Fiercely independent and historically at odds with the central authorities in Jakarta, Aceh is now classified as a Special Region of Indonesia. It is overwhelmingly Muslim and has become the first province of this vast and mainly religiously ...
As Calcutta was to the British Empire, so the tiny and distant island of Ambon was to the Dutch. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) made this the base of its administration and favoured the Ambonese in their civil service due to the island's ...
Imagine a proudly independent, mist-shrouded island nation, a country of tinkering backyard inventors, small-scale industrial manufacturers, shopkeepers and farmers. A nation home to a vibrant Baby Boom generation with money to spend on leisure ...
Photographer and filmmaker Martin Adler witnessed excessive and disproportionate use of force while embedded with Charlie Company, an American combat unit of the 4th Infantry Division, in Iraq in December 2003. He also uncovered the systematic taking of ...
'For ten years they did not let us breathe' Chechen civilian, 2004. On New Year's Eve 1994, Russian forces invaded Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, igniting a fierce resistance that eventually forced troops to withdraw two years later. In 1999, the ...
Our colleague Martin Adler was killed in Mogadishu on the 23rd of June 2006. He was filming a demonstration when a lone gunman came out of the crowd and shot him at close range. Martin was one of the longest serving members of Panos Pictures, and was a ...
Martin Adler's reporting from the civil war in Liberia in 2003 remains a highlight in his career. Almost alone throughout the weeks of heavy fighting between Charles Taylor's child soldiers and the equally young rebel groups, Martin witnessed both ...
It is 10 years on 7 October 2011 since the beginning of the War in Afghanistan. Precipitated by the terrorist attacks on NY and Washington on 11 November that year, the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan at the time was quickly toppled by the ...
A one-year-old Nenet nomad will have crossed rivers, braved storms and traversed 1,000 miles of terrain - a journey they will make every year for the rest of their lives as they follow their reindeer across Siberia's Yamal peninsula. 'For us, deer is ...
History has come full circle for South Africa's witkaffers - white Negroes. At the turn of the previous century, many Afrikaners lost everything in the Boer War and had to compete with Blacks for low-paid jobs. They were saved by 'positive ...
Religion has become a flourishing business in poverty-stricken Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, with scores of pentecostal churches springing up in recent years. They promise miracles but deliver little to alleviate worshippers' ...
There is a proverb saying that the Cantonese eat everything on 4 legs except for a table and a chair and everything that flies except for an aeroplane. Dong Wan animal market, in the West of Canton, is the place where the Cantonese get their exotic meat:...
From a Hindu temple in southern India to the smartest salons in the West, the lucrative trade in human hair traverses the globe. It is traditional for Hindus to have their heads shaved at a temple at least once in a lifetime. At Tirumala Tirupati ...
In 2006, five countries in East Africa suffered their worst drought in over a decade. Years of low rainfall in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti were exacerbated by the almost complete failure of the rainy season expected at the end of 2005....
A dry bed scattered with shells and rusting ships is all that remains of a formerly bustling harbour in what was once the world's fourth-largest inland sea. The Soviet Union decided in 1918 that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the...
Tanzania's albinos are stalked by cancer, stigmatisation and murder. Albinism is a genetic condition with a recessive inheritance that causes little or no pigmentation in people's eyes, skin or hair. Their lack of melanin means albinos have sandy ...
'Just because they are living in isolation does not give us the right to let them down.' This simple principle drives Friar Richard Hardi, an ophthalmologist based in Mbuji Mayi in the centre of the DR Congo, to venture into some of the remotest ...
For minorities in the new Kosovo, the future is uncertain. In a population of 1.9 million at the end of 2006, around 90% were ethnically Albanian, 6% Serb, 2% Muslim Slavs, with the remainder Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians and Turks. In some instances, notably...
The Moken, a nomadic tribe of sea gypsies who live on the Surin Islands off the western coast of Thailand, survived the South Asian tsunami thanks to a low-tech 'early warning system' based on wisdom passed down through the generations. Elders urged the ...
In the space of six days in July 1995, almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically massacred by Serb forces in and around the town of Srebrenica. Infamously, Dutch peacekeeping troops and the wider international community failed to ...
In July 2007 Andrew Testa won the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism for his story on the victims of acid attacks in Bangladesh. The feature was commissioned by Germany's Brigitte magazine and published in the UK by Ei8ht magazine. ...
At the end of the Kosovo war in June 1999, 5,206 people were reported missing by their families. The vast majority were ethnic Albanian civilians killed by Serbian soldiers, police and paramilitaries during the war. Over the next seven years the bodies ...
As Kosovo moves towards statehood, Andrew Testa has embarked on a new project. His aim is to explore the different landscapes of a country which is on the brink of a new start, but which remains scarred by ghosts of the past....
All orthodox Jews who live according to the Torah and Talmud should eat kosher food. But the rules are contradictory. Which fish is pure and which isn't? In America those who want to be on the safe side look out for the seal of approval given by the New ...
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on the 17th of February 2008, thus completing a long and difficult journey towards statehood. Since the end of the war in 1999 Kosovo had been in diplomatic limbo, technically still a province of Serbia but ...
Louisiana's Angola state penitentiary, once described as 'the bloodiest prison in America' by Time magazine, is an unlikely setting for a rodeo. Home to 5,200 murderers, rapists and other violent criminals, it gained notoriety when 40 prisoners were ...
'Babies, guns, Jesus. Hot damn!'Rush Limbaugh, right-wing radio host, commenting on Sarah Palin's attributes.In a rollercoaster ride which began with her nomination as the Republican candidate for vice president at the end of August 2008, Alaska governor...
At fourteen, Tom Hanley had a part alongside Marlon Brando in 'On the Waterfront'. He played Tommy, the boy who helps Brando's Terry Malloy look after his beloved pigeons. The film's portrayal of corruption, extortion and racketeering on the Hoboken ...
On November 4th 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The following is an excerpt from his acceptance speech in Grant Park, Chicago:'If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are ...
Controversial tactics used by London's Metropolitan Police during demonstrations are to be reviewed following the G20 summit held in the city in April 2009. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) received seventy complaints that officers had...
'It's easy to hide successfully when nobody wants to find you,' an associate of Radovan Karadzic explained with a wry smile. Former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic was arrested by the Serbian authorities in July 2008 and yet his fellow fugitive, ...
The highlight of every English summer, Wimbledon has become a draw for tens of thousands of spectators over a bustling two weeks in June and July. The venue - the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club - in London's leafy southwestern suburbs, was ...
London-based artist Ben Wilson (47) has chosen a most unusual space to be his atelier, come rain or shine: the city's streets. And he doesn't need to bring his own canvasses to indulge in his passion. They are provided by friendly Londoners who are ...
The photographs shown here were taken over the course of 18 months from the windows of Andrew Testa's apartment in Muswell Hill, a leafy north London suburb. They are mostly taken on weekend nights between the hours of 1.00am to 4.00am when pubgoers...
The horrendous wars during the breakup of Yugoslavia made the Balkans a byword for ethnic fragmentation and inter-communal strife. Most recently, Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 has seen yet another chunk break away from Serbia, formerly...
According to an Icelandic saga, Erik Thorvaldsson, a man who had been exiled from Iceland for murder around the year 982 AD, sailed West with his family and a small band of followers and established a settlement on a large island in the sea to the ...