Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

Insectageddon

Tuesday 15 October at 8pm

Remember when a country drive ended with the windscreen covered in smashed insects? Ever wondered why that seems to happen less these days?

Now a landmark German study has come up with a possible explanation. Conducted over thirty years, scientists in the city of Krefeld have documented a collapse in that country’s insect population. Those findings are backed up by another study across the border in the Netherlands which concludes a sharp drop in wildlife populations.

The scientists are warning that a crash of insect numbers could directly threaten not only the birds and other animals which prey on them but also, the plants that rely on them for pollination.

“About 80% of our crop depends on insects for pollination. 80% of the wild plant species as well” , explains Professor Hans de Kroon from the Netherlands’ Radboud University. “ If we are losing that, we are losing the ecological foundation of ourselves.”

The impacts on agriculture could be dire. Ironically, the culprit is believed to be farm-based insecticides. At its worst, this may be the realisation of US biologist Rachel Carson’s famous 1960s “Silent Spring” prediction of eco-system decline.

But the good news is that the Europeans are fighting back. In Germany, after a citizen-led petition to protect insects, the state of Bavaria mandated that a third of all farmland must be organic by 2030. And ordinary people are paying farmers to plant flowers instead of crops.

In the Netherlands, scientists are planting wildlife corridors to create safe passages for our flying friends. “You can really get it back quite rapidly” , says Professor de Kroon, “ but you have to help it a little bit. ”

Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell meets the passionate characters chronicling our bugs’ lives. He joins entomologists trapping and counting insects in Germany, biologists measuring the effects on bird and frog populations in the Netherlands, and tweedy British nature lovers chasing butterflies and bumble bees in the woods of Kent.

All have a passion for their tiny subjects, and a sense of urgency about the steps needed to avoid… Insectageddon.

Insectageddon airs on Foreign Correspondent on ABC TV at 8pm AEST Tuesday 15th October & Friday 18th October 1.30pm, and on ABC News Channel on Wednesday 16th October at 5.30am, Saturday 19th at 9.30pm & Sunday 20th October at 5.30pm & iview

[TV.Cynic]

At the Edge of the Earth

Tuesday 22 October at 8pm

In the dying weeks of summer, the indigenous Alaskan Gwich’in people do what they’ve done for millennia. Hunt the caribou, so they can feed their people over the coming winter.

“Our ancestors lived and survived off these animals, off this land, for thousands of years” , says Gwich’in elder Sarah, as she dries the caribou meat in the smokehouse.

Now the Gwich’in tribe fears a new proposal to drill for oil in Alaska’s north could endanger their fragile land and traditions.

As Alaska’s most productive oil field runs low, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with a plan to explore for new supplies in the country’s largest protected wilderness – the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

The Gwich’in people worry it could disrupt the caribous’ calving grounds and are fighting the proposal.

Hundreds of kilometers north, some members of the Inupiat tribe, which owns part of the land where the drilling is planned, have voted to support the plan.

“The community are for the oil companies so we can get more, better things” , says Marie, an Inupiat elder.

Alaska is dependent on oil. It provides up to 90% of its revenue, and around one third of its jobs.

The Inupiat hope the revenue from new oil fields will help support their remote communities.

In her last major trip as US correspondent and eight months in the making, Zoe Daniel travels to the remote, northern edges of Alaska to see this stunning landscape and meet its remarkable people.

She joins young Gwich’in on a hunt, tastes smoked caribou and whale meat, and flies in to visit the remote wilderness where oil exploration may soon begin.

As these two communities face a difficult debate over drilling, both are aware of the environmental risks. As climate change melts the Arctic ice sheets, polar bears are roaming closer on the hunt for food.

One young Gwich’in leader is determined to fight to protect what they have.

“I see a lot of people that never usually work together unite. And I have to hold on to that hope.”

Watch At the Edge of the Earth on Foreign Correspondent on ABC TV at 8pm Tuesday 22nd October and Friday 25th October 1.30pm, and on ABC News Channel on Wednesday 23rd October at 5.30am, Saturday 26 at 9.30pm and Sunday 27th October at 5.30pm and iview.

[TV.Cynic]

2020 Season Return

Tuesday 18 February at 8pm

From Germany, Eric Campbell reports on a radical plan to end coal mining. The government is giving billions of Euros to coal companies to shut their mines and power plants over the next 18 years. But will it be enough to find workers new jobs and help save the planet?

In Saudi Arabia, Samantha Hawley gains rare access to a hidden kingdom, now promoting itself as a tourist mecca. Hawley visits remarkable archaeological sites until now largely closed to foreigners. She explores the extraordinary social changes underway, speaking with a woman scuba instructor and one of Saudi’s first stand-up comedians. But alongside reform, there’s a brutal clampdown on dissent, with ongoing arrests and executions of the regime’s critics.

In Nepal, Sally Sara treks to a remote corner of the country with ten-year old Devi, who’s being reunited with her family after being trafficked in the fake orphan trade. It’s a powerful story about Nepal’s push to dismantle dodgy orphanages, educate overseas donors and bring the children home.

In more dangerous territory, Emma Alberici braves the no-man’s land north of Naples to report on the violent new crime gangs who’ve got the Italian mafia on the back foot. Running prostitution and drugs with ruthless efficiency, could the Nigerian mafia be even harder to root out than the local mob?

And that’s not all. We follow scientists across the icy plains of Antarctica as they hunt for missing pieces of the climate puzzle; we steer off the beaten track in rural China where desperate men take desperate measures to find a bride; we crash Carnival in the West Indies and discover the pirates of the Caribbean have returned and travel to East Timor with members of its ‘stolen generation’ who are reuniting with their families after decades apart.

With an expanded new season of 24 episodes, Foreign Correspondent will open a window for you onto a fast-changing world.

TOURIST MECCA

Tuesday 25 February at 8pm

The ‘hidden kingdom’ of Saudi Arabia has been mostly closed to journalists and travellers…until now.

In a glitzy PR push, the country is opening itself up to the world - and Foreign Correspondent rides the magic carpet to extraordinary sites, tens of thousands of years old, holding mysteries archaeologists are just beginning to uncover.

It’s part of a multi-billion dollar campaign by leader Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, to modernise the economy, diversify it away from oil dependency, and liberalise the austere, puritanical form of Islam that’s locked up the country for decades.

But will the notoriously repressive regime deliver on its promise to reform?

Reporter Sam Hawley witnesses the social revolution underway, speaking with a woman uber driver, a woman scuba instructor and one of the nation’s first stand-up comedian.

“It was like [being] alive”, says a young female uber driver, who’s taking advantage of her newly won freedom to drive.

The comedian explains he must operate within unwritten laws.

“We can’t go to the red lines… even if one day the government says it’s okay to talk about this and that. Okay, go talk about sex, religion, whatever…If you speak about it, people won’t feel comfortable.”

But there’s a dark side to the reform rhetoric. The gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi exposed the brutal face of the Saudi regime and still stains the country’s international reputation.

Sam Hawley charts the broad clampdown on dissent and speaks with the country’s critics, including a Saudi prince who lives outside the country under police protection and claims he is the victim of a state-sponsored kidnap attempt.

“There are no political reforms”, says the prince, now living overseas. “There is no separation of powers and there is a dominance by the religious authorities over other branches of power in the state.”
One professional Saudi woman tells us she’s optimistic about future reform.

“I promise you in your next visit you will see more changes. It’s coming, but…when you slow in these changes, they will be genuine instead of being lost.”

PAPER ORPHANS

Tuesday 3 March at 8pm

“The cold hard facts are there aren’t enough ‘orphans’ to volunteer with. So, the orphans are being invented.” (Kate van Dore, Forget Me Not)

Every year thousands of Australians donate money or volunteer in developing countries such as Nepal, helping to house and educate orphans.

But are we really doing good?

Foreign Correspondent travels to Nepal to uncover an ugly truth: most of the children living in the more than 500 orphanages across the country are not orphans. Many are the victims of traffickers, who prey on poor families in remote areas desperate to give their children an education in the city.

Westerners, including Australians, are driving this exploitative trade. Traffickers deliver the children to illegal orphanages where they’re used to attract foreign donors and volunteers.

Australian lawyer Kate van Dore found out the hard way. In 2006, she co-founded an orphanage in Kathmandu, taking in a group of girls from another institution. It was more than 5 years before she discovered that every one of them had living families.

Now Kate and her organisation are working with the Nepali government to stop the flow of foreign funds, to close illegal orphanages, and return the children home to their families.

Reporter Sally Sara follows the journey of 10-year-old Devi and a group of trafficked children as they travel from Kathmandu to their villages in the Himalayas.

It’s a moving, confronting and, ultimately, hopeful story.

‘I was worried, and I regretted sending her. I’m just so glad we have Devi back’. (Kalawati, Devi’s mother.)

[JohnsonTV]

The Peacemaker of Syria

Tuesday 10 March at 8pm

She was known as the Jasmine of Syria, an idealistic young woman who believed in a better future for her war-torn country.

After the Kurds fought and defeated ISIS in north east Syria — with the help of the US — Khalaf joined a grassroots movement that was working to rebuild Syria as a democracy.

US troops stayed on in the region to help keep the peace, ensuring that ISIS fighters did not regroup.

Then late last year, Donald Trump made the shock announcement he was pulling US troops out of the region, leaving their former allies the Kurds unprotected.

Turkey struck immediately, invading north east Syria and attacking the Kurdish forces it labelled as terrorists.

In the days that followed, Hevrin Khalaf and her driver were pulled out of their van on a main road and brutally murdered.

Reporter Yalda Hakim travels into north east Syrian to investigate the deaths of Hevrin Khalaf and her driver.

The killings looked like a political assassination but the Turks denied responsibility. So, who killed Hevrin Khalaf? And why?

Yalda Hakim speaks to Khalaf’s mother and her political colleagues.

She interviews a team of volunteers investigating the killings.

And she speaks to local journalists who are tracking down the identities of militia members who were in the area on the morning of the murders.

The evidence Hakim gathers points to ISIS as being responsible and suggests their return so soon after their so-called Caliphate was defeated last year.

In a compelling program, Yalda Hakim takes us on a disturbing journey into a world few outsiders are able to enter.

[TV.Cynic]

The New Mafia

Tuesday 17 March at 8pm

Sex, drugs and people smuggling. Emma Alberici braves a no-man’s land near Naples to report on a ruthless new crime group that’s moving in on the local mafia. Will the Nigerian mafia be as hard to root out as the local mob?

“When you enter the organization, you cannot get out other than by death,” says Italy’s top mafia investigator.

The mafia is one of Italy’s most famous international business brands, with an estimated annual turnover of $250 billion a year. But its market share is being challenged by a group of ruthless new players.

Foreign Correspondent’s Emma Alberici investigates the growing power of Nigerian organised crime in the birthplace of the Italian mafia.

The director of Italy’s anti-mafia agency says Nigerian crime gangs are organised and dangerous.

“It has many similar traits to Italian mafia - its oaths, its sense of belonging, the capacity to coerce, the code of silence…even the local mafia fear them.”

Specialists in trafficking humans for sexual slavery and drug running, the Nigerians are now being allowed to run their operations in return for giving the Italian mafia a cut.

A former prostitute, trafficked from Nigeria, tells us: “There’s no pity. If you misbehave…or you can’t continue anymore, they will bring their gun and shoot you.”

We investigate the two main hubs for Nigerian organised crime in Italy.

North of Naples, Alberici visits Castel Volturno, an almost lawless coastal town, abandoned by the local Camorra Mafia and by the state. Here, the Nigerian Mafia is left alone to use this once “Mafioso Riviera” as a hub for its European operations.

In Sicily, the mafia’s birthplace, we go undercover to expose prostitution and drug houses and catch up with the man named by investigators as one of the Nigerian Mafia’s kingpins.

At a secret location, we speak to Roberto Saviano, one of the world’s most famous Mafia whistle-blowers. He lost his freedom 13 years ago after revealing the sordid workings of the Camorra mafia in Naples.

Now living under permanent police guard, Saviano explains the role Nigerian organised crime plays in Italy’s homegrown mafia.

To stay silent, he says, is to be complicit.

Watch ‘The New Mafia’ on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm Tuesday 17 March on ABC TV, iview and live streaming on Facebook and YouTube.

Reporter: Emma Alberici, Producer: Giulia Sirignani, Camera: Louie Eroglu

https://www.facebook.com/ABCForeignCorrespondent/videos/675760039839760/?t=3

[TV.Cynic]

Life in the Time of Corona

Tuesday 24 March at 8pm

It’s Europe’s coronavirus epicentre with cases of infected rising by over a thousand daily. In the country’s north, hospitals are full. Patients, young and old, are dying.

To control the outbreak, Italy is in lockdown but is it too little too late?

In the province of Lodi, half an hour from northern Italy’s capital Milan, it’s day 23 of the lockdown.

A young couple - Isabella and Roberto - are stuck at home with their 3-year-old daughter Eleonora. They’re wondering when they will be able to resume normal life.

The northern Lombardy region has been dubbed the ground zero of Italy’s corona crisis. So far, over two thousand people have died there and nearly thirty thousand have been infected.

After Lombardy, the virus spread through the north, then nationwide.

At first, doctors mistook it for the flu. Precious time was lost and now Italy, known for its warm embraces and kisses on both cheeks, has more cases than any country apart from China.

Hospitals have been swamped. All non-corona related patients’ care has been sidelined. Doctors have been issued with protocols about which patients to prioritise and which not to - a form of disaster medicine.

Desperate to bring the virus under control, Italy has finally taken strong action, declaring a nationwide lockdown. Schools and universities have shut. Shops, cafes and restaurants have closed. Apart from buying groceries, people need official authorisation to move around or else face a fine.

Reporter Emma Alberici can’t travel to Italy but she has relatives and friends in and around Milan.

For this special report, Emma taps into her network of family and friends as well as doctors and businesspeople, to tell an intimate story about how families, communities and the country are dealing with this unprecedented health emergency.

We use skype calls, phone diaries and photos to bring you a picture of Italy in lockdown.

In Milan, we meet the head surgeon at one of the city’s major hospitals. He’s isolated at home after contracting the coronavirus from one of his patients. He explains how he’s being treated for the infection and his fears for his wife, who’s working as an obstetrician.

There’s 7-year-old Zoe, who’s doing schoolwork from her home in Milan. She skypes her Australian friend Livia and they chat and giggle about the virus and hand washing.

We meet Emma’s 90-year-old aunt recently hospitalised with influenza, and her cousin - also Emma Alberici - who’s looking after her mother while holding down a job as CFO of a big pharmaceutical company in Milan - an industry which has special exemption from the lockdown.

We hear from Isabella and Roberto about the meals they’re cooking and the bread they’re baking.

And we interview virologist Prof Roberto Burioni who warns Australia that this virus is dangerous and must be taken with the utmost seriousness.

This is an intimate insight into an extraordinary moment in history.

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1240525958723121153?s=20

[JohnsonTV]

ABC an essential service | TV Tonight

“Many program episodes for the current season have already been shot, and we are also able to revisit and update previous stories,” ABC said in a statement.

“As a result, we can confirm Foreign Correspondent will be completing its full season this year. There is no suggestion of the program being cancelled.

“We’re also talking to all our international correspondents about keeping them safe in their posts or facilitating getting them and their families back home temporarily.”

[JohnsonTV]

The Singapore Solution

Tuesday 31 March at 8pm

While the world shuts down in an effort to control the coronavirus pandemic, Singapore is more or less business as usual. Its schools and universities remain open and its restaurants and malls are operating – albeit with fewer customers.

So how has this Island State kept the new coronavirus under control, despite its strong business and cultural links with China?

As we find out in The Singapore Solution, the country was well prepared with a pandemic response plan. Once the world learned of this new coronavirus in December last year, the government acted on it.

Like many Asian countries, Singapore learned about the power of pandemics the hard way. When the deadly SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus spread through north Asia seventeen years ago, governments were unprepared.

SARS killed hundreds of people across Asia, including thirty-three people in Singapore.

“We’ve been preparing for this since SARS … this is something that is firmly etched in Singapore’s medical history,” explains Australian doctor Dale Fisher, an infectious diseases expert who is based in Singapore and is now part of the team battling the coronavirus.

To beat COVID-19, the Singaporeans have set up a network of clinics where symptomatic people can seek advice and if necessary, get sent for testing. Those who are positive are quarantined and tightly monitored.

Singaporeans are being asked to download a tracing app onto their phones. Those who are infected are subject to the “contact tracing” system, where health officials track down all those who’ve had contact with them.

Penalties for breaching these orders can be harsh. “If … they’re caught … there are jail terms,” says Professor Dale Fisher.

Other measures include temperature checks outside public buildings and schools – those with a high temperature must go home – and clear public health messaging and information.

While the measures might evoke fears of a “surveillance state”, they have been successful in flattening the rise of infections. The key to success has been to act fast and comprehensively.

Despite their success so far, authorities remain vigilant. As Singaporeans flock home to escape outbreaks elsewhere, the number of cases has begun to rise again. The government is tightening its policies and already the pandemic plan is being updated. Critics are asking if it’s enough.

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1243304769256665091

[TV.Cynic]

Atom Hunters

Tuesday 7 April at 8pm

It’s a mission six years in the making. A top team of scientists from the USA and Australia are finally realising their dream: they’re heading to a remote corner of the Antarctica to execute an ambitious plan.

They want to drill hundreds of metres deep into the earth’s frozen past in a bid to illuminate its not-so-frozen future.

“We need to see how the atmosphere has handled the emissions that we have thrown at it,” says CSIRO’s Dr David Etheridge.

The team’s destination is Law Dome, a mountain of ice holding a precious, pristine climate archive stretching back over 80,000 years.

To reach the site, the scientists must first haul hundreds of tonnes of equipment on sleds 130 kilometres from their base at Casey Station, then set up a high-tech lab for three months on ice.

Their quarry is tiny: individual atoms that should reveal the truth about the “detergent of the atmosphere”.

“It really is a question of increasing the sum of human knowledge … in terms of climate science and ultimately the future of our planet,” says Dr Andrew Smith from Australia’s nuclear research organisation ANSTO.

Film-maker Dr Richard Smith has embedded with the scientists – and his brother Andrew – recording them as they carry out extraordinary work in the most extreme of environments. They endure snow blizzards and ferocious winds, lose weeks of precious research time in weather lockdown, camp in freezing temperatures and (almost) run out of clean socks.

“I don’t want to just come down here for a jolly. Spend three months of my life toiling away drilling ice,” says glaciologist Dr Peter Neff. “I want to do it so that we have the best information … with what we can expect from the atmosphere and its influence on us as people living on Earth.”

They’re mining for air as old as Ned Kelly and Edison’s light-bulb. It will be taken back to Sydney for analysis at ANSTO where the team hopes it will reveal whether the planet is winning the battle to clean its atmosphere.

“This is certainly a very unique and a very difficult experiment that we’re undertaking,” says the understated Dr Smith. “It may not work.”

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1245237001969942528?s=20

[JohnsonTV]

The War on Afghan Women

Tuesday 14 April at 8pm

Some two decades ago, it would have been unthinkable; the United States making a peace deal with its arch enemy in Afghanistan. But after years of war, thousands of American lives lost and a presidential election on the horizon, the US government and the Taliban are making a ‘peace deal’.

The pact will pave the way for the withdrawal of American troops and open the door to the Taliban’s return to power.

But where does this leave one of the groups who suffered deeply under the Taliban’s brutal rule, Afghan women?

When the Taliban were in power, they denied Afghan women the most basic human rights: the right to go out alone, the right to go to school and work, even the right to show their face in public. If they broke these rules, they were flogged and sometimes executed.

Many Afghan women now fear that when the US leaves, the Taliban could join the government and re-impose its tyrannical form of Islam on the people.

Reporter Karishma Vyas goes to Afghanistan to investigate how Afghan women view the possible return of the Taliban.

‘As an Afghan, I’m shocked. The Americans introduced democracy, human rights, women’s rights to us, and encouraged us to defend them’, says Laila Haidari, who works in the streets of Kabul helping drug addicts. “But they’re telling us that now the Taliban is legitimate? How has the Taliban changed?”

Vyas meets some extraordinary women doing extraordinary work: a defence lawyer who represents women, a social worker and a young girl who fears the Taliban will kill her for leaving her violent marriage. She hears how hard the women of Afghanistan have fought to win back some freedoms, and how afraid they are of losing them again.

“We’ve gambled with our lives, minute by minute. Why? Because we want women to have a place in society”, say Haidari.

While the Taliban assure western leaders they’ve changed, this story exposes a different reality. We show mobile phone pictures of women being publicly lashed for singing and dancing and hear of others being beaten or gunned down over accusations of adultery.

As well as the possible return of the Taliban, there’s another enemy on Afghanistan’s horizon: COVID19. There’s a fear that the tens of hundreds of migrant Afghani workers returning home from Iran will spread the virus throughout the country. It may delay the US-Taliban peace process, but it could be devastating for ordinary Afghanis.

Foreign Correspondent: Tuesday 14 April at 8pm on ABC TV + iview

[TV.Cynic]

Covid Ground Zero

Tuesday 21 April at 8pm

The Big Apple is in bad shape.

It’s the epicentre of the US fight against the corona virus outbreak. Its people are in lockdown while frontline services wage war against the pandemic.

With around 10,000 deaths estimated to have been caused by the virus, New York City accounts for over a third of all corona-related casualties in the US.

Every day, there are hundreds of new infections and deaths. The city’s hospitals are overflowing, health workers lack medical and protective equipment and morgues have run out of space.

Foreign Correspondent’s reporter Karishma Vyas, a New York resident, goes behind the lines of the city’s battle to slow infections, save lives, protect its vulnerable and bury the dead.

We follow paramedics as they respond to emergency house calls, helping desperate families. We discover many who die of COVID -19 don’t make the official death toll.

We film with the police union as they hand out desperately needed personal safety equipment to their officers.

“I thought I’d seen it all on September 11th, but I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re anticipating this getting even worse. So that’s why we’re trying to get this equipment out to our guys”, says a Union officer.

We speak with an ICU nurse who’s travelled from out of state to lend a hand in a Bronx hospital. He tells us about working double shifts, often with no break, and the pressure of looking after multiple critically ill patients at the same time. A good day is when none of his patients die.

One overworked doctor describes his frustration with the US health system.

“I’ve had people come in barely breathing and their first question isn’t ‘Am I going to survive?’ It’s ‘How is this going to impact my family financially?’”

“This illness exposes all the fault-lines throughout American society”, says the doctor.

We meet a restaurant owner in Chinatown who’s transformed his floundering business into a lunch delivery service for frontline health workers.

And we catch up with characters who embody the city’s spirit of defiance and survival.

“I want to be remembered as someone who never left the frontlines and who was essential”, says the Naked Cowboy, a performer whose stage is Times Square - rain, hail or coronavirus.

This is an intimate and powerful portrait of a city in crisis.

Watch Covid Ground Zero on Foreign Correspondent, Tuesday 21st April at 8pm on ABC + iview

[TV.Cynic]

A New Crusade

Tuesday 28 April at 8pm

When Poland’s Archbishop of Krakow talks about fighting a plague, he’s not talking about the new coronavirus. He’s talking about gay rights.

“A certain ideology is a threat to our hearts and minds…so we need to defend ourselves just like against any other plague,” says Archbishop Jedraszewski.

In the 1980s Poland played a central part in liberating the world from communism. Now there’s a push to wind back many of those hard-won freedoms.

The Catholic church and the Polish government are forming a holy alliance, joining forces to denounce Western-style liberalism as the new enemy.

“From the very beginning the history of the Polish state and Polish nation were connected with the history of Christianity,” says Archbishop Jedraszewski.

In today’s Poland, the church is supporting government moves to discriminate against gay people, wind back sex education and outlaw abortion.

But feminists, gays and liberals are fighting back.

Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell reports on a deeply divided nation in the throes of a culture war.

He meets the Archbishop of Krakow who likens gay activists to the much-reviled Soviets who occupied Poland after the Second World War.

“This time it is not a red but a rainbow plague,” says Archbishop Jedraszewski.
Regional governments across Poland have declared about a third of the country ‘an LGBT free zone’.

Eric interviews critics of the current government, including Lech Walesa, the father of Polish democracy, who warns “our Constitution is being broken, the separation of powers has been violated and we have to do something about it.”

He meets a gay mayor in a small town who says the rhetoric from church and state is leading to an “increase in hatred spreading against homosexual people.”

And he films at a far-right rally in Warsaw where Catholic extremists are co-opting the church in their bid to push their nationalist agenda and vision of Poland as a new theocracy.

While many Poles believe a religious revival will lead their country to the light, others fear it is opening the gates to something darker.

[TV.Cynic]

Revolution in the Time of Corona

Tuesday 5 May at 8:00pm

This is not your typical revolution. It’s not just a group of young idealists pushing for the stars.

The revolution that has filled Lebanon’s streets for months on end has broad-based support.

Young and old, rich and poor, Muslim, Christian and Druze are united in their desire to overthrow their corrupt and incompetent leaders and save their country and themselves from economic collapse.

After decades of neglect, the country is on its knees. There’s hyperinflation, currency collapse, high unemployment, constant power cuts and people going hungry like never before.

And now the country is dealing with the new coronavirus.

In a rollercoaster ride, Beirut-based correspondent Adam Harvey lived through months of protest and weeks of lockdown and has documented it for Foreign Correspondent.

Adam meets ordinary and extraordinary Lebanese who are struggling to survive and desperately trying to save the country they love.

There’s Rima, the owner of a once-grand now crumbling hotel in the country’s east, a former haunt of kings, queens and presidents.

Today tourism has dried up and the hotel is struggling. Rima spends her time organising food handouts for hungry neighbours.

“The corruption…has eaten up the Lebanon we’ve known and we’re all trying to save it”, she tells us.

He meets Tarek, the star of Revolution TV who’s live-streaming the protestors’ every move for his popular YouTube channel.

“It’s very sad what’s happening but Beirut will never die. Beirut will get sick…but Beirut will survive.”

There’s Tala, a young DJ and part owner of Beirut’s biggest nightclub. Instead of spinning discs, she’s in lockdown, worried about her country’s future.

“Right now, our country has sunk so low…and it will be very, very hard to come back from that.”

And we meet unemployed Imad Awad, who doesn’t have enough money to pay for heating or his wife’s medicine.

The coronavirus is putting more pressure on a country already in strife. But it can’t kill the revolution. As the lockdown lifts, the protestors are coming back.

“We want action now. We want to see a result immediately on the streets for the people - otherwise there is no country”, warns Tarek.

In a visually arresting story, we meet four Lebanese from different walks of life, all united in their desire to bring their country back from the brink.

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1255761431896735746?s=20

[JohnsonTV]

The War Next Door

Tuesday 12 May at 8:00pm

Just north of Australia a secret war is being fought. West Papuan independence fighters and Indonesian security forces are involved in a protracted and bloody battle over the issue of Papuan independence.

The conflict escalated after young West Papuan fighters killed Indonesian road workers building a highway into Papua’s central highlands.

The Indonesia government hit back hard, deploying hundreds of police and military who attacked the region in an effort to root out the rebels.

Last year mass protests broke out, with civil resistance leaders from in and outside West Papua calling for freedom from Indonesia.

With foreign media largely shut out, the story of this unfolding humanitarian disaster remains untold.

Hundreds have died and local officials estimate that over 40 000 people have been displaced. There are allegations of torture and human rights abuses.

Foreign Correspondent has been able to report from inside the conflict zone, gaining access to exclusive pictures of the recent unrest and speaking to eyewitnesses of the violence.

“I have to yell out to the world…because if I don’t, we’re going to be weaker and the indigenous people will be wiped out,” says one West Papuan highlander, who’s looking after children orphaned in the recent fighting.

“We will not retreat. We will not run. We will fight until recognition dawns,” says a member of West Papua’s young guerrilla force whose ranks include teenagers orphaned in the ongoing conflict.

“Dialogue is needed but dialogue which is constructive,” says Indonesia’s former Security Minister. “We have closed the door for dialogue on a referendum. No dialogue for independence.”

Sally Sara reports on a war with no end in sight.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT - THE WAR NEXT DOOR

[TV.Cynic]

The World’s Biggest Lockdown

Tuesday 19 May at 8pm

“We are very worried about the lockdown. I can’t even get my daughter’s milk for her … She says, “Mummy I want milk” Where do I get her milk from?'”

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the world’s biggest lockdown, he gave the nation of 1.3 billion people only four hours’ notice.

He unleashed one of the biggest mass migrations in his nation’s history and left the poor in the cities with no means of earning an income or feeding their families.

Tens of millions of migrant workers, who’d moved to the cities to find work, lost their jobs, their wage and their shelter overnight. To find food and shelter, hundreds of thousands hit the road to head back to their villages.

In a bid to stop the exodus of people and the virus to the countryside, governments cancelled trains and buses, and closed state borders. Many kept walking anyway, often trekking hundreds of kilometres to get home.

While the government has tried to help those in need by providing food and financial aid, not everyone has benefitted.

Foreign Correspondent’s Emma Alberici tells the story of how the poorest of Indians are coping with this nation wide shut down, and asks, is the cure worse than the disease?

We speak to families living in the slums of Mumbai and Delhi.

“They tell us to wash our hands, change our habits. Where do we have the means to change our habits?” says a desperate father in Delhi, whose family shares one tap with 20 others.

“People are left to fend for themselves and you find migrant labour which is actually creating wealth for Mumbai are thrown under the bus,” says a lawyer who works with residents of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai.

We spend time with one of India’s top investigative journalists Barkha Dutt who’s made it her mission to shine on a light on India’s most vulnerable.

“If the lockdown has indeed worked…then a disproportionate amount of that price for keeping the country safe has been paid by the poorest Indian citizens,” says Dutt.

We speak with the government who says if it hadn’t locked the country down, the virus would have spread and ‘it would have led to a catastrophe’.

Celebrated author and activist Arundhati Roy observes, “The poor have been excised from the imagination of this country…This corona crisis sort of exposes the bare bones of what’s going on.”

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1260819680169734145?s=20

[JohnsonTV]

Carry On COVID

Tuesday 26 May at 8pm

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Britain hard. More people have died than in any other European country.

Its economy has had a shock too, with the Bank of England forecasting the country will now enter its deepest recession in three centuries. Unemployment is set to more than double.

Carry On Covid takes a snapshot of England through the lockdown, canvassing pub owners, school principals, carers, students and experts, from the south to the north, about their fears and hopes for life after corona.

When London publican Viv Barrett closes for the lockdown, she wonders whether she’ll ever re-open. Before the crisis, British pubs were already closing at a rate of 14 a week.

“We may not survive which means this industry will go under, which means the breweries will go under…and if it’s closed, where do these people meet?”

As school principals send their students home, they worry about the long-term effects.

“The impact on the children of the absence from school is going to be massive… these children will probably be labelled in some way as the coronavirus group of children.”

With more than a million school children relying on free school meals, the principal of a London high school worries many will now go hungry.

“The most vulnerable in society are going to be seriously affected by this virus and there is really no clear plan as to how we support them through this.”

In the country’s north, plans to revitalise the local economy are grinding to a halt.

“What we need to avoid is a coronavirus crisis that actually deepens those inequalities that we see in the country”, says one Labour MP from the north.

Emerging from his own battle with corona, Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes the country will be changed, for the better.

“We will come back from this devilish illness. And though the UK will be changed by this experience, I believe we can be stronger and better than ever before, but also more generous and more sharing.”

Presented by ABC London correspondent Samantha Hawley.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: CARRY ON COVID

[TV.Cynic]

The Doctor vs The President

Tuesday 2 June at 8:00pm

Dr Anastasia Vasilyeva is an unlikely threat to Russia’s most powerful man.

A single mother in her 30s, Dr Vasilyeva is an eye doctor who’s set up a doctors’ union.

But Dr Vasilyeva has been getting under the Kremlin’s skin, provoking vicious attacks by President Putin’s supporters.

“You are lying all the time. You are a group of liars…Do you even understand anything in virology?” rants a state TV presenter. “You are an alliance of crooks, scoundrels, villains and bastards.”

“I’m only telling the truth…and all my sentences, all my words, I can prove with the facts”, says the doctor.

Dr Vasilyeva’s union - the Alliance of Doctors - is raising money to buy and deliver protective equipment to hospitals around the country.

Her message of a health system under pressure is at odds with the Kremlin’s line that everything is under control.

Just two months ago, President Putin dismissed concerns about an epidemic, calling it ‘fake news’.

The pandemic wasn’t part of President Putin’s plans this year. He’d called a referendum which he hoped would install him as president until 2036.

But as the number of Russians infected by the virus sharply rises, Putin has had to cancel the vote. He’s struggling to keep control of the narrative. And the doctor.

Reported by former Russia correspondent Eric Campbell, Foreign Correspondent has gained rare access to film with Dr Vasilyeva and her team, as they travel around Moscow and beyond to deliver PPE to hospitals.

We see her get arrested and imprisoned. And we see her slandered by State media.

Today Russia has the third highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world but in Moscow and other cities, the lockdown is starting to loosen.

Dr Vasilyeva warns the danger is far from over, with the virus taking off in the regions. She and her team continue to make deliveries, despite the abuse and the threats.

This is a compelling and disturbing insight into Russian politics in the time of Putin.

Watch The Doctor vs The President at 8pm on Tuesday 2 June on ABC TV, iview and streaming on Facebook and YouTube.

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Pirates Of The Caribbean

Tuesday 9 June at 8:00pm

Next week on Foreign Correspondent … an old scourge has returned to trouble the Caribbean. Pirates are back in the waters off Trinidad and Tobago, this time from the collapsed state of Venezuela.

https://www.facebook.com/ABCForeignCorrespondent/posts/10157409500558295

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Stolen Children

Tuesday 16 June at 8:00pm

‘It’s a way to break a family, break a person, break a society by taking their most loved members.’ Human rights worker.

At the age of 8, Alis Sumiaputra was plucked from the streets of his village in Timor- Leste by an Indonesian soldier and taken to West Java.

The soldier adopted the stolen child into his family, converted Alis to Islam and changed his name. Eventually, Alis took over the family farm. His Timorese family was never mentioned. Until, in 2019, a woman called Nina came looking for him.

Like Alis, Nina Pinto was stolen from Timor-Leste as a child. She was sexually abused by the soldier who took her and treated like a servant by his family.

“All I could do was cry. I longed for my family. But I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless”, says Nina.

At age 17, she ran away and later managed to reunite with her Timorese family. Now she’s helping people like Alis connect with their birth families.

Nina and Alis are among an estimated 4000 Timorese children who were ‘stolen’ from their homeland after Indonesia occupied Timor-Leste in 1975.

In the early chaotic days of the invasion, the soldiers took the children opportunistically. Later, children were taken as part of a state-sponsored mission by Indonesia to educate and ‘civilise’.

“Maybe in the beginning, there was a feeling of trying to save children who were perhaps separated from their families’, says Galuh Wandita from the NGO, Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). “Later on, there were religious institutions that were involved.”

AJAR is now tracking down Timor’s ‘stolen children’ and helping reunite them with their birth families.

In a powerful and moving journey, Indonesian correspondent Anne Barker follows Alis and a group of Timor-born adults as they return to their country of birth to reunite with their families.

For Alis, there is pain, guilt, joy and an awakening.

At his parents’ graveside in his village, Alis, whose birth name is Kalistru, bows his head and weeps.

"My dear father. My dear mother. When you died, I wasn’t here. I am your son, Kalistru Momode, asking for forgiveness.”

“This was one of the most moving stories I’ve ever covered. The moment we landed at Dili Airport I had a lump in my throat as I watched the emotion of those ‘stolen children’ on board who were returning to their homeland for the first time in decades. I only hope that thousands more will have the same chance that Alis and Nina have had.” Anne Barker, the ABC’s Indonesia correspondent

[JohnsonTV]

The Doctor vs the President

Tuesday 2 June at 8pm

Dr Anastasia Vasilyeva is an unlikely threat to Russia’s most powerful man.

A single mother in her 30s, Dr Vasilyeva is an eye doctor who’s set up a doctors’ union.

But Dr Vasilyeva has been getting under the Kremlin’s skin, provoking vicious attacks by President Putin’s supporters.

“You are lying all the time. You are a group of liars…Do you even understand anything in virology?” rants a state TV presenter. “You are an alliance of crooks, scoundrels, villains and bastards.”

“I’m only telling the truth…and all my sentences, all my words, I can prove with the facts”, says the doctor.

Dr Vasilyeva’s union - the Alliance of Doctors - is raising money to buy and deliver protective equipment to hospitals around the country.

Her message of a health system under pressure is at odds with the Kremlin’s line that everything is under control.

Just two months ago, President Putin dismissed concerns about an epidemic, calling it ‘fake news’.

The pandemic wasn’t part of President Putin’s plans this year. He’d called a referendum which he hoped would install him as president until 2036.

But as the number of Russians infected by the virus sharply rises, Putin has had to cancel the vote. He’s struggling to keep control of the narrative. And the doctor.

Reported by former Russia correspondent Eric Campbell, Foreign Correspondent has gained rare access to film with Dr Vasilyeva and her team, as they travel around Moscow and beyond to deliver PPE to hospitals.

We see her get arrested and imprisoned. And we see her slandered by State media.

Today Russia has the third highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world but in Moscow and other cities, the lockdown is starting to loosen.

Dr Vasilyeva warns the danger is far from over, with the virus taking off in the regions. She and her team continue to make deliveries, despite the abuse and the threats.

This is a compelling and disturbing insight into Russian politics in the time of Putin.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: THE DOCTOR vs THE PRESIDENT

[TV.Cynic]

Pirates Of The Caribbean

Tuesday 9 June at 8:00pm

In the tropical waters around Trinidad and Tobago, pirates are making waking waves again, with a recent spate of kidnappings, shootings, robberies and even murders.

Marlon Sookoo, a fisherman from a sleepy village on the southern tip of Trinidad, has first-hand experience of how ruthless the pirates can be.

“They hold you. Some take you for ransom. You have to pay the ransom otherwise they will kill you. Some will take the boat and engine and throw you out.”

He’s one of a number of seafarers who’ve been attacked in recent years, a result largely of the collapse of the neighbouring state of Venezuela, which has left millions of its citizens desperately poor.

Foreign Correspondent reporter Andy Park visits this tiny Caribbean nation during its peak party season, the riotous festival of Carnival.

While there’s much cause for celebration, he finds the laid back, self-proclaimed “rainbow people” of Trinidad and Tobago struggling to cope with the fallout from Venezuela’s failed state.

Famous for cricket and calypso, the tiny islands are dealing with an increase in illegal migration, gang crime and also, piracy on-sea.

Kennier Berra Lopez is also a victim.

A Venezuelan refugee in Trinidad, Kennier arranged for his family to escape their country by boat but pirates intercepted them at sea and now Kennier’s family have disappeared.

“I don’t think Carnival is a happy time. All the time, day and night. I still have faith that [my family] are going to appear,” Kennier says.

https://www.facebook.com/ABCForeignCorrespondent/posts/10157409500558295

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Stolen Children

Tuesday 16 June at 8:00pm

‘It’s a way to break a family, break a person, break a society by taking their most loved members.’ Human rights worker.

At the age of 8, Alis Sumiaputra was plucked from the streets of his village in Timor- Leste by an Indonesian soldier and taken to West Java.

The soldier adopted the stolen child into his family, converted Alis to Islam and changed his name. Eventually, Alis took over the family farm. His Timorese family was never mentioned. Until, in 2019, a woman called Nina came looking for him.

Like Alis, Nina Pinto was stolen from Timor-Leste as a child. She was sexually abused by the soldier who took her and treated like a servant by his family.

“All I could do was cry. I longed for my family. But I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless”, says Nina.

At age 17, she ran away and later managed to reunite with her Timorese family. Now she’s helping people like Alis connect with their birth families.

Nina and Alis are among an estimated 4000 Timorese children who were ‘stolen’ from their homeland after Indonesia occupied Timor-Leste in 1975.

In the early chaotic days of the invasion, the soldiers took the children opportunistically. Later, children were taken as part of a state-sponsored mission by Indonesia to educate and ‘civilise’.

“Maybe in the beginning, there was a feeling of trying to save children who were perhaps separated from their families’, says Galuh Wandita from the NGO, Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). “Later on, there were religious institutions that were involved.”

AJAR is now tracking down Timor’s ‘stolen children’ and helping reunite them with their birth families.

In a powerful and moving journey, Indonesian correspondent Anne Barker follows Alis and a group of Timor-born adults as they return to their country of birth to reunite with their families.

For Alis, there is pain, guilt, joy and an awakening.

At his parents’ graveside in his village, Alis, whose birth name is Kalistru, bows his head and weeps.

"My dear father. My dear mother. When you died, I wasn’t here. I am your son, Kalistru Momode, asking for forgiveness.”

“This was one of the most moving stories I’ve ever covered. The moment we landed at Dili Airport I had a lump in my throat as I watched the emotion of those ‘stolen children’ on board who were returning to their homeland for the first time in decades. I only hope that thousands more will have the same chance that Alis and Nina have had.” Anne Barker, the ABC’s Indonesia correspondent

[JohnsonTV]

No Justice, No Peace

Tuesday 23 June at 8:00pm

“We are in a state of emergency. Black people are dying in a state of emergency,” says activist Tamika Mallory.

Pictures of a white Minneapolis police officer killing unarmed black man George Floyd provoked an immediate and furious response.

Angry protests demanding an end to entrenched racism erupted in scores of cities across America.

Floyd’s last words ‘I can’t breathe’ have become a rallying cry.

White and black, young and old, across 50 states, have protested peacefully against police violence and racism.

There’s been looting and destruction too.

On display for the world to watch has been the often violent police response the protestors are fighting against.

Galvanising this mass outpouring of rage and grief is the Black Lives Matter movement, formed seven years ago after the killer of an unarmed, black teenager was acquitted.

Foreign Correspondent’s Sally Sara looks at how what began as a hashtag has transformed into a global force pushing for justice and equality for black people.

We revisit the people she met in her Black Lives Matter documentary five years ago and takes the temperature of the nation after an extraordinary fortnight of protests and finally, some change.

We speak with Tamika Mallory, the activist who delivered what’s being called ‘the speech of a generation’ days after Floyd’s death.

“We cannot look at this as an isolated incident. The reason buildings are burning are not just for our brother George Floyd,” she told the Minneapolis crowd.

“ They’re burning down because people here in Minnesota are saying to people in New York, to people in California, to people in Memphis, to people across this nation, enough is enough.”

We interview Art Acevedo, the Houston Police Chief who told President Trump to ‘ shut his mouth…because you’re putting men and women in their early 20s at risk.’

Acevedo tells Foreign Correspondent he understands the anger. “ It’s about how he died. And he died at the hands of a police officer in circumstances where it should’ve never happened.”

And she catches up with Baltimore photographer Devin Allen five years after a death in custody of a young black man in that city triggered violent riots.

“ You got to release that rage. It has to happen”, says Devin, but that’s just the first step.

“What’s important is when the smoke clears, that’s when the real work actually begins.”

Foreign Correspondent - No Justice, No Peace