When the lions find their storytellers: A public talk by Dr Shahidul Alam
October 4th, 6 p.m.
National Geographic Store
83-97 Regent Street
London
Internationally renowned Bangladeshi photographer, writer, curator and teacher Dr Shahidul Alam, will lead a free public talk at the National Geographic Store next week.
During the 40 minute talk Dr Alam, a National Geographic juror and photographer, will discuss his 30 year career in documentary photography, as well as his role as one of the most respected photography educators in the world.
Dr Alam?s work in establishing networks for photography and media professionals in his native Bangladesh has opened up the medium to an entirely new generation of artists. As a result, Bangladesh now has the highest number of documentary photographers in the world, some of whom, thanks to his efforts, are becoming internationally acclaimed. Alam founded the award-winning Drik Picture Library (www.drik.net) in 1989; the Bangladesh Photographic Institute in 1990; Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography – considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world – (www.pathshala.net) and ?Chobi Mela? (www.chobimela.org), a biennial international festival of photography, which is held in the capital, Dhaka. Alam’s most recent project is the founding of Majority World, a photo agency dedicated to providing a platform for non-Western photographers.
A jury member of numerous competitions including World Press Photo, for which he has been a judge on four occasions and recently the first non-Western person to chair the international jury, Alam was also the first Asian recipient of the prestigious Mother Jones Award for Documentary Photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, including: the MOMA, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Royal Albert Hall, London; and The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran.
Dr Alam’s week-long visit to the UK is a result of his first retrospective photography exhibition at the Wilmotte Gallery at Lichfield Studios (http://www.tristanhoare.co.uk/) from 5th October -18 November, and the release of his forthcoming book, SHAHIDUL ALAM: My Journey as a Witness, published by Skira, Milan, and edited by Rosa Maria Falvo. The book will be launched at the Grand Hyatt Churchill Hotel in London at 5.30 pm.
‘Most of the photographs in your paper, unless they are hard news, are lies,? says Martin Parr. ?Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks amazing, right? Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.?
Parr, 59 years old and perhaps Britain?s best known photographic chronicler of modern life, is sitting in the kitchen of his beautiful Georgian house in Clifton, Bristol. He has served me tea from a fine china pot and ?posh biscuits? bought from the deli up the hill. Susie, his wife of 30 years, is stirring something on the hob. Everything looks rather lovely.
Everything, that is, except the appalled expression on Parr?s face when I suggest that sometimes, regardless of their truthfulness, pictures of things looking their best might be exactly what people want to see. ?Of course,? he says, ?but what people want?? He hits that last word with the force of a punch, then lapses into silence, as if the very thought of taking a photograph that perpetuates a fantasy disgusts him beyond words.
?If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we are sold every day. Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.?
A new exhibition, Martin Parr: Bristol and West, opening in the city next week, reminds us quite what a ridiculous, contradictory, dysfunctional and occasionally wonderful place Parr finds the world to be. Focusing on the part of the world that he has called home for the past 25 years, its 60 images, both old and new, suggest that whatever else has changed about photography over the intervening decades ? the advent of digital cameras, the death of film ? Parr?s gaze remains as acute and unsentimental as ever.
Has anybody ever looked their best in a Martin Parr photograph? Certainly not the mustachioed yacht salesman shot at Bristol regatta in 1989, his face, as he courts a couple of would-be buyers, frozen in a rictus of obsequiousness. Nor the group of girls Parr stumbled upon at Badminton horse trials, as much a product of good breeding and aggressive grooming as the fillies they have gathered to watch.
That picture finds its echo in another shot in the show, taken 20 years later, of a different quartet of girls of a similar age ? smoking, teetering on a lamplit pavement on a night out in 2009, off-guard, half-cut, mouths open, eyes closed. Parr?s images frequently raise a smile by exposing the gap between the public faces we wear and the private motives and insecurities that, if you know when and where to point a camera, can be seen seeping out from beneath. But if there is a joke here, nobody has let his subjects in on it.
When he is taking a photograph, Parr says, his prime responsibility isn?t towards the people in shot, but to his viewer and to his own sense of the truth of the scene. ?When someone says to you, ‘Oh, I don?t take a good picture,? what they mean is they haven?t come to terms with how they look,? he says. ?They take a fine picture, it?s just that their image of how they think they look is not in touch with the reality.?
I had always wondered how Parr got himself into such intimate proximity with the subjects of his photographs, who so often appear blissfully unaware of the critical lens loitering only inches from their faces. I suppose I?d imagined him to be a flatterer, or else a man of such discretion that people simply forget he is there and let down their guard.
In person, it quickly becomes clear that his chief weapon is not charm but directness. He shoots as he talks, with unflinching certainty and not a hint of self doubt. When I ask if he ever seeks a person?s permission before photographing them, that pained expression reappears. ?You would never get anything done if you did that,? he says. ?And besides, you still have the legal and moral right in this country to photograph anyone in a public place and do what you like with it.? So there.
Parr, who has been a member of the renowned Magnum picture agency since 1994, estimates he takes ?tens upon thousands? of photographs a year. Unusually in this digital age, he prints out ?maybe 15,000 of them? and, he adds, ?If there are 10 good ones, it would be a good year.? Themes recur ? ?tourism, consumerism, the Americanisation of the world? ? but his scope is dizzyingly broad: ?I am interested in people and what they do,? he says, ?the foibles of the world.?
As he approaches 60, Parr?s passion for his medium grips him as firmly as it did when his grandfather, an amateur photographer, first gave him a camera as a boy. ?I can?t imagine a time when I wouldn?t want to take photos,? he says. ?Photography for me is not work, it?s a calling.?
Martin Parr was one of the early photography trainers at Drik. His exhibition “Home and Abroad” was shown at Drik Gallery. Parr also gave a talk at the British Council, Dhaka.
Who: Internationally renowned Bangladeshi photographer, writer and activist Dr Shahidul Alam. What: Public lecture on the role of ?the visual? in communication for social change. When: Tuesday August 23 at 5.30pm for a 6pm start. Where: James Birrell Room of the UQ Staff Club, The University of Queensland. Cost: Free. Dr Alam flyer final
Champa with her son Ridoy, running to meet me. At first, she was very reluctant but soon she became quite willing, to pose in front of the camera. To trust or distrust some one is a matter of whimsy for her like others pavements dwellers. 2008, Kamalapur Railway Station, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo: Shehab Uddin/Drik/Majority World
UDDIN: I’m a freelance photographer in Bangladesh and I first met Shahidul in 1998. At that time I was in my hometown in Khulna. Shahidul, who also moved to Bangladesh a few years earlier was organizing all the photographers here. So it was a great moment for me to meet him.
After that, I came to Dhaka in 1990 and I joined a newspaper here. In 2005 I decided that work in the newspaper was not right for me, and I had the opportunity to join Drik and work directly with Shahidul. So I took the opportunity and worked there as a photographer. It was really a milestone, and a breakthrough for me. ALAM: The agency [Drik] was set up primarily because we were very concerned that countries like Bangladesh, which some have called “third-world countries” and we choose to call “majority-world countries,” have been portrayed almost invariably through a very narrow lens. It worries me that Bangladesh has become in the eyes of many, an icon of poverty. The reality is something we cannot ignore. Shehab shows it through his work and I have no intention of wallpapering over the problems we have. What I do have a serious problem with is when people are denied their humanity and become icons of poverty; they become lesser human beings.
The agency was set up because we wanted to tell stories that got across the richness and the diversity of people’s lives and we realized the story had to be told by people who had empathy for the subject. So it was a platform for local practitioners. And that’s the birth of Drik. But when we started, we realized that a lot of the photography infrastructure a Western agency has acess to, was not available to us. So we started creating some of that infrastructure here. Later on we also began developing educational structures that could foster new talents. We are one of the few agencies in the world that has two galleries of its own, runs a school of photography, and runs its own photography festival; I do not know of a single other agency in the world that does anything of this type. But all of that is really part and parcel of Drik’s photography-philosophy–in telling rich and diverse stories without compromising the subject’s humanity–we just had to create a whole space for ourselves. And now we are telling our own stories. Continue reading “Magnum Foundation Interview”
Trisha Ziff is a curator of photography and documentary film maker whose films, focus on the photographic image. A Guggenheim scholar, her exhibitions have been seen at major international museums including: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; California Museum of Photography, international Center for Photography New York and Centro de la Imagen Mexico City. Her exhibitions have looked at Mexican photography, the event of Bloody Sunday in Ireland, Hidden Truths and the famous image of Che Guevara, by Korda.
Message from Trisha:
My film, The Mexican Suitcase, is in DOCUWEEKS! This means that after screenings in New York and Los Angeles we’ll have accreditation giving us the possibility of being short listed for an Oscar nomination! Our film will be at the IFC cinemas in New York and Laemmle 5 in LA with the other DOCUWEEKS films.
The Mexican Suitcase is a 90 minute feature documentary that tells the extraordinary story of the recovery of 4,500 negatives taken by photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, with an extraordinary score by composer, Michael Nyman. The film reveals the story of the journey of these lost negatives from France to Mexico. I became involved in the story early on and was able to recover the negatives for the families of the photographers and personally returned them to their estates in New York. The story was on the front page of newspapers the world over… Finally, I was able to secure the rights to make this film and three years later, here it is!! The film is getting recognition, being seen at festivals as Karlovy Vary, San Sebastian, Morelia FF, LALIFF,DOCMIAMI and Dubai FF and we are still waiting to hear from many others.
DOCUWEEKS is unique. It gives us this incredible opportunity for an Oscar nomination run. However, to do this we need to raise the necessary funds. This is where you come in! Friends of our film.
DOCUWEEKS is expensive. We have had to pay our percentage of participipating, make a trailer, poster, postcards and hire a publicist! it all adds up to $45,000. We have received some initial donations and generous in-kind support too but we still need to raise a further $20,000. Every dollar helps!
The Mexican Suitcase, is a film about photography. Pictures taken by photographers who would become icons of the twentieth century – They photographed with a Leica and changed the way we saw war. All three would die while documenting wars. The Mexican Suitcase tells their story. It is is also a film about the power of memory. It’s a great story and asks… Who owns our histories? Why does the past matter today?
Funds raised by Kickstarter will be used only to help the film with DOCUWEEKS in Los Angeles and New York. As a result of these 2 week screenings, The Mexican Suitcase will qualify for academy consideration. Help us please to reach our goal and take this opportunity to the next level so we can be shortlisted for Oscar nomination.
Trisha Ziff – Director.
Soldiers rest just after the My Lai massacre, 1968.
My Lai 4, Vietnam, 1968.
It?s the smile. In photographs?released by the German weekly?Der Spiegel, an American soldier is looking directly at the camera with a wide grin. His hand is on the body of an Afghan whom he and his fellow soldiers appear to have just killed, allegedly for sport. In a sense, we?ve seen that smile before: on the faces of the American men and women who piled naked Iraqi prisoners on top of each other, eight years ago, and posed for photographs and videos?at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.
It?s also the cameras.?Der Spiegel reported this week that it had obtained four thousand photographs and videos taken by American soldiers who referred to themselves as a ?kill team.? (Der Spiegel chose to publish only three of the photographs.) The images are in the hands of military prosecutors. Five soldiers, including Jeremy Morlock, the smiling man in the picture, who is twenty-two years old, are awaiting courts-martial for the murder of three Afghan civilians; seven other soldiers had lesser, related charges filed against them, including drug use. On Tuesday, Morlock?s lawyer said that he would plead guilty.
We saw photographs, too,?at My Lai 4, where a few dozen American soldiers slaughtered at least five hundred South Vietnamese mothers, children, and old men and women in a long morning of unforgettable carnage more than four decades ago. Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer, was there that day with two cameras. He directed the lens of his official one, with black-and-white film in it, away from the worst sights; there is a shot of soldiers with faint smiles on their faces, leaning back in relaxed poses, and no sign of the massacre that has taken place. But the color photos that Haeberle took on his personal camera, for his own use, were far more explicit?they show the shot-up bodies of toddlers, and became some of the most unforgettable images of that wasteful war. In most of these cases, when we later meet these soldiers, in interviews or during court proceedings, they come across as American kids?articulate, personable, and likable.
Why photograph atrocities? And why pass them around to buddies back home or fellow soldiers in other units? How could the soldiers? sense of what is unacceptable be so lost? No outsider can have a complete answer to such a question. As someone who has been writing about war crimes since My Lai, though, I have come to have a personal belief: these soldiers had come to accept the killing of civilians?recklessly, as payback, or just at random?as a facet of modern unconventional warfare. In other words, killing itself, whether in a firefight with the Taliban or in sport with innocent bystanders in a strange land with a strange language and strange customs, has become ordinary. In long, unsuccessful wars, in which the enemy?the people trying to kill you?do not wear uniforms and are seldom seen, soldiers can lose their bearings, moral and otherwise. The consequences of that lost bearing can be hideous. This is part of the toll wars take on the young people we send to fight them for us. The G.I.s in Afghanistan were responsible for their actions, of course. But it must be said that, in some cases, surely, as in Vietnam, the soldiers can also be victims.
The?Der Spiegel photographs also help to explain why the American war in Afghanistan can probably never be ?won,? in my view, just as we did not win in Vietnam. Terrible things happen in war, and terrible things are happening every day in Afghanistan, as Americans continue to conduct nightly assassination raids and have escalated the number of bombing sorties. There are also reports of suspected Taliban sympathizers we turn over to Afghan police and soldiers being tortured or worse. This will be a long haul; revenge in Afghan society does not have to come immediately. We could end up not knowing who hit us, or why, a decade or two from now.
MAJORITY WORLD?, the socially responsible image agency, announces major expansion plan at ?Responsible Business?, Business Design Centre, London, 17-18 March 2011 Inspiring images, responsibly sourced MAJORITY WORLD? is a picture agency with a difference. It promotes the work of talented local photographers in the majority world ? Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East – enabling them to gain a fairer share of the global image market. Their work is often overlooked through inadequate access to global markets, or when organisations fly in western photographers for assignments rather than choosing to use and nurture local talent. It will also increasingly reveal the unique insider perspective that comes from local photographers? images and stories. Hence its wider mission to ?open doors and open minds?. MAJORITY WORLD? is pleased to announce that it has secured vital new start up investment from Stichting DOEN in the Netherlands as well as from two of its founder directors. As a result of this vote of confidence, MAJORITY WORLD? can now embark on its ambitious expansion plan. A new full time team will provide the expertise and dynamism needed to boost revenue growth, which in turn translates directly into increasing flows of commission funds into majority world economies. MAJORITY WORLD? is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company. Talking of its socially responsible brand, Ben Marshall, Creative Director, Landor Associates, worldwide branding & design consultants confirms, ?The global potential of the MAJORITY WORLD? brand is massive.? Dr. Colin Hastings, Co-founder of MAJORITY WORLD?, speaks of the opportunities the organisation?s new investment can realise. ?We are much more than a photo library; we are a cause. To date we have been refining and testing our business model and our social impact. Now we can actually make it happen? Dr Shahidul Alam, Co-Founder, Chairman and International Ambassador, will also be speaking at the event on 18th March, 11.00 ? 11.30. The title of his presentation is ?Behaving responsibly towards the developing world: the secrets of successful north/south partnerships?. The MAJORITY WORLD? founders will be at the exhibition to explain their innovative approach which helps photographic entrepreneurs in the majority world to build sustainable businesses whilst creating new added value opportunities for CSR professionals in the minority world. To understand the full picture: ? Visit MAJORITY WORLD? on stand 126 at Responsible Business 2011, Business Design Centre, London, 17 ? 18 March 2011. ? Visit www.majorityworld.com ? For interviews with Shahidul Alam or Colin Hastings, contact Clare Puddifoot +44(0)7876553879. – ENDS – Dr Colin Hastings www.majorityworld.com/ Visit Majority World on stand 126 at Responsible Business 2011 www.responsiblebusinessevent.org/
Police guarding the entrance to the Royal Exchange building at the G20 protest last year. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA
A photographer who was struck in the face by a police shield during the G20 protests last year has been awarded ?30,000 compensation by the Metropolitan police.
David Hoffman, who was covering the event in his professional capacity, suffered fractured teeth after a police inspector in full riot gear ran at him and hit him with the shield, says his law firm, Bindmans, which negotiated the settlement.
Hoffman’s solicitor, Chez Cotton, said in a statement: “Journalists such as my client are critical in disseminating information into the wider public domain.
“Reporters and photojournalists play a significant role recording political unrest, political events, which includes recording protest and, if it arises, police wrongdoing.
“That my client was assaulted by a police officer when carrying out this essential function, and brutally so, is shocking. Fortunately with photographic and film evidence of the incident and detailed testimony, Mr Hoffman has succeeded in holding the police to account.”
In an accompanying apology, the Metropolitan police said: “On 1 April 2009 well-respected social issues photographer David Hoffman was recording the G20 protests in the City of London.
“The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) recognise that Mr Hoffman was entitled to report on that day but was caused injury by an MPS officer during the event, preventing him from doing so.
“The MPS confirms its recognition that freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy and that journalists have a right to report freely. The MPS apologise to Mr Hoffman for the treatment he received and have paid compensation.”
Jeremy Dear, the NUJ’s general secretary, said: “No journalist should be singled out by the police and the police service has no legal powers or moral responsibility to prevent or restrict photographers’ work. Journalists have a duty to record and report on public protests as well as the behaviour of the police.
“David’s case is a shocking example of police brutality and totally unacceptable.” Related link in British Journal of Photography
By Carlos Miller
The Homeland Security Bureau of the Miami-Dade Police Department has published a ?Terrorist Awareness Guide? where it advises citizens to be on the lookout for people taking ?inappropriate photographs or videos.?
And no, they are not talking about perverts shooting?up the skirts of women.
They?re talking about people taking photographs of surveillance cameras and other things that are plainly visible to the naked eye.
Here is an excerpt of what the pamphlet says:
Maybe you are at a National Monument and you
notice a person nearby taking a lot of photos. Not
unusual. But then you notice that he is only taking
photos of t he surveillance cameras, crash barriers at
the entrances, and access control procedures. Is that
normal for a tourist? Absolute not! The following should cause a heightened sense of
concern: ??????? Unusual interest
??????? Surveillance
??????? Inappropriate photographs or videos
??????? Note-taking
??????? Drawing of diagrams
??????? Annotating maps
??????? Using binoculars or night vision devices
It should be noted that Detective Bustamante of the same homeland security bureau was one of the officers who responded to our?first Metrorail incident where we were ?permanently banned? for taking photos.
Bustamante proved pretty clueless of the law when he informed us we needed a permit to photograph anything within the Metrorail, regardless if we were shooting commercial or not.
Read the entire document below. The portion on photography is on the second page in the right-hand column circled in red. Terrorist Awareness Guide MDPD-PINAC
?The average person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. Of course, you and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.?
Lewis Hine 1909
Photographers often get defensive when reminded that many of them resort to ?digital manipulation? using the new tools currently available. Discussions about the limits of what is permissible regularly sparks off heated debates, particularly in contests. Jobs have been lost, awards cancelled, and credibility undermined when photographers have digitally manipulated photographs to create the image they have wanted.
Sadly, the arguments raised have largely dealt with issues of technique rather than issues of ethics. One school of thought suggests, ?if it was doable in a darkroom, then it can be doable in a computer?. Others claim that conventional darkroom techniques, such as dodging, burning, or changing contrast are acceptable, but inserting, taking away, or displacing visual elements are off limits (though these too were, and had been, done in the darkroom). More ?artistic? criteria suggest that the essential ?mood and character? of the original image must be preserved. None of this addresses the central issue Hine had brought up in 1909. Is the photographer lying?
I believe the discussion needs to shift from ?how? the image was altered to ?why? it was altered. Indeed, photographers have ?enhanced? their images by using filters to darken skies, dodged and burned in the darkroom to change relative emphasis of visual elements, sometimes even eliminated visuals that distracted from what was considered central to the photograph. Subtle changes in tonality and gradation altered the ?feel? of an image, affecting the emotional response one might have to the visual experience.? In the analogue days, the skill sets required hand-eye? coordination to a far greater extent than is needed today. The modern photographer needs to learn about pixels, paths and plug-ins. The software used, the amount of RAM and processor speed are the new vocabulary that replaces darkroom tools of yore. But even in the digital age, the skill of the practitioner often determines whether the change is detectable.
There are those who subvert the process and deliberately play on detectability of the process, confronting the viewer with their interventions, questioning her perception of what is acceptable, stretching her boundaries of credibility. Indeed, on occasions, flaunting these very norms to raise uncomfortable issues of how images are read. Early theorists like Professor Fred Ritchin, currently at Tisch School of The Arts, New York University, have eloquently analysed how this ?manipulation?, instead of undermining the credibility of the photograph, has returned the onus of authenticity upon the integrity of the author rather than the acceptability of the tools (human or mechanical).? One believes a photograph, as one believes a word, based on the reliability of the source, rather than the mode of production. The hugely talented pioneer of digital photography, the Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer, playfully, intelligently and skillfully, toyed with us, shaking the pillars of our age old beliefs, forcing us to question the process of seeing and believing.
Of course the photograph still retains the characteristic of being the primary source. ?I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I have photographs.? It is precisely because the photograph or the video, is seen as an unmoderated fact, that it is so powerful. It is precisely the reason why lying through a video or photograph can be so effective.
In this age of spin, rhetoric and hyperbole, does the liar, by shaking our confidence in the medium, undermine the veracity of the one source that we still implicitly trust? In some ways of course it does, but by doing so, the liar does us a favour. It reminds us to question, not merely the medium but also the source.
Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were believed because they were trustworthy. They had established their credibility. They had a track record that gave their word a respectability that others who said otherwise did not have. I have no way to vouch for the veracity of the incredible claims that they made. That is the basis of a very different discussion. But it is undeniably true that centuries after they have gone, there are people who live by their ideals and are prepared to die for them. The lives that they lived, made their words believable. We believed their actions, which led to us believing their words.
That brings me to the point of this article. The video of the attack on the flotilla. People have correctly pointed to the technical errors in the released videos. The fact that there were white frames inside the sequence, that consecutive frames did not match, that crude alterations revealed the manipulation where people are seen to be walking through metal pylons, the amateurish display of a catapult by turning towards a camera on a tripod and holding it high, in the middle of an attack by armed soldiers, the fact that a voice inserted in the video is that of a woman on another ship, all make the video a laughable piece of ?evidence?. Indeed, the detection of the tampering is what is being used as evidence of lies being told.
My argument is elsewhere. What if the Israelis had produced the perfect video, backing up their claims. What if their technicians had been more skilled, their computer animations more realistic, their actors more adept and telling their version of the story. Would that have validated their version of the story? I would like to return to who is telling the story. The veracity of the source.
Lies are more difficult to protect than the truth. If the version they had presented had been genuine, there would have been no need to confiscate all the visual material, releasing selective segments, with obvious tampering. If they had nothing to hide there would have been no need to jam the communications at the moment of attack, or to erase the audio from certain segments of the video. There would have been no reluctance to make all the evidence available and let the viewers decide. Suspicious behavior gives rise to suspicion. For a nation known for manipulating the truth at all levels, casting doubts on authentic data, vilifying honest citizens, persecuting every hint of dissent, it is the fact that the source is Israel that is the greatest reason for disbelief.
If a time were to come when Israel had a change of heart and for once spoke the truth, like Matilda in her burning house, there would be none to believe her. That fire is imminent and Israel?s house of lies might well be close to burning.
———————ENDS————————–
Other points of view.
BBC Panorama Video 1
BBC Panorama Video 2
“>Al Jazeera Storming of Gaza aid convoy Legal assessment of Gaza Flotialla raid
Related links: Military ties between India and Israel In Defense of Helen Thomas Human Rights Council Condemnation of Israeli Attacks
Adopted by a recorded vote of 32 to 3, with 9 abstentions.
The voting was as follows:
In favour: Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudia Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, Uruguay;
Against: Italy, Netherlands, United States of America;
Abstaining: Belgium, Burkina Faso, France, Hungary, Japan, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:
La Mohammed Kalay, Afghanistan, 2010.
Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 2003.
Soldiers rest just after the My Lai massacre, 1968.
My Lai 4, Vietnam, 1968.
