The first time I visited Sri Lanka was in 2001. I was working as a correspondent for a travel show in Portugal, my home country, and had three days to tour around this small Island nation and put together a 5-minute piece about the wonderful sights and scenery.
Before traveling there, I was handed a folder with all the hotels I’d be staying at and monuments I’d be visiting. But what really caught my attention was a little footnote with an intriguing name – the Tamil Tigers. Having majored in International Relations in Lisbon, I had heard about the group and knew they’d been waging a war against the Sri Lankan government since the early 80’s to establish an independent state for the country’s Tamil minority. But that was pretty much it. So instead of leafing through travel brochures and pictures of resort pools and marble lobbies, I spent much of my research learning more about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better know as the Tamil Tigers. And what I found out was fascinating.
Here are some facts about the group that if you didn’t know are bound to leave you amazed too:
1. They were the only non-state organization with its own army, air force and navy.
2. They were early pioneers in the use of suicide bombings as a tactic, creating a commando unit called “the Black Tigers” just for this purpose.
3. They invented the suicide vest, and conducted more suicide attacks than Hamas and Hezbollah combined.
4. They were the first group to use women in suicide attacks.
6. They were notorious for their recruitment of child soldiers.
Pretty good resume, right? So, as soon as I set foot in the country it became apparent to my cameraman and our driver that I was far more interested in hearing about the powerful Tigers than I was about the pristine beaches or the ancient temples. But since I was a travel reporter, I was steered as far away as possible from any sign of the war and instead was whisked around from tour site to tour site, asking questions such as, “Is this your idea of paradise?” to honeymooning couples who were having a relaxing day at the beach, at least until I came along.
But earlier this year I finally got to pursue the itinerary I was really interested in, when I returned to Sri Lanka to witness a historic moment: The defeat of the Tamil Tigers and with that the end of Asia’s longest-running civil war. In “Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror”, which airs tonight at 10pm EST/PST we look at what led to the downfall of one of the most powerful militant groups the world has ever known, and what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Sri Lankan government’s War on Terror.
With the launch of our season, we’ve given a number of presentations and have received a lot of questions from our viewers about how this “Vanguard” thing works. So today, I thought that I would address some of the most common questions.
Q: How many people go out on a story and which cameras/equipment do you use?
We usually go out in teams of two. A correspondent/producer and a producer/cameraperson. We’re a small team here at Vanguard, so most of us know how to do a little bit of everything — shoot, produce, edit, and make coffee. It’s all very DIY and roles often overlap.
The equipment we use all fits into a backpack. Our “big” camera is the Sony V1U, which is still really small by comparison. We also use the A1U as a second camera and sometimes as the primary camera in sensitive areas. We’re actually exploring some new options as well.
Having a small footprint is definitely part of our ethos. We don’t want to overwhelm people with our presence. The more it feels like we’re a film crew, the more things are going to feel staged. We really want to capture things in as authentic a way as possible.
Q: Do you already have an idea of what your piece is going to look like before you go out on the field? (more…)
The number of people charged, while eye-opening, still doesn’t show the true extent of the problem, said Kevin Payne, head of the state police drug-enforcement unit for Eastern Kentucky.
State police have information on 1,700 other people going out of the state to get pill prescriptions, Payne said.
“It tells me that this is a huge, huge problem,” he said.
We’re trying to get Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper, who was featured in “The OxyContin Express”, on the phone. According to the story at least 9 warrants were served in Greenup alone.
First Big Brother and now Clark Kent’s best friend! What is up with all these D-List celebrities dealing Oxy? Today’s news is that “Smallville” actor Sam Jones III was snagged by the DEA for possessing with the intent to sell more than 10,000 pills of the potent narcotic. That is a crazy number of pills! Yesterday, we did the math on Big Brother winner Adam Jasinski’s pills, and found that he stood to make $55,000 by selling the pills he was allegedly caught with. Well, if we apply the same logic to Jones, he puts Jasinski’s potential profits to shame. By selling his pills Jones could have pocketed $275,000.
But what I find most interesting about his arrest is the fact that in documents filed in federal court, the DEA claims that Jones was the “Hollywood connection” in the illegal distribution of oxycodone. As we reported in “The OxyContin Express”, more people are now abusing prescription drugs than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined. But unfortunately, we only seem to hear about it when the drug goes Hollywood.
To those of you who haven’t seen our film, here it is:
Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to piece it all together. I’m reading today’s LA Times story about Vanguard and even though I sat down for an interview with Matea Gold to talk about what it was like to work here while our friends Laura and Euna were being detained in North Korea, it didn’t really come together until just now.
We’ve all been swept up in preparation for the season that premieres tonight, and for the months during Laura and Euna’s absence, keeping busy was one way we all dealt with the grief and anxiety.
Darren and I were in Sri Lanka in March, reporting on the end of the war there when we got the call. It was four in morning. It was surreal, but we thought it would be only a matter of days before they were released and we completed our assignment.
Mariana Van Zeller with Sheriff Keith Cooper (photo by Cerissa Tanner)
In May, we were driving through Kentucky to interview the Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo with Cerissa Tanner, our co-producer on “The OxyContin Express”, when word came that Laura and Euna were going to be sentenced. We pulled over to the side of the highway and even though none of us are particularly religious, we prayed. The whole making of this season was filled with moments like this. But to know how much Laura had put into building Vanguard, we felt there was nothing better we could do than to keep it going.
For me, tonight’s premiere is an emotional one, not just because of the powerful subject, but because I remember the cloud under which it was produced. Of course, most of that cloud was lifted on Aug. 4th when the team gathered around the TV to watch Laura and Euna boarding a plane in North Korea.
The rest will lift as we dedicate this season to them.
In the Vanguard documentary “Chinatown, Africa”, we looked at China’s growing presence in Africa through Angola, China’s largest trading partner on the continent. We highlighted some of the controversies surrounding China’s influence including the lack of transparency in some of it’s loan deals, corruption and China’s willingness to look the other way on the question of human rights. Today’s New York Times has a fascinating story that really gets into the nitty-gritty of one deal between China and Namibia. For anyone interested in China’s rise as a global player — particularly, how it wields “soft power” – it’s a great read.
I want to highlight one quote from the piece:
“We know more about China’s military expenditures than we do about its foreign aid,” said David Shambaugh, an author and China scholar at George Washington University. “Foreign aid really is a glaring contradiction to the broader trend of China’s adherence to international norms. It is so strikingly opaque it really makes one wonder what they are trying to hide.”
The Wall Street Journal has a great article on where things stand in the Niger Delta. It’s about as comprehensive of a piece on the restive region as I’ve seen in a while, capturing all the complexities, contradictions and corruption. The story is pegged to an amnesty offer that is set to expire on Oct. 4. According to the article, “The most powerful militant leaders have yet to strike any deals with the government, but federal officials and rebels have indicated that an agreement may be close. This week, an umbrella group of militants extended a cease-fire, but warned of more attacks if its demands aren’t met.”
If I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on more attacks. The situation is so polluted (no pun intended) with corruption and criminality that a true deal is a pipe dream (ok, maybe puns are intended).
The latest attack by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND is being seen as a major escalation in the rebel group’s activities. Five people were killed when militants struck an oil tanker facility just outside Lagos, Nigeria’s capital. Rarely, does MEND operate outside of the swamps of the delta, so an attack so close to the world’s fastest growing “megacity” and commercial hub, certainly sends a message. MEND has been very active recently, despite the fact that one of their leaders, Henry Okah, was granted amnesty by the Nigerian government after he was charged with treason and gun running.
The latest attack also links together two of our reports from Nigeria. So for some background on the oil conflict in Nigeria and Lagos, check out these two pieces:
Niger Delta militants strike again. This time they’ve kidnapped 6 crew members from an oil tanker manned by a Russian captain – three Russians, two Filipinos and an Indian. MEND (The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) also claims to have blown up a Chevron pipeline and an oil well operated by Shell.
For more on the situation in the Delta, check out our film “Rebels in the Pipeline”.
What shocked me the most when I traveled around the Delta, was the staggering poverty that exists in one of the most resource-rich places in the world. In our film we show the contrast between the conditions in which the locals live, and the luxurious resort-like compounds built exclusively for foreign oil workers. Just a few meters — and a lot of barbed wire and security cameras — separate sprawling slums from manicured lawns and expansive golf courses. It’s African shantytowns and American suburbs sitting side-by-side, but so many worlds apart.
We’re still kicking ourselves. Several weeks ago we were inquiring about visas for Iran and were offered the opportunity to go during the elections. Given our production schedule and the fact that our stories are generally removed from the news cycle, we decided it was best to wait until after the elections to see how things shake out. But who would have predicted this?! Even though I know that you can never time a story, it’s killing me to have to watch this one from the sidelines.
Like many people, I’ve spent the last few days obsessing on the news coming out of Iran. I’ve been scouring Twitter and Iranian blogs and reading everything published in the NYTimes, BBC, etc. I have to admit that I’ve been swept up in the emotion of it all. It’s hard not to. But yesterday, I came across this sobering piece by former CIA field officer Robert Baer.
In his latest piece for Time, he cautions those following the fallout from the election not to make the same mistakes the US has always made when it comes to Iran, i.e. viewing the country through the eyes of people who we more naturally connect to: “Iran’s liberal middle class” as Baer calls them or the “Twittering Class” as we might call them.
“No doubt, Iran will come out of last Friday’s election a different country,” Baer writes in his piece Don’t Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost. “But it would serve us well to put aside our prism that has led us to misunderstand Iran for so many years, an anticipation that there would be a liberal counter-revolution in the country. Mousavi is far from the liberal democrat that many in the West would like to believe he is. The truth is, Ahmadinejad may be the President the Iranians want, and we may have to live with an Iran to Iranians’ liking and not to ours.”
As journalists, we’re supposed to be dispassionate observers. That’s a difficult thing to do when you see so many young people risking their lives for their voices to be heard. And its doubly difficult when you see how your colleagues in the press are being threatened, thrown out and otherwise stifled as they currently are in Iran.
While we’re still kicking ourselves for missing what is surely a historical moment in the history of Iran, probably the Middle East and maybe the world, I still think there is still going to be an amazing story to be done when this all shakes out. And like all good stories, it won’t be anything that you can predict. But hopefully, we’ll get the chance to cover it.
