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People & Power

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In 2016, a landmark accord between the Colombian government and FARC’s Marxist fighters saw fighters lay down their arms after decades of conflict. Although the deal was controversial, many hoped it would lead to a new era of calm and prosperity. But five years on, the inequality and poverty that led to the armed uprising have not gone away, amid claims the terms of the agreement have yet to be fully implemented by both sides. When anti-government protests earlier this year were met with a savage police response, Colombians began to wonder if their troubled country would ever be at peace. People & Power went to find out why.

Colombia: Killing the Peace | People and Power

In 2020, public fury at alleged corruption among Bulgaria's political elite erupted into widespread protests, Since then, the crisis has seen two inconclusive elections, various prominent officials mired in scandal, and a three-term prime minister, Boyko Borissov, forced from office. His almost 14-year reign came to an end in April 2021 when he failed to secure enough votes to form a government. A new poll was scheduled for July, which this time Borissov's GERB party lost outright. But the ostensible winner, TV chat-show host Slavi Trifonov, could hardly claim a mandate either, gaining only 25 percent of votes cast in a multi-candidate race. After declaring his There is Such a People party had no intention of seeking a coalition with rivals, and they, in turn, signalled their determination to reject his proposed list of ministers, Trifonov was forced to withdraw from his attempts to form a government. Now, another election looks likely. People & Power finds out what lies behind the impasse. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Bulgaria: At the Crossroads | People and Power

When Myanmar’s military regime ended its flirtation with the representative government in February 2021, it marked the moment by killing several hundred anti-coup protesters and detaining thousands more - including Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of the National League for Democracy. So now some activists are taking a more aggressive approach to the Tatmadaw, as the country's armed forces are known. They have been heading to remote jungle regions to seek support from armed ethnic organisations, which have been waging their own on-off war with the Myanmar military leaders for decades. People & Power visits a secret training camp to find out more. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Myanmar: An Uneasy Alliance | People and Power

At its closest point, the Greek island of Samos lies barely two kilometres off the coast of Turkey, which has long made it a target destination for refugees and migrants seeking to enter Europe. Those who make it across the Aegean Sea are housed in and around a camp close to the capital Vathy. Some have been there for years, waiting for their paperwork to be processed through the tortuously slow Greek bureaucracy. Living conditions are atrocious. In the official camp, people sleep in dangerously overcrowded re-purposed shipping containers. But most are forced to set up tents or build a makeshift shelter in the unofficial "jungle", which surrounds the original compound on an exposed hillside. A new centre is under construction, on a mountaintop 10km (6 miles) away, and there is hope that conditions there might be better, but that is little consolation for those still living in squalor. In late 2020, a team of filmmakers went to meet some of the people desperately hoping their ordeal will end. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The Shameful Camp | People and Power

Since early 2020 the world has been in the grip of a pandemic that has cost millions of lives and affected billions more of us through sickness, economic contraction and restrictions on our movements. Much of this story has been exhaustively documented - on Al Jazeera and elsewhere - but the crisis has also thrown up a question that has received far less attention. Have measures taken by governments and employers in the name of defeating COVID-19 also done lasting damage to our civil liberties? - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Under the cover of COVID | People and Power

Since the late 1970s, some one million square kilometres of Amazonian forest have been destroyed, mostly through industrial activities and large-scale agriculture like cattle-ranching, soy farms and irrigation projects. Sixty percent of the Amazon lies within Brazil, which is where the most rapacious deforestation has taken place. By the turn of the century, under growing international pressure, Brazil enacted new environmental legislation and stricter enforcement of the laws. But about a decade ago, that hopeful trend began to reverse. This was cemented when right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019 and began dismantling environmental protections despite opposition from environmentalists and Indigenous peoples. Now, Brazil's Amazon rainforests are once again being decimated at an alarming rate. We explore the causes and consequences and meet some of those fighting to stop the destruction. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Brazil's Amazonian Battle | People and Power

Now well into its second year, the coronavirus pandemic has devastated communities around the world - not just in terms of the fatalities, ill health and mental anguish endured by so many, but also socially and economically, as the effects of lockdowns, travel restrictions, social distancing and commercial contraction have hit home. Large, densely populated cities - as key vectors of infection - have been particularly vulnerable to these problems. One such example is New York. For a time in April 2020, it was the global epicentre of the pandemic when 600 people a day were dying in the city’s hospitals and, even now, its 33,000-plus death count is still one of the highest of any city in the world. Outside those in China, it was one of the first global cities to enforce a lockdown, to see its commuters stay home, its hotels empty of tourists, and its public transport, shops, offices, theatres and restaurants fall silent. Now things are getting better. At the time of writing, about half of its residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and there is widespread hope that it will not be long before New York fully recovers its famous urban vitality. But how easy will that be? Some of the cornerstones of the New York economy have shifted, perhaps forever; many of its people have gone elsewhere and they may not all come back. In short, the pandemic has added new challenges to existing urban problems like racial and economic inequality and, as elsewhere in the world, it has changed patterns of living and working in many unforeseen ways. The long-term consequences of all this are not yet clear. People & Power's Bob Abeshouse, himself a longtime New Yorker, explores some of these challenges and finds out what it will take to bring the city back. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Saving New York | People and Power

As South Africa's apartheid government fought to cling onto power in the latter half of the 20th century, it routinely imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents in the liberation movement. Controversially, in the years that followed the end of white minority rule, many of those crimes went unpunished. In 1995, President Nelson Mandela's new African National Congress (ANC) administration established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help heal the country by revealing the facts about the era's gross human rights violations. However the commission's emphasis was on gathering evidence, publicly acknowledging abuses and hearing testimony from victims, rather than on prosecuting the perpetrators - many of whom were granted amnesty in return for participating in the process. The reconciliation hearings helped unify the new South Africa but they also disillusioned and frustrated many survivors and victims' families who wanted more than mere acknowledgment of their suffering - and who have never given up hopes of justice. Lukhanyo Calata is one of them. His father was part of a group of anti-apartheid activists - famously known as the Cradock Four - who were assassinated by security forces in 1985. No one has ever been prosecuted for orchestrating or committing the murders, but as this episode of People and Power reveals, Lukhanyo remains utterly determined to hold his father's killers to account. (Material from The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa has been used in this programme) - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

South Africa: My Father Died For This | People and Power

Al Jazeera’s weekly investigative documentary programme that looks at the use and abuse of power.

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People & Power

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