Revisited

Ciudad Juarez, which Pope Francis has just visited, was long considered the most dangerous city in the world. A city plagued by cartel wars, drug trafficking, violence... and femicides. In the past few decades, thousands of women have been murdered. The bodies of hundreds of them have been found buried in the desert, horribly mutilated. These crimes remain unsolved to this day. Our reporters returned to Ciudad Juarez to meet the mothers of these missing women, who are fighting for justice. In Ciudad Juarez, some mothers are searching for their daughters and others are mourning them. According to authorities, nearly 1,500 women have been murdered in the city, on the Mexican border with the United States, since the mid-1990s. But Paula (pictured), the mother of Sagrario, who was killed in 1998, is convinced there were many more. When the phenomenon began, in around 1993 or 1994, families were often afraid to speak out and left the city without seeking justice.

In the media today, this wave of femicides no longer receives the same coverage as it did in the late 1990s. However, the problem is far from solved: since the beginning of the year, the authorities admit that eight more young girls have disappeared.

Although various theories abound and there have been many investigations, the mystery of the missing women of Ciudad Juarez has never been solved. Those arrested claim their innocence.

In this city where bars and table dancing attract Americans in seach of less regulated sexual services, where Mexican criminals readily cross the US border a few kilometres away to escape local justice, and where it is now proven that head honchos of prostitution rings have benefited from the complicity of the local police, the girls keep disappearing, one by one, in silence.

Forty years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Spain is still unable to fully move on from its past. The population remains deeply divided between pro and anti-Franco camps. Our reporters went to Madrid to meet those still affected by the memory of El Caudillo. For many Spaniards, it’s a taboo subject. Some families contain both anti-Franco Republicans and pro-Franco Nationalists, many holding painful secrets from the past. Generations of men and women who grew up after Franco’s rule have sometimes learned during a family gathering that a relative disappeared or was tortured, executed or kidnapped during the civil war (1936-1939) or the dictatorship of General Franco (1939-1975). Atrocities were committed by both sides.

According to the UN, Spain is the country that has experienced the second-largest number of forced disappearances worldwide, after Cambodia. Over 150,000 people went missing during the dark years, according to official figures. Tens of thousands more were tortured and thousands of children stolen from their mothers, who were often communist or left-wing, to be entrusted to "good Catholic families."

Today, more and more Spaniards are seeking justice and compensation. Many want to see their torturers, aged themselves, go to trial. The descendants of those who disappeared also want to know the truth about their ancestors and their fate. In addition to discovering the final resting place of their loved ones, they want to understand more about their own family history. But their appeals often go unanswered; their cases dismissed. For victims and their families, the need for recognition is immense and the fight rife with difficulties.

Peace is slowly returning to Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir. For more than twenty years, this city of the Himalayas, nicknamed "the pearl of Kashmir" or "the Asian Switzerland", was plagued by violence and a separatist insurgency supported by neighbouring Pakistan, killing tens of thousands of people and scaring away tourists. In 1990, the Indian government declared a state of emergency in Kashmir and issued a special act of law allowing one million soldiers to be deployed across the state. It equipped them with emergency powers to conduct large-scale search and detention operations. Purportedly, the Special Act was put in place to quell a separatist insurgency, backed in part by India’s arch rival and neighbour Pakistan. Many civil liberties were suspended, and the streets of Srinagar were transformed into a battleground that grabbed the world’s attention. Twenty-five years later, our reporters returned to Kashmir to offer a glimpse of the legendary valley of Srinagar, which is undergoing an important socio-economic revival.

>>On France24.com, also watch our report: "India - Pakistan: A new generation takes up arms in Kashmir"

The day we began filming in Srinagar, a curfew was declared in many parts of the city. A few days before, a young man had been killed when the paramilitary forces shot tear gas shells to dispel a crowd that had gathered to protest an upcoming visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The day of the curfew, the army was worried about protests over the “accidental” killing turning violent. Despite the curfew, we were able to move around the city quite freely, and even film army checkpoints - something that could have landed us in serious trouble as recently as five years ago.

Over the next few days, we met and filmed a range of people, including a young political cartoonist, an activist and entrepreneur, a houseboat manager reaping the benefits of revived tourism, and a family of Kashmiri Hindus who had moved back to Srinagar after having fled the city 22 years ago. We found, particularly amongst the youth, an overwhelming sense of the injustice that they have been subjected to. There was much conversation about the army’s continued use of violence and oppression, and the limits to freedom of speech in Kashmir.

But there was also hope. A decade ago, as the situation in Kashmir became less violent, tourists had begun to return to the valley, and by the time we began shooting in November 2015, the state had been welcoming over a million tourists for three consecutive years. The return of tourism has not only created a semblance of normality, but also revived the tourism-related economy, which had virtually disappeared during the conflict years.

It’s hard to deny that Kashmiris today enjoy much more freedom than they did even a decade ago, but the presence of the army and the Armed Forces Special Protection Act means that the youth of Kashmir are still not as free as their counterparts in other parts of India. The Indian government has, over the last few years, reduced the number of soldiers deployed in the state, and is even considering a complete repeal of the Special Act. But whether Prime Minister Modi’s conservative, right-wing Hindu government will be bold enough to take measures to withdraw the army is something that remains to be seen.

Colombians call it the “Sleeping Lion.” On the night of November 13, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in the Andes mountains, which had been rumbling for several days, erupted again, causing the summit’s glaciers to melt. Huge mudslides came crashing down into the valley below, becoming Colombia’s worst-ever natural disaster. Located a few dozen kilometres from the volcano, the small town of Armero, which had not been evacuated, was swallowed by the mud. Over 23,000 people were killed in their sleep and thousands more injured. The terrible agony of a little girl trapped in the mud, 13-year-old Omaira Sanchez, was broadcast live around the world on television.

Today, more than 30 years after the tragedy, the survivors of Armero have forgotten nothing and remain traumatised. Little Omaira has become an icon and many Colombians come to pay their respects at her grave.

Meanwhile, dozens of mothers are still looking for their children, convinced that they somehow survived. Some say they caught a glimpse of them being saved by rescue workers on television. Our reporters in Colombia went to meet these mothers fighting to find their children.

On the 25th anniversary of the Baltic states’ independence, FRANCE 24 returned to Latvia and Lithuania. In these countries, invaded by Soviet troops a quarter of a century ago, the Ukrainian crisis has reopened the wounds of the past and accentuated the threat of an increasingly unpredictable Russian neighbour. In 1989, the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet bloc collapsed. All eyes were on Germany and Eastern Europe. The three small Baltic states continued to fight to regain their independence. But Moscow did not see it that way and intervened in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, “Bloody Sunday” on January 13th, 1991 left nearly 50 dead.

Moscow only finally recognised the three countries’ independence a few months later.

Today, the Baltic states, which are members of the EU and NATO, are firmly tied to the West. But since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the atmosphere has changed. For Baltic countries, the neighbouring Russian giant, considered unpredictable, is again causing concern. Twenty-five years after the independence of the Baltic states, FRANCE 24 returned to Riga, in Latvia, and Vilnius, in Lithuania, to meet with those who fought for independence and young people who were born after the country regained its independence.