MAY 2003
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Wednesday, 28th May,2003
ETHIOPIA - COFFEE CRISIS
Now to the price of coffee. Next time you fork out $3 for a cup, spare a thought for those at the beginning of the coffee production chain. Due to a drastic cut in the world price, farmers in Ethiopia will be lucky to earn $10 each from this year’s crop. David Brill travelled through the coffee regions of Ethiopia where hundreds of thousands of farmers are now struggling to survive.
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For further information on Oxfam’s work to make coffee trade fair, visit www.oxfam.org.au -
Wednesday, 28th May,2003
WIRYONO SASTROHANDOYO INTERVIEW
Ten days ago Indonesia launched a full-scale military invasion into the northern province of Aceh, just hours after talks broke down between the government and the Free Aceh movement. Aceh has now been subjected to aerial bombing and 30,000 to 40,000 Indonesian troops are on the ground. Accounts of civilian executions and other atrocities are now being widely reported. Indonesia’s chief negotiator in the failed peace talks was Wiryono Sastrohandoyo. Mark Davis spoke to him a short time ago in Jakarta about the slide into war.
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Wednesday, 28th May,2003
HUMAN SHIELDS DYING FOR PALESTINE
Two years ago, the Israeli army reoccupied the Palestinian territories in response to terror attacks on Israel. The army has been waging war on militant groups but in the process, bulldozing homes and killing many civilians. Standing in their way have been international peace activists acting as human shields to protect civilian lives and property. Two have been shot and one killed by a bulldozer. Many are now asking whether the activists are being deliberately targeted by the Israeli army. Ginny Stein went to the frontlines in the Gaza Strip and West Bank to investigate.
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Wednesday, 21st May,2003
CRIMES OF THE KREMLIN
Dateline’s Nick Lazaredes was a correspondent in Moscow throughout the 1990s charting the unravelling of the Communist state and the emergence of crime lords and new capitalist kings. Tales of the Russian mafia are well known, but tonight, Lazaredes’ investigation places Russian crime at the heart of political power. The source of many of the allegations is Boris Berezovsky, a multibillionaire and former ally of Putin now in fear of his life and living in exile in London. He’s wanted in Russia on fraud and money laundering charges and currently fighting extradition, but with little to lose he’s now prepared to tell his story.
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Wednesday, 21st May,2003
CRIMES OF THE KREMLIN
DATELINE on Wednesday, May 21 at 8.30pm features a special one-hour investigative report by Nick Lazaredes on the links between Russia’s secret services and the Kremlin to a wide range of criminal activity including mass murder, assassination and drug running.
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Lazaredes interviews Alexander Litvinenko, a former Lieutenant Colonel from a unit of the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB), the successor to the KGB. He fled Russia after going public with evidence of FSB involvement in organised crime. He sought and has gained political asylum in the United Kingdom.
Litvinenko says that in December 1997 he was ordered to kill the billionaire media magnate Boris Berezovsky. The blanket coverage given by Berezovsky’s media empire (1999-2000) virtually handed Putin the presidency but this close relationship started breaking down when Berezovsky’s television networks became increasingly critical of Putin’s dictatorial style and actions. The government confiscated Berezovsky’s share of the national television network and his private television network. When he learned that he would face criminal charges he fled Russia in 2000. Lazaredes speaks to Berezovsky in London where he is under siege by a bitter Russian government determined to extradite him. Not only is he launching his own campaign into crimes he says were committed by the Kremlin, he is also mounting an unprecedented political campaign from abroad to defeat Putin at the next election.
Litvinenko claims that his unit gathered evidence that a criminal group of FSB officers was involved in drug trafficking – “tonnes of drugs including heroin (from)Afghanistan from General Abdul Rashid Dustum. They go through Russia ..to the St Petersburg port, from there they go to Spain.” Litvinenko says that a source who corroborated his claim was killed by the FSB.
A further allegation made by Litvinenko is that he gave his report on the FSB’s criminal links to Vladimir Putin. Shortly afterwards Litvenenko was sacked and after going public in 1998 the first of several criminal charges was brought against him.
This major report screens on DATELINE this Wednesday, May 21 2003 at 7.30 pm. -
Wednesday, 14th May,2003
A DOCTOR WITHOUT BORDERS
International aid agencies aspire to the most noble ideals, but often they have become mired in controversy. In some cases their efforts have made humanitarian crises even worse. According to senior aid worker Dr Fiona Terry from Medicins Sans Frontieres, humanitarian relief is increasingly being used as a political tool, rather than helping those in need. Irene Ulman has more.
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Wednesday, 14th May,2003
INTERVIEW - RICHARD BUTLER
A few days ago, the US Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a long-standing ban on the development of small nuclear bombs - so called mini-nukes. For 10 years the US has abided by an international moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons - another international convention now likely to go up in smoke. Tonight’s guest, Richard Butler, has had a long involvement in nuclear disarmament issues. Perhaps better known as the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, most of his career was spent in helping to forge the international anti-nuclear conventions - including a spell as Australia’s Ambassador for Disarmament.
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Wednesday, 14th May,2003
BAGHDAD - NOT AN ORDINARY LIFE
Following an upsurge in violence and disorder in Iraq, US officials are calling for more troops to control a worsening security situation. Baghdad is already effectively divided into two cities. The middle class areas which were largely loyal to Saddam Hussein are now under American control, but the poorer Shi’ite suburbs have become no-go zones for US troops and administrators patrolled and controlled by Shi’ite clerics. David O’Shea explores the two sides of Baghdad emerging from the ruins.
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Wednesday, 14th May,2003
BAGHDAD - NOT AN ORDINARY LIFE
On Wednesday May 14 at 8.30 pm, DATELINE’s Mark Davis interviews Richard Butler, former chief arms inspector for the United Nations.
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The program also includes a report from Baghdad on the aftermath of the war and visits Saddam City – a no go area for American troops.
Saddam City is an enormous area to the north of Baghdad with two million residents. They are Shiite immigrants from the South with traditional links to Iran. The Shiites have renamed the city Sadr City after a Shiite cleric rumoured to have been murdered by Saddam Hussein himself.
Now Hussein’s oppressive rule has finished and the Shiites are free to practise their religion without suppression, the mood is euphoric. Iraq’s Shiites believe they finally have a chance for their downtrodden, poverty stricken people to assert their new influence in Iraq. The city is now completely under the control of Shiite clerics and their followers who oversee everything from hospitals to traffic flow to security. The Americans do not even bother to patrol the city.
DATELINE learns of the presence of six prisoners of war being held at a city mosque – three Iraqi fedayeen and three jihadis from Syria and Jordan. A leading authority in Saddam City, Sheik Saeed, says the prisoners will not be handed to the Americans but to the “relevant authorities”, meaning the religious leaders in the holy city of Najaf.
Commenting on the Shiite attitude to the American forces Saeed says: "We will not respect the American army as an occupier. We respect it as a liberator. But if the American army becomes an occupier it will face real Iraqi fighting in defence of this nation…we know America and what they will do. They will bring shameful behaviour to us and they will bring unethical behaviour because that is what symbolises America really…You’ll find that I will offer myself and I’ll offer my little children. I’ll wire them up with explosives and blow up American forces if they don’ t leave." -
Wednesday, 7th May,2003
PLASTINATION
A lot of people have been calling us about tonight’s story on German anatomist Professor Gunther Von Hagans. We advertised that we were going to show it a couple of weeks ago but a small matter of a war got in the road. Von Hagens has gained notoriety by turning human corpses into plastic models - some used to teach medical students but others manufactured for glamorous art exhibitions. Nick Lazaredes travelled to remote Kyrgyzstan to observe the process first hand, and to ask where do the bodies come from? And a warning, if you haven’t already guessed so, this story is not for the squeamish.
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Wednesday, 7th May,2003
ROBERT BAER INTERVIEW
Robert Baer spent 21 years with the CIA - most of that time in the Middle East. He left in 1997 and more recently has become one of the most forthright commentators and journalists covering Saudi Arabia. His book on the subject, ?Sleeping with the Devil - How Washington Sold its Soul for Saudi Crude? is due out shortly. Mark Davis spoke with him in New York.
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Wednesday, 7th May,2003
SAUDI BACKGROUNDER
One of this week’s big stories which barely raised a blip on the media radar was America’s announcement that it was withdrawing its troops and military bases from Saudia Arabia. But can such a seismic shift have occurred as amicably and casually as it has been reported? We talk with our guest, an author and former CIA operative in the Middle East later. America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has been one of its cornerstone alliances for 50 years and it’s had major military bases there since 1991.
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Wednesday, 7th May,2003
KIRKUK
When American and Kurdish forces liberated Kirkuk in northern Iraq recently, there was great rejoicing from some, while others watched in dismay. Over the previous 15 years Saddam Hussein had driven the Kurds out of Kirkuk, effectively giving their homes to Iraqi Arabs in an attempt to stabilise the oil rich region. Now the war is over there is bitter dispute between Iraqi Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen - who all lay claim to the strategic city and its real estate. A tangled web which Matthew Carney reports on as he follows the Kurds back into the city.
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Wednesday, 7th May,2003
REBIRTH AND REVENGE FOR IRAQ’S KURDS
On DATELINE on Wednesday, May 7 at 8.30pm Matthew Carney reports on how the joyful return of Iraqi Kurds to the city of Kirkuk is bad news for the Iraqi Arabs who live there.
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Saddam Hussein expelled an estimated 100,000 Kurds from Kirkuk - the city they view as a possible capital for a homeland – in a savage ethnic cleansing program. They fled to the North to the Kurdish controlled part of Iraq while their homes were given to Iraqi Arabs.
Today Kurds are no longer a majority in Kirkuk and the oil rich city is bitterly contested between Arabs, Kurds and Turks (who are represented by the ethnic Turkman group in Kirkuk). The Kurdish forces captured Kirkuk without much of a fight but the real conflict is only now beginning as ethnic tensions are unleashed.
That’s DATELINE, Wednesday May 7 at 8.30 pm on SBS.
