Photo Credit- Sebastião Salgado

"It is estimated that there is one land mine per inhabitant in Angola"  (Salgado).  That means that every human living in Angola has the possibility of one-day falling victim to a landmine.  Throughout nearly four decades of war that Angola has endured, an estimated 10 to 12 million mines have been laid by both the Angola army and foreign armies  (Salgado).  The above picture, taken by Sebastião Salgado, depicts two landmine victims in Angola, Africa.  While the situation of these two women is terrible, it unfortunately is not uncommon.  Landmines have left 36 countries today suffering from casualties, handicaps, loss of livestock, and loss of land.  The cost of laying a mine falls between 3 and 10 U.S dollars, but the cost of deactivating and removing a single land mine is between 300 and 1,000 U.S dollars.  Most of the countries covered in landmines do not have the money needed to remove these mines, and so they continue to suffer in silence.

 

Photo Credit- Camree Johnson

In 1928 Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, started an influential communist party in Cambodia called the Khumer Rouge, and eventually took presidency in 1975  (Pol Pot).  Pol Pot ruled Cambodia in terror until 1998 when he was allegedly poisoned, by his very own Khumer Rouge.  During his rain, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and both Pol Pot and the Vietnamese army laid land mines all over Cambodia in counter attack of each other.  Today Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world, second to Angola; estimating ten million mines in a country of 11.5 million people  (Landmines).   The above picture depicts two landmine victims playing instruments on the streets, living off of the generosity of tourists because they are not able to work their land for income.  Landmines are vast in Cambodia, and lay hidden in families’ yards, school yards, the jungle- everywhere there is land, there is likely to be mines.  In talking with a family friend from Cambodia he explained; “Everyone in Cambodia has at least one relative who has been injured or killed by a landmine.  I myself have several, but am lucky to have never stepped on one myself”  (Vannak).  Studies have revealed that traumatic suffering at an early age carries through to later life; education rates among child survivors of landmines are lower than average while school drop-outs are more frequent, diminishing employment prospects later on  (Shah).

Works cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity In Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. Print.

Vannak, Soriya. Personal INTERVIEW. 27 January 2010.

Shah, Anup. “Landmines.” Global Issues, Updated: 27 Nov. 2009. Accessed: 28 Jan. 2010. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/79/landmines>

"Tanzania." wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 2009. Web. 20 Jan. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania

"Pol Pot." wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 2009. Web. 26 Jan. 2010.

"Landmines in Cambodia." SEAsite - SE Asian Languages and Cultures. Web. 28 Jan. 2010. .

Photo credit

 

Salgado, Sebastião. Rwandans Take Refuge In Tanzania. Migrations: Humanity In Transition. New York. Aperture. 2000.155.https://blackboard.byu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

 Photo Credit: Sebastião Salgado

Most of us I am sure are very, painfully, aware of the recent disaster that struck Haiti, but how many of us are aware of the people today that still suffer from disasters that occurred more than twenty years ago?  That is the purpose of my blog: to inform the world of past and present human tragedies to increase both awareness and action in our world. 
The focus of my blog entry today is on the “kidnappings” in Sudan brought on by the Second Sudanese War. 
At the onset of the Second Sudanese War in 1983, both the government and rebel forces were continually stealing young and able men from their villages and forcing them to fight on their side.  Tearing families apart during an already troubling time in Sudan, the government and rebel forces used these young men as pawns on a chessboard in their fight for stability and power.  In an attempt to salvage the lives of their children and ensure them the chance at a future: many Sudanese families would send their young sons away by the cart-full to refugee camps in northern Kenya. The picture above-taken by Salgado- is a cart full of Sudanese boys migrating to Kenya to escape the horrors of war they will surely face if they stay. 
In an interview with a close family friend Abdullah Laota, who grew up in Sudan, he referred to this disgusting act as “People Catching” (Laota).  He claimed “Those who have connections or money, bad things don’t happen to them.  They can bribe or pay their way to safety, it is the poor who suffer”  (Laota).  He explained “They take them, send them, and call it ‘National Service’” (Laota).  According to Laota, this “people catching” is still happening in Sudan, not to the same extent as it was ten years ago, but it is a very real on-going threat that Sudanese families still face.  When asked if he was ever forced to serve in the military he responded with “al hamdella I never joined any political party or served in the military, although they tried.  They tried to convince and recruit everyone”  (Laota). 
Although the worst of this problem was in years passed, the problem continues today and many suffer from it.  It is  our duty as members of humanity to give aid where and when we can.  Although I myself have no solutions to this problem, together we can find ways that we can help diminish this problem, or at least the effects of it.        


Laota, Abdullah. Personal INTERVIEW. 20 January 2010.

Photo credit-   Salgado, Sebastião. Rwandans Take Refuge In Tanzania. Migrations: Humanity In Transition. New York. Aperture. 2000.155.

Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944, in Aimores Brazil (Wikipedia.) He is a social documentary photographer and well-known photojournalist (Wikipedia.)  Salgado is famous for his many pictures, but particularly well known for his book of pictures published in 2000, called "Migrations: Humanity In Transition."  For this book Salgado traveled to 39 different countries and photographed the often-unseen horrors of migrations forced upon millions of people worldwide (Wikipedia.)

Salgado was himself a migrant in his childhood, and so he feels more than just sympathy for the people he photographs, he feels empathy, because he was once in their very place.  Moving from town to town, and eventually from Brazil to France to escape political instability, Salgado says of his photographs; “This story that I'm photographing is my story also. I am a migrant, too.”  (qtd. In PDN and Kodak)

Salgado’s purpose in taking and publishing his pictures was to inform the world of what revulsion much of our world is constantly suffering, in hopes that we may unite and provide relief those who need it.  “I want to show the immigrants' dignity, to show their courage and their entrepreneurial spirit and to demonstrate how they enrich us all with their individual differences."  -Sebastião Salgado. (qtd. In PDN and Kodak)

 the complete works of Sebastião Salgado include:

• An Uncertain Grace (1992)
• Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1993), includes photos from 26 countries
• Terra (1997)
• Migrations (2000), includes photos from 39 countries
• The Children: Refugees and Migrants (2000)
• Sahel: The End of the Road (2004)
• Africa (2007)

Photo credit-   Salgado, Sebastião. Rwandans Take Refuge In Tanzania. Migrations: Humanity In Transition. New York. Aperture. 2000.155.


Research On Salgado Works cited-
"Sebastião Salgado." wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 2009. Web. 13 Jan. 2010.


Photo District News. "Kodak Professional Present: Legends Online. Migrations." PDN and Kodak (1999) n.pag. Web. 13 Jan. 2010

This picture represents me because i have always been fascinated by different cultures, and love to travel from country to country and document different cultures around the world.