Innu
Children's Fatal Attraction
“The first soul I saw when I landed here at Davis Inlet
[on the Labrador coast of Newfoundland] two weeks ago was a
young man with a gray plastic bag pushed over his face, loping
down the edge of the runway. A sniffer. It is what this town
is known for, the epidemic of gasoline-sniffing and substance
abuse that has put it on the world map of despair. But right
now, the sniffers are supposed to be in treatment in St. John’s.
Last month, social workers rounded up 35 children and packed
them into a plane. They were taken to an old hospital for the
long, slow process of flushing the toxic chemicals out of their
blood and brain. ”
—The Toronto
Star (liberal),
Toronto, Canada, Feb. 10, 2001. From the May 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.5).
High and Dry: Young
Aborigines
“It is something many people living in bigger cities find
simply too bizarre to actually accept—that hundreds of
Aboriginal kids are living out their teenage years with their
faces jammed in petrol cans, most of them half-crazy. In communities
such as Mt. Liebig, Kintore, and Mutitjulu, all north and west
of Alice Springs, the drug is distributed in jerry-cans, petrol
tanks, or bled from fuel lines. As territory Chief Minister
Denis Burke said yesterday, it is terribly difficult to combat
something such as petrol, when so many communities rely on it
for more normal uses.”
—Paul Toohey, The Australian
(centrist),
Sydney, Australia, Feb. 21, 2001. From the May 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.5).
Brazil: Who's in Charge
of Prisons?
“In 1983, just after Franco Montoro took office,
the government of São Paulo state was surprised by the
large telephone bills it was paying for the House of Detention.
A quick investigation revealed that the prisoners were habitually
using the prison’s office phones. To resolve the problem,
pay phones were installed in the prison. A report—written
by a court commission in the early 1980s—declared that
organized groups were active in the prisons, threatening the
government’s control over the institutions. The document
was promptly stamped ‘confidential’ and filed away.”
—Madi Rodrigue and Mário
Simas, Istoé (liberal newsmagazine), São
Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 28, 2001. From the May 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.5). |
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Religious Rebirth in
Azerbaijan
“When Islam was declared to be an especially reactionary
religion by the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s, the 13th-century Bibi-Hejbat
mosque was blown up on Stalin’s orders. This mosque, which had
drawn pilgrims for centuries, contained the grave of the sister
of the seventh Shiite imam. According to legend, the residents
ran to the spot, awakened by the explosion, to see—before
the eyes of a horrified Red Army soldier—a woman dressed
in a white shroud descend toward the sea. Supposedly one of
the old men who witnessed this scene whispered: ‘It is
she, she will surely return in better times.’ It has also
been said that the Soviet soldiers who took part in destroying
the mosque were later killed under mysterious circumstances,
or so the legend goes.”
—Jerzy Rohozinski, Tygodnik
Powszechny
(liberal, Roman Catholic),
Kraków, Poland, Jan. 12, 2001. From the April 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.4).
Magazine
with a Sting Flies Again
“Near the entrance of Joseph Moukarzel’s office in
Beirut, a card catalog made of mahogany reeks of early [20th]
century architecture: The faded cards bear ancient addresses
from Mexico, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, New York, Paris,
and the Congo. The old type is square and boxy; the cards number
in the hundreds of thousands.”
—Amal Bouhabib,The
Daily Star (English-language, independent), Beirut, Lebanon,
Dec. 20, 2000. From the March 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.3).
The Thai Cult of the
'Half-and-Half Children'
“In Vietnam, they are called the ‘sulky faces.’
In South Korea, they are scorned on the schoolyard and later
on, in their professional careers, because they have ‘betrayed
the blood.’ But in Thailand, their situation is completely
opposite. The Louk Kreung - the ‘half-and-half children,’
that is, children born of mixed Western and Thai couples, are
a facination.”
—Arnaud Dubus,
with Laurence Sreshthaputra, Libération (leftist),
Paris, France, Dec. 2-3, 2000. From the March 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.3).
Suicide Epidemic in a Turkish City
“In the past four months alone, according to the editor
of Batman Cagdas, the local daily, 50 young women have
tried to kill themselves, and 29 of them died. Most of them
hanged themselves, but some jumped out of windows. Some shot
themselves with guns belonging to their fathers or husbands;
others swallowed anything they could find, from detergents to
rat poison. 'This wave of suicides has come upon us with such
fury,' says psychiatrist Sir, that 'it has turned all the statistics
upside-down.”
—Bernhard Zand, Der Spiegel (centrist newsmagazine),
Hamburg, Germany, Nov. 6, 2000. From the February 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL.48, No.2). |
