Untold Stories

The farmers of Buxton

Guyana, May 8, 2008

One aspect of what I think is a nascent insurgency is the ruthlessness of all sides involved (for simplicity’s sake I count three; the authorities – police and military; the drug lords; and the Afro-Guyanese gangs). In the mostly Afro-Guyanese villages of Buxton/Friendship, a farming community of about 10,000 near the site of the first massacre in Lusignan, the military and the police have gone in and razed farm fields on the village’s edge, claiming that the criminal gang responsible might be hiding there. Buxton has a history of resistance, and most everyone acknowledges that the gangs have used it as a base for years. And that’s because police and military have earned resentment for predictably heavy-handed, harsh treatment. As a result, some people there are sympathetic to anyone who could stand up to authorities.

Guyana: Police under fire

Georgetown, May 7-8, 2008

I tagged along with some local reporters the other day to a press event marking the Guyana Police Force’s acquisition of ten new Honda motorcycles – a shiny new addition to the fight against crime. But, standing out in the crowd as I do, the GPF’s public information officer, Ivelaw Whittaker, stopped me abruptly, asked why I hadn’t contacted him earlier to get approval to attend, then prohibited me from standing with the other reporters. It was ultimately a futile exercise. I saw and heard everything at this benign event, but was made to stand aside like a bad school boy. In fact, I had called his office twice from Miami and sent two emails, which he claimed he never received. It reminded me of some PIOs in the U.S. I’ve dealt with over the years, and I found it strangely comforting that obstructionist bureaucrats are so similar the world over.

Guyana's past coming back to haunt it

Guyana
Georgetown, May 7, 2008

I'm on my second day in Georgetown. Remarkable city; a national capital dominated by two story, peaked-roof wooden houses, many with ornate gingerbread trimming (the influence of Dutch and British colonialists), but up on stilts. Cars, trucks, scooters and the odd horse-drawn carriage clog the streets. The shops you pass range from internet cafes and cellular phone stores to stores selling mining equipment. Children play on open fields in the city center while cows and horses graze nearby.  The clash of epochs here is disorienting.

Power Politics Trump Democracy in US-Backed Ethiopia

Editor's Note: While reporting on water scarcity in Ethiopia, journalists Alex Stonehill and Sarah Stuteville happened to meet up with Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, who has been imprisoned multiple times under the country's restrictive press laws.  While not directly related to water, it felt like the story was too important to ignore.

By Alex Stonehill and Sarah Stuteville

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—Dawn in the Merkato breaks over a tangle of streets jammed with shouting hawkers and towering pyramids of ripe produce from Ethiopia’s fertile countryside. Today it is a popular destination for sunburnt foreign tourists, expensive cameras poised to capture lively scenes from one of Africa’s largest open-air markets.

Few of them, unloading from tour buses today, know that less then three years ago these bustling streets were stained with the blood of murdered citizens who had flooded into the center of Ethiopia’s capital city to protest the contested re-election of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

“People were pissed off,” says Eskinder Nega, who was a columnist and publisher for several Ethiopian newspapers during the 2005 protests. “It was the first time we really had hope, and when the elections were stolen, people were angry. … It wasn’t planned — people just started pouring into the streets,” Nega said.  The government reaction was swift.

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News Points: Round Two Winners

For our Global Issues/Citizen Voices Contest

Bethany Whitfield, Pulitzer Center

From finding the truth about military dictatorships like Burma to creating a solution for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, the questions of our latest Global Issues/Citizen Voices contest pressed for thought and analysis on some of today’s most complex and difficult global issues. Here’s what our four winners had to say on the topics and how their past experiences and research influenced their answers.

Winner Russell Smith worked for NGOs in Lebanon in the 1990s and during that time witnessed the stark contrast between Lebanon’s lush and rich tourist destinations and the destitution of its Palestinian refugee camps. He was so moved by the stories and experiences of the refugees that after returning to Australia, he became active in international politics to try and forge change on the issue.

In his essay Smith contends there is a “win-win” situation for Lebanon and Palestinian refugees, but only with the help of the international community. He calls for a U.N. sponsored international migration program, “not a forced migration but a focused sponsored humanitarian campaign, emphasizing economic prosperity, equal opportunity, education and security.”

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Kenya and Ethiopia: The Most Dangerous Men in Kenya

By Sarah Stuteville
April 22, 2008

NAIROBI—The first thing I thought of when I saw the scorched whitewash, shattered windows and collapsing skeletons of businesses in Kisumu's downtown was my father's furniture store in Seattle, Washington. 

Poking through the remains of doctor's offices, electronics shops and grocery stores—plastic vials and discarded packaging cracking and rustling beneath my sneakers—I imagined the nights of heartbreak the owners of these business lived through in the anarchic weeks following Kenya's most recent elections.

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News Points: Children and war

Bethany Whitfield, the Pulitzer Center

“It’s hard to talk about, but at least when I talk about it, I get some relief,” said Eric Gibson, a Liberian who survived the country’s civil war during his youth by living behind rebel lines.

Gibson earned his keep during the conflict as an entertainer, performing rap songs for the rebel forces. Gibson, alongside journalist Ruthie Ackerman and Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, led a recent discussion at Georgetown University on the widespread use of child soldiers in armed combats throughout the world.

Gibson testified to the atrocities he witnessed as a young Liberian growing up in a war-torn country, experiences that include watching the brutal murder of a pregnant mother, getting shot in the leg and having to bury his best friend’s body with his bare hands.

“You can’t cry,” at such times, Gibson said, lest the rebels perceive one as sympathizing with the other side. “You have to cry on the inside.”

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Ethiopia and Kenya: Water Crisis

By Alex Stonehill. April 17, 2008

Water is the new oil. I’ve spent the last four months reporting stories on water from Ethiopia and Kenya, two countries at the forefront of the world’s coming water crisis . And while western politicians and consumers fret over the declining economy and increasing oil prices, the news from East Africa is that with a growing majority of the world living on less than a dollar a day, the liquid that fuels bodies is becoming even more contentious than the liquid that fuels cars.

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Ethiopia: Running on Hope

By Alex Stonehill. April 16, 2008

Ethiopia has been a dominant force in long distance running for decades. Despite a shortage of training infrastructure, athletes have excelled thanks to hard work, the high altitudes in their home country and the purity of the ancient sport, where whoever runs the farthest and the fastest, wins. Alex Stonehill's photo slideshow offers a taste of training in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur

Bethany Whitfield, the Pulitzer Center

Citizens and human rights activists across the nation and the world are rallying today, April 13, for Global Day for Darfur, a 24-hour campaign designed to draw attention to the violence that continues to plague the region five years after rebels took up arms. Some of the larger events of the day include an Amnesty International human rights exhibition at D.C.’s National Mall, a demonstration in the U.K at the Sudanese embassy and a rally in Vancouver sponsored by Canadian Students for Darfur.

While this conflict has attracted global attention, critics argue key players in the international community continue to perpetuate violence by failing to undertake stronger peacekeeping operations as well as a harsher stance against the Sudanese government. A strong focus of today’s Global Day for Darfur is the call for a fuller implementation of the joint U.N.-African Union Mission in Darfur, a program initiated last July.

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