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Investigating the Dangerous New Mafia taking control in Italy | Foreign Correspondent 9geezyone 1 Views • 1 year ago

“When you enter the organization, you cannot get out other than by death.”

The mafia is one of Italy’s most famous international business brands, with an estimated annual turnover of $250 billion a year. But its market share is being challenged by a group of ruthless new players.

Foreign Correspondent’s Emma Alberici investigates the growing power of Nigerian organised crime in the birthplace of the Italian mafia.

The director of Italy’s anti-mafia agency says Nigerian crime gangs are organised and dangerous:
“It has many similar traits to Italian mafia – its oaths, its sense of belonging, the capacity to coerce, the code of silence…even the local mafia fear them.”

Specialists in trafficking humans for sexual slavery and drug running, the Nigerians are now being allowed to run their operations in return for giving the Italian mafia a cut.

A former prostitute, trafficked from Nigeria, tells us:
‘There’s no pity. If you misbehave…or you can’t continue anymore, they will bring their gun and shoot you.’

We investigate the two main hubs for Nigerian organised crime in Italy.
North of Naples, Alberici visits Castel Volturno, an almost lawless coastal town, abandoned by the local Camorra Mafia and by the state. Here, the Nigerian Mafia is left alone to use this once “Mafioso Riviera” as a hub for its European operations.

In Sicily, the mafia’s birthplace, we go undercover to expose prostitution and drug houses and catch up with the man named by investigators as one of the Nigerian Mafia’s kingpins.

At a secret location, we speak to Roberto Saviano, one of the world’s most famous Mafia whistle-blowers. He lost his freedom 13 years ago after revealing the sordid workings of the Camorra mafia in Naples.

Now living under permanent police guard, Saviano explains the role Nigerian organised crime plays in Italy’s homegrown mafia.

To stay silent, he says, is to be complicit.

About Foreign Correspondent:
Foreign Correspondent is the prime-time international public affairs program on Australia's national broadcaster, ABC-TV. We produce half-hour duration in-depth reports for broadcast across the ABC's television channels and digital platforms. Since 1992, our teams have journeyed to more than 170 countries to report on war, natural calamity and social and political upheaval – through the eyes of the people at the heart of it all.

Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC’s Online Terms of Use http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm (Section 3). This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel

Piracy in Nigeria | People & Power 9geezyone 1 Views • 1 year ago

The event followed a now familiar pattern: a small convoy of dusty 4x4 vehicles drove on to the edge of the airstrip at Galkayo in Puntland, north-central Somalia; armed security guards took up watchful positions nearby and a number of bemused-looking men stepped gingerly from the cars and lined up to have their photographs taken by the media.

On this occasion there were 11 of them; all had been hostages until that morning. They were sailors from a Malaysian cargo vessel that had been hijacked by Somali pirates a few years ago and held until a ransom was paid for their release.

One of them gave a brief account of what had happened. "On November 26, 2010 our ship was hijacked in the Indian Ocean. Their demand was 20 million. After that, they threatened the owner. You now increase money or we will shoot the crew. The owner didn't increase the money and then one Indian is shot with just three bullets. Then they hit us and tortured us. Tell your family to bring us money, otherwise we will kill you!"

The crew had been held for three and a half years but they were the fortunate ones. Five of their crew mates had died in that time. Now the survivors were going home and a UN plane with two envoys on board was flying in to see them to safety.

Such scenes have become relatively commonplace in Galkayo in recent times. Eighty percent of global trade is carried by sea and Somalia sits on a key maritime route linking Europe and Asia. More than 18,000 ships pass its shores every year. Over the past decade, Somali pirates, often former fishermen whose traditional livelihoods have been destroyed by foreign trawlers and toxic waste dumping, have attacked more than 300 vessels and kidnapped 700 people.

Faced with such a threat, the international community responded aggressively. In 2008, European states, the US and others began sending naval forces to these seas. They are still there today - warships, planes and helicopters patrolling thousands of square miles and doing a fair job of keeping the hijackers at bay. The UN and others have also played an increasing role in facilitating negotiations for the release of hostages - such as those set free at places such as Galkayo - for whose liberty large ransoms have been paid.

But if the problem is now slowly coming under control in Somalia, the same cannot be said for other parts of the world where piracy is on the increase. Lawlessness, desperation, poverty, greed and even political radicalism have brought the phenomenon to the waters of South America, Asia and, perhaps most aggressively, to West Africa.

In an effort to understand the reasons why, Bertrand Monnet, a French academic and filmmaker, has been travelling to piracy hot spots around the coast of Africa. In an extraordinary and very tense series of encounters, he came to face to face with heavily armed pirate gangs operating in and around the Niger Delta, where Nigeria's huge offshore oil industry, which employs thousands of expatriates, offers rich ransom pickings. It gradually became clear that piracy in West Africa has many of the same root causes as piracy in Somalia and elsewhere, not least of which is that those who don't share in the benefits and profits of global trade have ever fewer reasons these days to respect the security of those who do.

Source: Al Jazeera

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TRAPPED IN OMAN - BBC Africa Eye documentary 9geezyone 16 Views • 1 year ago

BBC Africa Eye investigates the plight of Malawian women lured to Oman with offers of domestic work, only to be trapped in a cycle of exploitation, with little hope of escape.

Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 http://bit.ly/subscribetoafrica

Through WhatsApp voice notes, videos, and texts, this documentary reveals their abusive ordeals, and exposes the tactics of agents that traffic and then abandon them. The investigation also examines the poverty and desperation that leads young people to seek opportunities in the Middle East, and the weak justice system that often allows their employers to abuse them with impunity.

Intimate testimonies reveal widespread accounts of sexual and physical abuse, or worse, of African workers - and the film follows the work of an extraordinary network of women working across three continents fighting to bring them home, often against impossible odds.

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🎥 Watch this documentary in SWAHILI here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QeZA0eZkfg
and in FRENCH here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89r0LMqW38Q

🎧 LISTEN to 'The Documentary: Trapped in Oman' from @BBCWorldService and #BBCAfricaEye here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct6q7y

🗞 READ about this investigation here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-68565425

Africa Eye brings you original, investigative journalism revealing secrets and rooting out injustice in the world’s most complex and exciting continent. Nothing stays hidden forever.

🎞️ Check out all #BBCAfricaEye investigations here: https://bit.ly/bbcafricaeye

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Credits:
Head of Longform – LIZ GIBBONS
Africa Eye Editor – TOM WATSON
Director and Executive Producer – NICOLA MILNE
Film Editor – FINLAY MILNE
Investigative Producer – KASSIM MOHAMED
Reporter – FLORENCE PHIRI
Archive – VOICE OF AFRICA, VOA, NEWS CENTRAL AFRICA
Additional Camera – ROBERT MBETEWA
Additional Translation – SUSAN MATIYA
Online Editor – CHRIS STOTT
Colourist – BOYD NAGLE
Dubbing Mixer – JEZ SPENCER
Reversioning Producer and Film Research – ANNA PAYTON
Digital Producer – TAMASIN FORD
Impact Producer – ADELLE KALAKOUTI
Social Media Producer – ANUSHA KUMAR
Production Coordinator – ABIGAIL KNIGHT
Production Manager – SIMON FROST
Camera - Malawi – PETER MAZUNDA
Camera - USA – DEREK ELLIS
Camera - Greece – VANIA TURNER
Fixer – HENRY MHANGO

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Website: https://www.bbc.com/africa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bbcnewsafrica/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/bbcafrica/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bbcafrica/

#Malawi #Oman #DomesticWorker #Migrants #MigrantLabour #WomensRights #MiddleEast