|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Latest |
Pictures |
|||
|
THE young women stride out along the dusty street that cuts through the Madiyav slum. Their bright red uniforms glow in the late afternoon sun and there is no mistaking their air of confidence. Since the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in December, women in India have formed the Red Brigade, a civilian group that aims to empower females to take back the streets. The men loitering around the market move aside warily, like a pack of wolves who have just discovered that the sheep are armed.
|
|
|||
|
Portfolio |
Gethin Chamberlain |
Investigations |
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Featured |
Magazines |
Recent |
||
|
AZAM was seven when his mother decided the time had come for him to go out to work. There were too many mouths to feed and no money coming in since her husband deserted her. And there were no opportunities in their village of Basagaon, which lies at the farthest and most desperate end of Bihar, the poorest state in India. Here more than half the population exist below the official poverty line of 22 rupees [25p] a day. Anjura Khatun knew what to do. The next time the child trafficker came to the village, they agreed a price. A few days later, Azam was on a train to Delhi. |
|
IT is marketed as the very best of British, a handbag that has become the season's must-have accessory after capturing the heart of Pippa Middleton. |
||
|
India |
||||
|
"DANCE," the policeman instructed. The girls in front of him, naked from the waist up, obeyed. A tourist's camera panned round to another young woman, also naked and awkwardly holding a bag of grain in front of her. "Dance for me," the policeman commanded. The young woman giggled, looked shy and hopped from foot to foot. The camera swung back to the others who clapped, swayed and jumped. This kind of video is the trophy tourists dream of when they set off into the jungles of the Andaman Islands "on safari". The beauty of the forest functions merely as a backdrop. The goal of the trip is to seek out the Jarawa, a reclusive tribe only recently contacted, which is taking the first tentative steps towards a relationship with the outside world. |
|
A shocking series of brutal attacks has led to a national debate on sexual violence. The Observer asked a group of young men in Goa for their views. The talk revealed a disturbing mindset |
||
|
Iraq |
||||
|
In this cat-and-mouse war, the sniper is king THE tank crew spotted them first; four men in civilian clothes jumping out of a pickup truck in the centre of Zubayr. One had a rocket- propelled grenade launcher. Corporal Mark Harvey was the first of the accompanying snipers to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carrying the RPG in his sights. One shot, a moving target, the militia man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground. The three others stopped, pulled his body into bushes by the roadside, then took off towards nearby houses. But in the Challenger tank, their every move was being watched. As the Iraqis ran into what they thought was the safety of the rabbit warren of buildings, the snipers' radios were crackling in their earpieces, guiding them in. |
|
With a spear clutched in one hand, a bag of bananas in the other and iPod headphones tucked beneath a white and purple turban, Alexandra Aitken cuts a striking figure as she strides along an Indian country road. |
||
|
Human safaris |
||||
|
Gap, Next and M&S in new sweatshop scandal Some of the biggest names on the British high street are at the centre of a major sweatshop scandal. An Observer investigation has found staff at their Indian suppliers working up to 16 hours a day. Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next have all launched their own inquiries into the abuses and pledged to end the practice of excessive overtime, which is in flagrant breach of the industry's ethical trading initiative (ETI) and Indian labour law. Some workers say they were paid at half the legal overtime rate. Gap, which uses the same factory as Next, confirmed it had found wage violations and gave its supplier a deadline of midnight last night to repay workers who lost out. M&S says it has yet to see evidence to support the wage claims. |
|
TAX row coffee chain Starbucks is paying workers just 25p an hour at its newly-opened stores in India. |
||
|
Afghanistan |
||||
|
Red hackles rise as the Black Watch stride out TAM o'shanter on his head, pistol in his belt, the commanding officer of the Black Watch is striding ahead through the crowded market place in the centre of the town of Az Zubayr. Yesterday this street was thought still too dangerous to drive down in a soft-skinned Land Rover, but the CO has decided enough is enough. After days of sitting back and watching his troops come under attack from militiamen armed with mortars, AK47s and rocket propelled grenades, he has decided that he and his men are not going to be forced to hide behind the safety of the armour-plate of their Warriors any longer. |
|
VULNERABLE children as young as 13 are being used as human guinea pigs by firms testing drugs for use in the UK, a People investigation reveals. |
||
|
Sri Lanka |
||||
|
Elephants push back against India's growing villages The moment the elephant's trunk wrapped itself around Fulmani Urao's waist, she must have known it was all over. She did not even try to struggle. There was no point. It was about 1.30am when the huge, bad-tempered bull elephant smashed its way into Fulmani's house. Her five-year-old son Asman, asleep in her lap, managed to wriggle free, but there would be no escape for his mother. This was an elephant with murder in mind. |
|
MILLIONS of British music lovers are being charged up to SIX TIMES as much for iTunes singles as those in other countries. |
||
|
Audio-visual |
||||
|
'The blast left the soldier on his back, staring at the mess of his leg' STRUGGLING TO sit up, Frederic Couture surveyed his torn trouser leg and the bloodied strips of flesh which were all that remained of his foot. A landmine had exploded, blowing the rest of it away. "I'm 21-years-old and I've lost my foot,'' he cried. "What am I going to do now?' "You'll be fine,'' his comrades tried to reassure him, pulling hard on the tourniquet they had tied just above the ragged wound. "You'll be fine.'' But it was not true - not really. The young Canadian private was inconsolable. "I'm 21 and I've lost my foot,'' he repeated. "What do you think I'm going to do?'' |
|
As the nation still struggles to come to terms with the attack on a Delhi student, another disturbing sex abuse case has shaken a rural community. It has raised awkward questions about police efficiency, disputed evidence and local gossip |
||
|
Darfur |
||||
|
Child victims of the battle to end a bloody civil war LYING howling on a torn mattress, in a cot by a window overlooking the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, the wounded toddler was a pitiful sight. A female relative fretted, trying to calm the girl down as the medics worked around her. The 18-month-old had been shot in the stomach in the final stages of the fighting in the north-east of the country and there was an ugly line of stitches across her abdomen where doctors had operated to remove the bullet. Her right leg was missing a chunk of flesh and had been gashed. |
|
Meet Sunder, the brutalised elephant angry Sir Paul McCartney says MUST be freed. The cruelly scarred 13-year-old animal has been beaten so badly by his temple keeper he is blinded in his right eye. |
||
|
International |
||||
|
One family's anguish amid India's child abduction epidemic IT happens all of a sudden. One moment Anil Lakhotia is talking, the next his face is buried in his hands and his shoulders are shaking. He is lost in his own world of pain, a world that began when his young son was kidnapped and murdered in January 2009. The silence grows heavier. "I used to try to scare him, to make him laugh," he says, struggling to find the words. He looks around, a grown man helpless, and the tears roll down his face. "I can't imagine how scared he was when it happened to him and I was not there for him. Everyone wants to protect their child, but we were helpless." |
|
An investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have Apple iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west. |
||
|
UK |
||||
|
The sisters who took on the IRA and won THE men's toilet in Magennis's bar in central Belfast is not a large room. There is a small sink to the right of the door on the way in, a single stall to the rear of the room containing a WC, and a stainless steel trough on the same wall as the sink, with room for two people. There are a couple of adverts on the wall above the trough; below it is the obligatory puddle of urine on the floor. In the chipped brown varnish on the back of the door, the initials PIRA - standing for Provisional Irish Republican Army - have been scratched. |
|
Wills and Kate flew home from their Indian Ocean honeymoon yesterday... after being presented with the world’s most erotic fruit. |
||
Gethin
Chamberlain is a photojournalist
covering South Asia for The Observer. He also writes for a number of
other newspapers and magazines, including Marie Claire, Sunday
People, Grazia, Mail on Sunday, Sunday Mirror, South China Morning
Post and The National. Based in India, he was previously a foreign
correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and was The Scotsman's chief
reporter. Nominated in the One World Media awards for the last two
years, he is also shortlisted for this year's Amnesty International
media awards. He can be contacted at 
