[Reader-list] Frontline/World - India, Mexico and China (fwd)

Wed Jun 23 08:17:16 IST 2004

   The full stories will be available for streaming online next Monday 
(possibly earlier).

--- begin forwarded text

FRONTLINE/World
:::Stories from a small planet

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/

  - This Week on FRONTLINE/World:
"India: The Sex Workers"
"Mexico: A Death in the Desert"
"China: Shanghai Nights"

- Live Discussion: Chat with reporter Raney Aronson about covering
India's red-light districts and confronting the AIDS epidemic, Friday at 
11am ET

- Stay Tuned This Summer: Special Election Coverage From Around the 
Globe

- Educators: New Classroom Resources

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FRONTLINE/World returns this week with our unique mix of extraordinary
and eclectic stories -- personal stories about people and places,
stories you are not likely to see elsewhere.

This time, our adventurous journalists -- Raney Aronson, Claudine
LoMonaco and Nguyen Qui Duc -- take us inside the sprawling red-light
districts of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta);
bring us along on a perilous desert border crossing; and sneak us
through the back door of one of Shanghai's underground nightclubs.

We start in India, where there are more than 3.5 million sex workers,
yet they are almost invisible.

When "Aloka" was just 16 years old, her parents sold her into
prostitution. After five years of sexual enslavement in a brothel in
Mumbai, Aloka is HIV positive.

"The brothel keepers would force me into a small room, and the clients
would refuse to wear a condom," she says. "At that young age, I had no
idea what to do but to listen to them -- and now I am paying the price."

Aloka is not alone. She is just one of thousands of HIV-infected sex
workers who are at the center of India's AIDS crisis. Already India has
more than 4.5 million cases of HIV -- second only to South Africa. If
drastic measures are not taken, it is feared that more than 25 million
Indians could be HIV positive by 2010.

"The Sex Workers" is a tale of two cities -- Mumbai, where more than 60
percent of the sex workers are infected with the AIDS virus, and
Kolkata, where a strong sex worker union, a history of militancy and a
model AIDS prevention program have managed to limit the infection rate
to 10 percent. In an astonishing scene, reporter Raney Aronson shows us
women from the Sonagachi AIDS Project confronting a group of men --
pimps, brothel owners and clients -- urging them to use condoms.

And in a heartbreaking encounter, Aronson visits a shelter outside
Kolkata and talks with girls who have been rescued from brothels where
they had been sold into prostitution. Their faces and stories are
unforgettable.

Closer to home, we bring you the story of Matias Garcia, a 29-year-old
migrant from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, who died in the Arizona desert
last year as he tried to cross illegally into the United States in
search of work. A married man, the father of two, Garcia had been making
an annual journey north since he was a teenager, to work in the fields
of California. But these days the border crossings are more dangerous.
Fences and tightened patrols in California are causing migrants to risk
crossing through Arizona's deserts, where temperatures are extreme.
Garcia was one of more than 200 migrants who died last year in the
Arizona desert.

In this intimate and moving portrait, reporter Claudine LoMonaco and
producer Mary Spicuzza track down Garcia's family in a Zapotec Indian
village. They find a village in mourning for a lost son. It's a simple,
powerful story -- one that you are likely to remember every time you
read of an anonymous migrant death on our southern border.

Finally, in "Shanghai Nights," reporter Nguyen Qui Duc introduces us to
the new cultural revolution unfolding in China's most open, cosmopolitan
city. We meet young writers, artists, and rock 'n' rollers who are
pushing for more personal freedom. Duc's guide is Mian Mian, "the bad
girl of Shanghai," notorious for her banned novel, Candy, an underground
best-seller about taboo subjects in China: sex, drugs, and crime. It's
the story of a generation that no longer accepts the old rules, but
doesn't want to confront the government directly -- a generation that
would like to have some fun.

On the Web site, you can read excerpts from Mian Mian's scandalous book,
"Candy," then prowl the Shanghai streets in our "Bright Lights, Big
City" reporter's slide show. On an interactive map, you can follow the
spread of HIV/AIDS around the world and see where prevention and
treatment are making a difference. And you can read about our
producer/reporters' experiences filming in Mexico.

This is our season finale for FRONTLINE/World, a season in which we took
viewers to Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, Spain, Belize, Pakistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Kenya -- and now India, Mexico and China. You can revisit
all of these stories on our Web site. Then take new journeys with us
when we return to FRONTLINE this fall.

Meanwhile stay tuned to our Web site, where this summer we will publish
14 fresh dispatches from around the globe as part of a special PBS
FRONTLINE/World series, "As Others See Us -- Bringing an International
Perspective to U.S. Elections." Our first report, from Lebanon and
Syria, will launch Tuesday, July 27, and we'll bring you weekly updates
from all over the world.

As always, let us know what you think of our stories from a small
planet.

Sincerely,
Stephen Talbot
Series Editor

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+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com

This Friday, June 25 at 11am ET, join FRONTLINE/World reporter Raney
Aronson for a live online discussion about her story "Sex Workers."

For details, go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34616-2004Jun11.html

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+ Special Summer Election Coverage

Starting July 27 and continuing into November, weekly reports each
Tuesday from around the world: What do people and officials in other
countries think of our presidential campaign? Do they care who wins? Why
or why not? What do they hope -- or fear -- will be the consequences for
them and their country if George W. Bush is re-elected? if John Kerry
defeats Bush? How do they view American-style democracy? Other
dispatches will report on foreign elections -- and what those results
mean for Americans.

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+ Educators

New Classroom Resources With a Global Perspective! Come explore the
latest collection of standards-based classroom activities and
recommended literature on the FRONTLINE/World Web site. These new
resources will help grades 7 through 12 investigate press freedom around
the world, evaluate the pros and cons of command and market economies,
role-play peace talks, and more.

All activities tap into the wealth of free video and Web resources from
FRONTLINE/World.

Available at:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/educators/

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FRONTLINE/World Fellows
If you haven't already done so, check out our special report from Sicily
-- "A Bridge Too Far?" -- about the controversy over a proposed bridge
that would link Sicily to Italy's mainland. It's the latest in our
series of FRONTLINE/World Fellows stories by talented young journalism
students. Reporter Mary Spicuzza just graduated from Berkeley's graduate
school of journalism.

You can access a full archive of Web-exclusive FRONTLINE/World Fellows
reports at:

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/fellows.html

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FRONTLINE/World is co-produced by WGBH Boston and KQED San Francisco and
is broadcast nationwide on PBS and PBS.org.

Major funding and underwriting support comes from the corporation ABB
Ltd., the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional funding from Tom Steyer
and Kat Taylor, and the Tides Foundation. The FRONTLINE/World Fellows
program is funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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FRONTLINE/World
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/
125 western avenue, boston, ma 02134

June 2004
copyright WGBH and KQED (c)2004

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