Other Stories
Some stories were for regional television in Cologne, Germany. To get a foothold in the local TV station was not easy. I knew no one and German is not my mother language. However, I looked for stories that may be of interest. I used to just pop into the regional TV office, I knew nobody but with my journalist pass I got through security. The thing is, you got to walk in as if you own the place. To tell you the truth I was terrified. You walk in an office floor, knowing no one and hoping no one asks me what I’m doing. At least 15 visits before I got a story. Here it is a sweet little piece about a tea taster. A film about a British tea taster a German’s ‘cup of tea’. (Ugh)
Anthony Darley, Tea Taster Extraordinaire
As with most things in life there is a story within the story. I knew Mr Darley as I interviewed him for radio years ago. And because of him I got my first ever radio scoop! He told me about his job. 300 to 400 samples a day, he tasted. When he goes home, does he drink tea? No. He has a beer!
About the scoop! That night I could not sleep, something was at the back of mind! Then it suddenly occurred to me, an incredible story I heard whilst at Teekanne (Teapot) GmbH. A tragic story. Before interviewing Mr Darley, I met the director of TeeKanne GmbH. Rolf Anders, the director was running a very big successful company and spoke impeccable English with a slight mid-Atlantic accent twang. We got talking about tea bag machines and he told me he was in the 1930s wanting to buy these machines in America, when the ‘tragedy’ happened. Tragedy, I asked him?
On the 6th May, 1937 Mr Anders was waiting for his father to arrive on the Hindenburg a giant airship at Lakehurst airport in New Jersey. This giant air vessel exploded before his very eyes. There is footage of this tragedy and you can hear the reporter describing the terrible fire. The footage is truly remarkable the reporter gets very emotional when he sees the airship on fire. It is a wonder, if you look at the footage that some of the passengers actually survived. Unfortunately, the father of Mr Anders passed away.
So next day I rushed to the office, told my boss, phoned Mr Anders and got an interview. I still have the professional radio audio tape and hope to someday digitalise it.
In the small clip Mr Darley talks German.
Window Cleaner
Driving one day I saw this guy cleaning the windows at a height of over 250 metres! Great pictures.
Dogs and Dental Treatment
This was a sort of challenge. Could I make a short news item piece about dogs dental care? Could I sell the idea? This story comes with a slight confession. Just after the closing shot I could not resist but to edit a little bark of our main character!
My Mum says that she saw a fortune teller when younger and she told her, a son would always be around her when she got old. It just so happened I was filming story after story from my neck of the woods in north west England. I became a mummy’s boy!
Ship under Arrest
I covered a few stories for the national Breakfast TV channel. They liked ‘quirky’ European stories.
Following Tito’s death in 1980 and the disintegration of Yugoslavia ethnic-nationalism led to the Yugoslav wars. In response to this conflict international sanctions were imposed by the European Union against Serbia and Montenegro. Ships sailing under the Serbian flag were stuck in harbour throughout Europe. It so happened in Liverpool there was such a ship the MV Playa run by a skeleton crew a Moslem and two orthodox Christians. They were like brothers, the three musketeers. They wanted to go home to their families who were suffering like them. My late father was a Chief Marine Engineer; I love these type of stories. I think of my Greek dad, visiting him on his ship. Going in the engine room.
To add spice to the story there was an apparent ‘naughty’ German angle. The MV Playa was placed in a high security harbour next to toxic waste sent for waste treatment from Germany. And then it happened on 8th August 1994 a huge explosion causing a toxic inferno barely 50 metres from the ship. It took 100 firefighters 36 hours to put out. If the wind on that day had carried the fumes in their direction they could have all been gassed.
After the explosion the ship was covered in chemical waste. The Liverpool people were great. One of the poorest regions in Europe but many people were doing all they could to help the three men. The ships assets were frozen so the men got no wages. They had to rely on hand outs from the local community. Fellow countrymen and well-wishers visit them. The three men missed their wives and kids very much.
There was another ship story I did. A ship from Nigeria with lots of cadets. Not considered sea worthy, the cadets and sailors where not allowed on land (asylum). The locals were supporting these men. After a while it was called ‘The Love boat’. Many young ladies where visiting the ship and the cadets…
Other stories: Louise Woodward accused of murdering a baby who she was babysitting in the US mercifully avoided a terrifying prison sentence and returned home to wild jubilation. She had many supporters. Others, curry college, oldest Islamic community., German POW’s who stayed behind after the war, and then the cow thing! There were two cow scares in Germany. I’m responsible for one of them. The clip below was German breakfast TV asking me to smuggle a cow from England to Germany.
No problem.
Cow Smuggle
The story scare I started. In Northwest England I saw on regional TV whilst staying with Mum a farmer spraying his field with milk. Pictures of cows in a very sorry state and the farmer concerned about his livelihood. It turns out that some of his Friesland cows (some were imported from Germany) had BIV (Bovine immunodeficiency virus). I filmed him and the department got a reporter in the States to talk with one of the world’s most renowned BIV experts, Professor Snider from the University of Louisiana. The reaction among the viewers was that of complete shock. We’ve just been through the BSE thing, so called Mad Cow disease now BIV! The EU Agricultural minister Franz Fischler phones up the department on two occasions and made a statement about there being no cause for alarm. Viewers phoning up. Can I get AIDS from drinking milk?
Spain and Racism
I made a report in Spain SOS Racisme an anti-racist organisation who helped people, mostly from the African subcontinent get papers so they could look for work and find accommodation. SOS volunteers regularly visited schools to talk about racism. I like to think the people filmed in the 1990’s are now integrated.
Similar to many other European countries the Roma were confronted with prejudice despite the fact that they have been living in Spain for over 500 years however many were outside mainstream life living in a sort of ‘self – alienation’. SOS Racisme had a policy of encouraging the Roma to be part of society and to keep their cultural identity. Not an easy task, especially with the massive influx of Roma from Romania after the report was made. The so called ‘Spanish model’ concerning the integration of Roma people gained favour in other European Union countries with an emphasis on active citizenship and social integration such as access to health services and participation in
education.
Circus in Romania
This clip has my favourite ‘opening’ shot! There was the elephant trainer standing on a rock that moves! Earthquake? No he’s standing in an elephant in the sea. I got a thing about elephants. I love them. When I was a boy there was one that called round to my Mum’s garden for a visit. Round the corner from Mum’s Bed and Breakfast the circus came for a few months each year. Every morning this elephant would visit for a treat. I thought as a little boy elephants were part of our native animal world.
Austrian Circus Gartner were struggling to survive. After the fall of the wall in 1989 their existence was threatened. Life was getting too expensive and less people were visiting the circus. In Eastern Europe there was a greater enthusiasm for the circus. Instead of Eastern European business relying on the west, we had here a western business relying on the east.
Karachi
Raw material
I spent 2 years doing reports about Guantanamo Bay. (GTMO) Made visits with permission from the US authorities to their detention facility on 2 occasions. I was following the trail of a German detainee who was arrested in Karachi. I knew that Daniel Pearl was murdered in Karachi a few years before and like with all my trips I took very stringent precautions. I had a very good BBC fixer who did all the preparations for me. I took a camera with me and used a local cameraman.
I flew out to Karachi on the 24 the December 2002 and stayed at the Sheraton. There was a huge crater in the road just outside the hotel. A few months before 14 people, 11 of them French engineers were killed by a devastating explosion outside the hotel. Murdered by Islamic militants probably linked to al-Qaida. Quite frankly, the hotel seemed to be amazed that anybody from Europe was staying at their hotel. They gave me an incredible room and wanted that I feel ‘comfortable’, this meant they kept playing non-stop “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!”
The material below is raw material. A big part of my story was about the arrest and imprisonment in Karachi of a German – Turkish detainee called Murat Kurnaz. I managed to also get a very good interview with Moin Ud-Din Haider a retired three-star rank general and former Interior minister of Pakistan.
I followed the police on patrol and got access to the main prison in Karachi. One of the people in the opening shot happens to be the prison hangman. A shy, friendly man. More about him and what happened in my next book.
Casualties of War
During the Second World War the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the Dutch East Indies, known today as Indonesia. Approximately 42 000 Dutch nationals and 140 000 allied soldiers were taken prisoner. They suffered vicious and cruel physical punishments under the brutal, sadistic regime of Japanese guards. Approximately one in five of the POW’S died in captivity. Some of the children from the Dutch settlers are alive today, many still traumatised about what happened to them and their loved ones.
After the Japanese surrendered the Dutch government consented to Indonesian independence. Thousands of Dutch nationals, many suffering permanent physical and psychological damage were expelled to a war torn country that was not all that welcoming, the Netherlands. Today many of the children who endured cruelty and violence want recognition, apologies and final reparations from both Japan and the Netherlands. The Japanese official view is that the Dutch state bought off the rights of the victims, so any political and financial compensation had to be between the foundation representing the victims called ..’The Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts’ and the Netherlands. Dutch victims of the Japanese occupation say that Japan has not dealt with their war history and only when she acts upon her moral obligations, she may count on respect and forgiveness. Germany, in contrast, set an example with its ‘Wiedergutmachung’.
The elderly ‘children’ set up the ‘The Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts’ for the victims of Japanese occupation. I visited the foundation in Den Haag and talked with Mr J.F. Wagtendonk, the president of the foundation. He told me, ‘Japan and her people do not wish to honour their moral obligation by offering heartfelt and real apologies to the individual victims and compensating them financially, The Japanese people, particularly the young, are ill informed about the crimes, the damage and the insensitivity of the Japanese military machine.’ On a personal note I visited the Memorial Hall in Nanjing where an as many as 300 000 men, women and children were murdered. From the Chinese perspective, the Japanese government refuses to appropriately apologise for their despicable inhuman behaviour. The victims don’t want to be forgotten but time is the enemy of the persecuted. The foundation organizes monthly demonstrations at the Embassy of Japan in The Hague. I hope their children do the same till their plight is addressed.
The Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts also advocates for recognition of and reparations for Dutch ‘comfort women’. During the Japanese occupation, the Imperial Japanese organised the forced prostitution of thousands of women, for the benefit of their troops. In total some 200,000 women and girls from Australia, Burma, China, Netherlands, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and other countries were abducted and forced into sexual enslavement. When the women and girls desperately resisted, terrible scenes occurred.
Constantin and I made went to East Timor and met with two Japanese professors who work on behalf the Japan East Timor Coalition, which is committed to getting justice for past human rights abuses in East Timor. These abuses include the enslavement of women and girls by the Japanese military during World War II. Akihisa Matsuno from Osaka University who researched the East Timor conflict and his wife Kiyoko Furusawa, from the Economics department of Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. Both professors have opponents in Japan who hate their work. They are accused of discrediting Japan and even telling lies. We were very fortunate to have their support. They knew of an elderly lady called Ines Magadha who’d talk with us about her experiences. After we met, we had a two-day journey over some really rough terrain. Ines lives in Lasaun a village in the Ermera district.
East Timor’s such a beautiful country where something terrible happened. Thousands of young girls forced into prostitution. I can’t help but think that the depth of human suffering is often found amongst incredible beauty. The sun rising after a terrible slaughter, so to speak. I’ve seen ‘it’ on the border of Rwanda, in the Congo. A village called Kasika, reminding me of Switzerland with rich soil for farming with delightful, kind, poverty stricken people. A little girl in rags aged 8 told me she wants so much to go to school and I asked an elderly lady what she wished. ‘A blanket’, she said. And the late Mr Rupert Neudeck gave her a blanket, from us. Kasika happens to be a place of slaughter, and outright depravity. And then that teenager in Vietnam. The landscape was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Some of the most breath taking scenery the world has to offer, beautiful mounds of rock jutting out a dreamy landscape. The boy with dreadful psoriasis, stopped growing in childhood. A probable genetic victim of Agent Orange. He likes drawing but it was so painful for him to hold a pen. I can’t trust beauty, anymore.
And now, Ines. Her baby was born as a result of a forced encounter, amidst the horror of her life, this very young girl aged fifteen could not help but love and cherish her baby, Japanese father unknown. When talking with Ines, I avoided the word ‘rape’. Ines cared and nourished her little one. A beautiful baby girl. Then one day her child was taken from her. The soldier told her she’s going to Japan to have a better life and this girl child believed him. She told me, she often thinks of her little girl. She likes to think her daughter is alive and living a beautiful and happy life in Japan. This was at the back of her mind when she visited Japan in 2015 and 2016 to testify at a public hearing. That when she talked about the past a beautiful woman from the audience would cry out. ‘Mummy, Mummy it’s you.’ Ines does not believe her baby was murdered by the Imperial Japanese Army. Who after all would murder a little baby?
Comfort Women
Ines spoke a language called Kemak that very few people on the island understand. From Kemak the language was translated into Tetun the standard language of East Timor. So there were two translators. After her son Reonel translated Kemak to Tetun, Akihisa Matsuno translated for me, Tetun into English. I did reach out to the Japanese Embassy as representatives of the Japanese government in Dili for an interview concerning the treatment of women during the Second World War, no one was available for comment.
James Pastouna 