Vanguard Blog

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.

5. They assassinated two world leaders, one of which was Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India.

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.

This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror (Video)

Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Chinese Mobsters and Megacities – Joanne Shen
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders – Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters – Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass – Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! – Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. – Mariana van Zeller

There’s a lot of soul searching going on in the field of journalism these days. It’s been a tough year. And I don’t just mean for the declining newspaper industry.

It’s a little early to be doing end-of-year accounting, but it relates to Vanguard’s story this week, so bear with me.

Looking back, 2009 was a year that saw perhaps more high profile cases of journalists in jeopardy than in a long while: freelance reporter Roxana Saberi, New York Times reporters David Rohde and Stephen Farrell, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari and of course our colleagues Laura Ling and Euna Lee, just to name a few.

Reporting, especially in conflict zones and repressive environments, has always been and will always be a risky endeavor. Our president of programming likes to quote “The Godfather” when we talk here about the risks that reporters often assume: “This is the business that we have chosen.”

And while it’s true that many of us often choose to parachute in and out of risky places in order to tell stories that we believe need to be told, there is also the understanding that we have a safe place to retreat when things get too dodgy.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case for local reporters.

While reporting this week’s episode of Vanguard, “Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror”, Mariana van Zeller and I encountered one of the toughest media crackdowns we’ve ever experienced. Like all independent reporters, we were shut out of the war zone, refused entry into hospitals where the sick and wounded were being taken, and banned from refugee camps. But worst of all, in Sri Lanka’s War on Terror the government had drawn an eerily familiar line: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” And few people felt comfortable speaking openly or challenging the government’s prosecution of the war out of fear that they would be labeled a traitor or worse, a supporter of terrorism.

Much of the risk reporters take on is when trying to navigate around the barriers that are put up to block them from getting information, information that is often vital to drawing a true picture of events. Needless to say, Sri Lanka’s media crackdown was frustrating for us. But the struggles we faced were put into perspective when we visited the office of The Sunday Leader newspaper. There we found the empty office of Lasantha Wickramatunge, a prominent Sri Lankan journalist and editor of the Sunday Leader. Lasantha was a dogged reporter who spent his career exposing corruption and misdeeds in government. He was also a vocal critic of Sri Lanka’s War on Terror. It was a stance that would cost him his life.

In January, just months before the war officially came to an end, Lasantha was shot in the head and killed by unknown gunmen while on his way to work. But knowing that he was a target, just days before he was killed, Lasantha wrote an editorial that on his instructions was only to be published upon his death.

“When finally I am killed,” he wrote. “It will be the government that kills me.“

Lasantha’s letter from the grave received worldwide attention. But he was not alone. According to Amnesty International, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and media workers have been killed since 2006. And many others have been assaulted, arrested or fled the country. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka is also not alone. All over the world, there are journalists who daily suffer repression and intimidation, risk imprisonment and sometimes their lives in pursuit of truth.

This is the business we have chosen.

***

Within the journalism community there is a healthy debate now taking place about how we can better look after ourselves and members of our community, and still cover important stories. A few weeks ago, Mariana van Zeller and I were invited to New York by PBS’s FRONTLINE/World to participate in a small gathering of journalists and media representatives to discuss the challenges of covering conflicts and working in repressive environments.

The participants ranged from New York Times reporters to freelancers, established media organizations to fairly new upstarts like ourselves.

The idea is to eventually create a resource for journalists of all stripes when it comes to covering difficult stories. For more info go here.

Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass – Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! – Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. – Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” – Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere – Tracey Chang

Every now and then, something that seemed impossible to achieve, comes to pass. But we don’t always notice and say, “Holy Shit!” That’s because we live in an age where an over-abundance of trivial information is coupled with a rapid pace of change. Often, when we learn about a new occurrence, it’s difficult to think back even a few years and remember why it’s significant.

That’s the case with the subject of this week’s Vanguard doc, Mariana van Zeller and Darren Foster’s Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror. Which is one of the reasons why it’s so cool.

Without spoiling the suspense in Wednesday’s episode, in it Mariana and Darren look at the recent demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the LTTE, one of the nastiest and most formidable insurgent/terror organizations in the world. With the US facing escalating violence in Afghanistan, they’re telling an important and engrossing story with big implications.

But besides plugging their episode, what I want to do here is vouch as to how nasty—and seemingly impossible to defeat—the Tigers really were.

In April of 2000, when the Tigers had a huge offensive going, Laura Ling, Gotham Chopra and I went to Sri Lanka, after Laura succeeded in getting us journalist visas in two days of trying, after I tried for a year and a half and failed. We arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and found out that in order to get past the military checkpoints to head to the conflict zone, we needed a Road Permit, which we didn’t have. It took Laura a few days of negotiating with the Minister of Defense to get us the permit, and meanwhile we looked around Colombo a bit—what struck us was how common large suicide bombings by Tigers were. Our hotel had been bombed, and many public places had huge doves painted on the pavement—a sign that there had been a bombing. Hundreds of people had been killed in the city in the previous couple of years.

Outside the capital, fighting between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government continued to intensify. The week prior to our visit the Tigers had staged an amphibious landing at Elephant Pass and over-run a large Sri Lankan military base. The guys at the US Embassy in Colombo told us: “There are only two groups in the world that could stage an amphibious landing of that size—the US Marine Corps, and the Tamil Tigers.” The city seemed to live on edge.

Laura finally got us our road permit, and we drove out to the east, where the government controlled the main highway via a series of fire bases built along it—until night fell, and then the Tigers controlled the highway, along everything else off the highway which they controlled during daylight also. En route to a safe hotel run by a Tiger sympathizer, the sun set on us, and we had a pretty intense few hours driving the highway in the dark, afraid the soldiers in the fire bases we were passing would mistake us for Tigers and shoot, while the Tigers would mistake our van for a military vehicle and shoot.

The second day, we reached the end of where the government controlled the highway. There was a military base, and a barrier, like a train crossing, leading to Tamil Tiger country. Laura got on the phone with her friend the Minister of Defense back in Colombo, the soldiers raised the gate and we headed into Tiger Territory driving a steady 40 km per hour and honking our horn every 100 meters as a sign to the Tigers not to fire on us. Finally, some Tigers flagged us down, took us to a nearby command post. For such dread folks, they seemed very soft spoken and placid. They served us ice cold Coke—it was hot—and then showed us the cyanide capsules around their necks—they all wore them so they could commit suicide if captured. Then they gave us a tour of the area. We met a couple 16 and 17-year old girl Tigers who’d already had several years of combat experience. They were also placid, but now it began to seem spooky. Not surprisingly the Tigers were big into a culture of martyrdom. They showed us a lot of monuments to dead leaders, and a cemetery with 1000 fresh Tiger graves. They offered to let us stay to the night and go with them to fire mortars at a Sri Lankan military base, but we decided to head back.

My conclusion back then: What a nightmare. So when Laura and I heard early this year that the Tigers might be close to being defeated, we found it astonishing. And then Mariana and Darren went over to check out this important but underappreciated development. And the result is not only fascinating, but important. Check it out Wednesday.

This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror

“Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror” airs this Wednesday at 10pm ET / 10pm PT on Current TV.

Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! – Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. – Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” – Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere – Tracey Chang
- The economy is growing again. Where does that leave you? – Mitch Koss

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…)

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.

The Vanguard page on current.com got a brand new make over and it’s just in time for our new season, which launches Oct. 14.

A couple of things to point out :

You’ll find a place to subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog so you can keep on top of all Vanguard news and events. (It’s located just under the very Hollywood photo of our correspondents.  Yes, that’s how they look after we shower’em up when they return from the field).  In the main player is the Vanguard season promo and below that in the “featured videos” section are a few sneak peaks at our upcoming episodes.

We’re really excited for the new season and have been working hard to meet our deadlines, just ask our editor Yasu, who we’re just barely keeping conscious with a steady feed of coffee and red bull.

Yasu's ever-expanding coffee cup graveyard.

Below is the line up.  All premieres are 10pm (9 central) on Current TV.  See you then!

The Oxycontin Express : 10/14/09
Mariana van Zeller travels to South Florida, the “Colombia of prescription drugs”.

Cuba: Waiting for a Revolution : 10/21/09
Adrian Baschuk searches for seeds of a homegrown revolution in Cuba.

Forest of Ecstasy : 10/28/09
Adam Yamaguchi investigates how demand for the party drug is destroying Cambodian forests.

Notes from a War on Terror : 11/04/09
Mariana van Zeller examines how Sri Lanka put an end to its 25-year conflict.

Porn 2.0 : 11/11/09
Christof Putzel looks at how technology is reshaping the Porn industry.

Prison Contraband : 11/16/09
Janet Choi investigates the black market trade behind bars.

Remote Control War : 12/02/09
Kaj Larsen explores the future of battle.

European Coke Trail : 12/09/09
Christof Putzel steps into a turf war for control of the Old Continent’s drug trade.

Just as we’re getting ready to put the finishing touches on our Sri Lanka story for the upcoming season of Vanguard (premieres Sept. 30) comes video footage of what appears to be Sri Lankan troops summarily executing Tamils.  The video was apparently shot on a cellphone camera by a Sri Lankan soldier; obtained by “Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka”, a group Sri Lankan journalists, writers and human rights advocates in exile; and passed along to Channel 4 News in the UK.

JDS says the video was shot in January during the height of the war between government forces and the Tamil Tigers.   And it has just surfaced now, 3 months after the government of Sri Lanka claimed victory in their 30 year conflict with the militant separatists.  During the last months of the war, independent journalists were banned from reporting in the conflict zone and there were many rumors and leaked videos of atrocities.  But this footage would seem to be the worst evidence of war crimes to have emerged thus far.

The Sri Lankan government has challenged the veracity of the footage, alleging that it’s “doctored”.

We’ll be exploring this latest development and much more in our piece for the new Vanguard season.  In the meantime, for more on the video, check out Channel 4 correspondent Jonathan Miller’s blog.

Click here for the raw video ***Warning: it’s graffic***

MIA voices her frustration to Bill Maher about the lack of Sri Lanka coverage in the US media.

We got you covered, Maya.  A full Vanguard half-hour on the conflict is being cut as we speak.

The body identified as Tamil Tiger leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, being carried through Sri Lankan troops.

When Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and I set out a few weeks ago to cover what appeared to be the waning days of the 25-year conflict in Sri Lanka, we knew that the fighting could come to an end before we ever got our piece to air.

And so it did. On Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE, a militant group that has been fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority for nearly three decades.

Over the years, the war in Sri Lanka has received little attention in the US. It was a local conflict, and the US never really had a dog in the fight. That’s how it appears on the surface anyway. But dig a little deeper and you see that the war in Sri Lanka has had repercussions that extend far beyond the small island nation’s shores.

The LTTE are in many ways the original gangsters of modern day terror. They have been one of the most cutting-edge insurgencies the world has ever seen, and their tactics have served as a model and inspiration for terrorist organizations around the globe. Today, the Tiger’s influence can be seen from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of an increasingly fragile Pakistan.

Inventors of the suicide vest, the LTTE conducted more suicide operations than Hamas and Hezbollah combined. Innovators in international fund raising, they proudly boasted that they were the only militant group to have formed a navy and an air force.

But after Sept. 11, the mighty Tigers, who once controlled up to a quarter of Sri Lankan territory, quickly found themselves on the wrong side of history. And the once feeble government of Sri Lanka was emboldened by the Global War On Terror launched by the US and its allies.

We’ll examining this and much, much more in our piece, including if the conflict is truly over. We’ve seen at least one premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished” since the war on terror began. Major combat operations in Sri Lanka may have ended, but there’s a lot of hard feelings and the long road of reconciliation still lies ahead.

Hello! And welcome to our shiny new blog.

We decided to kick this thing off while we’re in the thick of it, which is a good thing because there’s nothing worse than having nothing to blog about. From now on, this is where you’ll be able to keep track of all things Vanguard, like what we have hitting the airwaves and internets, what we have in production, where we are in the world, what the hell we’re doing there, etc. We really don’t have to tell you what a blog is for, so let’s get straight to it.

Last Wednesday, we launched “Vanguard’s Economic Stimulus Package”. It’s our take on the sad (and no so sad) state of our economy. We started it off with “Lost Vegas”, Laura Ling’s tour of the wreckage of Sin City, which did really well when times were good, but is getting clobbered now that the economy has hit the skids. Tonight we’re premiering Adam Yamaguchi’s “Outsourcing Unemployment”, a look at what happens when instead of jobs the US starts outsourcing unemployment to China. And because good things come in threes, the last of our economy trilogy will premiere next week with “Thank You Recession”, where Vanguard travels 5,000 miles from Wall Street to Argentina looking for inspiration in these troubled times.

Adam Yamaguchi’s “Outsourcing Unemployment” on Current.com

While our awesome editors have been chugging red bulls and coffee (yes, sometimes mixed together) to meet deadlines, our producers and correspondents are deep into production for our next run. (Like all good blockbusters, we’re scheduled for Summer ‘09).

Here’s a quick look at what we got cooking up:

Mariana van Zeller and Darren Foster just returned from Sri Lanka, where they were reporting on what may be the most brutal chapter in the island nation’s 25-year conflict.

Adam Yamaguchi and Joanne Shen are off to the rainforests of Cambodia this week and will hopefully be checking in here from time to time.

Christof Putzel will be heading to Europe, where btw Vanguard is HUGE. (We’re like the Baywatch of documentary programs). Christof will be on the European Coke Trail.

Kaj Larsen and Lauren Cerre are looking into next generation warfare, which is as fascinating as it is scary.

There’s much, much more and to keep track of it all, you can check in here. Or become a fan of us on facebook. Or both.
Thanks! The Vanguard Team, over and out…