MAY 2006
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Wednesday, 31st May,2006
THE COST OF DEVELOPMENT
In recent years, most of what Dateline has been hearing from massively populated India is about the country's phenomenal economic growth, so much so that currently it rivals China as the engine for the world's resources boom. John Howard didn't lead a team of Australian business bosses there earlier this year because he wanted to see the Taj Mahal. But this push for industrialisation in India is coming at a cost. To make way for factories, mines and industrial estates, right across the Indian sub-continent subsistence farmers are being pushed off their land. In the poverty-stricken state of Orissa, for instance - when this occurred earlier this year - the consequences were both dire and deadly. For the second time tonight, a warning - Aaron Lewis' report contains images of corpses that may offend some viewers.
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Wednesday, 31st May,2006
FOUR DAYS IN DILI
It is almost a week now after the arrival there of Australian peace-keepers but peace, you'd have to say, still seems a way off. What, earlier this year, started out as basically an industrial dispute between disgruntled soldiers and the East Timorese Government, in April escalated when the armed forces split along both ethnic and political lines. On one side, rebel soldiers from the west of the country called for the resignation of Prime Minister Dr Mari Alkatiri, while on the other, soldiers from the east remained loyal to the government. Then, last Wednesday the police force fractured and pretty soon rival mobs were slogging it out in the streets of Dili. On the scene when the first shots were fired last week was Dateline's David O'Shea. In fact, for a while there, it seemed some of the shots were actually aimed at David. What follows tonight is what David describes as "four dark, desperate and drama-filled days in Dili." A warning though - his report does contain graphic images of wounded, dying and dead Timorese that some of you could find confronting.
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Wednesday, 24th May,2006
CUBA: A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH
For almost half a century now Cuba, the unapologetically communist nation led by Fidel Castro, has endured crippling economic and trade sanctions imposed by its next-door neighbour, the United States. But not only has this tiny Caribbean country survived, it's achieved close to the unthinkable. Over the years of its isolation, Cuba has made major medical breakthroughs and now has a health system that's the envy of most of its neighbours, including the mighty US. Here's Ginny Stein.
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Wednesday, 24th May,2006
HAIFA ZANGANA INTERVIEW
Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi, she is also a writer and an activist for women's rights in her savagely battered homeland. Before the 2003 invasion, or liberation, depending on your point of view, she was an opponent of Saddam Hussein and his regime; indeed, she was imprisoned and tortured by the dictator. Haifa Zangana's currently in Australia for the Sydney Writers' Festival. Her most up-to-date contribution to the global debate on Iraq is a piece in "Not One More Death," a collection of essays on Iraq from a string of prominent writers including the likes of Harold Pinter and John La Carre. Earlier today, George Negus caught up with her at her Sydney hotel.
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Wednesday, 24th May,2006
ENDLESS JIHAD
Over the past week more people have died in Afghanistan than at any time since the notorious Taliban government fell back in 2001. Today alone, 60 suspected Taliban and five members of the security forces were killed in a major clash in the south of the country. Tonight, fresh from the Afghan capital, Kabul, insurgent video footage that shows both the Taliban and al-Qa'ida have been recruiting for another battle, one that could well be against Australian troops. Here's John Martinkus
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Wednesday, 24th May,2006
DAVID O'SHEA INTERVIEW
Earlier this month East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, told us here on Dateline that, after earlier clashes with rebel soldiers, the government had "woken up" and was "acting swiftly" to curb any further incidents. Well, it looks like they didn't act swiftly enough. Today, more gun battles broke out across Dili with at least two killed and seven injured. Terrified East Timorese are fleeing the fighting, foreigners are being evacuated. And now, foreign peacekeepers, including from this country and New Zealand, are on the way. Yesterday, Dateline reporter David O'Shea was in the firing line when bullets and grenades started flying between rival Timorese soldiers in the hills outside Dili. And this morning it was the front page, not just front line for our man on the spot. Earlier this evening George Negus asked David to tell Dateline what was actually going on in the fledgling nation.
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Wednesday, 17th May,2006
FOOD NOT BOMBS
These days, it seems hardly a month goes by without the American Civil Liberties Union accusing the Bush Administration of illegally spying on its own citizens. One of the latest groups to come under FBI surveillance is a real doozy. Food Not Bombs protests against war by feeding the homeless and the hungry, and while the FBI may have managed to silence some anti-war campaigners, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs just won't shut up, even when he's accused of being part of a "domestic terror group". Dateline's Elizabeth Tadic caught up with him, almost predictably in poverty-stricken Nigeria.
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Wednesday, 17th May,2006
WINSTON PETERS INTERVIEW
Earlier today George Negus recorded from Brisbane, an interview with New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters. The interview was recorded before a shock, late afternoon announcement by Solomons Prime Minister, Sogavare, that he’d postponed indefinitely appointing the two goaled Solomons MP’s to his ministry. Clearly the Solomon's leader has been under enormous pressure, both from within and outside the Pacific Island nation over those controversial appointments. Among other things, Dateline’s interview with the New Zealand Foreign Minister, a controversial politician in his own right, puts the issue in perspective.
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Wednesday, 17th May,2006
DARK DAYS IN THE HAPI ISLES
Last month's violence and mayhem in the Solomon Islands may have subsided, but the future there still looks decidedly dicey. So much so, the Australian and New Zealand foreign ministers are meeting in Honiara later this week for some hard talking with Manasseh Sogavare's Government. Not a big fan, Prime Minister Sogavare has called for a review of RAMSI, the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomons, and some of his initial ministerial appointments did not exactly endeared him to his near neighbours either, although a few hours ago Sogavare appeared to back away from appointing two jailed MPs to his cabinet, here's SBS reporter Garry McNab.
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Wednesday, 17th May,2006
THE VERY THIN BLUE LINE
Through many years on the road around the globe, not surprisingly George Negus has experienced the odd hairy moment, but compared to plenty of other career choices, life as a foreign correspondent can actually be pretty cushy. For example, George would not be putting up a hand to go down any mine shaft, gold or otherwise, even before Beaconsfield. And if George had to nominate a line of work that he would definitely avoid at all costs, it would be the one that reporter Thom Cookes explores in Dateline’s first story tonight.
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Wednesday, 10th May,2006
JAMES NAUGHTIE INTERVIEW
One of Galloway's staunchest enemies, Tony Blair, who's in big trouble. In fact, the British New Labour Prime Minister, coalition-of-the-willing ally of George Bush and John Howard, has been under almost constant attack, with calls becoming more raucous by the day from the media, the British public and from within his own party for him to fall on his political sword. To bring us up to date on the Blair crisis, George Negus spoke earlier this evening to British broadcaster and political journalist James Naughtie in London.
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Wednesday, 10th May,2006
GEORGE GALLOWAY: WANTED, FOR ANTI-WAR CRIMES
Now to a bloke who would have to be one of the most colourful Western politicians you are ever likely to meet. 'Gorgeous George', they call him, but more seriously dubbed 'the MP for Baghdad Central', George Galloway prides himself on being simultaneously a thorn in Tony Blair's side and a fly in George Bush's ointment. Loved and loathed in equal measure, this irascible backbench British MP is, to mix yet another metaphor, the cat among the coalition of the willing's proverbial pigeons. Bronwyn Adcock recently spent a couple of memorable weeks with the cigar-chomping Galloway as he glad-handed his way from London's East End to the Middle East, but there is a serious twist to the Galloway tail, he just may have been set up over allegations that he benefited from Iraq’s Oil-for-Food Scheme.
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Wednesday, 10th May,2006
REVD SOFYAN YOMAN & PETER KING INTERVIEW
In Australia, as we speak, is the Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman, the head of the Baptist Church in Indonesia's Papua province. The Reverend was in the province last week and is visiting here to speak about what he describes as the "climate of fear and intimidation in West Papua" right now. Also in the studio is the Convenor of Sydney University's West Papua Project, Professor Peter King.
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Wednesday, 10th May,2006
DATELINE NEXT WEEK: WEST PAPUA
Three weeks ago, largely unreported, 22 student activists fled West Papua by boat to seek refuge in this country. Their boat was pursued by Indonesian police somewhere in waters just to the north of the border between West Papua and Papua New Guinea. It sank and at least one student drowned. What followed was not just a tragedy, it may be a nasty crime. Eyewitnesses claim that at least one student on that boat was murdered by Indonesian police who should have saved him from drowning, Mark Davis takes up the story of the recent sinking off the PNG coast.
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Wednesday, 3rd May,2006
DR JOSE RAMOS-HORTA INTERVIEW
In recent days, the violent goings-on in Dili, our northern neighbour's capital, have seen a serious blast from its horrible pre-independence past - burning vehicles, vandalised buildings, street violence and fatal shootings. On the face of it, the rioting, which led to at least five deaths, sprang from resentment within the fledgling nation's 1,800-strong army over recruitment discrimination, including many soldiers who fought as guerrillas in the 24-year resistance to Indonesian rule, until Australian-aided independence finally came to the former Portuguese colony in 1999.
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But there are any number of observers who believe there's much more to the current unrest than meets the eye. Is it, they ask, an indication of much deeper socio-economic problems, even the basic stability of the world's newest nation and Asia's poorest Jose Ramos-Horta - the East Timorese Foreign Minister and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize Winner - has been here in Australia this week and George Negus spoke with him at the East Timorese Consulate in Sydney. -
Wednesday, 3rd May,2006
INDIA'S MINI MARATHON MAN
Yesterday, Budhia Singh, a youngster from the slums of one of India's poorest cities, entered his country's record books after he completed a gruelling marathon run of 65km - 40 miles in the old distance. Budhia ran for seven hours and his coach said he would've kept running if he hadn't been interrupted by supporters and television crews. He's clearly a rare natural talent, but he'll have to wait another eight years before he can compete in real marathon races. Why? Because - believe it or not - Budhia's only four years old. In fact, he's just enrolled in kindergarten. What makes his story all the more remarkable is that, as an infant, he was sold by his impoverished mother, then bought by the man who became his coach. But as Aaron Lewis reports, understandably, some Indian officials are asking whether young Budhia is being nurtured - or abused?
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Wednesday, 3rd May,2006
SENATOR AMANDA VANSTONE INTERVIEW
The local Internet lobby group GetUp launched a new television ad condemning the Federal Government's plans to alter Australia's immigration laws so that all unauthorised boat arrivals - aka asylum seekers - will be transferred to offshore detention centres where their claims for refugee status will be assessed. The main spark for the GetUp protest is that this harsh new law includes the detention of children. The dramatic change was prompted of course by last month's granting of temporary protection visas to 42 West Papuans - a decision that's sent the Indonesian Government into political paroxysms. Dateline takes a look at the GetUp ad and then an interview George Negus recorded late this afternoon with the Minister for Immigration, Senator Amanda Vanstone.
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Wednesday, 3rd May,2006
IRAQ - ON THE ROAD
This time last week Dateline cameraman/producer David Brill was on a lone assignment in Iraq, specifically Baghdad and Australia's base in the southern province of al-Muthanna. As a member of the so-called coalition of the willing, Australia's principal role is a training one, plus providing protection for non-combatant Japanese engineers in the south. But if and when the Japanese leave, of course, all that will change. David was with the Australians when the death of Private Jake Kovco was announced.
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