Untold Stories

From the Langtang Himalayas

For the mountain people of the Langtang region, the recession of the Himalayan glaciers is an unexplained fact of life.

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From Bouddha, Nepal

Reporting from an Tibetan exile community in Nepal on renewable energy.

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Just Back from Pakistan

Reporting summary on a trip to Islamabad to report on the status of the Indus water treaty. follow our work here

Iran: "The guest is God's friend"

Iason Athanasiadis, a journalist reporting from Iran on a grant from the Pulitzer Center, has been in Iranian custody since June 17. The Greek government has taken the lead in efforts to secure his release. The article below, written for Salon by University of Southern California professor Sandy Tolan, tells of Iason's remarkable career and why he has touched so many people, in journalism and beyond. Read earlier posts on Iason's case here and view his work with the Pulitzer Center in Iran, Turkey and Greece.

Iran: "The guest is God's friend"   
(Salon, July 2, 2009)

By Sandy Tolan

Jul. 02, 2009 |

Journalism's deepest, most honest contributions inevitably spring from on-the-ground reporting, unencumbered by policy agendas in Washington, London or other foreign capitals. That's what epitomizes the work of my friend and colleague Iason Athanasiadis, and it's why his detention by Iranian authorities, on June 17 when trying to board a flight out of Iran, is so troubling.

Iason, who has written for the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and publications across Europe and the Middle East, comes from that breed of journalist in pursuit of something beyond just "the story." To work in Iran, he learned Farsi; to understand its people, he lived with them for three years. His work, as a writer and photojournalist, reflects deep empathy with the Iranian people, an understanding of their historical legacy, and an analysis of the changes swirling around them. Those values lend an independence and credibility to Iason's work that allow him, on the one hand, to produce the revealing photo essay "Children of the Revolution," which captures the hopes of a new generation of Iranians; and on the other, to invoke, in his writing on the nation's history, "Britain's imperialist past and expert meddling in Iran's internal affairs," which "has left most ordinary Iranians nursing a distrust that endures."

Read Sandy Tolan's article in Salon.

Laying Sewers Before the Monsoon

The streets of Boudha have turned into a muddy puddle as monsoon and sewer water mix while frantic community members work to lay down pipes before the waters rise over their feet.

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

Guinea Bissau: Crack and prostitution, cocaine’s other face

Marco Vernaschi ©, for the Pulitzer Center

(Editor's note: This is the final dispatch in a series of eight, recounting events surrounding the double assassinations of Guinea Bissau's president and army chief of staff last March and the country's emergence as a 'narco state.')

I drive through Reno, Bissau’s poorest slum, heading to Justino’s house. He’s 16 and a crack addict. Justino started to smoke quisa, as they call crack in Bissau, one year ago with his sister, Sadia. Now they both spend the whole day smoking the drug. Since they started, their old lives vanished. Justino lost his job and Sadia began to sell her own body. It’s 10 a.m. when I park my car in front of their house. Sadia waits by the door, holding her cachimbo, the crack pipe that has become her best friend. All around the house it’s garbage, rotten water and pigs.

This sounds like any other crack story, but there’s a difference: We are in Guinea Bissau, a place where crack was totally unknown until traffickers decided three years ago to target this country.

Sadia’s eyes are lost into the emptiness that surrounds her life. She waits for her brother to bring the drug. He comes with a friend and they immediately start smoking. I sit on the house floor with them. Sadia stretches out on a mattress while Justino and his friend feed the pipe; they start the ritual, which lasts at least 40 minutes.

They completely ignore me. They ignore everything but the cachimbo. Their entire lives revolve around the drug.

There are no gay pride parades in Jamaica

Part of an upcoming project that explores the impact of homophobia and stigma on the spread of HIV in Jamaica.

Lisa Biagiotti is working on signature stories for Worldfocus on HIV/AIDS and homophobia in Jamaica. She reported with Producer Micah Fink and Director of Photography Gabrielle Weiss, both from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their reports will air on Worldfocus later this summer. Lisa gave the below interview to Thirteen.org.

Q: Gay pride is celebrated across the U.S. every June. Could there be similar celebrations of gay pride in Jamaica?

Lisa Biagiotti: No, there could not be an openly gay pride parade on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, as in New York or San Francisco. In Jamaica, anti-sodomy laws criminalize sex between men, fundamentalist interpretations of the bible and pride in reproduction contribute to the general disdain and non-acceptance of the gay lifestyle.

The idea of a “glass closet” best describes the public’s expectations of homosexuals, meaning, “We know you’re gay, and we can see you, but stay in that glass closet.” In fairness, Jamaica tends not to be a heavily PDA (public display of affection) culture. You don’t see men and women petting each other or even holding hands in public, with the exception of the dancehalls.

One thing that was interesting was the way homophobia finds its way into the language, in the choosing (or avoiding) of certain “gay” words. When little boys call each other “sissy” names, they say “you’re a battyman.” “Batty” means buttocks and is a derogatory name for a gay man. Saying the number “two” — referring to the anus — is also avoided. We heard a story of a father instructing his two-year-old son to say he’s going to be three. You’d say “come forward” instead of “come back.” If you’re ordering fish to eat, you’d say, “Give me a swimmer or a sea creature.” “Fish” is another term for a gay man.

Continue reading on WorldFocus>>> 

Visit the Pulitzer Center’s multimedia website Live, Hope, Love, which explores living with HIV in Jamaica.

Photo: Lisa Biagiotti (right) walks with Ida Northover (left) through an inner city on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.

Afghanistan: Kabul's Juvenile Detention Center

A sixteen-year-old ward of Kabul's Juvenile Detention Center.  She is serving eight years for an unspecified crime.

by Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

I ask for a volunteer.  Two girls raise their hand.  The center’s director points to one, and she walks to the front of the class.  She is instructed to cover her face with her scarf; she is a minor so I am prohibited from filming her face or asking her name.  My translator asks her age.  Sixteen.  How long have you been here?  Eleven months.  How long is your sentence?  I was sentenced to fifteen years, but it was reduced to eight.  Of what crime were you convicted?  Before she can answer the director interjects.  That question is not permitted.  I move on and ask about her family.

In addition to the sixteen-year old volunteer, there are thirty-one other girls serving time at Kabul’s Juvenile Detention Center.  An adjacent building houses one hundred and twenty-five boys.  The most common crime according to the director is theft, but abandonment (running away), adultery and murder are also represented, though these crimes are not always as they seem, especially as they relate to the young girls.  Because leaving home to avoid a forced marriage can lead to a conviction for abandonment, being raped can lead to a charge of adultery, and many women and young girls are forced by their families to serve the murder sentences of male relatives. 

The Bissau-Conakry Plan

Marco Vernaschi ©, for the Pulitzer Center

(Editor's note: This is the seventh of eight dispatches, recounting events surrounding the double assassinations of Guinea Bissau's president and army chief of staff last March and the country's emergence as a 'narco state.')

Several years ago, two long-friends met in Guinea Conakry to talk about some business opportunities. They were Lasana Conte and Joao Vieira, the presidents of Guinea Conakry and Guinea Bissau. It was 2006 and cocaine trafficking in West Africa was at a development stage.

President Lasana Conte proposed that his counterpart Nino Vieira come on board, and then easily convinced him to allow Latin American traffickers to use Guinea Bissau as point of transit for their business. The profits would be huge, the risks minimal.

In late December 2008, Conte died, after almost forty years of dictatorship. A few hours after his death, a bunch of soldiers seized power in a coup d’etat. According to this new, untried military junta that has ruled Conakry since the coup, the overall goal is to clean up the country from corruption and extirpate cocaine trafficking — and to do so before the next scheduled elections, in 2010.

Reporters' Center: YouTube's News U

Jon Sawyer, Pulitzer Center

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is pleased to join in the launch today of Reporters' Center, a new venture of the News and Politics channel on YouTube aimed at bridging the gap between established journalists at traditional news outlets and the aspiring journalists who are part of the global YouTube community. Plenty of great video pointers, from journalists like Bob Woodward, Katie Couric, Nick Kristof and Scott Simon.

We welcome this opportunity to talk about our mission at the Pulitzer Center, a non-profit created with the goal of bringing under-reported stories on vital global issues to the broadest possible public. The first Pulitzer video on Reporters' Center is "how to surface, pitch, and distribute an untold story."

The second, featuring associate director Nathalie Applewhite, addresses how to to use video "to bring your story to life."

Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, called Reporters' Center something new.

"For the first time on YouTube, veteran journalists are making themselves openly available to aspiring reporters around the world who want to report on the news and events happening around them," he said. "As current events demonstrate on a daily basis, citizen-reporting on YouTube is a critical part of today's media landscape - and the YouTube Reporters' Center will help foster an even more productive relationship between professionals and these aspiring reporters."