Martin Savidge hosts David Rayside and Rachel Tiven on LGBT politics and gay asylum. We begin the conversation with Jamaica, which makes up 17 of the 55 U.S. asylum cases won by Immigration Equality last year alone. We examine the metastasizing colonial and slave culture, entrenched poverty and rampant violence in Jamaica.

In 1994, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expanded asylum law to include persecution based on sexual orientation. Sexual orientation has been increasingly used as grounds for asylum. We also discuss how to begin the process of applying for gay asylum in the U.S.

From human rights abuses to political progress, the gay rights movement is at different stages throughout the world. We take a comparative look at the progress of LGBT politics and the gay rights movement in different countries, including the best and worst places to be gay.

A Greek gay rights parade. Photo: Megan Thompson

• Read about one gay Jamaican’s story of asylum: Gay men in Jamaica must lead two separate lives
• Watch signature videos from Jamaica: Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide and Gays in Jamaica worship in underground church
• Watch our signature video from Greece: Ancient Greek values clash with modern treatment of gays

GUESTS:

David Rayside is a political science professor at the University of Toronto. His latest book “Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions” is a comparative analysis of Canadian and  American political recognition of same-sex relationships, the extension of parenting rights to same-sex couples and the response to sexual diversity in public schooling. For over thirty years, he has also been an activist on issues related to sexual diversity and gender within academic institutions and beyond.

Rachel B. Tiven is the executive director of Immigration Equality, a national organization fighting for equal immigration rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive community. Under her leadership, Immigration Equality has doubled in size, quadrupled client services and opened a policy office in Washington, D.C.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven
Researcher: Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti, producer Micah Fink and director of photography Gabrielle Weiss report on the secret underground church that is welcoming gay men and women to practice their faith. Reverend Robert Griffin, an American priest, leads the secret church.  He believes religion is at the heart of Jamaica culture of homophobia, and the time has come to reinterpret the Bible for modern times.

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti, producer Micah Fink and director of photography Gabrielle Weiss report on the dark side of Jamaica’s anti-gay violence and attitudes and explore the ideological beliefs that perpetuate a culture of homophobia.

• Read Protecting our gay Jamaican sources and their confessions
• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

The signature story Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide reports on the dark side of Jamaica’s anti-gay violence and attitudes and explores the ideological beliefs that perpetuate a culture of homophobia.

Producer Micah Fink of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting produced the Worldfocus signature story “Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide.” He explains why we had to protect peoples’ identities.

For more information on HIV and homophobia in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Reporting for television on anti-gay violence in Jamaica is tricky.

It is widely believed that being openly gay in Jamaica is essentially a death sentence. That eventually, if you put your face on camera and admit you are gay, someone, sooner or later, will come along and kill you. Or attack your family. Or kill you and your family.

So we had to accept that anyone gay would not be willing to appear on television talking openly about their life experiences. We also agreed before we began filming that if we did find people willing to tell their stories, we would conceal their identities.

And we met many people, more than we could film, who were willing to be interviewed – and who trusted us to protect them from retribution.

There were only two exceptions.

One was a young gay woman who had been brutally attacked by anti-gay thugs and who was planning to flee Jamaica forever and apply for asylum in the United States. She agreed to openly tell her story as long as she was safely off the island when the film was broadcast. Unfortunately, her request for an American visa was denied, and she remains trapped in Jamaica, fearing for her life. And the footage we shot with her will likely never see the light of day.

The other exception was Reverend Robert Griffin, a gay American minister with the Metropolitan Community Churches, who agreed to appear on camera to tell the story of his efforts to build an underground church for Jamaica’s gay community. He is aware that he is risking his life by showing his face to the camera – since he often travels back and forth between Jamaica and the US – but he believes this is a risk worth taking. He sees himself as part of a long tradition of fighting for civil rights that passes through Martin Luther King and connects back to the anti-slavery movement and the underground railroad. And he believes that fighting for tolerance and human dignity for Jamaica’s gay community is a cause for which he is willing to risk everything.

Everyone else wanted to appear in silhouette.

I wasn’t sure at first if these darkened features, shot against a bright window frame, would convey the emotional intensity that is so essential for effective television story-telling. But after we filmed several young gay men speaking about their lives, it was clear this was material we simply had find a way to use.

I now think that the absence of specific visual details makes you listen more closely to the humanity of these voices, and that their remarks may even be more chilling and more universal than if you were able to see a particular, individual face.

“If you are gay in Jamaica, people want to kill you,” one young man told us, explaining how he has to change how he walks and talks so that he doesn’t draw attention to himself when he walks outside. “So I try to walk thuggish,” he explains.

Another young man tells us that he is now living in hiding. “Where I live it is very dangerous,” he says. “Most of the time I can’t come out during the day because people want to kill me.” Why do they want to kill him? “Because I’m gay,” he says.

He also tells how his best friend was murdered and chopped into tiny pieces – and how another friend was locked into his parent’s home and then burned alive.

“People who live here, once they find out that you’re gay, Battyman, let me use the word Battyman, they want to kill you,” says another young man. He goes on to explain that the police are also a serious threat. Just last week, he says, he was searched by several police officers who “razzle dazzled” him up, and then told him: “Bataman fi dead around here,” which means, translated from Jamaican, “We kill gay people around here.”

How do I know they were speaking the truth?

Partly from my 15 years of experience as a journalist—my inner sense told me while we were filming that these men were speaking openly about their lives. Most were poor and had nothing to gain from making up stories. And then there were the common themes that run through their accounts—that make their stories similar, while still being unique. Most of these men said they were afraid to disclose their sexual identity to their parents, or families, or girl friends, for fear of being rejected or expelled from their homes.

And then there are the odd, but very human inconsistencies.

Listen closely to the young gay man who goes by the pseudonym Damion and who says he believes that homosexuality runs counter to God’s will. “I read the Bible for myself and see in the Bible where it says Sodom and Gomorrah is wrong and God destroyed them, so I believe the practice is wrong,” he explained. “So what we need to do is try and put that in a restraining order and stop doing it.” he says. “It is a big challenge for your lifestyle to be changed from homosexual, to be free from it. I believe you need to go through a lot of prayer and fasting, dedication, commitment, and counseling that would help to bring you through that process. It is very hard to do, but I believe it can be done. I’m trying to climb that ladder but I keep falling back because it’s very hard to do. It’s very difficult to change your lifestyle.”

This is the confession of a man struggling with himself—his conscience battling both his sense of morality and his innate sexuality. Given the social context in which he lives, this seems to me to be a battle that he can never really win. Which I find as profoundly tragic as it is profoundly true.

- Micah Fink

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Daggerin’ dancing at the Passa Passa Dancehall in Kingston, Jamaica. Photos: Gabrielle Weiss

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti reported the signature story One island, two Jamaicas and a ‘whole heap’ of difference with Micah Fink and Gabrielle Weiss of the Pulitzer Center.

Lisa shares why Worldfocus didn’t broadcast daggerin’ images, addresses the realities of rampant violence and adolescent sex and recounts how some Jamaican artists are singing more uplifting gospel Dancehall music.

At the center of the music ban in Jamaica is daggerin’. Earlier this year, Jamaica’s national broadcasting commission banned sexually-explicit and violent lyrics and images related to daggerin’.

Worldfocus — based in New York City, not Kingston — also decided not to air these images because we thought our audience might be alarmed by the graphic nature of the dance. (Tell us below what you think of the daggerin’ images!) We didn’t mention daggerin’ in our video story because it begged the question…what is daggerin’?

Americans usually refer to this form of dancing as “freaking,” “bumping and grinding” or “dry-humping.” Urban clubs across the U.S. are packed with young people doing the American version of daggerin’.

In Jamaica, opponents of daggerin’ have described the dance as having sex with clothes on and even framed it as an aggressive, violent rape. Essentially, a woman bends over while a man pounds against her to the beat of the music. They liken the dance to a dagger stabbing piece of meat, violently and repeatedly.

The daggerin’ dance and the music that goes along with it slit Jamaican society. The Christian moral guard said children were overexposed to sex at an immature age. The defenders of Dancehall said the music mirrored the life and pressures in Jamaica’s poorest ghettos.

Turf wars and teen pregnancies

But behind the public music clash lurks the reality of rampant violence and adolescent sex in Jamaica.

Last year, 1,600 people were murdered mainly because of turf wars and reprisal killings. But this is still four to five  murders a day for an island the size of Connecticut with a population of 2.8 million. (Most murders are confined to waring communities and the result of turf wars and reprisal killings.)

As for sex, approximately 80 percent of children are born out of wedlock and 35 percent of Jamaican women are pregnant by age 19.

Put down the gun and praise the Lord to the tune of gospel Dancehall

Not all Dancehall music is “murder music,” and not all of it is so sexually charged it could electrocute you. The Dancehall genre can be broken down into three streams: hardcore (explicit), mainstream (radio and TV friendly) and gospel (uplifting and positive).

The Worldfocus signature story One island, two Jamaicas and a whole heap of difference focused on the hardcore Dancehall variety, examining Jamaican society through the lens of the public debate on daggerin’ music. Hardcore Dancehall has gained international airplay, but has also come under attack abroad. Concerts of Jamaican singer Buju Banton are currently being canceled in the U.S. because gay groups are saying his lyrics advocate the killing of homosexuals.

As for mainstream Dancehall, lyrics must be sanitized or changed completely for air play. For example, “Rampin’ Shop” became “Dumpling Shop.” The tune and rhythm were the same, but the lyrics were child-proofed.

When I was in Jamaica late last spring, I stopped over at Roots FM, a community-based radio station that pumps positive music and conversation into the inner cities. Every week, Dudley Thompson hosts “What’s the Verdict” — an American Idol styled contest where callers can vote on songs from emerging artists. The gospel Dancehall song “Same Gun” by Xtreme had won the contest. The song traces the cycle of violence committed by one gun that kills a person, is stolen and used again until it it is put down. The young artists of Xtreme, Chris D and Lyrical, dedicated the song to their three slain friends and hope their music encourages more peace and love.

LISTEN to Chris D and Lyrical’s song “Same Gun:”

Joel Harrison, known as Kruddy, is a DJ at 876radio.com and supports the music ban, believing that Dancehall artists are now forced to be more creative and are singing about the recession and fathers abandoning their children. Critics aren’t convinced the ban has had any real effect on artists because the realities in Jamaica’s inner city have not changed.

Keepin’ it safe with Daggerin’ condoms

And for his part, Vybz Kartel, whose sexually-explicit song “Rampin’ Shop” provoked the ban, has come out with a line of Daggerin’ condoms. Now you can dagger away to his sexually-explicit music, and should you feel compelled to take off your clothes, you’re equipped with his Daggerin’ brand of condoms. See the commercial below…and let me know what you think of the daggerin’ debate.

- Lisa Biagiotti

• Watch the signature story about how public responses to the ban reveal the legacy of two Jamaicas dating back to the country’s slave history: One island, two Jamaicans and a ‘whole heap’ of difference.
• Watch Jamaican Dancehall artist Spice sing about the poverty plaguing Jamaica’s ghettos.
• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti, producer Micah Fink and director of photography Gabrielle Weiss examine the public debate that erupted earlier this year when graphic Dancehall music lyrics and images were banned from Jamaica’s airwaves. The public responses reveal the legacy of two Jamaicas dating back to the country’s slave history.

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• Read about the controversy over music and dance related to daggerin’ and the variety of Dancehall music here: No daggerin’ on Jamaican TV and on Worldfocus.
• Watch Jamaican Dancehall artist Spice talk and sing about her life story: Dancehall artist sings of poverty plaguing Jamaica’s ghettos.
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Grace Hamilton, known as Spice, is one of Jamaica’s most prominent Dancehall artists. She and Vybz Kartel came under attack for their duet “Rampin’ Shop.” Not all of Spice’s songs are so sexually graphic. In the video below, Spice talks (and sings) about growing up in Jamaica’s ghettos.

Listen to the song Rampin’ Shop by Vybz Kartel and Spice that caused a culture war in Jamaica:

• Read about the controversy over music and dance related to daggerin’ and the variety of Dancehall music here: No daggerin’ on Jamaican TV and on Worldfocus.
• Watch the signature story about how public responses to the ban reveal the legacy of two Jamaicas dating back to the country’s slave history: One island, two Jamaicans and a ‘whole heap’ of difference.
• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Daljit Dhaliwal sits down with Julia Greenberg, the associate director of AIDS-Free World, a global advocacy group tackling HIV/AIDS. They place Jamaica’s AIDS epidemic within the context of the Caribbean region, address anti-sodomy laws in Jamaica and around the world and identify the successes and shortcomings Jamaica has experienced in containing the epidemic.

Daljit and Julia also look at the role women play in the epidemic. Women make up half of the adults living with the virus in the Caribbean, and are infected by “bridging populations” — bi-sexual men who are leading double lives. Julia raises the possibility of linking women’s rights with gay rights to tackle the spread of the epidemic.

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

TRANSCRIPT:

Daljit Dhaliwal: Hello, I’m Daljit Dhaliwal of Worldfocus, and joining me now is Julia Greenberg. She is the associate director of AIDS-Free World, a global advocacy group tackling HIV and AIDS, and she responsible for the Caribbean region. Julia, thank you very much for joining us.

Julia Greenberg: I’m delighted to be here.

Daljit Dhaliwal: So, give us some background on AIDS and HIV in the Caribbean, especially in Jamaica. Start off with that. What are the rates of infection and what are the trends that we are seeing?

Julia Greenberg: Sure. I think the most important thing to know is that in the general population the HIV prevalence rate is 1.6 percent. But if you look at the population of men having sex with men — the gay community — that prevalence rate soars to 31.1 percent.

Daljit Dhaliwal: And what is being done about trying to reach out to these groups and to try and educate them about HIV and AIDS, and to come up with preventative measures?

Julia Greenberg: Well, I think you have to step back when you look at the issue when it comes to men who have sex with men in Jamaica and look at the terrible culture of homophobia that is pervasive throughout the country. So there is a sodomy law — gay men’s lives are criminalized. So, in one of the segments thatWorldfocus aired earlier this week, in fact, there was a gay man who said, “AIDS is not killing us, people are killing us” referring to the very high murder rates of gay men in Jamaica.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Do you think it would make a difference if these laws around sodomy were decriminalized in Jamaica?

Julia Greenberg: I think it would be part of making a difference. I think we have to attack it several different ways. One is definitely getting rid of this sodomy law, which criminalizes sex between men. So if you’re going to do effective prevention for the population most affected by AIDS in Jamaica you would have to actually talk about the kind of sex that they engage in, and you can’t do that because that kind of sex is against the law.

Daljit Dhaliwal: And in terms of the big picture in Jamaica and in other parts of the Caribbean, do you think in the discussion of HIV and AIDS that we are moving away from treatment to prevention, or not?

Julia Greenberg: Well, I think the Caribbean is a perfect example of why we have to do both. So let’s look at treatment for a second. Jamaica has 43 percent coverage rates. So, 43 percent of the people who need AIDS treatment to extend their lives right now are getting it. Then, if you look at the prevention picture overall in the Caribbean, for every five (5) people put on treatment, 10 are newly infected. So we’re swimming against the tide. And it’s my opinion and I think the growing understanding in the AIDS movement that if you want to effectively deal with prevention, you have to deal with the concentrated epidemics among men who have sex with men, sex workers and in some regions drug users.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Right, and these trends that you’re talking about in Jamaica, do they also reflect a pattern in other parts of the Caribbean or is it too much to generalize? As far as you can generalize, what would you say is going on?

Julia Greenberg: They absolutely reflect a trend. If you look at Trinidad and Tobago, the prevalence rate is 1.5 in the general population and it’s 20 percent among men who have sex with men. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, where there isn’t a sodomy law, I believe the general prevalence rate is 1.1, and it is 11 percent in the gay population. So, it’s less than of a divide and maybe that speaks about the criminalization of gay men’s lives. But the trends are absolutely across the board similar.

Daljit Dhaliwal: In terms of Jamaica’s anti-sodomy laws, they would say, “Why is Jamaica always having the finger pointed as us? There are other countries around the world that also have anti-sodomy laws?” What would you say to them?

Julia Greenberg: I would say that’s true. I think there are about 80 countries around the world with sodomy laws or some kind of laws that criminalize relationships between men or relationships between women and women. And I think that’s really important. Look at the United States — it was only in 2003 that our Supreme Court ruling essentially nullified all state sodomy laws. So, that’s true. I would point to the recent Human Rights Watch report on the militia-sponsored attacks against gay men in Iraq. It would make your blood turn cold to read these reports. So, it’s a problem all over the world, absolutely. But the quality of the violence in Jamaica is quite stark. In fact, there are immigration lawyers here in the U.S. working with asylum seekers from Jamaica and they say that across the board, the quality of attacks is extreme, and, in fact, it makes it easier for them to win cases because of the nature of the violence perpetrated against the gay community there.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Is there some insight you can give us as to why this culture of homophobia is so pervasive in Jamaica, say, compared to other parts of the world? Are there cultural factors that make it that way?

Julia Greenberg: The story that is important to understand and tell, but is really difficult to face in Jamaica is that the prevalence is so high in the gay community and stigma is so strong, that gay men are getting married or having female partners and they’re acting as a bridging population to the heterosexual community, and specifically women. And that’s not something that’s discussed. It’s a very difficult issue to discuss again because of the culture of homophobia, but also because it feeds into homophobia. So then, the homophobic elements in the culture can say, “See these gay men are infecting our innocent women.” And, obviously, that’s not the picture.

Daljit Dhaliwal: And what role is Jamaica’s government playing? Could it be doing more? Is it doing what it can do with the money and resources it has available within its widerhealth care budget?

Julia Greenberg: Well I’ll break it down again between the government and the Ministry of Health. So the government has said some terrible things about how they’ll never repeal the sodomy law, the prime minister has said he’ll never have a gay man in his cabinet. So there is a lot being done at the highest levels of government to fuel homophobia. And when homophobia is fueled, you’re not going to, again, contain the AIDS crisis. The Ministry of Health is another story. They’ve recognized that they’re not going to get their job done unless they deal with the epidemic among men who have sex with men.

Again, if I might refer again to one of the Worldfocus segments, the former head of the national AIDS control program said, “It would be good if we could repeal the sodomy, and that the entire government and Ministry of Health needs to understand that they’ve failed when it comes to prevention.”

Daljit Dhaliwal: Is it a political issue for the Jamaican government that they don’t want to decriminalize or repeal the sodomy law, or is it more to do with this culture of homophobia, which you’ve been describing?

Julia Greenberg: I think it’s really integrated and complex. I think it’s a political issue because it really is ingrained in the culture and the society and there would not be popular support for such a move.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Give us a sense of what Jamaica has done — the kind of progress that it has made. And give us some context about the antiretroviral drugs, which have been provided by Jamaica, which are free, whether they are accessed or not accessed by individuals.

Julia Greenberg: There’s been an increase in the uptake of antriretroviral drugs in Jamaica. And it’s fantastic that they’re given for free. They are now achieving 43 percent coverage of people who need the treatment. But it’s important to state that the global community — the heads of state, the U.N. — have all said that universal access must be achieved by 2010. We’re about a third of the way there, and Jamaica is only a little ahead of the curve.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Is Jamaica unique in using community liaison groups and individuals like Ida, the woman that we saw in our film, in terms of educating communities and trying to reduce the stigma around HIV and AIDS?

Julia Greenberg: I wouldn’t say they’re unique. I think it’s been generally understood because of activism in the global AIDS advocacy community, that communities have to be involved in every aspect of AIDS prevention and support. So, governments are actually required to have communities involved in all of their programs. It seems to me that the Jamaica program is quite strong. The parish AIDS communities seem to be doing really great work. And you see communities adhering to their drug regimens and really absorbing prevention messages when they’re working with community leaders such as Ida.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Give us some examples of the kind of grassroots campaigns that these activists are involved in. And can you share some of the strategies that they are using, which perhaps have or haven’t worked, or you feel you can make better?

Julia Greenberg: To say grassroots campaigns is to overstate it because the lesbian, gay, transgender community in Jamaica has to basically exist underground. Again, as one of the excellent segments you aired shows, if you so much as embrace in public you’re at risk of being attacked by a mob. So, the kind of work the gay community is doing is underground, it involves speaking out when the government or the church says something egregious about the lives of homosexuals and how they should be criminalized, how they’re an abomination in the eyes of the lord.

Daljit Dhaliwal: So what is the best way of tackling that?

Julia Greenberg: Tackling that? I think one of the most important ways is finding leaders within the culture, in the church, in the communities — where you can find an opening. Where they’re willing at least to say that it is not OK to beat or kill gay people. And start working with them to see if they can begin to take a leadership role in making changes.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Let’s talk a little bit about how women are being infected by these “bridging” populations and the way in which they access treatment. Does it happen along gender lines that they have difficulty accessing treatment? Or, are they more stigmatized as a group if they become infected? What is the role of women in HIV and AIDS in Jamaica?

Julia Greenberg: Again, it’s another complex picture. When I was there last February I had the opportunity to meet with a group of HIV positive women at the office of an excellent organization called Jamaica AIDS Support. And these women, I have to say, after spending 10 years working in sub-Saharan Africa in some of the poorest communities in the world, there was no difference between the lives of these women and lives of the women that I met in my work and my travels in Africa. The stigma is intense. The poverty is intense. They’re not able to stay on their drugs for lack of food. They’re not able to get to the clinics for lack of transportation.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Right, and what kind of role can these women play in helping to lessen the epidemic?

Julia Greenberg: I’ve talked to a lot of activists about this — how can we get the gay community and the women’s rights community together talking about this issue. And it’s not happening yet. It really needs to happen. There needs to be an understanding that both communities are affected and they’re in it together.

Daljit Dhaliwal: There is also a culture of blame, as well.

Julia Greenberg: There is a culture of blame.

Daljit Dhaliwal: How do you get beyond those very, very emotional issues when a women becomes infected by a man she thought was straight, and it turns out he’s bisexual or he’s gay? How do you have those conversations?

Julia Greenberg: I don’t think those conversations as far as I understand — they may very well be happening at a personal level, but they’re not happening at a national level or even an organizational level, among the organizations that are working on this issue. It’s really, really tough.

Daljit Dhaliwal: Alright, Julia Greenberg, thank you for talking to us and giving your insights.

Julia Greenberg: A pleasure to be here, thank you.

Lisa Biagiotti produced this interview.

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti, producer Micah Fink and director of photography Gabrielle Weiss report on how Jamaica’s national AIDS program is targeting community leaders like Ida Northover to educate people about HIV and change the stigma surrounding the disease.

Violence and hatred lurk close to the social surface in Jamaica.

Producer Micah Fink of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting produced the Worldfocus signature story “Jamaica’s battle against AIDS fought in the shadows.” He reflects on Jamaican culture and the homophobia that has contributed to the country’s HIV/AIDS crisis.

Jamaica, to me, is a land of deep contradictions.

On one hand, it’s a lovely, lush tropical country, blessed with sandy beaches, fantastic flowering shrubs, ripe mango and coconut trees, and inhabited by a strong, proud people who clearly share a basic sense of personal dignity and a deep-seated hospitality towards strangers. I found this to be true regardless of whom I was speaking with, be they rich or poor, educated or illiterate, straight or gay.

At the same time, I also encountered an intensity of violence and hatred lurking close to the social surface that shocked me. I was amazed at how easily people expressed their disregard for the human rights of gay people. Or how the same individual could argue that most violence against gays is carried out by other homosexuals while also acknowledging how “understandable” it is that gay people would be beaten by a mob, perhaps even killed, if they “flaunt” their sexual identity in a public space.

I was also surprised by the homophobic venom expressed, openly and on-camera, by the political leaders we met. Perhaps it was to be expected from Representative Ernest Smith, an outspoken opponent of gay rights, but I felt side-swiped to hear similar views expressed by the Reverend Bishop Herro Blair, who is Jamaica’s Political Ombudsman and widely credited with reducing political violence in Jamaica’s inner cities. And I was stunned when their most inflammatory remarks were repeated by leading public health officials, teen-aged school children, and, sometimes, even by members of Jamaica’s gay community.

The ideology of homophobia is as deep as it is pernicious in Jamaica.

It is widely held that homosexuality is a mortal sin, which the Bible (and by extension God) has ruled should be punished by death. And if that wasn’t inflammatory enough, there is a wide-spread perception that gayness is transmitted by homosexual contact (gays are made, not born) and that gay men and women are out actively raping young Jamaican children to “recruit” them into a new generation of homosexuals. Many people also seem to believe in the existence of an “international gay lobby” that is conspiring to undermine and destroy the nation’s moral values and political sovereignty.

In the context of HIV and AIDS, of course, these attitudes are deadly. So it wasn’t surprising for me to meet a young gay man who rejected every safe sex message ever created. “It’s not AIDS that is killing us,” he told me. “If it were, I would use a condom. But it’s people, not AIDS, that is killing us. AIDS has nothing to do with it.”

Jamaica, it seems, needs to be reminded of another old biblical adage, expressed succinctly in Galatians: “You shall reap what you sow.”

- Micah Fink

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Micah Fink of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting produced the Worldfocus signature story “Jamaica’s battle against AIDS fought in the shadows.” He breaks down the statistics that have been used to characterize Jamaica’s HIV/AIDS epidemic and its impact on the gay community.

Numbers, statistics and dates are notoriously difficult elements in any television script.

Most people find it hard to catch numbers on the fly. And when it comes to complex statistics, well, let’s just say that hearing them as a spoken word makes them even harder to grasp than usual.

So what does it mean when we report that a recent Jamaican government study found that nearly one-third of gay men in Jamaica is HIV positive? Is this a high number or a low one? Is just one isolated study really significant? And how does Jamaica’s infection rate in the gay community compare with levels of infection in other countries?

While these questions are too complicated for a six-minute television broadcast, they are more easily addressed in print. So here are seven facts and one extrapolation to help place these figures into context.

Fact # 1: When we say that nearly 32 percent of Jamaica’s gay community is infected with HIV, we are referring to a study conducted in 2007-2008 by the Jamaican National HIV Control Program. This study was the very first controlled study of HIV rates in Jamaica’s gay community and found a 31.8 percent infection rate among the 201 gay men tested. More than half of the gay men tested were between 20 and 29, and nearly 30 percent of the group reported not using a condom when they had sex during the past month. Eighty percent of the men studied reported having two or more male sexual partners during the past year. And interestingly, 33.8 percent of the total group also reported having sex with at least two female partners in the previous year.

Fact #2: “Controlled study,” by the way, means that the researchers linked the anecdotal reports of each individual person studied with their actual blood test. This technique is generally considered a very reliable way to conduct HIV research.

Fact #3: HIV has been infecting people in Jamaica for more than 25 years. The first case of AIDS was identified on the island in 1982, but for several reasons the folks in charge of the national response didn’t decide to study how deeply the virus had penetrated the gay community until 2007-2008.

Fact #4: Only one other study of HIV infection rates in Jamaica’s gay community has ever been conducted. It was done more than 10 years ago, in 1996, by Rossi Hassad, a graduate of the University of the West Indies and public health researcher. Hassad reported that 31 percent of the gay men he tested were infected with HIV. This study was never officially confirmed or accepted by the Jamaican Ministry of Health.

Fact #5: Based on the results of these two studies –- Hassad’s in 1996 and the National Program’s in 2008 - – it seems apparent that HIV infection rates have likely been hovering between 31 percent and 32 percent for more than a decade.

A fly-by-night extrapolation: I had to “run the numbers” for myself to begin to understand the implications of these studies for Jamaican society. A conservative estimate used around the world suggests that about 10 percent of the total number of men in Jamaica may engage in homosexual activities. Given a total population of 2.7 million, and a fairly equitable breakdown of the sexes -– let’s say 49 percent of the total population — we come up with a total male population of roughly 1.3 million individuals. Dividing by ten percent gives us an estimate of 130,000 gay men in Jamaica. Extrapolating from the Ministry of Health recent study means that 30 percent of this number are infected with HIV, and we arrive at the conclusion that some 39,000 gay Jamaican men may now be infected with HIV. Curiously, this number exceeds the Ministry of Health’s current estimate for the total number of HIV cases in all of Jamaica, which is about 36,000 cases. This inconsistency is worth pondering.

Fact #6: The Ministry of Health’s finding that 31.8 percent of the gay Jamaican men are infected with the virus that causes AIDS is alarming. However, when it is discussed in reports to international agencies like UNAIDS, the numbers are played down as a “concentrated” epidemic. But what is a “concentrated” epidemic? This term is how public health official now refer to infections within a specific sector of society, as opposed to infection rates in all of society, which is known as a “generalized” epidemic. Concentrated epidemics are now found in gay men, sex workers, handicapped communities, intravenous drug users and prisoners in Jamaica. However, calling these epidemics “concentrated” seems a bit misleading, since members of these “communities” are seldom, if ever, really isolated from rest of the general population. For example, as we saw above, more than one-third of the gay men studied reported having two or more female partners in the previous year. Clearly, the gay men in Jamaica, not to mention sex workers and prisoners, have strong sexual links to the “general population.”

Fact #7: Jamaica is not the only country in the world now reporting high HIV infection rates in local gay communities. Recent research on HIV rates in gay communities around the world –- particularly in developing countries –- has found similarly high “concentrated” infection rates. Recent testing in gay populations in Mumbai, India, found a 17 percent infection rate; in Bogotá, Columbia, 20 percent of the gay men tested were infected. Two years ago, Mexico reported a 15 percent infection rate and an older study in Trinidad topped the list by reporting a 40 percent infection rate in the local gay community.

- Micah Fink

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Correspondent Lisa Biagiotti, producer Micah Fink and director of photography Gabrielle Weiss report from the front lines of Jamaica’s battle against HIV and AIDS, a war waged in the shadows.

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• Read Lisa Biagiotti’s blogs: There are no gay pride parades in Jamaica and Gay men in Jamaica must lead two separate lives
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Photo: Vanessa Gezari

Since 2007, an experimental Pentagon program has been sending teams of civilian anthropologists into the hardest-fought regions of Iraq and Afghanistan to understand the needs of local communities. The mission has become increasingly important to U.S. military strategy, but remains deeply controversial.

Social scientists work within frontline combat units to gather information and advise soldiers about the workings of the local economy, tribal structures, cultural norms and other elements of what the military calls the “human terrain.”

Journalist Vanessa Gezari of the Pulitzer Center is currently reporting on the Human Terrain project in Afghanistan. She is responding to your questions and comments about her story in The Washington Post Magazine.

Post your questions and comments below and Vanessa will answer them in the coming week.

Visit “Afghanistan: Human Terrain” to view Vanessa’s dispatches from the field, including slideshows and  links to additional resources.

Worldfocus was nominated for an Emmy in the “Best story in a regularly scheduled newscast” category for our coverage of the “Crisis in Congo” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center, Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Taylor Krauss). The “Crisis in Congo” videos also won the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international television category.

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Worldfocus was also nominated for an Emmy in the “Outstanding feature story in a regularly scheduled broadcast” for our coverage of “21st Century Africa” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Martin Seemungal, Producer: Yuval Lion).

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Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores tensions in South Sudan, the site of a two-decade civil war between the Muslim north and mostly Christian south that killed more than 1.5 million people. The south is also home to 80 percent of Sudan’s oil.

The war came to an end in 2005 with the signing of a peace agreement that exempted the south from Islamic Sharia law and established a regional southern government as well as a system of shared oil revenues. But with increasingly deadly tribal violence in South Sudan and a humanitarian crisis that could soon eclipse that in Darfur, trouble is brewing once more.

In a conference on Sudan in Washington last week, leaders from the north and south pledged to avoid a return to war.

South Sudan is set for a referendum on independence in 2011 and many in the region hope that the vote will allow a break from Khartoum once and for all, creating a new African nation. Others remain wary, pointing to corruption and incompetence on the part of South Sudan’s government and accusing leaders of squandering oil revenues.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Jen Marlowe is a filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. She traveled to South Sudan for the forthcoming documentary “Rebuilding Hope,” funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has spent the past 10 years researching Sudan. He has testified several times before the Congress and served as a consultant to human rights and humanitarian organizations in Sudan. He is the author of “A Long Day’s Dying,” a book about Darfur. He contributes to the blog Making Sense of Darfur.

Sunday Taabu left South Sudan at the height of the civil war in 1991. She is the founder of the South Sudan Institute for Women’s Education and Leadership and previously worked for the Government of Southern Sudan’s Mission to the U.S.

The show also includes audio clips from:

A Worldfocus interview with Scott Gration, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, on the importance of the region to the United States.

Peter Wankomo, who fled Sudan during the civil war and now lives in Canada. He’s the editor of a website, “South Sudan Nation,” which lobbies for the south’s independence.

A clip from Jen Marlowe’s forthcoming film, “Rebuilding Hope,” featuring a minister in the government of South Sudan and a woman living in the rural village of Akon. Both comment on what’s changed since the peace agreement and the end of the war.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

Lisa Biagiotti (right) walks with Ida Northover (left) through an inner city on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.

Lisa Biagiotti is working on signature stories for Worldfocus on HIV/AIDS and homophobia in Jamaica. She reported with Producer Micah Fink and Director of Photography Gabrielle Weiss, both from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their reports will air on Worldfocus later this summer. Lisa gave the below interview to Thirteen.org.

Q: Gay pride is celebrated across the U.S. every June. Could there be similar celebrations of gay pride in Jamaica?

Lisa Biagiotti: No, there could not be an openly gay pride parade on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, as in New York or San Francisco. In Jamaica, anti-sodomy laws criminalize sex between men, fundamentalist interpretations of the bible and pride in reproduction contribute to the general disdain and non-acceptance of the gay lifestyle.

The idea of a “glass closet” best describes the public’s expectations of homosexuals, meaning, “We know you’re gay, and we can see you, but stay in that glass closet.” In fairness, Jamaica tends not to be a heavily PDA (public display of affection) culture. You don’t see men and women petting each other or even holding hands in public, with the exception of the dancehalls.

One thing that was interesting was the way homophobia finds its way into the language, in the choosing (or avoiding) of certain “gay” words. When little boys call each other “sissy” names, they say “you’re a battyman.” “Batty” means buttocks and is a derogatory name for a gay man. Saying the number “two” — referring to the anus — is also avoided. We heard a story of a father instructing his two-year-old son to say he’s going to be three. You’d say “come forward” instead of “come back.” If you’re ordering fish to eat, you’d say, “Give me a swimmer or a sea creature.” “Fish” is another term for a gay man.

Q: This anti-gay side of Jamaica doesn’t really jive with what many Americans may think of Jamaica. (Stereotypically, sun, fun, Bob Marley and “no problem, mon.”) How did you become interested in this topic?

Lisa Biagiotti: I first became interested in the subject of gay Jamaicans about 18 months ago. I was reporting on gay asylum in the U.S. and was told that Jamaica was one of the most violent and homophobic places for gays. I was told by human rights organizations that if you’re gay and Jamaican, you’d qualify for asylum. I then spent a year profiling Alex Brown, a gay Jamaican who received asylum in the U.S. In all honesty, this portrait of Jamaica was completely foreign to me — it contradicted the image of the Jamaica I know and love.

Q: Your mom is Jamaican, and your family ties to Jamaica span three generations. Was it difficult to report these seemingly negative stories for Worldfocus? What did your family think?

Lisa Biagiotti: At first, I was concerned we were doing advocacy journalism. I questioned whether we were imposing our U.S.-centric views on a country with a different cultural bedrock. Did we really understand the Jamaican culture, which is steeped in religion? Admittedly, I was protective of Jamaican people, who I still hold to be some of the warmest and most resilient people on Earth.

Going into these stories, I was aware of my bias. As a journalist, first-hand observation served as my guide. My team and I went to the places where people were literally living in hiding. We listened to the palpable stories of many gay men — the violence against them, the families that rejected them, the double lives they lead and the idea of mainstreaming their lifestyle to “make it right with God.”

We spoke to hundreds of Jamaicans from all walks of life to try to understand the cultural nuances and attitudes toward homosexuals. And everywhere we went, we heard the same things — said with varying levels of vitriol. Open homosexuality is not accepted. Tolerance and violence really depends on class and whether people act on their general disgust toward gays.

After observing and speaking with people on the ground, I’m confident that the stories we’re producing are fair and accurate illustrations of Jamaican attitudes toward homosexuals. As for my family in Jamaica and abroad, I believe they will respect that. Our goal is not to change Jamaican culture and mores, but to present what it’s like to be gay in Jamaica, and why it is important for the general population to talk about homosexuality because gay men are living double lives in secret.

Q: What do you mean by “double lives?” How is this playing into the spread of HIV?

Lisa Biagiotti: A recent Ministry of Health study showed that more than 30 percent of gay men are HIV+. It was a small sampling of about 200 gay men. But it was one of the first surveys conducted within the gay community. Whether or not the study is actually reflective of the larger gay community is questionable, but this rate is still 20 times higher than that of the general population.

What’s important here is that gay men are not isolated from the rest of the population. These men lead double lives — one gay life underground and another “heterosexual” life to save face in their communities. Gay men have girlfriends and wives and children, who likely do not know of their secret lives. This poses a threat to spreading HIV into the general population. So, when you layer this 31.8 percent figure over the laws, religion and general stigma against homosexuality, you’re masking the problem and potentially spreading the infection into the general population.

Q: How does the Jamaican government address the HIV problem without acknowledging the gay community?

Lisa Biagiotti: It’s difficult to target the gay community because they’re not out in the open. There could be no ad campaign in Jamaica talking about using condoms for anal sex because anal sex is illegal and punishable with a 12-year prison sentence of hard labor. The channels of awareness and education of gay men are limited and insufficient.

I should also mention that, on the flip side, Jamaica has made incredible strides in making anti-retroviral medication free and accessible to everyone. Early testing has whittled down the mother-to-child HIV transmission rate to under 5 percent. But the gay community is not siloed from the general population and could potentially reintroduce the disease into the general population.

Q: Given the extreme anti-gay discrimination and level of violence in Jamaica, did you ever feel that you were in danger as you covered these stories?

Lisa Biagiotti: Every day, approximately four or five people are murdered in Jamaica. For a country the size of Connecticut, with 2.8 million people, that’s a staggering murder rate. I don’t know if I had a false sense of security, but I never felt in danger. We had local guides taking us around and introducing us to communities, and I think that was key. We made sure we had introductions wherever we went. We told people we were reporting on homosexuality, HIV and AIDS. We knew these were touchy topics, but we were open and I think Jamaicans appreciated our honesty, and were in turn welcoming.

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• Visit the Pulitzer Center’s multimedia website Live, Hope, Love, which explores living with HIV in Jamaica.

Soldiers outside military headquarters following an assassination in Guinea-Bissau. Photo: Marco Vernaschi, Pulitzer Center

Campaign season has begun in Guinea-Bissau, though it is muted due to continued concern following repeated assassinations.

Earlier this month, presidential candidate Baciro Dabo and former defense minister Helder Proenca were killed. Dabo was suspected of plotting a coup attempt.

The country’s president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, was brutally murdered on March 2, apparently in retaliation for a bomb attack that killed Army General Batista Tagme Na Waie. No suspects have been arrested in the president’s death.

Marco Vernaschi of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting recently returned from Guinea-Bissau and describes the country’s climate of violence.

I was drinking a coffee at Baiana when the Afropop music played by the local radio suddenly stopped. A frantic speaker was trying to report about a blast that had just killed a few soldiers, destroying the military headquarters.

I jumped in my car and drove toward the military compound. When I arrived everyone was shouting and running through the smoky ruins of the building. Bissau’s only ambulance was coming and going from the hospital to pick up the bodies of the victims. Four heavily armed soldiers pointing their AK-47 at my face discouraged me from taking photographs or asking questions. All they told me was that General Batista Tagme Na Wai, head of the army, had just been assassinated. I went back to the car and headed to the hospital.

On this night last February Bissau’s sleepy routine was broken. I made some phone calls to find out what was going on, even as the Minister of Defense arrived at the hospital and ordered the police to keep journalists away. After two hours trying to get information I left the hospital, heading to my hotel. At the reception everyone was trading theories. Someone said it was a coup d’etat, others that it was an accident, a bomb, or the beginning of another civil war. I went to my room and tried to sleep.

At six in the morning my friend and informant Vladimir, a reliable security man who works at the hotel, knocked on my door. He was frightened, and told me that the president had just been killed. When I asked him how he knew, he simply shook his head. I instantly left my room and went to the President’s house. Soldiers there were shooting in the air, to keep a little crowd of people away from the house.

A bunch of soldiers with machine guns and bazookas surrounded the block. The president’s armored Hummer was still parked in front of the house, the tires flat and its bulletproof windows shattered. The police cars from his escort were destroyed. A rocket shot from a bazooka had penetrated four walls, ending up in the president’s living room. Joao Bernardo Vieira was dead, after ruling Guinea Bissau for nearly a quarter of a century.

After a few hours waiting in front of the house I understand I wouldn’t have been allowed any access this day. A soldier came toward me and seized my camera to check if I had taken any pictures. Fortunately I had not, and he gave me the camera back. It was time to leave.

In just nine hours Guinea Bissau had lost both it president and the head of its army. Why so much violence? Was this double assassination the result of an old rivalry between Vieira and Tagme, or was it something more? The army’s spokesman, Zamora Induta, declared that the president had been killed by a group of renegade soldiers and that assailants using a bomb had assassinated General Tagme. He said there is no connection between the two deaths. Of course, nobody believed that this was so.

[...]The next day, I managed to visit the president’s house with my camera. One of his several cousins gives me a tour. He led me to the kitchen first, to show me where Nino Vieira was executed. The blood was all over the room. The machete was still on the floor and the bulletproof vest he always wore was on the chair where his wife sat during the questioning. All around there were hundreds of bullets from AK-47 and machine guns. The soldiers looted and destroyed the house. They took everything they could, including clothes and food.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

The Victory Monument in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital.

Somaliland, a break-away region of north-western Somalia, has gone unrecognized by the international community since it declared independence 18 years ago.

Since then, the Somaliland region has remained more peaceful and stable than the Somali Republic, which has descended once again into chaos. While the world’s eyes are fixed on Somalia, Somaliland — and its 3.5 million people — linger in the periphery.

Tristan McConnell of the Pulitzer Center laments the lack of concern for the small, unrecognized Somaliland.

It’s a disconcerting experience to report from a place that doesn’t exist. 18-years ago Somaliland broke away from Somalia, its bigger, nastier neighbor. While that benighted nation has continued its descent into chaos, death and mayhem Somaliland has kept the peace and built a likeness of democracy.

But as Somalia’s anarchy is showered with money Somaliland is diligently ignored. In April donor nations pledged another $213-million to the besieged Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, that’s roughly seven times the annual budget of Somaliland’s entire government.

The reason is that Somaliland is unrecognized. It has most of the trappings of the modern nation-state: army, government bureaucracy, parliament and (limited) multi-party political system, legal system and functioning economy.

But not a single country in the world accepts Somaliland’s existence. The question constantly asked by politicians, businessmen, civil society activists, street traders and school children alike is, “Why?”

In the mean time Somaliland struggles on, isolated from the international financial institutions that could help transform the lives of its dirt poor people.

Part of the problem is that this chunk of stultifying semi-desert squeezed between Djibouti, Ethiopia, northern Somalia and the Gulf of Aden has little to offer the world: there are lots of sheep and goats, and maybe a little oil and some minerals but nothing much else.

In the absence of valuable resources Somaliland has to fall back on moral arguments – we are good neighbors, we are a stable country in a notoriously tough region, we are trying to be a good democracy, they say.

But moral arguments don’t carry much weight in the world of global realpolitik: Somalilanders (as they call themselves) can expect to be waiting a good while longer before the world accepts that they exist.

To read more, see the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user tristam sparks under a Creative Commons license.

Last week, the U.N. passed a resolution introduced by small islands that will recognize climate change as a threat to security. Climate change could potentially create 200 million refugees by 2050.

The people of the Carteret Islands have been called the world’s first environmental refugees. Journalist “Dan” chronicled his experience at the Carteret Islands in his blog, “Journey to the Sinking Lands,” where he describes how life has been impacted by the encroaching sea:

You can walk around the largest and most populated island, Han, in less than an hour. Life on the islands moves to its own rhythms; the only electricity is supplied by a few generators or solar panels so people wake and sleep with the sun. There is virtually no paid work and instead, people fish and gather fruit from the forest to survive. They are some of the nicest people I have met and, having visited, it is more the similarities between life there and at home that stay with you.

[...] The adults can tell you where they remember the shoreline reached in their childhood – as much as 50 metres further out from where the beach is now. Coupled with this are storm surges and high tides that are far worse now than any time in living memory. These smash in and strip away the land and the people’s fruit crops. What crops remain are being poisoned by salt. As a result, the regional government has decided to evacuate the entire population of the islands.

He also provides an interactive map showing which parts of the world will be flooded as the sea level rises. Watch a video featuring the evacuees from the Carteret Islands, produced by Jennifer Redfearn of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:

Blogger Mehrunnisa Yusuf visits the Maldives  –  the lowest-lying country in the world – and argues that the rest of the world needs to follow the small country’s lead in combating climate change:

Fortunately for the Maldivians their government, both the previous and newly elected democratic one, is doing a fair share to address these challenges. As a developing country that is challenged by its own geographical environment and resource constraints it is remarkable that they have taken such a robust stance on this issue. To be sure, the government’s decision to go carbon neutral in a decade is an ambitious target, but that is to lose sight of the important precedent that is being set. It is time for the international community to take stock and follow the steps and listen to the voices of small states.

In October, Evelyn Ng of the World Bank described life in Kiribati, one of the threatened islands:

The people of Kiribati (I-Kiribati) are thirsty. Literally. The water drawn from the wells has become almost undrinkable due to salination. The ladies say: “water cannot drink, too salty”. They would have to go digging elsewhere or share with neighbours or look for unguarded water

Kiribati is one of the island countries threatened by climate change.

sources. The I-Kiribati live mainly on coconuts and breadfruit. Three years of drought has caused some of the coconut trees to dry up, while high waves have damaged some of the trees closer to the water. Of course, I-Kiribati survive on fish too but fishermen are now suffering from the impact on global oil prices. They say:  “price gone up, now we don’t go so far, we catch smaller fish.”

Blogger Marguerite Finn writes about the difficulties facing Kiribati as it considers relocating its people — and perhaps losing its culture:

This is a huge dilemma: how to find host countries to take the immigrants and to ensure that they do not sink to the bottom of the pile, losing their self-respect and their culture.

In the best I-Kiribati paternal tradition, President Anote Tong is leading a move towards maximum education for all his people — seeing this as giving them the best equipment for the nation’s demise and their personal futures. He explained: “I don’t want my people to be called refugees – but rather immigrants who have the capacity to work on any standard skills for any jobs required in their new homes.”

There is a genuine ‘clash of cultures’ here. The Kiribati culture served its people well before being undermined by a drastic change in its climate for which it was not responsible.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jopolopy under a Creative Commons license.

Photo: Akim Aginsky / Pulitzer Center

Kristina Rizga of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting writes about how farmers are coping with the difficult economic times in Latvia, where the economy is expected to contract by 16.5 percent this year.

Watch the Worldfocus signature story “Empty stores, offices tell tale of Latvia’s economic fall.”

Small Farmers Weather the Economic Storm, Large Farmers Hit Hard

Sixty-year-old farmer Marite Martuzane wakes up every morning at 4:30 and rarely goes to sleep before midnight. Unlike most sectors of the Latvian economy that have slowed dramatically, many small farms that sell directly to their clients have more work than they can handle.

“We are somehow doing better in the economic crisis,” Martuzane explains with a broad, warm smile, as she gives us a tour of her small farm in Adazi, a rural town about 30 minutes away from the capital city of Riga. “People buy more at farmer’s markets now to save money.”

The daughter of a small apple grower at the Riga Central Farmer’s Market, Kristine Brinka, confirms Martuzane’s sentiment. The apples grown on their land in Ikskile always sold well, she says, but they are now selling even more than last year. Vallija, who sells fish caught by a local fisherman, has similarly noticed a spike in her sales this year.

Martuzane works on the farm with her two kids, Liga and Janis, as well as Liga’s partner, Alvis Kigelis. Together, they take care of 12 cows, 40 pigs, dozens of chickens, ducks, and geese, as well as tend to three large greenhouses and an expansive open garden where they grow vegetables and flowers. They own about 34 acres and lease 70.

The countryside with small farms like Martuzane’s always held a special place in the Latvian culture and is still strongly associated with the idea of being Latvian. When Latvia proclaimed its independence in 1918, agriculture was the largest and strongest sector of the economy, and it employed about two-thirds of the work force. When the Soviet Union occupied Latvia in 1945, aggressive industrialization and forced relocation of labor, particularly in the ’60s reduced agriculture’s share of the labor force to about 16 percent by 1990. When the Soviet system fell apart, feed shortages and rising cost of farm equipment created a decline in agricultural production in Latvia.

Today, about nine percent of the 2.3 million total population of Latvia are still engaged in agriculture, compared to the average of about 2.5 percent in the E.U. Close to two thirds of all farms in Latvia are similar size to Martuzane’s — using less than 50 acres, or owning up to 5 cows.

Just like 20 years ago, when Martuzane first started working on this farm, everything they produce is organic and free range. They smoke their own sausages and bacon, and make their own cheese. According to the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture, the number of certified organic farms like Martuzane’s have grown from 38 in 1998 to 4,105 in 2006.

Martuzane thinks the fact that they are small and sell a diverse range of products has enabled them to weather this economic crisis better than bigger, more specialized farms in Latvia. “If we can’t sell meat, we can usually sell cheese,” she explains. “If cheese is not selling, I can sell vegetables.”

The other reason they are doing well, according to Martuzane, is low debt. They took out a small loan to buy two used cars, but resisted taking out larger loans to buy new equipment or expand their facilities.
Unfortunately, profitable farmers like Martuzane, are rare exceptions in the difficult economic times. Even before the economic recession in Latvia, small farmers who lived further away from the wealthier Riga region were among the poorest in Latvia.

But it is the middle and large farmers that are among the hardest hit by the economic crisis right now. After Latvia’s entry into the E.U. in 2004, many small farmers decided to expand. Encouraged by increasing export opportunities, growing GPD and attractive investment loans, large farms increased by 25 percent from 2005 to 2007. About half of their investments were made into facilities and modern equipment.

As Kigelis watched many fellow farmers taking out loans and expanding their operations, he felt that some of the growth was excessive. “I feel like Latvians tried to attain in 10 years what Europeans were building for 40,” Alvis reflects. He also recalls “Aizkraukles Banka” becoming especially aggressive in the countryside with their offers to seemingly attractive loans.

As the global financial crisis spread, the prices of milk and grain — two of the primary agricultural products in Latvia — dropped dramatically. “It’s very hard for large farmers right now, who focused on producing one thing like milk or grain, and took out large loans to expand their facilities,” Liga explains. She mentions the tragic suicide of a large farmer and grain grower, Gatis Karlovs, last year, as an example.

In February of this year, Karlov’s son — along with over 1,000 other primarily large farmers — blocked the streets of Riga with their tractors to protest government policies toward farmers. The protest was one of the largest visible displays of outrage since the economic recession and forced the resignation of Martins Roze, Latvia’s then-agriculture minister.

Martuzane thinks that Latvian farmers, big and small, are being undercut by subsidized, low-cost imports from other E.U. nations. In 2006, the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture shared Martuzane’s sentiment in their yearly report, “Notable differences in the amount of support of the EU market distorting the competition and depriving Latvia of the possibility to use its competitive advantages.” When a New York Times reporter recently expressed this concern to E.U. representatives, they countered that the country’s agricultural program was proposed by the Latvian government itself when Latvia joined the bloc.

Despite the difficulties with E.U. imports, Liga and Marite Martuzane think that joining the E.U. was a positive development overall, at least for small farmers. Liga feels that the E.U. regulations benefited small farmers by overwriting previous Latvian government policies that generated burdensome red tape and corruption. “Before the E.U., I had to fill out six different documents, buy all this extra equipment, and build expensive storage spaces just to milk two cows,” Liga notes.

Marite Martuzane agrees with Liga. Even though she enjoyed the most income from her work back in the Soviet era, there was a significant caveat she explains: “I couldn’t buy anything with my money.” Now, she says, “I have less money, but I can buy anything I want and can get on the airplane to Portugal tomorrow!”

Martuzane proudly explains and rattles off the names of 12 different countries she has visited in Europe since Latvia regained independence. “I also feel more free,” she adds. “It’s difficult to articulate how, but I do.”

Liga and her partner Alvis are concerned that the economic crisis could get even worse this winter, as a growing number of Latvians lose their jobs. Liga can already tell people are preparing for a hard winter. Pigs and potato seeds are sold out in her parish. But Liga says that the majority of farmers like them, who are small and relatively debt-free in Latvia, will survive. “At the very least we know that we will always have enough to feed ourselves.”

- Kristina Rizga