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Egypt:
Rubbish People
USA:
The Devils Highway
Nicaragua:
Church Blood and State
Russia:
Railway of Bones
Russia:
The Drowning Country
Sudan:
Meet the Janjaweed
Gaza:
Reign of the Rockets
Benin
Voodo Children
Brazil:
The Amazon’s Golden Curse/a>
Kenya
Nation on a Knife Edge
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Egypt’s Rubbish People
Often filming secretly, Reporter Evan Williams and producer James Brabazon begin a new series in the slums of Cairo. Although Egypt purports to be a secular state, Coptic Christians are marginalised and discriminated against. Some 100,000 Christians live in the Zebeline slum, collecting and recycling Cairo's rubbish by hand. The stench is overpowering. Rats flourish and pigs are reared on the detritus. The Egyptian Government is embarrassed that anyone should be seen to live like this, and yet - so widespread is anti-Christian discrimination - that even affluent Christians choose to live in the ghetto
Almost all of Cairo's Christian community live in ghettos. Collectively known as the Zabaleen (rubbish collectors), these people eek out a living in rubbish, fending off rats and foraging for food, while trying to keep sanitation levels at a habitable high.
The Egyptian government doesn't 'recognise' Christianity as a religion. Therefore these people cannot obtain the ID cards necessary for employment. They are also forced, quite literally, underground to worship, in beautifully excavated cave-churches, where they practice an extreme sort of Evangelicism.
These are activities which the government isn't keen on allowing Williams to report, and he is quickly presented with a police escort. It's only when he slips away from them that the perturbing truths start to trickle out. Death threats, illegal newspapers, torture: it's no surprise that these people hope that Unreported World will publicise their plight. He tracks down the parents of a teenage girl who was jumped by a gang of Muslims while walking home from church. She was forced into an arranged Muslim marriage and hasn't been seen since; nor have hundreds more Christians arrested on trumped up charges of 'prostitution' and 'illegal activities'.
'However much television is criticised for dumbing down, Channel 4 still has Unreported World - …long may [it]last’.
The Times
‘Extraordinary’
The Sunday Times
'Disquieting .. reveals increasing intolerance and Islamisation within Egypt's security services.'
The Guardian
‘Death threats, illegal newspapers, torture: it's no surprise that these people hope that Unreported World will publicise their plight. A tourist board's nightmare with a twist that even its reporter didn't anticipate’.
The Observer
'Excellent - a welcome return for the foreign affairs series'
The Telegraph
USA: The Devil’s Highway
Squatting in the shade of thorn bushes and squinting against the midday sun, a young Guatemalan woman fights back tears as she explains that she has left her mother and two-year-old son to cross the north Mexican desert and enter America illegally – traveling ‘The Devil’s Highway’. Another girl, still in her teens, says she left home without telling her parents where she was going. But all the economic migrants interviewed are unshakeable in their belief that beyond the arid plains of north Mexico, a better life awaits them.
The Devil’s Highway shows the human cost of illegal immigration into America, a largely forgotten aspect of one of the key debating points in the current presidential campaign.
Those who make it across the desert can look forward to long hours in menial jobs and a furtive life without rights or papers, trying to evade detection. Those who don't either die from heat or exposure - there have been 4,000 recorded deaths in the desert - or are picked up and repatriated by American border guards. Many head straight out into the wilderness for another attempt.
Reporter Aidan Hartley and Producer Julie Noon don’t just focus on the migrants themselves; Hartley also speaks to those on the other side of the border - to the hardline American anti-immigration groups who patrol the border in army fatigues trying to prevent people crossing illegally, to those who travel the desert leaving water for the migrants, and to those who try to identify the anonymous corpses found in the desert.
Hartley concludes tighter security along the border - a wall, armed patrols and helicopters - has done nothing to stem the numbers; instead, it has driven would-be migrants into the hands of people smugglers and drug gangs, forcing them to find ever-more circuitous and dangerous routes through the desert. "The wall," says Hartley, "has become a tragic symbol of the division between rich and poor worlds."
'Impressive’.
The Sunday Times
‘Powerful…thoughtful documentary’
The Observer
'Disturbing'
The Daily Mail
Church Blood and State
Back in the 1980s, Nicaragua was a fashionable leftwing political cause, with organizations across the world supporting the National Sandinista Liberation Front led by Daniel Ortega and condemning the US government for financing the rebel Contras.
Voted out in 1990, Ortega made a comeback in November 2006 and took office in January 2007, but those decades have made a difference. These days he plays down his Marxism and crucially, has changed his views on religion. Once a defender of Nicaragua's limited abortion rights and a critic of the Catholic Church, he has re-embraced Catholicism and since autumn 2006, his government has banned all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest or life-threatening conditions.
Reporter Kate Seelye and producer Paul Kittel investigate what this means in practice. At a hospital unit for women with pregnancy complications, she meets an expectant woman with a severe heart condition. If she continues her heart medication, she may miscarry or the baby may be deformed. If she stops it, she may die. Her doctor confirms that her life is in the balance but that abortion is not an option; he cannot break the law.
One doctor who says she does not believe in abortion admits to nevertheless carrying out illegal but safe terminations, explaining simply: 'I do believe in saving women's lives'.
There’s widespread public support, and when Seelye talks to a poverty-stricken pregnant rape victim she says she does not think she should be allowed to have an abortion.
'..measured but hard-hitting...’.
The Observer
‘Excellent’
The Sunday Times
Railway of Bones
As President Vladimir Putin prepares to hand Russia's presidency to his chosen successor, Unreported World travels deep into the country's Arctic North to examine his legacy. Reporter Sam Kiley and producer Nick Sturdee discover a nation where political dissent is stifled, corruption is rife, and where little of Russia's huge wealth reaches a population racked by poverty, alcoholism and suicide.
Kiley begins his journey in Syktyvkar, capital of the Komi Republic and 1,000 miles north of Moscow. It's election day for the Russian Parliament and the team has been tipped off that political parties are handing out money to buy votes. Kiley meets student activists who claim they have been offered 400 roubles (£10) to vote for President Putin's United Russia party. In dramatic scenes which support claims that polls in some electoral areas were rigged, the programme films a student negotiating her payment from her United Russia contact and others queuing to sell their votes as well.
Kiley also visits Usinsk, the region's oil capital. Russia now earns huge profits from oil exports, but little seems to be reaching the people here. Many of the workers who built the town are housed in barracks. One of them tells Kiley that it would take nine years, without eating or paying any bills, to save enough money to buy a one-room apartment in the town they built.
As Kiley travels further north he finds once wealthy logging towns, such as Ust Tsilma, in the grip of an alcoholism pandemic. Kiley meets Igor, a youth worker in the town of Izhma. He says he knows ten children and 20 adults who have killed themselves in the town, which he says has long been abandoned to its fate.
At the end of the railway is the city of Vorkuta (pictured) which was originally a Gulag labour camp. Today its residents are free but, apparently, only if they keep their mouths shut. Liudmila Zhorovlia, a community activist who campaigned against local authorities over price rises in rents and services, did not. Her husband Ivan shows Kiley where his wife and 19-year-old son Konstantin were slaughtered in their own home, minutes after he left for work. Their killers took nothing he says, but he claims, they did erase files detailing his wife's campaign from her computer. He says the investigation has been closed for lack of evidence.
Back in Syktyvkar, Kiley interviews Yuri Bolobonov, United Russia's deputy leader for the Komi Republic. He is dismissive of the complaints of a growing one-party state in Russia and the rigging of elections, which he blames on rival parties trying to make United Russia look bad. He says Russia is a huge country and it needs a big powerful party.
As Kiley leaves, he concludes that it's clear a one-party Russia might be good for business and politicians, but it seems that very few ordinary citizens that he's met think it's good for Russians themselves.
‘Impressive’
The Sunday Times
‘Powerful…thoughtful documentary’
The Observer
‘Disturbing’
The Daily Mail
Bangladesh: The Drowning Country
Bangladesh is a drowning land. The last major cyclone killed 3,000 and left millions living in tents, with barely any food or drinking water. With the land literally disappearing beneath the feet of the ever increasing population, it’s a problem that shows no sign of easing. Correspondent Ramita Navai and producer Andy Wells discover an extraordinary and devastated landscape that’s on the front line of climate change, with water levels rising inexorably and floods that once occurred every 20 years now happening every five.
Kiley begins his journey in Syktyvkar, capital of the Komi Republic and 1,000 miles north of Moscow. It's election day for the Russian Parliament and the team has been tipped off that political parties are handing out money to buy votes. Kiley meets student activists who claim they have been offered 400 roubles (£10) to vote for President Putin's United Russia party. In dramatic scenes which support claims that polls in some electoral areas were rigged, the programme films a student negotiating her payment from her United Russia contact and others queuing to sell their votes as well.
Entire villages now lie permanently underwater. Schoolchildren who once walked to school now travel by boat to schools which will themselves soon be underwater. Land is so scarce that people fight murderously over 'chars' - sandbank islands often only a few inches above sea level that can disappear again at any time. As their land disappears the only escape for most people is to flee to a life of grinding poverty and disease in the fast growing slums in the capital.
‘This excellent series continues with an impassioned report from Bangladesh by young British reporter Ramita Navai...beautifully filmed by director Andy Wells…a documentary where the pictures tell the story’
The Observer
Sudan: Meet the Janjaweed
After a hazardous journey reporter Nima Elbagir and producer Andrew Carter gain unprecedented access to the Janjaweed, the Arab militia blamed for the atrocities in Darfur. After finding a pilot willing to land his plane on a makeshift airstrip in southern Darfur, the team travelled for three days along back routes and donkey-cart tracks to reach Commander Muhammad Hamdan and his garrison of heavily armed militia. It's the first time he and his fighters have sat down with foreigners. Contrary to denials by the Sudanese Government, Hamdan tells her that his men were a regiment of the Sudanese Army, receiving orders from President Omar al-Bashir. His men were armed with weapons - many of them Chinese made - by the Sudanese government up until October 2007 in what appears to be a clear violation of the UN arms embargo.
'Rivetting'
The Sunday Times
‘A scoop for this valuable strand’
The Times
Gaza: Reign of the Rockets
As terrorists strike deep in the heart of Israel and schoolchildren are buried in Gaza, a new and devastating chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict looks set to unfold. Israel and Hamas are on collision course, each new incursion or terror attack propelling them towards outright war.
Reporter Sam Kiley and director Edward Watts travel across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to discover whether Hamas is gaining in strength despite Israeli assaults, a siege on Gaza, international isolation, and virtual civil war. Are the Islamists' succeeding in their aim to be a credible government and lead the Palestinian national cause?
Unreported World reveals how in Gaza Hamas has harnessed Palestinian defiance at the siege, and used brutal oppression to crush its internal opponents, while continuing to rain rockets down on Israeli civilians. They discover young men and women are being been shot for being members of the rival Fatah political faction. Many do not dare seek treatment in the main Hamas-controlled hospitals
The team reveals the human tragedies caused by Israel's response. Civilians who suffer horrific injuries on the edge of supposedly targeted airstrikes. Electricity engineers who ration the electricity and switch transformers by hand, risking death by electrocution or lynching by angry citizens. Homes flooded with sewage that bubbles up through their toilets.
On the other side of the line in Israel, the team visits Sderot, which has been hit with more than 8,000 rockets in three years. Its population lives in a state of grinding fear.
On the West Bank the rival Palestinian faction Fatah rules through the US and EU backed Palestinian Authority. The team discover Hamas legislators, militants, students and preachers have been rounded up in their hundreds. They film as the death of a local Hamas imam in Palestinian police custody ignites widespread demonstrations in which Fatah is accused of doing the West’s dirty work. The marks they see on the imam confirm that he has been extensively tortured.
Kiley concludes that, far from collapsing in the face of the political, economic and military pressure Hamas survives - and may even be gaining in strength. As the team leave, amid rising levels of violence, the voices of moderation and the advocates of peace are increasingly drowned out in the growing clamour for war.
'Cutting edge and frankly brave reporting from one of the bloodiest and most intractable conflicts’.
Daily Telegraph
Benin: Voodo Children
The tiny, impoverished West African state of Benin is the home of Voodoo - the ancient animist belief that was spread by slaves to Haiti and New Orleans. It is the only country in the world that recognises Voodoo as a state religion, but reporter Evan Williams and producer James Brabazon reveal that its influence is less than benign. Priests select two-year-old children to be initiated into secret religious rites and expensive initiation ceremonies; many are forced into "Voodoo convents", and their parents have to pay if they are ever to see their children again. In some instances, the cost of Voodoo ceremonies means that parents have to sell their children into bonded labour. "What do you want me to do?" asks a priest. "Stop Voodoo? That's impossible."
'Even by the standards of this reliably intriguing series, tremendous'.
The Guardian
'First rate overseas TV journalism’'.
The Telegraph
'intensely watchable… incredibly insightful’.
The Observer
Brazil: The Amazon’s Golden Curse
Reporter Jenny Kleeman and producer Paul Kittel travel to the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to reveal just how some of the Earth's most isolated people are being affected by the banking crisis, which has caused the price of gold to rise to record levels. There are approximately 30,000 self-employed miners in Brazil, the vast majority of whom are working illegally. They have invaded the territory of the indigenous Yanomami tribesmen, bringing with them viral infections and whiskey. They transform swaths of rainforest into giant craters filled with stagnant water, where mosquitoes breed and spread malaria. Although the mining is illegal, the Brazilian Air Force and the federal police blame each other for the inadequacy of their response. Meanwhile, the Yanomami - the custodians of the forest - are being wiped out.
‘A well-argued plea for an ancient culture's survival, rich in memorable images’
The Sunday Times
Kenya: Nation on a Knife Edge
AThe recent violence in Kenya happened in a country long held up as Africa's success story, a stable democracy among dictatorships, civil war and famine. It is with an awareness of this loss that reporter Aidan Hartley, who lives in Kenya and was raised there, attempts to uncover the root causes of the current troubles and imagine the future in a country where unemployment has doubled since the end of British rule and the population continues to grow.
Hartley and producer George Waldrum begin their film with interviews at newly destroyed villages - we see blood that is still drying and the skull of a small child still smouldering in the embers. This is then followed up at overcrowded schools - 120 to a class - and hospitals - overworked doctors, burns victims sharing beds. Doctors at a charity-run family-planning clinic tell Hartley that economic and population growth are simply cancelling each other out. At least twice as many such facilities are needed, they say, but resources are stretched, and right-wing western donors don't look kindly on organisations suspected of providing abortions.
When Hartley speaks to embryonic guerrilla forces ('I never thought I'd see this in Kenya,' he says) it becomes quite clear that the political disputes which started this violence are deeply based in issues of land, and that there simply isn't enough of it. Tribes are profoundly aggrieved at the lack of land and are prepared to fight to the death for it. Hartley introduces us to a rural family - 22 children, 40 grandchildren and growing - sharing 27 acres from which to source their food. There is no land to pass on to the next generation. 'We're in trouble,' says an elder.
‘A tragic picture of a proud and beautiful country’
The Observer
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