On Saturday afternoon, August 11, 2012 two earthquakes, measuring 6.2 and 6.3 on the Richter scale shook the North-Western Iranian province of East-Azerbaijan. Having their epicenters in the province they destroyed more than 100 villages, killied more than 300 locals and devastated homes to approximately 10000 people.
The Red Crescent immediately then started to search for survivors and help building an improvised infrastructure. Nonetheless thousands of people were injured and thousands lost their relatives, housing and belongings and are still in severe need of humanitarian aid as the cold season is approaching.
The Morning After
Rough Days, Joyous Nights
A group of homeless people lives under a bridge between the famous amusement center of Hamburg, Reeperbahn, and the Port. There is a core who stays there permanently, and others who come and go. They all share a motivation, which they call “Freedom”. Many of them feel free of bureaucracy as they are not registered within the social system. Others enjoy the anarchic way of living, and others have no other choice.
The Tomsk Trash
No garbage separation yet: A giant dump, Suhorechje Polygon, 50km away from the Siberian city of Tomsk, is where the whole Garbage of the city and its surroundings is brought to. In the middle of vast Siberian wood land. Some workers refer to the way of disposal as the “Lasagne-System”, as there is mud poured over a garbage layer in order to prepare the dump for the next layer.
The old dump, Novomichailovka Polygon, was serving for over 40 years, before it was closed down in 2008. Boris and Nikolai who grab the waste, Galina and Lubov who are managers at the garbage disposal, as well as many others, all have to earn their living from this business.
Mathare: Slum Life
Approximately half a million poor people live in Mathare, the second biggest slum around the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, in poor hygienic conditions and without proper water supply.
According to UN-HABITAT up to 2 billion people will be living in slums worldwide as a result of urbanisation by 2050.
Castor! X
Since 1996 the radioactive waste from the French La Hague is brought to Germany’s Gorleben in special “Castor” cases. The transport is traditionally confronted with massive protests, specially near its destination, the interim storage facility of Gorleben, which used to be a salt dome. Most of the population in this part of Germany are farmers who are worried about the possible effect of radioactivity on their land and future harvest. In 2010 the transport was delayed about 92 hours due to extraordinary massive protests and the police force deployment.
Asylum in Germany
A large number of people who seek asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany land in collective accommodation facilities (CAF) all over the federal states by good luck.
Mohammad is one of them. He has been in a CAF near the northern German district of Gifhorn since 2005 after he fled his homeland Pakistan over Iran to Germany.
His son joined him in 2008.
Istanbul – in between
Under the Erdogan administration and the centre-right AKP, Turkey has had an economic revival. However more and more Turks fear their country sliding on a track to conservative Islamism. On 12 June 2011, there were the General Elections in Turkey. The reigning AKP’s slogan in Istanbul, “Istanbul Hazir Hedef 2023″, refered to the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and promised a complete modernization by then.
Istanbul – the city between the continents – is a good mirror of Turkey, as about one-fifth of the Turkish population lives there. Many seem now to have forgotten that Atatürk was an ultimate maintainer of the separation of religion from politics.
