Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

LEAVE NO DARK CORNER

Tuesday 18 September 18 at 8:00pm

China is marrying Big Brother to Big Data. Every citizen will be watched and their behaviour scored in the most ambitious and sophisticated system of social control in history. Matthew Carney reports.

It’s innocuously called “Social Credit”. In fact, it’s a dystopian personal scorecard for every one of China’s 1.4 billion citizens.

Jaywalking, late paying of bills or taxes, buying too much alcohol or, much worse, mouthing off against the government will see you lose points and accumulate punishments like the right to travel by plane or train.

Model citizens, fear not. You will gain bonus points and rewards like the waiving of deposits on hotels and rental cars.

“If people keep their promises they can go anywhere in the world. If people break their promises they won’t be able to move an inch!” Jie Cong, Tianjin General Manager, financial credit system Alipay

“Leave No Dark Corner” is a slogan China’s authorities have long used to root out “unstable elements”. It can equally be applied to Social Credit, which builds on China’s formidable history of surveilling its people.

Already about 200 million cameras sweep its cities. That number is set to triple by 2020. Combine these with rapid advances in facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking, add each individual’s digital history and behaviours, and there you have it: a personal score ranking your trustworthiness.

Dandan, a young mother and marketing professional, is proud of her high credit score. If she keeps it up her infant son will be more likely to get into a top school.

"China likes to experiment in this creative way… I think people in every country want a stable and safe society.” Dandan

“We need a social credit system. We hope we can help each other, love each other and help everyone to become prosperous.” Dandan’s civil servant husband Xiaojing

Social Credit is still being trialled – it’s supposed to be fully operational by 2020 – but already an estimated 10 million people are paying the price of a low rating. Corruption-busting journalist Liu Hu is one of them.

“The government regards me as an enemy.” Liu Hu

After exposing official corruption, Liu Hu was arrested, jailed and fined. Now a poor Social Credit rating bars him from travelling by plane or fast train. His social media accounts with millions of followers have been suspended. He struggles to find work.

“This kind of social control is against the tide of the world. The Chinese people’s eyes are blinded and their ears are blocked. They know little about the world and are living in an illusion.” Liu Hu

From Beijing, Correspondent Matthew Carney travels to the north western province of Xinjiang, where China’s surveillance machine is at its most ruthless. Here, the UN estimates that about 1 million Islamic Uighur people are being held in re-education camps.

“The surveillance system suddenly ramped up after the end of 2016. Since then, advanced surveillance technology which we’ve never seen, never experienced, never heard of, started appearing.” Tahir Hamut, Uighur poet and filmmaker who fled to the US

Leave No Dark Corner, Matthew Carney’s chilling report on China’s digital dictatorship, airs on Foreign Correspondent at 8 pm Tuesday September 18 and 1.30 pm Friday September 21 on ABC TV and at 7.30 pm AEST on Saturday September 22 on the ABC News Channel; also on iview.

[JohnsonTV]

Matthew Carney has written an excellent article on his experience in Xinjiang trying to film for this week’s episode.

The struggles of reporting on China's secret Uighur 're-education camps'

[TV.Cynic]

Foreign Correspondent Series Return

Tuesday 8 January

[TV.Cynic]

Promo for 8 January return

[TV.Cynic]

MAN vs WILD

Tuesday 8 January at 8pm

In India’s far east, wild elephants are in deadly, daily conflict with people. Siobhan Heanue follows the clashes as roaming herds get squeezed by shrinking forests and a growing human population.
Our Indian cameraman Gurmeet saw the attack as he fled…

“I saw a cloud of dust, one elephant charging over one man, and that man got under the feet of the elephant. We thought ‘this dude is dead’.”
The man under the elephant was our local guide, Sanu. Amazingly he survived, with just a few scratches.

“My feet slipped… the elephant hit me. I’m lucky, or I’d be dead by now,” Sanu explains to his wife. “Why were you such a show-off?” she snaps.

Danger is ever-present in Assam state in India’s north east, where 6000 elephants live among 30 million people. The animals’ forest habitat is being sliced up for new rice paddies, tea plantations, roads and villages. Their old migratory trails, up to 1000 kilometres long, are strewn with man-made obstacles.

So the big herds are hemmed in, with nowhere to go. They raid villages and crops for food. They kill and terrify local people. Last year in Assam state alone, elephants killed at least 64 people.

Elephants are sacred in India and evoke the image of the popular Hindu deity Ganesh. But patience is thin among farmers when entire rice harvests are destroyed.

“Yes, they’re hungry but we’re hungry too ,” says Sharayan Bodo, who guards his crop at night armed with a crude spear. “Lord Ganesh is a god, but elephants are not. To us, they’re demons.”
As correspondent Siobhan Heanue discovers, the elephants are taunted nearly everywhere they go as crowds of locals pelt them with rocks, firecrackers and shot pellets. Sometimes they move on, as intended. Sometimes they attack.

“I’m still shaking from the noise and ferocity of something that big coming towards you,” says Heanue, after fleeing an angry female elephant which had been separated from her calf.

“Due to the encounters with humans, the elephants have changed their behaviour,” says conservationist and filmmaker Rita Banarji. “They are more aggressive than they used to be.”
Despite the conflict and a recent fall in India’s elephant population, Banarji is determinedly optimistic. She sees a “win-win situation” ahead and sets out how to strike a delicate balance between the needs of people and those of the giants that roam among them.

Man vs Wild – a vivid illustration of development colliding with nature, airs when Foreign Correspondent returns to ABC TV at 8 pm AEDT Tuesday January 8 and on the ABC NEWS Channel at 7.30 pm AEDT Saturday January 12 and 5.30 pm AEDT Sunday January 13; also on iview.

[JohnsonTV]

The Australian reports Emma Alberici’s report, Secret Sardinia, about the poisoning of the Italian island’s people, animals and idyllic coastline by the testing of toxic military weapons, was accused by Australian/Italian filmmaker Lisa Camillo for being too similar to her own documentary, Balentes.

[JohnsonTV]

ABC Statement on Secret Sardinia

Lisa Camillo has made serious and unfounded claims, including in The Australian, about the 29 January Foreign Correspondent story “Secret Sardinia”.

“Secret Sardinia” is an original current affairs report containing extensive new research and material, including key interviews, the findings of the 2018 Scanu parliamentary inquiry and the charging of the eight former commanders of PISQ.

Camillo’s documentary “Balentes” was just one of a range of sources Foreign Correspondent included in its extensive research.

Camillo was employed by the ABC as a researcher for three weeks specifically in order to facilitate access to contacts and material for Foreign Correspondent. As Camillo acknowledged by email on 27 November: “(W)e’re discovering a lot more than we did for my documentary.”

[TV.Cynic]

Foreign Correspondent - Series Return

Tuesday 6 August at 8:00pm

HIGH STEAKS

Will Silicon Valley kill the cowboy?

America’s multi-billion-dollar meat industry is threatened by meat substitutes that promote themselves as healthier and more environmentally friendly. The industry is fighting back, pumping huge sums to stop start-ups marketing their products as “meat”. But it’s also having a bet each way, with some giant meat companies sinking serious money into plant and animal cell-based substitutes.

Craig Reucassel rides with slow-talking Texas cowboys who decry the “fakery”, visits the Silicon Valley labs which are driving this food revolution and persuades hard core carnivores to blind taste the real thing and the substitute product.

[TV.Cynic]

Motherland

Tuesday 20 August at 8pm

Ukraine is the new ‘go-to’ destination for couples desperate to be parents. But our investigation uncovers an industry out of control that exploits surrogate mothers and leaves babies abandoned.

With international surrogacy now banned in Thailand and India, a thriving industry has sprung up in Ukraine, attracting couples from around the world, including Australia.

But how much do would-be parents really know about the business which delivers their baby?

In Motherland , Europe correspondent Samantha Hawley goes behind the slick surrogacy websites and glossy brochures to expose the industry’s dark underbelly.

In a 6-month investigation, Foreign Correspondent meets those caught up in Ukraine’s baby business and uncovers an industry with few rules and fewer scruples.

The new parents

“It was a reckless decision to make, because we didn’t have all the facts,” says English woman Kate who turned to surrogacy after an illness left her unable to have a child.

When the birth of her baby boy went badly, Kate couldn’t get him the urgent medical help he needed. She realised she was out of her depth. Now she worries about the long-term health effects on her baby.

The surrogate mother

“They don’t treat you as a human being,” says one birth mother, who signed up as a surrogate to feed her family after the war with Russia left her homeless.

To earn a small fee, she endured forced terminations, caesareans and callous treatment at the hands of her agency. “Surrogate mothers…we’re just a flow of incubators,” she says.

The abandoned child

We track down a little girl living in a children’s home outside Kiev. She’s been rejected by her American parents and is now stateless and an orphan.

This is a common story, says Ukraine’s Children’s Ombudsman, who has reports of at least ten children left behind by the parents and agencies who ‘commissioned’ them.

“This is an immoral business ,” says the Ombudsman. “ It does harm.”
The businessman
And we put hard questions to the owner of one of Ukraine’s biggest surrogacy agencies, a man who’s facing charges of child-trafficking and tax avoidance.

Join us for this gripping and gut-wrenching tale.

Motherland airs on ABC TV at 8pm AEST Tuesday 20th August and again on Friday 23rd August at 1.30pm. It can also be seen on ABC NEWS channel on Wednesday 21st at 5:30am, Saturday 24th at 9.30pm & Sunday 25th at 5.30pm, plus anytime on ABC iview.

[TV.Cynic]

Mother Courage

Tuesday 10 September at 8pm

This is a story of love, hope and forgiveness overcoming evil.

During the Rwandan genocide 25 years ago, thousands of women were raped and bore the child of their attacker. For some of these women, like Rose, their baby’s face was their attacker’s; today Rose and her now adult daughter still struggle to relate to each other, but they’re working at it. For others like Eugenie, her two children born from rape were loved unconditionally.

Now those kids are coming of age and making successful careers – a reflection of how Rwandans have been able to forgive, but not forget, and to create a new prosperity out of the darkness.

Sally Sara reports.

Testing Times

Tuesday 17th September at 8pm

As Australia grapples with a spate of deaths at music festivals, Triple J presenter Tom Tilley heads to Europe to see drug testing in action. But is it the only way to keep people safe?

https://twitter.com/ForeignOfficial/status/1171371487363833858?s=20

Mother Courage

Tuesday 1 October at 8pm

They’re young, passionate and they want to save the planet.

Foreign Correspondent profiles three young women in three continents who are sounding the alarm on climate change.

These committed activists are part of a global network of young people seeking to put pressure on world leaders before a crucial climate conference in New York.

The meeting has been described as ‘the last chance’ to keep global warming in check. As they head to the Big Apple we ask, can they make a difference?

We follow them as they take part in protests, manage hectic media schedules, and prepare world- wide climate strikes in the lead up to the New York conference.

[Salty]

News Breakfast co-host Lisa Millar is reporting next week (24 September).

[JohnsonTV]

The State of Denmark

Tuesday 8 October at 8pm

It’s one of the most open and equal countries in the world. Denmark has long had a reputation for welcoming migrants and protecting its minorities. But these days there are fractures in this once cohesive society. Its mood of tolerance has shifted and now migrants feel on the outer.

“When do you feel Danish? What is Danish?” asks actress and comedian Ellie Jokar, who arrived in Denmark from Iran with her family when she was four. Now she feels she lives in a no man’s land.

"I define myself as a grey zone kid because people like me are not accepted by the Danes and not accepted by the Muslims.”

In recent years, the government has passed a hundred laws which place strict controls on immigrants: they’ve frozen the intake of refugees, banned the burqa in public and made it mandatory for children of migrants to attend Danish cultural training from the age of one.

The laws are some of the most draconian in Europe and have the backing of both sides of politics. Some areas with large immigrant populations have been designated as ‘ghettos’, where you get double the punishment for a crime.

Foreign Correspondent reporter Hamish Macdonald travels through Denmark in midsummer and takes the temperature of a country in the middle of an identity crisis.

He meets a far-right politician whose provocative stunts include kicking around the Koran and who often needs a police entourage when he appears in public. He wants all Muslims deported.

Hamish visits a young Muslim woman who has been driven indoors by the burqa ban, and he has lunch with the local councillor who’s making pork compulsory on the menu at restaurants and schools in his area.

“If you want to be integrated and accepted, they must also accept the way we live,” he says.

Hamish also takes a ride in Ellie’s pink taxi – made famous in her popular YouTube show – where she interviews Danes from all sides of the political fence, using humour to navigate and explore the cultural divide.

“I meet people that are different than me… and I try to get to the bottom of, how did they become extreme Muslims? Extremist right wing?” she says. But Ellie is increasingly worried about the growing divisions in her country and longs for strong leaders who can build bridges.

“So the Danes are over here. The Muslims are over here and…they don’t really know how to communicate.”

[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.

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