• An African Voice: Sorious Samura

• Legacy of a secret war

• Burma's freedom fighting comics

• Another Rwanda?

 

We said “Never again…”

Is the international community and the media repeating the same mistakes in Sudan that failed to prevent the Rwandan genocide?

In April 2004, the world marked the ten-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a chorus of mea culpas. “800,000 dead in just 100 days…and the world stood by and did nothing,” said one headline. “Genocide: We just ignored it,” said another. World opinion agreed: “Rwanda’s genocide could have been prevented”. Yet, as the international community engaged in its public hand-wringing, a similar catastrophe was unfolding in silence in Sudan’s western province of Darfur. Read more...

An African voice: interview with Sorious Samura

It is January 1999. On a street in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a young boy begs for his life. “My name is Gibrilla Kargbo,” he pleads with the pro-government soldiers that surround him. “I only came to find fish for us to cook. Don’t you people know me?” Coldly, casually, one of the soldiers shoves the boy a few metres along the road and guns him down. The picture freezes; the shocking image stands still on the television screen. “I am still haunted by this boy,” says the voice on the soundtrack. “My camera has saved lives, but not this time.” Read more...

Burma's freedom-fighting comedians

The Moustache Brothers were Burma's most famous performers until two of them received seven-year prison sentences for telling jokes critical of the military junta. Third brother, Lu Maw, tells of his family’s association with the pro-democracy movement, their struggle for freedom of expression (and a few jokes about his mother-in-law) Read more...