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Zimbabwe: Jan Grarup Captured Darfur Refugees At the Sudan-Chad Border.
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
20 February 2008
Posted to the web 20 February 2008
Wonder Guchu
Harare
Photo exhibition tells sad story of world THE world, according to the ongoing World Press Photo exhibition at the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe, is a very sad place.
Most of the images except those on soccer show nothing but torment, hunger, despair, hopelessness and death in Africa, Iraq, West Bank, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Guatemala and Mexico.
There are images of the war in Iraq where the Americans are seeking out militants, in West Bank where Israelis are taking out Hamas, in Sri Lanka where a civil war has been going on for years, riots in Nepal and Mexico.
It's about blood, displacement, anger, loss and some sad endlessness to the suffering of mostly women and children. The story of Africa is not any different.
In Sierra Leone, Pep Bonet from Spain captures the sad story of men who lost some of their limbs to war but are determined to play soccer.
Part of the Single Leg Amputees Sports Club, the men who have already played matches in Britain, Russia and Brazil come from Murray Town in Freetown.
The pictures on display show some of the players preparing for the match. They have nothing much to take along with them except crutches and one soccer boots.
Another sad story from Africa being told by the pictures on display is about a nine-year girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Per-Anders Pettersson from Sweden captures Esther Yandakwa who has lost both her parents to civil war and has turned to prostitution. In the picture, the nine-year-old girl is smoking while two of her friends are doing her hair.
Esther is just but one of tens of thousands of children who were displaced by war and now find themselves with no option but accept anything that comes along.
Another very common story about Africa today is illegal migration with many youths from West Africa risking their lives just to get to Europe.
Arturo Rodriguez has two images on display about African youths who make it to the Spanish Canary Islands where they are captured, sent to holding centres before repatriation. The first image shows the immigrants after arrival on La Tejita of the most popular beaches on Tenerife in the Canary Island where tourists, Red Cross members as well as the security forces rush to rescue the famished youths.
The second image shows some of the youths on the quayside in the port of Los Abrigos waiting for transfer to a holding centre from where they would be repatriated back to Africa. One can see the tiredness and the despondence in the eyes of the arrivals who endured the more than 1 000km journey in a wooden boat across turbulent seas where some could not make it.
But after all the pain and the hope, the immigrants are returned back to Africa. Displacement, hunger and death is yet another common African story as shown by Jan Grarup in the images from Habila village in Chad. Here women and children who bear the brunt of men's senselessness queue for food at a refuge camp where they ran to after their villages were destroyed by the Janjaweed militia which operate from Sudan's Darfur into Chad.
The few that queue for food and hope survived where 400 000 others died and are some of the more than 2,5 million who were displaced. The only bright spot in the whole exhibition is maybe the images of soccer icons, David Beckham, Pavel Nedved, Didier Drogba and Carles Puyol, Gerald Asamoah and Wayne Rooney.
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There are also a few images of some matches that brighten the exhibition. The exhibition that opened on February 14 runs till March 7.
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