Camille Sachs chooses three fieldwork images and tells the story behind them.
In this recurring series, members of the DAWNING team reflect on fieldwork lessons by looking at behind-the-scenes images that evoke meaningful episodes in their journey. Here, Research Director Camille Sachs selects three more images that capture some of her most decisive moments in the field to date.
This photo is from our most recent trip to Moldova, to investigate the impact and efficacy of international targeted sanctions for corruption. The primary target is Ilan Sor, a pro-Russian oligarch who was implicated in a major 2014 bank fraud that resulted in $1 billion being stolen from Moldovan banks–roughly one-eighth of the country’s GDP at the time. Sor fled Moldova in 2019 and was subsequently tried, convicted, and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison. He has since been operating from Israel and Russia, continuing to influence Moldovan politics through proxy organizations.
When we first visited Moldova last Spring, Sor’s political foothold seemed tenuous. The pro-EU government led by President Maia Sandu had taken countermeasures to blunt the efforts of Sor’s network in the country, and international sanctions against Sor and his associates were proving effective. Yet when we went back this October to cover the presidential election and national referendum on EU membership, the picture looked very different.
Authorities had uncovered a massive vote-buying effort that resulted in some 130,000 people–a significant share of the electorate in a small country of 2.5 million–receiving bribes totaling $15 million in exchange for pledging to oppose the EU referendum. This suggested that Sor’s network was finding ways around the sanctions.
The photo above was taken shortly after we interviewed Moldova’s chief police inspector, who informed us that they had seized a large quantity of propaganda newspapers being produced and disseminated by the Sor network ahead of the election. We asked where the materials were being kept, and he said they were in evidence holdings and that we were welcome to take a look.
Our local researcher, Alex Macovei, is standing next to me helping to translate one of the articles, which was about several pro-Russian Moldovan parties who had traveled to Moscow to launch a new coalition. We also saw other items in the evidence holdings that Sor’s allies were using to bribe voters, such as t-shirts and even food items.
It’s rare for us at DAWNING to be able to travel to the same country a second time for a follow-up visit. But it was a great way for us to build on all the contacts we had made during our first trip. Having done that initial work allowed us to go much deeper during the second trip, and we even managed to secure an interview with Ilan Sor himself.
Ultimately, observers said the elections were largely peaceful and well-administered. Sandu won a second term and the EU referendum passed, though by a razor-thin margin of just 50.39% voting “yes.” We’re hoping to stay on this story and continue to cover the aftermath of the elections.
Earlier this year, we traveled to Sri Lanka to investigate the impacts of international targeted sanctions for human rights violations that occurred during the civil war. The atrocities committed during that conflict are well documented, and were particularly severe during the final years of the war, when the Sri Lankan armed forces forcibly disappeared people with suspected ties to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and indiscriminately shelled minority Tamil communities without regard for the presence of civilians.
The woman making a pot of tea in this photo is Jennifer Weerasinghe, whose teenage son, Dilan, was one of 11 people allegedly abducted in 2008 by Sri Lankan naval officers. Popularly known as the Navy 11 case, the story has garnered a lot of attention in Sri Lanka, but the details are very murky. That hasn’t stopped Jennifer from waging a legal battle for more than 15 years in order to find out what happened to her son and hold the perpetrators accountable.
She desperately missed her son and believed the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who served as president during the final years of the war, was responsible for his disappearance. Yet she still voted for him –and for his brother, Gotabaya, who has also held positions of power– because she believes he ended the conflict. She held two truths in her mind, which to me seemed irreconcilable: that the Rajapaksas are both war heroes and war criminals.
Sri Lanka remains very divided. Among members of the Tamil community, there is a common feeling that the war never ended. Yet many other Sri Lankans we spoke with who, like Jennifer, come from the majority Sinhalese ethnic group, feel an intense affection toward the Rajapaksas. Despite the ample evidence of corruption and war crimes, they are seen as having ended the war and brought about peace.
This is a vignette from our forthcoming graphic novel titled The Dark Corridor, about the lives of Bangladeshi migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was the most sensitive project I’ve ever worked on. Most of our interview subjects were in very precarious situations, as their employers held their passports and controlled many aspects of their lives. Everyone we spoke to did so despite the risk of retaliation. To protect their identities, we relied much more heavily on graphic storytelling for this project, as opposed to photographs.
The interview shown here in particular was very hard to get. We wanted to speak with someone who worked in rubber manufacturing, a very secretive industry with one of the highest rates of safety violations. The workers tend to live in on-site dormitories, so they’re difficult to access, and they don’t have much free time.
Before flying into Malaysia, we spent months trying to develop sources on the ground. Once we landed, we reached out to local nonprofits to see if they knew of someone on the inside who would be willing to talk. Finally, we heard from one of those organizations about a man who had been injured on the job and had sought assistance from them to pay his hospital bills. That organization put him in touch with us, and we were able to meet him near the factory on his day off.
He told us about the dangerous conditions inside the facility, which the managers refused to address. One day, he suffered a head injury on the job that required a hospital stay and stitches. The company gave him three days off but refused to cover his medical bills. His ordeal mirrored other stories we had heard, and being trusted with this story was a big moment for DAWNING.
Article by Elliot Waldman, based on interviews with Camille Sachs | Photographs by Rafe H Andrews and Nick Parisse | Graphic novel vignette by Eric Andriantsialonina
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