco companies spent £142 million on advertising in the country.

Nov 2012

The Dominican Republic provides almost 20% of professional baseball players in the United States. In a country where many are very poor, the sport is one of the few routes out for young men. But the cost of failure at 18 years old can be devastating. In the United States, Major League teams can't sign a player until he has a high school diploma, usually at the age of 18 or 19. Dominican Republic law allows children to leave school at just 14 and sign when they're 16, so the US teams can sign them up earlier. As a consequence, the teams pay the most for players when they're 16. But these boys know they have a limited shelf life. In two years they will be worth a lot less and may have missed their chance to get signed at all.

Nov 2012

Mogadishu is one of the most dangerous cities on earth. Unreported World meets the remarkable British Somali man who has mortgaged his life in London and left his family behind to set up a chain of restaurants in the Somali capital. Cooking is his contribution to the peace process in this war-torn country.

Nov 2012

Young clubbers in Mumbai are being arrested, assaulted and accused of being prostitutes in a police crackdown on the city's nightlife. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Alex Nott investigates why a policeman dubbed 'Inspector Killjoy' is now enforcing long-forgotten laws and how being caught up in the raids can change young women's lives forever. The film looks at the fault lines where East meets West and where generations clash as India changes. The team is taken to one of the city's best-known clubs - the Blue Frog - by Nisha Harale Bedi, a former Miss Mumbai. It's a place where models and Bollywood stars come to party, but it's also one of over 200 venues the police have raided this year, under 60-year-old licensing laws that many feel are out of step with modern Mumbai.

Dec 2012

Unreported World examines the increase in sexual assaults and harassment in Egypt. The programme reveals claims that young men are being paid to carry out horrendous mob attacks on women. It is claimed that this started under the Mubarak regime and it is suspected by some to still continue. Women have been at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution but are now often fearful of taking part in the regular public demonstrations.

Dec 2012

Glamorous young Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak has swapped high-profile TV stardom for a life leading political protest against President Putin, who also happens to be a close family friend. Unreported World reveals how far Sobchak is risking her livelihood and privileged lifestyle to confront the strongman of the Kremlin, who has dealt ruthlessly with other political opponents. Sobchak is one of the most famous people in Russia, known by millions as the presenter of Russian Big Brother, and a member of the elite that made fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her father was the mayor of St Petersburg and mentor to Vladimir Putin, a family friend.

Dec 2012

Unreported World meets the Burmese villagers fighting for their ancestral lands as foreign investors flood in to a nation rich in undeveloped resources. After 50 years of military dictatorship, Burma is finally re-emerging from isolation as a pariah state. Economic development is leading to new social unrest as tensions build between big business and local people. Reporter Evan Williams and director Wael Dabbous travel to the north of Burma, close to the country's famed second city Mandalay. It's the center of a farmers' resistance movement against some of the most powerful forces in the region and the stakes couldn't be higher.