‘Such a cool idea and execution! BRAVO! to the brilliant curators and city of Wilson. Hope you can see it live. If you can not go in person, check it out virtually: http://www.eyesonmainstreetwilson.com/about-the-festival/’ Scott Mc Kiernan.
Also featured on Yahoo. https://www.yahoo.com/…/photo-p-carol-guzy-zuma-press-photo…
ZUMA Press photographer Olmo Calvo was awarded a POYi 2018 Award of Excellence for his work ’Rohingyas, Flee from Genocide.’ http://poyi.org/75/R1075/ae02.php
Since August 2017, more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar and is becoming the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. This Muslim minority denounces that the army and radical Buddhists of the border country burn their villages and attack them with machetes and firearms. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, nearly 7000 Rohingyas have died in Myanmar since last August. In the words of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the Rohingya people are being victimized by ”an ethnic cleansing manual”. In spite of the dimension of the tragedy, it is happening before the passive gaze of the international community. The Rohingya, who numbered around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one of the many ethnic minorities living in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, and the majority live in Rakhine state. They have their own language and culture and claim their descendants have been in the region for generations. But the government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, denies the Rohingya citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census, refusing to recognize them as a people. It sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The changing seasons of the subcontinent are about to bring further suffering upon the already persecuted population that has fled to Bangladesh. Now they must prepare for the onset of the monsoon, the flooding that follows.
The Yalu River forms a natural 491 mile border between China and North Korea, and along the heavily policed border the sparse landscapes of North Korea are in stark contrast to China’s hyper developing skylines. Increasingly led by China itself, the pressure of the outside world via UN sanctions, US lobbying and regional impatience with North Korea’s continued nuclear tests, is being brought powerfully to bear on their focal point of contact, the river port of Dandong. Hidden away in the far northeastern corner of China, ‘Red East’ as Dadong is known is a city of almost a million, charming and modest in size by Chinese standards, and popular for ‘red tourism’ as Dadong is known, is a city of almost a million, charming and modest in size by Chinese standards, and popular for ‘red tourism’ to nostalgic Korean War sites. As the largest border city in China facing N. Korea, Dadong’s Sino-Korea Friendship Bridge is the main conduit of trade between the two countries, but last December new UN sanctions quieted the trade business. In January China began ramping up security on the border with new surveillance and security forces, and a banner seen on a border fence in Dandong bore the message: ‘ Citizens or organizations who see spying activities must immediately report them to national security.’ Across the half frozen river from the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin, sentry posts with North Korean guards loom around the clock, but adventurous tourists can still hire speedboat rides to get a closer view of the ‘hermit kingdom’, and Korean influence makes it across the border in the clothing, karaoke, and food. As Kim Jong Un meets in Beijing with Xi Jinping ahead of a potential meeting with Donald Trump, the speculation runs wild, and how it plays out is still anyone’s guess.
Photo Credit © Andrew Parsons/I-images via ZUMA Press
Photo Credit © BARNEY SELLERS/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL via ZUMA PRESS
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