Past Programs
Poverty - 2008
Transient Tales
13/07/2008
Tonight, while many of us are tucked snugly in our beds, countless numbers will be seeking refuge under a car, a railway station bench, or a public park. These are the people with no fixed address, learning to live on the streets.
In this program we hear tales from the homeless. Ex-military men explain how they ended up without shelter, while another individual reveals that his family have no idea that he has dropped out of the rental market.
Jhyimy makes the cliffs of Bondi his home. He shares his stories of surviving without charity. We hear how he feeds himself and his seagull companions, and why a set of golf clubs can be the most important possession in the world.
- Watch a short film Bondi Beach dweller, Jhyimy.
Green Tea and Landmines
09/03/2008
We're heading to the Thai-Burma border to the highly politicised town of Mae Sot. The streets of Mae Sot are full of stories of loss and death and flight. Some Burmese people crossed the border into Thailand illegally and have been living here for twenty years, many for more than ten, while thousands are arriving right now.
Another fifty thousand people live in Mae La, the nearest refugee camp. And there are a hundred thousand more refugees in other camps in Thailand. But possibly the most overwhelming fact is that about two and a half million Burmese have fled their country for Thailand, many simply in search of work. Burma remains one of the poorest countries in the world and the protests against the military dictatorship last year did little to change the lives of people.
While we're in Mae Sot we visit the extraordinary Dr Cynthia Maung's Mae Tao Clinic. It's as much haven as clinic. Funded mainly by foreign donations, Mae Tao Clinic runs the training centre for the Backpack Medical Teams and the Free Burma Rangers, both of whom illegally cross the border back into Burma to help the country's ethnic minorities survive the onslaught of the Burmese military.
The clinic is also where people come to vaccinate their babies, to be treated for malaria or cholera, or to receive a prosthetic leg when they've lost theirs to a landmine. Many of the villagers who come to the clinic are fleeing the Burmese military after being forced to act as unwilling porters, or even as human landmine detectors.
We also meet long-time political prisoners from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, as well as Karen and Shan ethnic Burmese working to help their own people in their struggle against the military inside Burma. Over the last ten years the Burmese army has destroyed around three thousand ethnic villages. Some of the people from those villages are now living in hiding inside Burma; some are in Thailand. Many of them are children who have crossed the border alone.
- Watch the short documentary Steps to Freedom, filmed inside Burma by the Free Burma Rangers.
A Life of Ashes
17/02/2008
There are more than 40 million widows in India today and for a large proportion of these women, their lives are what some have referred to as a living sati, a reference to the now outlawed practice of widow burning. A woman's diet, dress, and even sexuality all suddenly become part of the public realm the moment her husband dies.
Producer Dheera Sujan is an Indian herself and the daughter of a widow. In 'A Life of Ashes' she weaves her own experiences with those of the women she met.
