I recently had a short video on sex workers in Thailand published at VJMovement.  If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s definitely worth checking out.  It’s my hope that this is the direction of videojournalism in the future, with communities forming between audience and journalists and intimate story-telling taking the place of larger impersonal networks that have a Facebook page for no clear reason.

This story was not the story I set out to tell, I had originally hoped that a few of the women I had spoken to in the trade would agree to be interviewed on camera, but they weren’t comfortable with their images being used. This is itself was telling, as almost every woman I interviewed spoke of an unspoken agreement with family to keep up a charade of having a job as a waitress or hotel employee, while both parties were aware of what was really happening.

My original intent was also to focus on EMPOWER as an entry into the lives of sex workers. EMPOWER is a non-profit that extends community-building services to sex workers in cities throughout Bangkok. Free language courses, internet access, and healthcare and health counseling are provided in an environment dominated by signs urging sex workers to fight for the legality of their profession and for their rights as workers.

Unfortunately, EMPOWER would not allow any members of their staff or women using their facilities to speak about their own personal experiences, so I wasn’t able to tell the more personal, and most likely more revealing story that I originally planned.

There are of course, many NGO’s who are rightly working to stop human trafficking, child prostitution, and other injustices in this region. However, after months reporting on and researching the world of sex workers over the age of 18, it was my intent to show a side of the sex trade that is, as far as I was able to discover, made up of men and women who choose to engage in a profession due to economic, social and cultural circumstances.

Click map to see my route through Cambodia, Vietnam and southern Laos.

This video was taken over the course of the day as blood was collected, paraded through Bangkok, and splashed on the Democratic Party’s headquarters.

A protestor who refused to be filmed said that the blood signified the inequality in Thailand, where he said the ruling party and the higher classes live off of the blood and sweat of the poor and middle class.

This video is intended only as a snapshot of the events of March 16th, and is not meant as a piece of journalism. Sound has been changed in some sections, although all sound was part of the march and subsequent protest. There is a continuous shot of a man giving blood that is then poured into a communal jug.  Rumors among red-shirt detractors included talk of cat and dog blood being used instead of supporters’ blood.

Protestors returning from 11th Infantry Headquarters, where Prime Minister Abhisit had been staying

Thousands of protestors have descended on Bangkok for the past seven days, and although the rally is losing steam, traffic remains shut in a large area of of downtown that houses most governmental offices.

Resembling a music festival, the protest has consisted mostly of rhetoric, cheering, camping out, and spicy papaya salad – all accompanied by 100 degree heat and outdoor toilets.

Dozens of gallons of donated protestors’ blood were dumped all over the gates to the gov’t headquarters and prime ministers home in a display what one protestor called an act of symbolism for the elite flourishing on the blood and sweat of the poor.

The protest has been exhaustively covered, and BBC yesterday offered a good round-up of Thai media.

I’ve been filming quite a bit, but editing has been slower. Will be posting short vignettes this weekend as they’re finished.

(photo Wally Santana – AP)

Two weeks ago I stood on top of the remains of a mountain village in southern Taiwan. Fifty feet of boulders and mud dislodged from the top of a nearby mountain by Typhoon Morakot’s rains lay between me and at least 200 people that were buried as they slept. I picked up my camera, and I did what the Associated Press’ Taiwan team and I had been doing for the last 4 days – I documented the pain in the face of a survivor’s relative coming to terms with the likely death of their unrecovered family members.

As with any legal decision in Burma, I keep being reminded by pundits, the outcome is always a political one, legal niceties need not be observed.  If the verdict is announced, expect an AP report around 11 PM Eastern Standard time on Monday. However, there’s no precedence for how long the court will wait before announcing, the entire case could be reread, and the verdict given hours later.

The other story in the news tomorrow is the extradition hearing for Viktor Bout, a Russian national arrested in Thailand last year in a US-led sting operation almost a year ago on charges of international weapons smuggling.

His last extradition hearing in March 2009 was delayed, but a decision is expected tomorrow, with the assumption that Bout will appeal any decision to extradite him to the United States.  Russia strongly wants him released, and Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov made a trip to Bangkok on the way back from July’s Asean forum to meet with the Thai foreign minister, confirming in a press conference that Bout was a subject of discussion.  Lavrov also had a private audience with Thailand’s King Bhumibol, but when I asked him whether Bout would be discussed at that meeting, he told me that he questioned the logic of implying that the only reason to meet a revered royal figure would be to discuss a criminal matter.  After hearing the question leave my mouth, I sort of agreed.

Look for word on that decision sometime in the early morning Eastern Standard time.

I am being sent to Taipei for the next few days, helping with coverage of the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, and so will miss all the press conferences tomorrow. I will try to post footage of Taiwan if it’s not being used in news reports.

I was in Pattaya, Thailand, to cover the contest on Saturday, and shot, edited and uploaded my footage to our London bureau before catching a taxi home and writing a quick print story on the way back.

It’s raw footage, but it was a solo effort, and hopefully only the first of many.

“‘I don’t want to guess what the verdict will be,’ Nyan Win told reporters. Without directly calling Suu Kyi’s case politically motivated, he noted: ‘I have never seen any defendant in a political case being set free.’”

For Thailand, a close neighbor and trading partner with Myanmar, the trial comes soon after last week’s ASEAN summit, during which tensions between Myanmar officials and other representatives, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were strained, but perhaps fortunately overshadowed by the North Korean nuclear issue.  

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit cancelled a scheduled trip to Myanmar tomorrow due to the timing of the Suu Kyi decision, but only at Myanmar’s request, said a government spokesman.

“The postponement has no connection with Thailand’s role in the discussion of Myanmar’s internal issues at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers Meeting in Phuket earlier this month, he added.” 

Needless to say, AP’s Bangkok bureau will be covering the events tomorrow closely, and I hope to post some efforts of that coverage here by tomorrow night.  

Later in the day, the United Front for Democracy against Democracy (UDD) publicized plans to converge on Bangkok’s royal park of sorts, continuing a signature drive that they claim tops 1 million signatures already.  The group plans to submit the signatures to King Bhumibol on August 7, asking for a royal pardon for ex-Prime Minister Shinawatra.

All of these events occurred with the backdrop of a continuing increase in deaths from the H1N1 flu, known in Thailand as the Big Fever of 2009, and responsible for 44 deaths here. Thai politics are also in their usual state of a slow simmer.

With most of the bureau in Phuket for the ASEAN meetings, a cameraman was flown in from Taiwan to coordinate TV coverage and help with filming.  

The shortage of staff also meant that I had a perfect opportunity to watch and participate in all levels of the bureau’s TV operations, from setting up for shots in press conferences, plane arrivals, and locations like a Thai temple with no ability to plan first.  

From filming on-site, to racing the videos back to the bureau by motorbike for editing, to uploading footage to London’s servers and writing the scripts, I worked in every part of the bureau’s process last week, and am looking forward to focusing on the shooting next week.  

I’m editing footage from all of the shoots I mentioned above, and will have posted by tomorrow.