Editorial South Sudan
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A new nation is born
Ukraine
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Italy
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Usa
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Europe
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Israel
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Point of u
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Multimedia
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Contacts
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Behind the barricades
Africo: the death's street
Slab city
Living on the edge
Almost Gaza
Faith
The hurt lockers
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EDITORIAL After long weeks of battle, Ukraine’s protesters succeeded in ousting president Victor Yanukovych, and to basically gain control of the country. But that, as recent events in Crimea suggest, was just a battle. There might be more to come, and it will be Putin’s Russia that could shape Ukraine’s future. In the meantime, we go back to the past, to the days of the fight, with our Francesca Volpi who spent almost a month behind the barricades side by side with the protesters. The Europe that Ukraine’s revolutionary movement is aspiring to, for Europeans is sometimes a geographical and social terra incognita, with borders that many seem to have forgotten or have no notion about, and that are not simply physical, but religious and ideological. This is what Marco Ansaloni found out travelling along those boundaries. Some remarkable boundary is also that dividing Israel from Gaza, where many Israeli settlers have decided to live: see what their daily life is like through Alessandro Gandolfi’s compelling images. We then go to South Sudan, where Bruno Zanzottera explores a country born just over three years ago. To the U.S., where another very peculiar city was born practically out of nowhere in the middle of the Californian desert. And finally to
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a little town in Southern Italy, which was born a long time ago but whose population, as Simone Cerio reports, is dying way too fast, and from the same terrible illness. The theme of last month’s Point of U, our readers’ photographic contest, was faith: we have received an amazing amount of images, and once again we were pleasantly surprised by their quality. You will see the best of them on this issue. So, thanks to all the readers who participated and congratulations to the winner, Mr. Riccardo Gallino, who, with his beautiful photograph taken in Varanasi, India, gets a free photojournalism workshop at Parallelozero’s headquarters. This issue’s multimedia is by Sergio Ramazzotti: you will go to Afghanistan, a country that he has come to know very well in the past decade (sometimes in encounters just a bit too close), and be introduced to one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, that of the Italian Army’s bomb disposal units. As the Nato coalition troops are preparing to leave the country for good, the specialists of bomb disposal squads will be the ones to secure the way ahead of the convoys, and among the last to pack and fly back home. Hold on tight for a genuinely explosive story.
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SOUTH SUDAN
A NEW NATION IS BORN
SOUTH SUDAN
A NEW NATION IS BORN By Bruno Zanzottera South Sudan proclaimed its independence a little over three years ago. The new country was born from the ashes of a long civil war and centuries of oppression. It is a brand new nation which boasts a great potential but also needs to lay new foundations. Pride and ferment are in the air, but on the downside both the national situation and the relations with the North are tense and constantly on the verge of a fresh full-scale conflict. The two factions contend not only for oil, but also for water and land. Moreover, the Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army destabilize the South-western area of the country. “The final walk to freedom”, in the words of the hero of the liberation fight John Garang, “is not over yet”.
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Rumbek, Lakes State. The Sunday mass in the Sacred Heart church, which was heavily damaged by bombings during the war 6
Rumbek, Lakes State. Santo Domich Chol (right), in charge of the state security services, at the seat of the regional government in Rumbek
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Sunset over a cattle camp near Yirol. The camp belongs to a group of Dinka shepherds
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Kids playing soccer outside the Catholic church in Juba 9
Rumbek, Lakes State. A young man asleep on a table in a public building to a group of Dinka shepherds 10
An elderly woman in the Catholic church of Nzara
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Nzara, Western Equatoria. Members of the Arrow Boys, a self-defense militia established in the province’s villages in order to counter the attacks brought by the Lord’s Resistance Army 12
A crashed truck on the road that connects Rumbek to Yirol 13
A journalist working at Radio Bakhita, a Catholic radio based in Juba 14
Patients at a local hospital in Yior
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Nihal Bol, “the Citizen�, newspaper in the
editor-in-chief of the first and only Southern Sudan, in print shop in Juba
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Nzara, Western Equatoria. An elementary class in a school run by Combonian missionaries 17
BEHIND THE BARRICADES
LOVE GIVERS
UKRAINE
BEHIND THE BARRICADES
By Simone Cerio
This is a journey. A physical and mental journey. Sexual assistance is a technique of psychophysical approach to disabled people, based on massages, kisses, visual contacts and erotic stimulation. It is commonly believed that disabled people have no sexual needs and their isolation causes them
UKRAINE
BEHIND THE BARRICADES By Francesca Volpi Since November, 2013, thousands of Ukrainian protesters have taken control of Independence Square in Kiev, and occupied many of the government buildings in the centre of the capital. Initially, they gathered to protest against the decision of President Victor Yanukovych to block the negotiations that would bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. But after the brutal repression by the police and the first casualties among the protesters hit by snipers, the protest grew bigger and ended up ousting Yanukovych. A makeshift army of civilians fought for weeks from behind the barricades, where civilian clothes were replaced by uniforms and many people constantly wore bulletproof vests. That battle was won. But after Russia’s recent moves in Crimea, everybody now wonders what lies ahead.
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Behind the barricades, where the demonstrators spent day and night to monitor the situation and observe the moves of the police
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Youngsters train outside one of the buildings occupied by the protesters
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Moments of tension during an afternoon in Kiev
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Women and children at the frontline barricades in Hrushevskoho Street, in downtown Kiev 23
Inside one of the buildings occupied by protesters
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A free Library inside one of the buildings occupied by protesters
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An exercise that simulates the clashes with the police. The boys who joined the field fighters underwent daily exercises and workouts 26
A checkpoint in between the barricades. Protesters covered each six-hour guard shifts in order to control the area surrounding Independence Square 27
Mothers of protesters belonging to the “euromaidan� movement get together to remember their sons injured by the police 28
Demonstrators at the front line barricade in Hrushevskoho Street 29
Protesters gathered at one of the barricades
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A demonstrator at the front line barricade in Hrushevskoho Street
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AFRICO: THE DEATH'S STREET
WOMEN OF THE
ITALY
AFRICO: THE DEATH'S STREET
By Paulo Siqueira
Prostitution is a big word, to describe what goes on on the straights of the great Amazon River of Brazil in a region privy to years of conquest and exploitation. The life of the river people or “Ribeirinhas”as they are
ITALY
AFRICO: THE DEATH'S STREET By Simone Cerio Africo is a small village in the Southern Italian region of Calabria where an invisible and silent tragedy is taking place. There is a street where people die of cancer more than anywhere else: via Matteotti, known among local people as the "death's street". It is only 300-m long and its death rate is incredibly high: 35 out of its 80 inhabitants are affected by cancer and 20 of them passed away in 2013. Many people from Africo are convinced that their houses were built with "infected" bricks mixed with toxic materials that families of the local mafia have buried throughout the years. The deaths seem to be also related to two environmental disasters: the ship Rigel (loaded with barrels of radioactive waste) which sank in 1987 along the coast nearby, and the Casignana garbage dump (seized by authorities in 2011), whose toxic leaks could have poisoned the local aquifer. 33
Rosa Lucisano’s son died at the age of 14 because of a nerve sheath tumor in the arm. The kid spent most of his time with his grandparents who lived in Via Matteotti 34
town is called Africo, a small urban settlement in the Tyrrhenian Calabria. The man is called Antonio Pratticò. Africo is a place where people die as in war, even if the war is not there. Antonio is a generous man, ready to do anything to save the future of its people. There is a street in Africo where people are dying more than elsewhere: via Matteotti, here known as “Death’s Street”. Only 300 meters of asphalt, 49 houses, 80 people including 35 with cancer, 20 of them passed away in 2013 alone. Out of 2850 inhabitants (locally known as africoti), 180 died from cancer in the last decade, most before the age of 50. The death rate in such a small area would be described as the consequence of one of Italy’s biggest environmental disasters, were it not for the fact that this is an invisible and silent massacre.
THE
But Antonio Pratticò makes noise, and plenty of it. His family has been affected by the disease, right there, in the same street where his sister Maria Grazia, who fell ill in 1999, died in 2004 after a struggle against cancer of the uterus and ovaries: “I fight not for the sake of pointing the finger” he says, “but because I lost too, like the others”. Pratticò, 53, now lives in Bianco, a few kilometers from Africo. A farmer son of farmers, he is a character well known and respected in the area: apart from the work, he devotes most of his time to take care of the sick. In via Matteotti, he takes us to the home of Pasquale Maviglia, one of the most heavily affected families in Africo: Giulia, sister of Pasquale, cancer of the ovaries, died in 2007. Francesca, second sister of Pasquale, Hodgkin's lymphoma, still alive. Leopoldo, third brother of Pasquale, underwent surgery for a bladder tumor in 1990 and 2004, still under treatment. Giuseppe, the fourth brother of Pasquale, colon cancer, still alive, and his son Domenico, born in 1973 and operated in 2001 for testicular cancer. A whole family devastated. Pratticò logs everything. He is the only one in Calabria to have drawn an actual tumor registry for Africo patients. He hopes that by comparing the number of certified deaths with the data he required from Arpacal (the regional Agency for Environmental Protection) on water, air, soil and building materials of the houses, he will be able to find out the cause of “Death’s Street”. 35
The inhabitants speak of bricks “infected” by poisonous mixtures, possibly the result of toxic waste illegally buried in the surrounding countryside. “Tumors have erupted in the 1990s, when we started to renovate, but I’m positive they buried the drums before we moved here”, says Giuseppina Romeo, wife of Bruno Gligola, 60 and 73 years respectively. She has a benign breast tumor and he a malignant one in the kidney, identical to that of their daughter Piera, 37. Via Matteotti seems to have a bond with two environmental disasters, one of the past and still uncertain, the 1987 sinking of the ship Rigel (loaded with radioactive waste) in front of Cape Spartivento, a few miles east of Africo, and one announced, the 2011 seizure, by local authorities, of the Casignana landfill, just west of the town, whose collection tanks of toxic leachate, produced by the fermentation of waste, have long been at risk of a landslide, with disastrous consequences for the soil and aquifer.
In Calabria, the health care system is sick like the ground: migration for sanitary reasons towards hospitals in the north are the cause of substantial costs to the region administration; the hospital in Locri is the only oncology center in the entire province of Reggio Calabria and, despite having all the machinery necessary to therapies, it only provides day-care service for chemotherapy. In neighboring hospitals, patients are asked to bring from home sheets and even syringes. But above all, there are no specialists and this sometimes leads to late or wrong diagnoses: “I often feel like the daughter of a Lesser God”, says Rosa Lucisano, 44, a native of Africo who runs a bar in Bianco together with her husband. Their son Leo, who died in 2009 at age 14, for the first three years of illness (he had a tumor of the nerve sheaths of the arm) was treated for what doctors believed was a form of arthritis. When they finally understood the correct diagnosis, it was too late. The following year, Rose’s father became ill with colon cancer, and now the tumor got her father in law. “We are unprepared for all this”, she says forlornly. On the window of the bar she hung a sign that says: “Educate children and you won’t need to punish adults”. Simone Cerio 36
One of the possible causes of such high cancer rates in Via Matteotti could be the mixtures of building materials, deriving from toxic waste dumped in the surrounding area from the 1970s 37
Bruno Gligola, 73. was affected by liver cancer in 2001 and is now surviving on chemotherapy. His wife and daughter also have cancer 38
The analyses by Arpacal (the regional Agency for environmental protection) on the soil of Africo show high levels of pollutants 39
Annunziato Iannelli, oncology head physician in Locri hospital, the only oncology centre in the province of Reggio Calabria
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The La Verde According to mafia dumped polluted the
stream in Africo. investigations, the toxic waste which village aquifer
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The Maviglia family house in via Matteotti. Cancer has affected the whole family: four brothers and a nephew 42
The first cancer registry in Africo created by Antonio Pratticò, a local farmer of 53. This is the first and only registry of this kind in Calabria
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Francesca, 71, and Leo Criaco, 92, in their house in Via Matteotti. He has had colon cancer twice since 1984 and she had surgery for breast cancer in 2001
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A corner of Via Matteotti
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The Casignana dump is a few kilometers from Africo. Although it was seized in 2011, toxic leachate continues to leak into the soil polluting the surrounding aquifer
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USA
SLAB CITY
USA
SLAB CITY By Carlo Bevilacqua Since the housing bubble burst, nearly 4 million American homes have been taken from their owners. Slab City is a squatters' camp deep in the badlands of California's poorest county, where the road ends and the sun reigns, about 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The vast state-owned property gets its name from the concrete slabs spread out across the desert floor, the last remnants of a World War II-era military base. In the decades since it was decommissioned, dropouts and fugitives of all stripes have swelled its winter population to nearly 2,000, all attracted by the do-it-yourself and rent-free living, beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law. And while the aspect of the Slabs, as the place is locally known, may be changing in some ways, the same old rule applies: respect your neighbour, or stay the hell out of the way. 49
Dylan Luciano and a friend (in the foreground), with mother Maileina holding her youngest daughter Evelyne
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Although violent and unlawful behaviour is not tolerated in Slab City, robberies and drugs are not unknown in the community, and those who have moved here, like Vince Neill, are obviously worried about keeping their families safe. Like many Americans, he thinks he can do so with a rifle despite the community’s main rule “Respect your neighbour”
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An old checkpoint, belonging to the former military base, now welcomes people to Slab City
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A military-style mountain bike is perfect to move around Slab City
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The inside of the mountain is not less surprising than the outside. Sometimes an organic architecture welcomes visitors 54
Vince Neill’s eldest son imitates his father, even if only with a toy rifle. Poor education and unstable living conditions force him to play a role that does not suit him 55
More than 100,000 litres of varnish have been used to paint Salvation Mountain
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Raphael and Maileina Luciano are Neill’s neighbours. They ended up in Slab City after moving to different places due to financial difficulties and the loss of their job and home. They now receive unemployment benefits 57
Although he lives like a hermit, Leonard is much loved and receives letters from different parts of the United States, ending up in this mailbox 58
Allie Neill, Vince’s eldest daughter, helps her parents take care of her five younger brothers, between the age of 2 and 10. She has just finished High School thanks to her father’s help. She hopes to attend college or a drama school and to become an actress
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Sexuality is the central theme of the mural painting on the old water tank
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LIVING ON THE EDGE
GOD BLESS
EUROPE
LIVING ON THE EDGE
by Francesco Alesi
When St. Patrick set his feet on Irish land to preach Christianity, it is unlikely there were any Irish Travellers in sight. Almost sixteen Centuries later, the Irish Travellers is one of the strongest Catholic communities in the world.
EUROPE
LIVING ON THE EDGE By Marco Ansaloni The UE has worked since its foundation to achieve border integration. Nevertheless, the creation of new borders and the strenghtening of existing ones still occur, especially within cities. Divided cities are both cohabitation laboratories and battlegrounds, as one can see in the streets of Nicosia (Cyprus), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Mitrovica (Kosovo) and Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina). What these cities have in common are physical borders that were born from conflict. In each of them, social, ethnic and religious communities feel that their presence should be exclusive. Even so, there are also members who would like to overcome the past and define a common future, beyond differences.
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Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mural of King William III at the entrance of Sandy Row Protestant quarter
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Belfast, Northern Ireland. Clonard Memorial for the victims of the Bombay Street bomb 64
The Peace Wall in Cupar Way, the longest in Belfast, divides the east Belfast loyalist area of Shankill Road from the Catholic Springfield/ Falls Roads area of west Belfast 65
Nicosia, Cyprus. Flags of Greece and Cyprus in memory of the fallen of the 1974 clash in the square of Aghios Charalambos church
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Nicosia’s Ledra Street is the main thoroughfare of the city. It divides the two parts - the Greek and the Turkish - just like any official border
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The village of Rizocarpos, on the Turkish side of Cyprus. Since the 1974 turkish invasion, a Greek community of about 200 shares the village with 3,000 Turkish-cypriots 68
A military border in Nicosia’s buffer zone. On the back, the minarets of the Selimye mosque 69
An artistic protest against the separation of the city in Mitrovica, Kosovo, which the Serbian still refer to as Kosovska Mitrovica
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The bridge on the Ibar river divides the serbian and albanian communities in Mitrovica. KFOR international forces patrol day and night the access to the bridge 71
A Serbian wedding at the Orthodox church of Saint Dimitrios in north Mitrovica. The church was built in 2004
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A Serbian cemetery in south Mitrovica, an area of Albanian majority. After the riots of 2004, Albanians destroyed the graves and burned the chapel of the cemetery
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Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. An old destroyed building belonging to the ex Yugo Bank 74
The Old Bridge in Mostar, built in 1566 and destroyed during the 1993 war. The bridge was rebuilt in 2004 with the support of the international community 75
Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. A man walks among the ruins of a building belonging to the ex Yugo Bank
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Orhan 'Oha' Maslo, general manager of the Mostar Rock School, inside Mostar’s Pavarotti Music Center
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ISRAEL
ALMOST GAZA
ISRAEL
ALMOST GAZA By Alessandro Gandolfi They have been living for ten years next to a hell called Gaza. They are Israeli families which settled right on the border. They can see Gaza’s lights and hear the muezzin’s call to prayer. The land beyond the wall is hostile and occupied by, says Israeli settler Erez Ben Asher, "people who hate us and want our destruction". In 2012, 2256 rockets were launched from Gaza against Sderot, Ashkelon and the kibbutz of Nir Am, Dorot and Netiv Haasara. That's why most houses have armoured rooms, sirens go off as soon there is an alert and even bus stops are built in reinforced concrete. To these days, thirteen civilians have died.
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Dorot, Israel. Erez Ben Asher is playing with his grandchildren while his wife Shlomit and his daughter Yaara are preparing lunch for the Sukkot at their home in a kibbutz near Gaza 80
Sderot, Israel, posters for the mayor campaign in a city one kilometre from the Gaza Strip
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Ashkelon, Israel. a boy with a Star of David tattooed on his left shoulder in a football ground
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Ashkelon, Israel. People get dressed after bathing at a beach reserved for Orthodox Jews. Ashkelon is ten kilometres from the Gaza Strip
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Young people get together at the Jack bar in Ashkelon on a Saturday night 84
Netiv Haasara, Israel. Guy Rappaport watches the wall separating Israel from Gaza outside his house
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Dorot, Israel. Relatives from Eastern Europe in an old photo at Erez Ben Asher's house 86
Sderot, Israel. A Chinese man working at the construction site of the new station where trains from Tel Aviv will be arriving 87
Dorot, Israel. Erez Ben Asher’s family in the garden during the Sukkot 88
Children play football in a ground in a Dorot kibbutz
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Israelis of Russian origins cook dinner in a camping site in the Ashkelon National Park, ten kilometres from the Gaza Strip 90
Sderot, Israel. A map stained with varnish. Sderot is one kilometre from the Gaza Strip 91
A fire brigade tower in the countryside near the border with the Gaza Strip
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Ashkelon, Israel. A kid plays in a public park on the Bar Kochva Promenade at night
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WORLD
POINT OF U: FAITH
WORLD
POINT OF U: FAITH Readers’ photo contest 2013 was proclaimed the Year of Faith by the Vatican. During his first year in office, Pope Francis made more magazine covers – including that of Time weekly in the U.S. – than any other Pontiff. Is faith finally coming back, at least in the Catholic world? And what is exactly faith, what forms can it take? What does the notion entail? We asked our readers to give us their interpretation of faith, the way they see it with their cameras. Here are some of the most intriguing images that we received, including (in the previous page) the winning photograph, taken by Mr. Riccardo Gallino in the holy city of Varanasi, India, and (above) Mr. Stefano Strazzacappa’s photo of a street in Kyoto, Japan.
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By Flaviana Frascogna
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By Marco Raccichini
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By Pietro Magnani
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By Francesco Biasi
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By Daniele Borghello
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By Aurora Biagi
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By Vittorio Carlini 102
By Giorgio Barbato
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By Ivan Ferrari
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By Ludovico De Maistre
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By Mauro Pignotti
By Paolo Maggioni 106
By Enrico Guala
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AFGHANISTAN
THE HURT LOCKERS
Parallelozero Multimedia
AFGHANISTAN
THE HURT LOCKERS By Sergio Ramazzotti They are few, selected and extraordinarily well trained. They chose a life of risk, but, unlike the Oscar-winning movie's main character, do not feel like joking about death, which took away many of their colleagues. Their code name is IEDD, an acronym that stands for "improvised explosive device disposal": they are the bomb specialists of the Italian Army, based all over Western Afghanistan. During the upcoming withdrawal of Italian troops, they will be the first to open a secure way for the convoys, and among the last to leave. Considered the world's best, they use the most advanced technologies, and are forced to update almost daily against an insurgency using explosive devices that day after day turn out to be more sophisticated, creative, and lethal.
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Parallelozero Srl via Donatello, 19/A Milano - Italy ISBN: 9788898512072 P’Zero #02.2014 - All rights reserved - Copyright Parallelozero 2014 www.parallelozero.com