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I often feel betrayed, even abandoned, by some of my
comrades (although never by people like you, Binu), I sometimes fall from
exhaustion, or injury. But I never regret embarking on this path. It is my
obligation to fight for better, socialist world. I never see it as a sacrifice.
5.
BM: What was your first anti-imperialist project after coming out of the
'empire'?
AV: As I mentioned earlier: Peru. But Peru was not just
Peru. I worked in the 'neighborhood', too, intensively: in Bolivia, Ecuador and
post-Pinochet Chile. I quickly understood and began describing, what was done
to native people of Latin America. I saw and understood that wealth of the West
is based on plunder of others. I understood how tremendous are 'pre-Colombian'
cultures of the Americas.
6.
BM: You worked long years in Latin America. Can you tell us about the
work you did?
AV: I did quite a lot there, basically in all Spanish speaking countries, plus Brazil and Caribbean. Among other issues, I covered wars in Peru and Colombia, but especially great revolutionary struggles in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. I always go to Cuba, periodically, as it is my intellectual and emotional home. I wrote a lot about Brazil under Lula and Dilma, crisscrossing entire huge country. I covered "Archives of Horror" left by Strossner's dictatorship in Paraguay. I worked with great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, author of "Open Veins of Latin America", and in Chile, exposing German Nazi colony "Colonia Dignidad". I wrote about horrific gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and I wrote about aftermath of the US attack against Panama, particularly in the city of Colon. And I spend long time in Mexico" My last visit was in September, 2018, after AMLO won elections and Mexicans had chosen their first left-wing government in decades. For three weeks I filmed all over the country, from Tijuana to Merida, Yucatan.
Accumulatively, I spent around 5 years in Latin America.
7.
BM: You also worked hard in Africa. Can you tell us about the work you did?
AV: That is the most scarred continent on Earth.
Entire world suffered from the Western imperialism and plunder, but Africa is 'unique', because nowhere else in a modern history, brutality of Westerners reached such climax. Well, with the exception of Southeast Asia, perhaps.
I was filming for a Latin America television channel Telesur in the toughest slums in Kenya
and Uganda. I produced documentary film about monstrous Dadaab camp,
constructed for mainly Somali refugees in the middle of a dessert. And I
produced and directed my big, 90-minutes documentary "Rwanda Gambit",
about how the West created absolutely false narrative about Rwanda genocide,
and how it keeps silent about one of the most monstrous genocides of all times
-- that in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Rwanda and Uganda, on
behalf of the West, have been totally stripping off this mineral rich nation.
The DRC has everything -- from coltan to uranium, from gold to diamonds. Some 9
million Congolese people already died, since the invasion of Rwanda.
8.
BM: I think you have a love affair with Asia. Living long years in
Asia and working for Asia, especially on Indonesia. How did this come
about?
AV: Asia is my home. I am Asian culturally, and some of my blood is from here.
I love China, but I also feel very comfortable in Japan and in other countries.
Indonesia is definitely not one of them. I do not live there, I never could; I'd rather die. I am so horrified by it, that I write about it often, and make films. I do it as a warning to the world. I am in Indonesia for totally opposite reasons than 'love': after 1965, this 4th most populous country on earth, was turned into one huge laboratory, by the West. Indonesia is not a country, it is a 'concept'.
Before 1965, under left-wing, anti-imperialist President Sukarno, Indonesia was a progressive country, a cradle of Non-Aligned Movement. All the natural resources were nationalized.
The West overthrew Sukarno in the bloodies coup of the 20th century. Between 1-3 million people were butchered, and rivers were clogged with corpses: members of the Communist Party (PKI), intellectuals, teachers, unionists.
I call it 'intellectual Hiroshima'. The West suggested that all theatres and film studios get shut down, that Chinese and Russian languages are banned, together with the Communist ideology. Almost all writers and painters were imprisoned in Buru concentration camp.
Mass rapes took place all over the archipelago.
Thinking people were either murdered or forever silenced. Instead, cheap pop, Hollywood films and junk food were injected and promoted. In many ways, Indonesian culture ceased to exist, and its diversity was killed.
Indonesia committed, with great help from the West, three genocides in just over half of century: genocide of 1965, then in East Timor, and now an on-going genocide in West Papua.
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