The undercover migrant

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The extraordinary story of an undercover migrant and his ‘secret spectacles’.

When Azeteng, a young man from rural Ghana, heard stories on the radio of West African migrants dying on their way to Europe, he felt compelled to act. He took what little savings he had and bought glasses with a hidden camera – his ‘secret spectacles.’

Then he put himself in the hands of people smugglers and travelled 3,000 miles on the desert migrant trail north, aiming to document the crimes of the traffickers. Along the way he saw extortion, slavery, and death in the vast stretches of the Sahara.

For Assignment, reporter Joel Gunter tells the story of his journey – a journey that thousands of young Africans like him attempt each year.

Producer, Josephine Casserly

(Image: Azeteng's secret spectacles. Credit: BBC, taken by Joel Gunter)

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you turn on the camera?
0:04.0	You turn it on here.
0:06.0	You press it this way.
0:08.0	With that tiny little button and the red light comes on.
0:11.0	Then you press it again.
0:12.0	So when it blinks like this, it means it's ready to wake.
0:17.0	That's Azeteng.
0:18.0	We're in his small room in a slum-like settlement in Accra, the capital of Ghana.
0:23.4	And he's showing me a pair of glasses.
0:25.4	When you put it on, most people wouldn't know.
0:28.4	That is a spy camera.
0:31.8	So, Aziteng's putting on the glasses and he's right when you wear them really they just
0:37.5	look like a slightly strange but really a normal pair of spectacles.
0:43.2	But they aren't normal.
0:48.2	They contain a secret camera.
0:50.2	In April 2017, Azeteng made the drastic decision to cross the Sahara Desert in the hands of people smugglers and traffickers to film their crimes.
1:01.0	This is assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Joel Gunter from BBC Africa I and this is the story of Azateng's journey.
1:12.0	Azateng, that's not his real name by the way, was raised on rural farmland.
1:18.8	Two years ago, age 25, he was living in Kintampo in Central Ghana. In the day he worked in the fields and at night
1:26.9	he lay in bed listening to the radio.
1:30.3	Crossing the Sahara in such of a better life.
1:34.0	These migrants abound for Europe.
	...

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