Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

The Foreign Correspondent program previously list for Tuesday 19 July (The Labours of Mr Zhang) has been delayed by a week due to events in PNG.

###A Bloody Boycott

Tuesday 19 July at the earlier time of 9.20pm

Eight or more students shot, universities boycotted, a prime minister fighting for his political life. Eric Tlozek looks behind the unrest afflicting Australia’s nearest neighbour, PNG.

You are brewing up popular resentment which is a recipe for revolution… It’s bound to explode – head of PNG’s anti-corruption task force

As Prime Minister Peter O’Neill marshals the numbers to fend off a no confidence vote in PNG’s Parliament, the students who helped trigger the vote are mostly lying low.

We were running into the bush, they were shooting and they were like hunters looking for animals – Christopher, student protester

At least eight students were shot and wounded when police opened fire last month at a university protest in Port Moresby. Student protesters want Mr O’Neill to submit to official questioning over corruption allegations - specifically that he had authorised a fraudulent $30 million payment from public funds to a law firm.

While Mr O’Neill has denied the allegations, he has so far refused to be questioned by police.
He’s not respecting the law, he thinks he’s above the law – Tracey, student

I have exercised my constitutional right – PM Peter O’Neill

PNG correspondent Eric Tlozek was on the scene right after the shootings. He obtained interviews with wounded students in hospital and with protest leaders as they ducked between safe houses.

I got a bullet at the back and it penetrated to the stomach – Max, wounded student

Tlozek also meets the corruption-buster who, having been appointed by Peter O’Neill, is now warring with him. Two years ago Sam Koim’s Task Force Sweep issued an arrest warrant for Mr O’Neill – but the PM counterpunched by winning a series of court orders.

We gave him two hours and that two hours has been extended to two years – Sam Koim

Right or wrong, the allegations against the Prime Minister are serving as a lightning rod for popular discontent about broader corruption.

This is corruption that is depriving our people at the grandest scale – Sam Koim

“A Bloody Boycott” – on Foreign Correspondent at the earlier time of 9.20pm Tuesday July 19 and 10.30am Thursday July 21 on ABC and iview and 6.30pm AEST Saturday July 23 on News 24. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###GET UP, STAND UP

Tuesday 2 August at 9.30pm

As the world’s newest nation teeters on the brink of civil war, the young people of South Sudan are pushing back, seeking peace through music and the power of radio. Sally Sara reports.

Five years ago it burst into life in a euphoric celebration of new nationhood. Now the fear is that South Sudan is barrelling towards failed-state oblivion, its future trashed by tribal conflict and bloodshed.
But try telling that to W J “De King”, local reggae star.

“Peace will be here,” he says matter-of-factly.
As South Sudan’s elders fight over the spoils of independence, dreadlocked WJ criss-crosses the country to sing for peace, rallying young people who make up 70 per cent of the population.

Let me cry now through my music, if my leaders will listen to me… People are dying, all because of them – lyrics of WJ song

The meaning of his songs is touching our hearts – teenage girl at a WJ concert

Like WJ, most of South Sudan’s young people were born into war. Many lost loved ones, homes and any chance of an education in the war for independence from the mostly Arab north.

Now they are claiming their future… For that they need peace. And in a largely illiterate country with barely any TV or Internet, the anti-war message is best spread by radio.

People are so hungry for information – Tethluach Yong, Eye Radio presenter

In the capital, Juba, Sally Sara meets a team of young journalists who risk their lives to keep countrymen informed about the intricacies of the latest peace deal and other vital news.

You walk outside and anyone can just pull his gun and shoot you – Eye Radio station manager

Presenter Tethluach, 27, wears the risk. He would broadcast all day long if he could. The main challenge, as he sees it, is to educate young people to help break down tribal rivalries.

If he had a microphone big enough he would ask every South Sudanese:
While you’re busy dividing yourselves, while you’re trying to stand along ethnic lines, don’t you see the world is progressing? You will be the only people who are left behind!

Twelve years after she last reported on Sudan’s civil war, former Africa correspondent Sally Sara returns to what is now South Sudan, to find an infant country still deciding whether to destroy itself or pull together for the future of its young people.

Get Up, Stand Up - Foreign Correspondent airs 9.30pm Tuesday August 2 and 10.30am Thursday August 4 on ABC & iview. Also, 6.30pm AEST Saturday August 6 on News 24. Also available on iview

[TV.Cynic]

###Never Trump

Tuesday 9 August at 9.30pm

Hamish Macdonald goes deep inside the Republican Party’s civil war, as insurgents plot to destroy Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Can Donald Trump be stopped? Will he even make it to election day?

This week Foreign Correspondent takes a warts-and-all journey through the strife now engulfing the Republican Party.

Through backroom deals and convention floor rebellions, Kendal Unruh, a schoolteacher and God-fearing conservative, is taking on the Donald Trump juggernaut, the Republican establishment and the global media.

“The most hated woman in America, or the most loved? Someone’s gotta save the republic, right?” – Kendal Unruh, Republican delegate

Unruh is a key player in ‘Never Trump’, the rebel movement that’s raked in millions of dollars in donations to stymie the presidential nomination of Donald Trump.

At the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s game on…
“It’s going to be chaos!” – Kendal Unruh, Republican delegate

Reporter Hamish Macdonald follows Unruh and her fellow dissidents as they stalk delegates, haggle over rules and crunch numbers over pizza and Coke in late night meetings.

Unruh grew up in a cult and sees Trump as a type of cult leader, a sham conservative who is stealing the Republican Party.

“Donald Trump is not a Republican, bottom line. We have no party left if he’s our nominee.” – Kendal Unruh
“There’s just not support for Donald Trump.” – Dane Waters, Republican operative, pushing to win delegates a conscience vote for the nominee

The schisms that Trump has opened up in the GOP are laid bare as Foreign Correspondent captures the backroom arm-twisting and double-crossing in the run-up to the final vote for the nominee.

“I’ll sleep when the revolution is over, right!” - Kendal Unruh

“Never Trump” – Hamish Macdonald reports on Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday August 9 and 10.30am Thursday August 11 on ABC and iview and 6.30pm AEST Saturday August 13 on News 24. Also on iview.

- YouTube

[TV.Cynic]

###For Greater Glory

Tuesday 16 August at 9.30pm

With the Rio Games beset by doping controversy, Sarah Dingle reveals the tragic human cost of one of the biggest drug scandals of them all – East Germany’s state-sponsored doping program.

They were doped and they were duped. Thousands of young East German men, women and children were talent-spotted, scooped into intensive state-run training regimes and administered an array of “vitamins” or “supporting means”.

“We were willing, useful idiots. Parents gave their children to the state, like presents.” – Ines Geipel, former sprinter

As for what the mysterious pills and injections actually were, no one asked, no one told. The doping racket was compulsory by law yet shrouded in secrecy.

“It was done like an animal experiment.” – Werner Franke, microbiologist

Global prestige was the pay-off. The former East Germany, a relative minnow of 17 million people, amassed hundreds of world records and Olympic medals from the 1960s to the 1980s.

But as Sarah Dingle reports, the cost to many athletes’ health has been immeasurable.

“There is a time bomb ticking away in every one of us because of doping - and whether that goes off at 30 or 70, it doesn’t matter.” – former cyclist Uwe Troemer.

Troemer’s body is ruined – a legacy, he tells reporter Sarah Dingle, of seven years of doping from age 16. The invalid pensioner has suffered a stroke, kidney failure, high blood pressure and damaged joints. He won a small sum of compensation in official recognition of what was done to him.

Troemer is one of hundreds of former East German athletes whose health has suffered irreparably. Some had liver tumours. Some took on characteristics of the opposite gender – men with breasts, females with deep voices, body hair and clitoral enlargement. And some died.

“In think I am now one of the older ones.” – Ines Geipel, 56

Geipel tells a horror story of how she was mutilated by the State, apparently as a punishment. These days she is a powerful voice for former doped athletes. After proof of systemic doping emerged from once-secret Stasi files, she has publicly disowned her place in the record books.

And that doesn’t sit well with some past East German champions, including some names familiar to Australians.

“I was an athlete. Everything was clean and proper as far as I was concerned.” – Renate Stecher, who won gold in the 100 and 200 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympics, relegating Australia’s Raelene Boyle to the silver.

Did Stecher dope? Was Boyle robbed of Olympic gold? Four decades on the historic rivalry continues, as both women open up to Foreign Correspondent’s Sarah Dingle.

“For Greater Glory” – Sarah Dingle reports on Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday August 16 and 10.30am Thursday August 18 on ABC and iview and 6.30pm AEST Saturday August 20 on ABC News 24. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###The War on Children

Tuesday 23 August at 9.30pm

In a playground of international powers, it’s children who are dying from bombs, bullets and hunger.

Sophie McNeill and cameraman Aaron Hollett report from the Yemen war zone.

A Night Strike: “I want to go out and play,” says eight-year-old Faris as he lies in his hospital bed. Then the burned and wounded boy turns pleadingly to his grandfather: “Will I live? Will I live?”

Faris and his family were asleep when a missile hit their house, killing his mother and brother.

A Wedding Party: “We didn’t expect them to hit a wedding,” says Mohammed. He was among the wedding guests who had just finished feasting; the singing and dancing was starting up. Then came the air strike - leaving as many as 40 people dead, among them a little girl named Jood, aged five. She was Mohammed’s daughter.

“We recognised her from her hair ribbon,” he says. “There was no face.”

A Starving Child: “We don’t sleep day or night worrying about him,” says the father of 17-month-old Eissa. The boy is severely malnourished and needs to move into the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. His family can’t afford it.

A Boy Soldier: “Are you going to watch your country and your kids and families destroyed?” laments another father, as he buries his 16-year-old son, a child soldier taken by a sniper’s bullet.

“Why is the whole world silent about Yemen?”

Middle East Correspondent Sophie McNeill travels to Yemen to report on a war that has now claimed more than 6500 lives, many of them children, in just 17 months.

Civilians make up nearly half of all casualties and, according to the UN, they have been deliberately targeted by the US-backed Saudi coalition. Hospitals, schools and homes have been bombed. Nearly 3 million people have fled their homes; 14 million are going hungry; 1.3 million children are severely malnourished.

“The hospitals, the schools, public buildings have not been spared in this war and that’s been a tragedy,” the UN’s Jamie McGoldrick tells Sophie McNeill in the capital Sana’a.

McNeill and cameraman Aaron Hollett travel under heavy security to the capital Sana’a and surrounding towns amid rising expectations of the conflict intensifying. They get out just before Saudi-led forces step up their bombing raids and push their troops closer to Sana’a.

As McNeill discovers, hospitals confront not only a steady stream of casualties amid a constant threat of air strikes, but also a lack of equipment and drugs. Thousands of dialysis patients are at risk; there are no medicines for 40,000 cancer patients.

“There are many people here dying silent deaths,” says Jamie McGoldrick.

This is a civil war – but the protagonists are in debt to outside powers. Houthi rebels who toppled Yemen’s president last year are allied to Shia Iran. Sunni Saudi Arabia, which leads a regional coalition supported by the US and UK, deploys jet fighters and troops against the Houthis.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes. But when the UN listed countries that maim and kill children in war, the Saudis were controversially included – before being deleted amid claims of pressure being brought to bear on the UN.

The War on Children – reported by Sophie McNeill - on Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday August 23 and 10.30am Thursday August 25 on ABC & iview and 6.30pm AEST Saturday August 27 on ABC News 24. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###Last Whites of the East End

Tuesday 30 August at 9.30pm

For the first time ever, white Britons are a minority in London. This film delves into the lives of the dwindling cockney tribe of the East End as they struggle with immigration, “white flight” and loss of identity.

For centuries, Newham in London’s East End has been home to a tight-knit, white working-class community. But over the past 15 years something extraordinary has happened.

We’ve lost our community. We’re foreigners in our own country now – Doreen, East Ham Working Men’s Club regular
More than half the white community has disappeared as Newham has welcomed more new residents than anywhere else in the UK. It now has the country’s lowest proportion of white Britons.

This documentary tracks the thoughts, fears and experiences of locals who have made the painful decision to join the “white flight” and leave the place where they have grown up.

I want to feel like I’m living in England and belong there really again to be honest, back to the old east London how it used to be, being there with your own people and fitting in again – young mother Leanne, who is leaving Newham for “a better life” in Essex.

I think these schools around here will make her lose her identity. The schools, they terrify me around here - Mixed race Tony, who wants to send his daughter to a school where there are fewer Muslim kids.

But for some, multi-racial schools are the glue that binds a diverse community.

Schools and children can be a fantastic way for people assimilating into a society because children don’t see colour, children don’t see religion, children don’t see all of those things that adults may see – Emma, Australian principal of local primary school.

This is a story that gives voice to people who cling to old ways and are struggling with seismic change. It was controversial when it aired in the UK. But it does shed light on how immigration is reshaping some local communities – and influencing a nation that has just voted itself out of Europe.

Usmaan’s family came to London from Bangladesh in the 1930s. He’s Muslim and proud of his Asian heritage. But he’s equally “a proud East Ender” who misses his white mates who have up and left. As he sees it, there’s no turning back for the East End.

Ten years’ time, maybe not even that, there will be absolutely no trace of cockney culture. No trace of British culture… Everything this area stood for is being eradicated, slowly but surely - Usmaan

“Last Whites of the East End” – airs on Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday August 30 and 10.30am Thursday September 1 on ABC & iview and 6.30pm Saturday September 3 on News 24. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###Generation Left Behind
Tuesday 6 September at 9.30pm

More than 60 million Chinese children are growing up without their parents, paying the price of their country’s dash to prosperity. Matthew Carney reports on the generation left behind.

Li Yikui, 13, hasn’t seen his dad in four years. His mum visits once a year. When asked if he misses them, his answer is silent: a quivering chin and a teardrop tumbling down his cheek.

There are 61 million kids like Li Yikui. In parts of central China, not far from the birthplace of modern China’s founding father Mao Zedong, 80 per cent of children are growing up without their parents.
“If they decided to stay in our village just because of me, I’d feel very guilty… a big burden” – Li Yikui

Mothers and fathers leave rural villages and towns for the big city factory jobs that have helped make China an economic powerhouse. Some return briefly; some never do. So children are farmed out to grandparents or boarding schools or left to fend mostly for themselves.

“I get up early to prepare simple breakfast and go to school. When I get home I wash clothes and make dinner” – Xiang Ling, 14, who since the age of 10 has cared for her ill grandmother and three young cousins

For many parents it’s a devil’s bargain. They sacrifice time with their child to make the money they think will better their child’s life.

But some children have never known love. So they cannot handle affection when it is offered by volunteers and social workers.

“I want to leave and I will leave. I don’t want contact” – Xiang Biao, 14, whose parents left him with his grandmother when he was a baby

Many kids suffer outright rejection.
“You go wherever you want to go! Don’t stay in my house!” – grandmother screaming at 16-year-old girl Xie Bingxin

As China Correspondent Matthew Carney reports, a few local governments and NGOs are trying to fill the parental void, but it is just too vast. Some fear that without big reforms by the national government, tens of millions of children will be lost - at a major cost to the nation.

“Of the 61 million (left behind children) a third will get involved in short term or long term criminal activities. Another 20 million might be in mental institutions, short term or long term… I can’t imagine what that will do to China” – Joseph Lim, Children Charity International

“Generation Left Behind” – airs on Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday September 6 on ABC & iview. Also airs 10.30am Thursday September 8 on ABC & iview and 6.30pm Saturday September 10 on News 24. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###Family Business

Tuesday 13 September at 9.30pm

When Oscar-nominated Australian filmmaker Bob Connolly reunites with the characters of his acclaimed PNG Highlands trilogy (First Contact, Joe Leahy’s Neighbours, Black Harvest), he is shocked at how their fortunes have changed.

To mark this special report by one of Australia’s finest filmmakers, ABC iview is now showing the original Highlands Trilogy films by Connolly and his partner the late Robin Anderson, as well as two of their other classics.

The last time filmmaker Bob Connolly was in PNG’s Highlands he was caught up in one of the bloodiest and most destructive tribal wars in the region’s recorded history.

Now, 25 years on, Connolly returns to the Highlands for Foreign Correspondent to catch up with key characters from the masterful trilogy of documentaries he made with his late partner Robin Anderson – Academy Award-nominated First Contact (1983), Joe Leahy’s Neighbours (1989) and Black Harvest (1992).

At the heart of it all is Joe Leahy, the son of an Aussie gold prospector who was the first European to make contact with the local Ganiga tribe, and a Highlands woman. As Connolly puts it: “Western-oriented, mixed race coffee millionaire surrounded by tribal subsistence farmers – fertile ground for a clash of values.”

Joe Leahy had big dreams for his coffee plantations. So too did the Ganiga people who wanted to grow rich from them. That was until the coffee price suddenly tanked and a tribal war exploded, scenes dramatically captured in Black Harvest, the last film in the trilogy.

Fast forward to 2016. Coffee prices have recovered and a quarter century has passed. So by now, surely, war will be a distant memory, and Joe Leahy and the Ganiga finally will be reaping their shared riches? That is the rough scenario Bob Connolly hopes he will find as he drives into the Highlands to pick up with Joe Leahy and Ganiga leaders.

But from day one the signs are bad. It’s harvest time. There are 60,000 coffee trees but only two pickers.
“Why do I have to give them money and all these things?” Joe is railing against the Ganiga. “I’m sick of it now.”

But Joe, now 77, can’t bring himself to leave the plantation, despite pleas from his son Jim. In turn Jim is resisting pressure from Joe - to take over when Joe dies.

“I don’t want to be Joe Leahy when I turn 80,” says Jim. “He’s angry all the time and I don’t want to be like that.”

Wrangling over the succession is imperilling the Leahy coffee dynasty - but what’s left anyway? As Connolly digs deeper it becomes clear that the old tribal war is still playing itself out, with insidious effect, long after the last arrow flew.

Family Business, shot by Stephen Dupont airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday September 13 on ABC & iview. It will be replayed at 10.30am Thursday September 15 on ABC; 6.30pm AEST Saturday September 17 on ABC News 24. Stream it LIVE or watch it later on iview.

To mark this special report by one of Australia’s finest filmmakers, ABC iview is now showing the original Highlands Trilogy films by Connolly and his partner the late Robin Anderson, as well as two of their other classics.

First Contact (1983)
Three Australian gold prospectors - brothers Michael, Dan and James Leahy – encounter thousands of highlanders seeing white men for the first time. This Oscar-nominated documentary includes remarkable footage shot by Michael Leahy in the 1930s and interviews with the surviving brothers and highlanders 50 years later.

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours (1989)
Sequel to First Contact illustrates the conflict between old ways and new. Michael Leahy’s mixed race son Joe buys tribal land to establish a coffee plantation and grows rich while all around him his tribal neighbours maintain their subsistence lifestyle.

Black Harvest (1992)
Joe Leahy’s Ganiga tribal neighbours are finally about to share in the wealth of the coffee plantation – but the golden opportunity is let slip when the price of coffee collapses and tribal warfare explodes.
Rats in the Ranks (1996)
A fly on the wall expose of the machinations behind Leichardt mayor Larry Hand’s bid for a fourth term, and the “rats” in the Labor Party caucus who want to bring him down but can’t agree how to do it.

Facing the Music (2001)
Sydney University music professor Anne Boyd strives to bring the best out of her talented students. But years of funding cuts make it a struggle to maintain standards, forcing the composer/teacher into unfamiliar territory as she scraps for every dollar and makes some unpleasant decisions

[TV.Cynic]

###Wild Things

Tuesday 20 September at 9.30pm

Elephants roaming Denmark… wolves and bison in Germany. As Barbara Miller reports, endangered animals are being reintroduced to wild places as part of a radical and controversial idea called “re-wilding”.

Creatures great and small are returning to the wilder reaches of Europe, centuries after they were hunted to extinction or driven from their natural homes.

Some are brought back by human hand; others make their own way back as original habitats are restored.

It’s known as re-wilding, a push-back by scientists and conservationists against a creeping loss of biodiversity.

“It’ll be like the dodo, it’ll be gone,” warns scientist and wildlife warrior Dr Paul O’Donoghue, whose mission is to rescue the critically endangered Scottish wildcat.

Reporter Barbara Miller joins Dr O’Donoghue on a search for the wildcat – so elusive it’s called the “ghost cat” – in the dramatic scenery of the Scottish highlands. Thousands once thrived in the UK. Now there are about 50, a population smashed by past hunting and interbreeding with feral cats.

“This is our secret weapon,” says Dr O’Donoghue, as he sets baits of stinking, oily, tinned mackerel to lure wildcats to his camera traps. His dream is to create a vast reserve starting with at least 250 wildcats.

Most locals back his wildcat aspiration, but his next project – taking bigger, fiercer lynx from the wild in Romania and freeing them in England’s north - is hitting opposition.

It was 1300 years ago - around when the Vikings first invaded Britain – that lynx last lived there. But Dr O’Donoghue insists that the transplanted lynx will adapt quickly, while keeping fox and deer numbers down in “an ecology of fear”, and have minimal impact on farmers.

But for O’Donoghue’s local adversary, sheep farmer Greg Dalton, there’s no going back.

“No one is going to be putting up with sheep being eaten by a lynx,” he says. “They will get to a point where they will sell up and move away and the land will be left for the mess of re-wilding - god knows what it will end up looking like.”

Farmer Dalton calls the re-wilding push “slightly delusional”. Surprisingly it’s a sentiment shared by re-wilder O’Donoghue about the most ambitious re-wilding plan afoot – bringing elephants to Denmark.

“I think that’s a ridiculous idea,” says O’Donoghue, arguing that it will bring re-wilding into disrepute. Yet proponents include respected scientists who note that elephants were in Europe for millions of years before disappearing relatively recently, about 12,000 years ago.

To these re-wilders, Europe is an ark for threatened elephants in Asia and Africa – and there’s a moral imperative to act.

“We’re really seeing massive losses of biodiversity at the moment and it we look to the future we see dark skies,” says Danish ecology professor Jens-Christian Svenning. “It’s an obligation for scientists to work on helping us to overcome this.”

If Professor Svenning is right, we could see elephant herds grazing the wilds of Denmark within a decade.

“Wild Things” – reported by Barbara Miller - airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday September 20 on ABC & iview. It is replayed at 10.30am on Thursday September 22 on ABC and 6.30pm AEST on Saturday September 24 on News 24.

[TV.Cynic]

###Keep Calm and Drill On

Tuesday 27 September at 9.30pm

Oil-rich Norway has adopted the radical goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. But, as Eric Campbell reports, there’s a catch to this green revolution.

For decades Norwegians have savoured the good life, courtesy of a bounty of oil.

“I’m part of the oil generation here in Norway…We don’t even have to pay to go to the dentist.” – oil analyst, Thina Saltvedt

They don’t just spend their North Sea riches on high living standards. They bank them too, prudently stashing away nearly US$900 billion - about $170,000 per person - in the world’s largest national sovereign wealth fund.
But now the parliament of this fossil fuel-endowed country has voted for carbon neutrality by 2030, two decades earlier than previously planned.

Already much of Norway’s electricity already comes from clean hydro. The conservative government has long supported a carbon tax and it’s heavily subsidising electric cars to help phase out petrol guzzlers as part of a wider push to a greener economy.

So where’s the catch? It may lie deep in the Arctic seabed.

In May the Government issued 13 companies with oil and gas exploration licences in the south Barents Sea along the Russian border.

“To maintain our position as a supplier of energy resources to a global population… we have to continue exploring new acreage.” – Energy Minister, Tord Lien

So while Norwegians debate how they will attain carbon neutrality in just 14 years, the Government is potentially opening up vast new oil and gas export fields on the edge of the high Arctic.

“The idea of Norway being such a great contributor to solving climate change is a scam. We’re contributing to the problem much more than we’re contributing to the solution.” – Greens MP, Rasmus Hansson

As Eric Campbell discovers, Norway is already feeling the impact of warming, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than at its northernmost tip. Here, as vast glaciers melt away, Foreign Correspondent’s cameras capture giant slabs of ice crashing into the sea.

“When you see blocks the size of skyscrapers coming down, it’s awe-inspiring. It’s hard to believe we’re having such an impact on things this big.” – Tom Foreman, environmental scientist

“Keep Calm and Drill On” – airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday September 27 on ABC & iview. It is replayed at 10.30am on Thursday September 29 on ABC and 6.30pm AEST on Saturday October 1 on ABC News 24.

[TV.Cynic]

###The Bridge

Tuesday 4 October at 9.30pm

Who’ll be next? Fear grips Turkey after a failed coup and a sweeping purge set the country on a dangerous and unpredictable path. Sally Sara investigates.

At first she was just “the woman in the head scarf”, a diminutive figure captured on mobile phone footage, singlehandedly confronting and scolding armed rebel soldiers who had suddenly seized Istanbul’s main bridge.

Why did you close my Bosphorous Bridge? Why are you doing this? she demanded, arms waving.
The woman was 34-year-old Safiye Bayat. She took a bullet in the leg from those soldiers. When the coup was put down, the crazy-brave mother-of-two became an instant national heroine – a symbol of how people power helped rescue Turkey’s brittle democracy.

Safiye Bayat is still recovering from her wounds from that midsummer night. Her country remains in turmoil.

Within hours of the coup attempt President Erdogan’s forces began rounding up tens of thousands of his suspected opponents – jurists, journalists, civil servants, artists, musicians.

They stand accused as “Gulenists” – followers of US-based Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally-turned-rival.

We had a sort of cancer within our body… and now we are getting rid of the cancer cells – Government official Yasin Aktay

Erdogan’s purge has deepened the gulf between two distinct strands of Turkish society - conservative Muslims and western-leaning secularists. Many secular activists, it’s claimed, are being unfairly tarred as Gulenists.

We have this extraordinary sense of paranoia and fear – Gareth Jenkins, Istanbul -based British author
As I’m walking I can feel the people around me looking at each other, weighing up one another – young man in Istanbul street

Safiye Bayat, the woman on the bridge, is a devout Muslim and Erdogan loyalist. As reporter Sally Sara discovers, Erdogan’s purge has only stiffened Bayat’s faith in him.

He is our dearest, a piece of ourselves, our commander-in-chief, our general – Safiye Bayat

Actor and activist Levent Uzumcu got sacked from Istanbul’s theatre company for his public criticisms of the government. How, he wonders, can his own secular outlook co-exist with the Islamic conservatism represented by the heroic Safiye Bayat?

We speak the same language, we eat the same food, we walk the same street, but we have hundreds and hundreds of years between us. This is the problem – how can we live together? – Levent Uzumcu

Sally Sara explores Turkey’s identity crisis in “The Bridge” - on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday October 4 on ABC & iview. It is replayed at 10.30am on Thursday October 6 on ABC and 6.30pm AEDT on Saturday October 8 on ABC News 24.

[TV.Cynic]

###President Trump: Foreign Correspondent Special

Sunday 20 November at 7.30pm

We got to know him as a showman, a wheeler-dealer and one-time rank outsider who shocked and appalled Washington’s establishment. Now he’s set to lead the free world.

So who is President Trump?

Fifteen months ago Emma Alberici reported for Foreign Correspondent on the emerging Trump phenomenon in The Trump Show. Back then, few thought he would win the Republican nomination, let alone the White House.

Now, in a Foreign Correspondent special presentation, she returns to the US to ask if there is any prospect that Donald Trump can unite a country that’s now more polarised than at any time in living memory.

What about those promises? Will he target Muslims, eject illegal Hispanics by the thousands and wall off Mexico? Will he start a trade war with China while cosying up to Putin? Can he cut tax and build job-creating infrastructure without exploding debt? Will he rip up trade deals and kill global consensus on climate action? Will he truly Make America Great Again?

If he backs off his promises, will his supporters cry betrayal, or are they happy enough having thrown a grenade into the thick of the Washington establishment? Republicans control the Congress but how easily will they submit to a man many of them hold in contempt?

Emma Alberici seeks answers to these key questions in interviews with Republican insiders, Trump supporters, his biographer and senior political analysts in President Trump, a Foreign Correspondent special presentation airing 7.30pm Sunday November 20 on ABC & iview and repeated 11.30pm AEDT Sunday November 20 on ABC News 24.

[TV.Cynic]

Returns for 2017 on Tuesday 14 March at 9.30pm

[TV.Cynic]

Foreign Correspondent returns

###“It doesn’t happen to people like me”:

Tuesday 14 March at 9.30pm

Hamish Macdonald joins Foreign Correspondent for its 2017 season.

Thousands of travellers, many of them young Australians, are flocking to the Amazon to chase the highs of the ayahuasca plant. Tragically, some never return. Hamish Macdonald investigates.

Matthew Dawson-Clarke made no secret of it. The young Kiwi had told his mum and dad that he was off to Peru to try ayahuasca, a traditional hallucinogen that’s made the adventure travellers’ bucket list.

Then, out of the blue, came the phone call. It was Father’s Day, but it wasn’t Matthew ringing home. It was a young woman he had met in Peru. She was ringing to offer her condolences.

“My world stopped that day.” – Matthew’s mother Lyndie

At that moment Matthew’s parents were told that their 24-year-old son had died three days earlier at an ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian jungle, in highly questionable circumstances.

“This is my world, you know? It doesn’t happen to people like me, and it doesn’t happen to my son.” – Lyndie

Matthew was among the tens of thousands of tourists who visit the Amazon every year to try ayahuasca, which is legal in Peru. Many do have a positive experience and some rave about its supposed healing and spiritual properties. But in the 18 months since Matthew’s death, another five people have died there.

Hamish Macdonald joins Foreign Correspondent for its 2017 season with an expose of the Amazon’s booming ayahuasca industry, told through the prism of Matthew Dawson-Clarke’s death. He reveals an industry that rakes in money for its mostly western operators, but falls badly short in regulation or accountability.

Macdonald and his team track down the shaman who prepared the brew of “cleansing” tobacco tea that Matt consumed before he died…

“I think that it was his destiny.” – the shaman

… the tour operator who failed to notify Matt’s parents…

“People die sometimes. Shit happens. It’s always gonna happen.” – tour operator

…and the fellow tourist who tried to save him when no one else would, and lives with guilt for having failed.

“He’s just a 24-year-old kid for God’s sake. He went there to better himself, to become a better person, a better human being, and now he’s dead. I think about Matt every day. If I could have done just a little bit more…” – “Richard”, from Texas

Foreign Correspondent returns for 2017

Hamish Macdonald’s cautionary tale “It Doesn’t Happen to People Like Me”, produced by Sashka Koloff, airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday March 14 on ABC & ABC iview. It’s replayed at 10.30am on Thursday March 16 on ABC & ABC iview and 6.30pm on Sunday March 19 on ABC News 24.

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###Venezuela Undercover

Tuesday 21 March at 9.30pm

It’s got more oil than any country on the planet but its people eat garbage and gangsters rule. Defying a media ban, Eric Campbell goes undercover in the onetime socialist idyll of Venezuela.

Just 15 years ago Venezuelans bathed in their oil riches, and in the revolutionary charisma of their radical leader Hugo Chavez.

But cancer claimed Chavez, oil prices tanked and Latin America’s wealthiest state plunged into poverty.

“The country is practically destroyed. We barely eat.” – Leon and Andri Guerrero, husband and wife from the slums of the capital Caracas

In Caracas, people now forage for food among piles of rubbish or queue resignedly outside near-empty shops…

“They’ve been here since 3am to buy two packets of flour. That’s the only product in the store.” – man in food queue

“I’ve been here since 4am with my four-month-old daughter but I couldn’t find any nappies.” – woman in food queue

…While more and more turn to crime…

“Well we do a bit of everything – drugs, kidnapping, stealing cars, killing for money like hitmen, you know. Mostly drugs.” – gangster leader

Masked in balaclavas and flashing their guns, the gangsters tell reporter Eric Campbell that for them – unlike most Venezuelans – business is going just fine. For Campbell and producer Matt Davis, it’s a dangerous meeting - one of many tense moments in an assignment that can only be conducted undercover.

Apart from cracking down on political opponents, the government has effectively banned foreign media. So Campbell and Davis travel as surfboard-toting tourists, bringing viewers a rare look inside a chaotic and desperate country.

What they find is a place inhabited by the omnipresent ghost of the late Chavez, whose piercing eyes are painted on city buildings as if he is still watching over his tribe.

“Chavez lives and lives! The nation goes on and on!” – Chavez supporter

The crisis that was born under Chavez now paralyses the government of his successor, the uncharismatic Nicolas Maduro, who confronts a rising tide of popular anger.

Surprisingly however, Campbell and Davis discover that despite all the pain that Maduro’s government has inflicted on its citizens, it still enjoys a body of stubborn loyalty.

Venezuela Undercover airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday March 21 and 10.30am on Thursday March 23 on ABC & ABC iview. Also at 6.30pm on Sunday March 26 on ABC News 24.

Venezuela Undercover: Foreign Correspondent

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###Line in the Sand

Tuesday 28 March at 9.30pm

India’s building boom has spawned a “sand mafia” that is plundering the environment and even killing those who get in its way. But as Samantha Hawley reports, some people refuse to be intimidated.

The world is running low on sand. It’s a basic ingredient in construction – think skyscrapers, shopping malls, roads and windows – and cities are growing faster and bigger than at any time in history.

In India, where the government promises to build the equivalent of a “new Chicago” every year, the demand is insatiable. Its construction industry is said to have tripled its sand consumption since 2000.

Legal supply can’t keep up. So now organised criminals are hitting pay dirt, pillaging millions of tonnes of sand from the nation’s beaches, riverbeds and hillsides. Construction wants sand hewn by water, not by wind. So it’s waterways, not deserts, that face devastation.

“This is probably the largest scam ever in our country,” Sumaira Abdulali tells Foreign Correspondent. The activist was beaten and hospitalised when she blocked trucks taking sand from her local beach.

She at least has her life. The sand mafia is prepared to kill. Ask farmer Brijmohan Yadav. He took on illegal sand miners and was kidnapped and beaten. He now lives in hiding, away from his family, in fear for his life and theirs.

Or Akaash Chauhan, whose father was asleep at home when three men stormed in and shot him dead. He had complained about the sand mafia trashing communal land. Akaash’s brother died mysteriously a year later.

“My father’s fight has become my fight,” Akaash tells reporter Samantha Hawley. “Sand mining is ongoing – my father was against it, I am against it and so is my family.”

Akaash names the chief murder suspect, then bravely guides the Foreign Correspondent team to where illegal miners are working. As the team films, a tall man materialises and confronts them. His name is Sonu. He is the accused killer. The crew must decide - stay or go?

Despite a near-blanket ban on unlicensed sand mining across India, the sand mafia operates with near impunity.

“I have to give money to the inspector and the officer at the checkpoint,” says a tractor driver, adding that what’s left after the bribe is barely enough for food. He is one of the sand mafia’s many foot soldiers.

At best, officials are blind to the obvious. “No mafia… You are probably mistaken in believing that sand mining is going on here,” protests a magistrate in charge of an area where illegal mining is carried out routinely and brazenly in full daylight.

With authorities paralysed by inertia or corruption, it’s up to a small band of activists to take the fight to the sand mafia and expose the dirty secret at the heart of India’s construction frenzy.

Line in the Sand: Foreign Correspondent 9.30pm Tuesday March 28 and 10.30am Thursday March 30 on ABC & ABC iview, and at 6.30 pm Sunday April 2 on ABC News24.

Line in the Sand: Foreign Correspondent

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##THE BIG GOAL

Tuesday 4 April at 9.30pm

China is executing a masterplan to dominate world football, pumping billions of dollars into buying up foreign players, coaches and entire European clubs, and grooming new generations of its own young stars.

China is the world’s rising superpower - but in the world game, it’s a pushover.

In the race for football’s great prize, the World Cup, it’s a perennial dud. Even in Asia it lags behind its neighbours.

But that may be about to change. National pride demands it.

China has just exploded out of nowhere – Trent Sainsbury, Australian Socceroo playing for Jiangsu Suning FC

Sainsbury’s club is owned by a giant electronics group which has splashed nearly $100 million on imported players in the past two years. It also spent $380 million buying Italian superclub Inter Milan – where Sainsbury is now on loan - in just one of a series of Chinese takeovers of European clubs. Other Chinese clubs spend even more.

The Australian league is on a budget basically but over here there is no budget. Club owners can spend as much money as they please – Trent Sainsbury

As China correspondent Bill Birtles reports, after decades of neglect, money is also starting to flow at grass roots level. Birtles travels to the backwater town of Zhidan where juniors coach Ding Changbao has pioneered a program that’s produced more than 80 players for clubs across the country.

A lot of Chinese people are now flocking to football because they want their children to become stars – coach Ding Changbao

Among coach Ding’s charges is rising star Gao Baosen, aged 12. He and his family live in a one room house and struggle to get by. But he dreams big.

My dream is to be like Ronaldo, to be a professional player like him. I hope when I grow up I can look after my parents for the rest of their lives. I don’t want them to suffer – Gao Baosen

Baosen and coach Ding are small pieces of the Government’s plan to have 50 million players and 50,000 coaching schools by 2025 – and, by 2050, to sit atop the football world.

The Big Goal, by China correspondent Bill Birtles, airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday April 4 and 10.30 am Thursday April 6 on ABC TV, and 6.30 pm Sunday April 9 on News 24. Also on ABC iview.

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##“RESIST!”

Tuesday 11 April at 9.30pm

It’s famed as the city of peace and love, but San Francisco is digging in for a fight over President Trump’s order to expel millions of undocumented migrants. Stephanie March reports.

The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc. We will get them out and we are going to get them out fast! – Donald Trump, January 25

In the president’s sights are the 11 million undocumented migrants – that’s equivalent to nearly half of Australia’s entire population - who came to America illegally or overstayed visas.

But Mr Trump has a rebellion on his hands. The “sanctuary cities” movement – led by San Francisco – is a push by hundreds of cities, towns and counties to defy the presidential order. They refuse to co-operate with federal officials whose job is to hunt down and deport undocumented migrants.

We’re going to protect our immigrants. We’re all immigrants – Harriet, at Resist! protest, San Francisco

If they are illegally here why would we give them sanctuary? – Cody, Trump supporter

Mr Trump warns that he will strip federal funding from sanctuary cities. San Francisco alone could lose more than a billion dollars a year, but it’s holding the line.

We have to not be afraid of those fights - San Francisco mayor Ed Lee in an interview with Foreign Correspondent’s Stephanie March.

There’s more at stake than federal funding. In California – which is on track to declare itself a “sanctuary state”, undocumented migrants account for a full tenth of the workforce.

The dishwashers, the cooks, the people picking your fruit – the whole economy really is founded on undocumented cheap labour – Nancy Charrago, San Francisco store owner

Mr Trump’s chief targets are what he calls “bad hombres” - the estimated 800,000 undocumented migrants with criminal convictions.

One of them is Mexican-born Joaquin Sotelo, who was eight when his mum brought him to America. Later he served three years in jail for domestic assault. He also served five years fighting for the US in the Iraq war and has three children, all US citizens.

He now lives in a halfway house for damaged veterans. His service counts for nought

I’m now facing deportation even though I’m a US Navy veteran. This is my home. This is what I went and fought for. I deserve to be here - Joaquin Sotelo

Stories like Sotelo’s just don’t wash with people like Don Rosenberg, whose son was killed in San Francisco by an unlicensed driver, a Honduran who had come to the US illegally and who had earlier been caught without a licence.

Once they get here and commit a crime, we’re protecting them. We’re supporting them. That’s the story that needs to be told - Don Rosenberg

Stephanie March reports on the battle that’s widening the ideological divide in Donald Trump’s America. Resist! airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday April 11 and 10.30 am Thursday April 13 on ABC TV, and 6.30 pm Sunday April 16 on News 24. Also on iView.

[TV.Cynic]

##Saving the Big Blue

Tuesday 18 April at 9.30pm

A band of inspired young Australians are deploying a new weapon against a global scourge – the great gobs of plastic polluting our oceans. Europe Correspondent Lisa Millar tells how they’re doing it.

Every year millions of tonnes of plastic wash into the world’s oceans, killing countless turtles, sea-birds and other marine life, before breaking down into tiny particles that infiltrate the food chain all the way from plankton to whales.

By one forecast the oceans could soon hold a kilo of plastic for every three kilos of fish.

Sounds hopeless? Not to a small team of surf-loving environmentalists who have challenged themselves – and their crowd of supporters on social media – to tackle the problem.

Everybody is aware of the ocean problem with plastics… and we came in at a time when the world was screaming for a solution – Australian Pete Ceglinski

Ceglinski used to design plastic products. He’s now gone full circle. A year ago he raided his life savings and launched a crowd-funding drive to chase his dream of creating a cheap device to suck plastic and other rubbish from polluted harbours and marinas.

We’ve quit our jobs, we’ve taken all our money and we’ve put our hearts and souls into making this happen – Pete Ceglinski

Now his small Australian-led team is readying the invention – the Seabin - for market.

It’s really exciting but at the same time we’re all sort of on edge – Sascha Chapman, Seabin team

Correspondent Lisa Millar joins the young team in Majorca as they face a crucial deadline. Just days before they’re due to demonstrate the Seabin to backers and sceptical officials, they hit technical problems.

It would be pretty bad if we don’t get this done. If it fails somehow, then there’s going to be a bit of a backlash and negativity about it – Pete Ceglinski

The team sees a day when the Seabin will be used in ports all over the world. But for that to happen, first they must pull off a successful demo at La Grande Motte.

Seabin is definitely not going to save the world, but it’s a start – Pete Ceglinski

Will it all go to plan? Watch Lisa Millar’s story Saving the Big Blue on Foreign Correspondent 9.30 pm Tuesday April 18 and 10.30 am Thursday April 20 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday April 23 on the ABC NEWS channel. Also on ABC iView.

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###The Real Great Escape

Tuesday 25 April at 9.30pm

Foreign Correspondent tells the true story behind the legendary movie The Great Escape – and the overlooked role of Australians in breaking out of the “escape proof” German POW camp.

It’s one of cinema’s memorable moments: American Steve McQueen powering a motorcycle through paddocks and hurtling over fences after breaking out of a German POW camp.

Small problem…

Among the 76 Allied airmen who escaped via the ingeniously built tunnels under Stalag Luft III, there was not one American. There were, however, six Australians.

To round off Anzac Day, Foreign Correspondent reprises the true story of two of those Australians – John “Willy” Williams and Reg “Rusty” Kierath, old schoolmates who were joined again by circumstance at Stalag Luft.

Reporter Eric Campbell accompanies Willy’s niece – journalist Louise Williams – and Rusty’s nephew Peter Kierath – as they return to what’s left of Stalag Luft and meet up with the relatives of other Great Escapers.

That was definitely Mission Impossible – Peter Kierath

The planning and construction of the tunneI, the fooling of the Nazis and the climactic escape make for a rousing story of derring do. But cruelty prevailed in the end. Nearly all the prisoners were recaptured. An incensed Hitler ordered 50 of them shot, Willy and Rusty among them.

It was really quite a pivotal turning point in the war in terms of exposing the Nazis for who they really were and how absolutely amoral and brutal they were – Louise Williams

This story, first aired in 2012, is updated and introduced by Louise Williams, who has chronicled the event in her recent book “A True Story of the Great Escape”.

“The Real Great Escape” airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday April 25 (Anzac Day) and 10.30 am Thursday April 27 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday April 30 on the ABC NEWS channel. Also on iView.