Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

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."

Afghanistan: Remote Communities Lack Schools

Classroom in a HAWCA funded school in the village of Malik Jan Khiel, Parwan province

By Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

For families living in Afghanistan’s remote areas, access to education is anything but a given.  There are currently 12,000 elementary, middle and high schools in Afghanistan.  Fifty-percent have no permanent structure, with classes being held under tents or trees.  Yet for many of the country’s smaller villages, access to a school, even a school with no permanent structure, is unavailable.

The Ministry of Education, along with foreign assistance, is taking steps to increase not only the number of schools, but the capacity of schools already built—some schools that offer 1^st through 12^th grade in Kabul have enrollments of five to six thousand students, with fewer than thirty classrooms available in some cases.  Last year fifteen hundred schools were built across the country, and the there are plans within the Ministry of Education to build at least eighteen hundred more a year for the next decade.  But in the interim, local and international organizations are attempting to fill some of the void.

Iran: News organizations call for journalist's release

Kelly Mallahan, Pulitzer Center

UPDATED: Iason was visited by the Greek ambassador in Iran's Evin Prison on Thursday.

The Nieman Foundation, The Washington Times, World Politics Review and GlobalPost,  along with the Pulitzer Center, are calling for the immediate release of Iason Athanasiadis, an Istanbul-based Greek journalist.  Iason was detained last week in Iran, where he had been covering the elections and aftermath on a grant from the Pulitzer Center. 

The Greek ambassador met with Iason at Evin Prison on Thursday, the first contact he has had with non-Iranians since his detention on June 17. Family members said the ambassador found him "doing well mentally and physically."

Iason is fluent in Farsi and Arabic and lived in Iran for three years.  Nieman curator Bob Giles says of Iason, "His dispatches from Iran are the work of a professional journalist who cares deeply about the Iranian people, for whom he has developed a deep affection during his years of reporting there.”

Hampton Stephens, the editor and publisher of World Politics Review, said Iason's work was "characterized by a rare dedication to objectivity, intellectual honesty and cultural understanding."

"His love for Iran is obvious in his coverage of that country," Stephens added.

It is unclear why Iason was detained.  According to a statement by GlobalPost, Iason "was traveling with a valid journalist’s visa and credentials when he was picked up by Iranian officials at the Tehran airport the evening of June 17. Iranian news agencies have reported that he was detained although no precise charges have been presented."

John Solomon, executive editor of The Washington Times, said, "We understand that the Greek foreign ministry and the Greek ambassador in Tehran are diligently working to secure his swift release. We hope the situation will be resolved very soon."

See our previous post about Iason's detention.

Afghanistan: Attacks on Students and Teachers

Schoolgirl victim of an acid attack, Kandahar, Afghanistan

by Shaun McCanna, for Pulitzer Center

The Ministry of Education is already seeing some frightening numbers for the current school term.  Only three months into the year, a combined 103 students and faculty members have been killed or seriously injured.  Last year a total of 203 were injured or killed over the course of the entire year.  

In addition to the 103 individual attacks, there have also been two schools gassed in the Paktian and Parwan provinces in the past few months.  In each instance an unknown gas was used, causing vomiting, eye strain and general distress for dozens of students.  Attacks on school children, particularly girls, is a recurring theme in Afghanistan, and the Ministry of Education anticipates an increase in such attacks in the run up to the August Presidential election, not just from the Taliban, but from political interests attempting to cause unrest.

The most well-known incident involving schoolgirls occurred in Kandahar last year.  A group of girls were doused with acid while walking to school.  Each suffered acid burns to the face.  While in Kandahar this week, I went to the home of one of the victims to film an interview.  An interview that ultimately never happened.

Pulitzer Center journalist detained in Iran

Jon Sawyer, Pulitzer Center

The Iranian government has confirmed the detention of Pulitzer Center grantee Iason Athanasiadis, who had been in Iran covering the elections as a free-lancer for The Washington Times, Global Post and other outlets.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has supported Iason Athanasiadis' travel over the past nine months, primarily in Turkey but also in Greece and, most recently, his trip to Iran.

Iason is a Greek citizen, a dedicated journalist, and someone who loves Iran, a country where he lived for three years while earning a master’s degree. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2007-08.

He has written on the clash of cultures in Turkey and on political unrest in Greece. In Iran it was his hope to stay on past the elections, exploring that country's relationship with the region and drawing on the many contacts he made during his years as a foreign resident in Tehran.

Multilingual, comfortable with both broadcast and print, relentlessly fair-minded, Iason is among the most versatile and sensitive journalists with whom the Pulitzer Center has worked. We join his family and friends in urging his immediate release.

Jon Sawyer, Executive Director
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

UPDATE: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism has also called for Iason's release. 

Afghanistan: Teachers, Schools and Security

Nasaji Nakhi High School, Kandahar, Afghanistan

by Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

There is an ongoing debate as to what is the most pressing challenge facing education in Afghanistan.  According to Asif Nang, the spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Education, the greatest challenge on a national level is the need for qualified teachers.  The Ministry’s statistics show only twenty-three percent of teachers in Afghanistan have graduated past class 14, which is high school plus a two-year teaching degree.  Seventy-five percent have only completed high school.  But as Nang points to a lack of professional teachers, others in the south and west point to the lack of security.

Alhaj Najibullah Ahmadi, Provincial Education Director of Kandahar, says security is the gravest concern in his region.  Sitting in his office on Tuesday he was adamant, qualified teachers need some place to teach, and with the current lack of security in Kandahar province, schools have become a prime target for the Taliban.  Last year the Provincial Education Council oversaw the building of thirteen schools in the region.  During the same time period the Taliban destroyed eighteen of the Council’s schools.  A trend repeated in other provinces.