I wanted to follow up here on Andrew Berends, who has been speaking out on his 10-day detention in Nigeria. He was there filming of his documentary about the Niger Delta, and became the latest journalist to be detained by government security forces and eventually deported. The Hastings High School grad is back home in Brooklyn …

… and hopes to finish his documentary, “Delta Boys,” for broadcast next spring. As he told the Committee to Protect Journalists,

“I want Americans to see in places like the Niger Delta what’s the real cost of the oil that we want to get cheaply. And not just the cost in money but the cost in human suffering.”

I spoke to another filmmaker, Sandy Cioffi, about her detention and the story that both she and Berends are trying to get out. Below are that story and another by my colleague Barbara Livingston Nackman about Berends’ detention.

(Photo: Seth Harrison/The Journal News)
Sept. 18, 2008

Freed filmmaker remains committed to his work

Barbara Livingston Nackman

The Journal News

BROOKLYN — In a move worthy of a classic espionage film, documentary filmmaker Andrew Berends swallowed the memory card from his cell phone as Nigerian security police were closing in on him Aug. 31.

They would accuse the 36-year-old former Hastings resident of spying, hold him for 10 days and subject him to long hours of interrogation about just what he was doing in their country. Ultimately, he was never charged with any crime.

After six months in the Niger Delta researching how the multimillion-dollar oil industry has affected the people there, Berends had his sources. Their names and phone numbers were in his cell phone.

“I just swallowed it,” Berends said this week in his Brooklyn apartment. “These are people who trusted me.”

Berends was right to believe those who helped him with his film “Delta Boys” would be targeted. His translator, Samuel George, was detained along with Joe Bussio, a bar owner who gave him shelter.

Berends said he prefers his subjects do the talking. He and his colleague, producer Aaron Soffin, 26, seem most comfortable listening. Soffin stayed in New York to edit video that Berends sent back every couple of weeks and to work on grant applications and paperwork.

“I am incapable of writing a script. Having a camera gives me freedom to go places and share what I see,” Berends said. “The Niger Delta is the context. But I always try to get people’s lives (un)folding within that context.”

At 6 feet 3 inches tall with blondish-brown hair, he hardly blended into the population, but he said he gained people’s trust by sharing meals and showing his genuine interest in their stories.

In 2005, he made two films about the Iraqi war. One is “Blood of My Brother,” which tells of an Iraqi family coming to grips with the death of their son by U.S. soldiers.

“The whole focus in his films from both Iraq and Nigeria is not to tell people what to think, but to give voice to the voiceless by exposing untold stories of suffering and injustice that will hopefully lead to corrective political action,” his mother, Polly Berrien Berends, a Putnam Valley resident, said in an e-mail to The Journal News.

Berends began delving into the Nigerian oil industry last year and made two trips. His second one began in March and ended when he was deported by the government last week. His visits convinced him that there is a significant local and global story to be told about the region. Further, being detained brought home that press freedom is suppressed in Nigeria, he added.

“And this is happening in a country that has full diplomatic relations with the U.S.,” said Soffin, who rallied help for Berends.

“There are huge, huge injustices there,” Berends said about the enormously profitable oil industry whose proceeds are shared between the Nigerian government and the multinational oil companies operating in the Delta. The Africans are mostly bystanders and survive by fishing and selling produce like coconuts and periwinkle herb plants.

“You have people who are (paid) less than a dollar a day in a region where millions of dollars are being pumped out of the ground,” Berends said.

His head is filled with images of Nigerians he met.

There is a young woman barely out of her teens who gave birth to a baby on the dirt floor of a thatched hut within 100 feet of oil company executive offices. There were two young men who were publicly flogged by militia for reasons unclear to Berends.

Some stories will remain untold because his visit was cut short by one month. Nevertheless, he will finish his film and expects to debut it at festivals along with a similar documentary, “Sweet Crude,” whose filmmakers were detained in April in Nigeria by the same State Security Service. They were part of the effort to bring Berends home.

Berends’ offense remains unclear. He had an approved business visa and U.S. passport. After pressure from U.S. officials, including New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Nigerian government released and then deported Berends. He thanked free press organizations, his family and friends.

“I am overwhelmed by the extraordinarily deep pool of effort, time, ingenuity, concern, love and prayers to which you have all contributed,” he wrote on the seventh day of his detention on a Web site dedicated to his plight.

In an odd scenario for someone not charged with any crime, Berends explained, soldiers escorted him onto a commercial plane. He was allowed his suitcase, but his laptop was confiscated. He reached John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sept. 10.

He was greeted with hugs from his mother, who was involved in the campaign to win his freedom and is the author of “Whole Child, Whole Parent,” a 1970s book offering spiritual and psychological insights into the child-parent relationship.

Andrew Berends said he wasn’t very aware of his mother’s writings as a child. He studied film at Wesleyan University and learned his camera skills on his own. He praises Hastings and its public schools for inspiring his curiosity and intellectual development.

“I went to a public school, but one with such a high caliber of (teachers). They were liberal, open-minded and encouraged me artistically and with language,” he said of growing up in the Hudson River village.

That environment and living so close to New York City, he said, helped him choose a less traditional career.

“Part of the challenge I love,” he said, “is to break down barriers and overcome fears … even my own fears.”

Sept. 18, 2008
Pattern of press intimidation in Nigeria

Leah Rae

The Journal News

Andrew Berends is only the latest journalist to risk detention trying to tell the story of the Niger Delta – a vast region that is oil-rich, deeply poor, and increasingly violent.

A pipeline bombing yesterday underscored the region’s chaotic situation. Militant groups have been demanding more oil revenues for the Niger Delta, which remains poor despite 50 years of industry there. Criminal gang activity and government corruption have taken hold.

“It’s a little bit like living in a mafia world,” said Sandy Cioffi, director of the upcoming documentary “Sweet Crude.” The roving gangs, guns and corruption in the Delta have something in common with the mob-controlled, 1960s Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Cioffi grew up, she said. Payoffs are required at every turn, and the players often change sides.

An implicit demand for a bribe led to her own detention in April when she and her film crew were finishing work in the Delta. Their boat was stopped at a military checkpoint, and they were interrogated by the State Security Service, the same federal agency that detained Berends. The four American crew members were released after seven days and never charged, though their captors gave reasons ranging from a lack of life jackets to a lack of military clearance.

The nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists has been tracking numerous examples of harassment against the Nigerian press, and noted that free elections in Africa have failed to ensure press freedom. Last October, two German filmmakers and an American peace activist were also detained in the Delta.

Cioffi interviewed various sides in the conflict over the course of three years but said her interrogators did not need information about the militancy.

“What’s much more sensitive to the Nigerian military, the Nigerian government, is if the European and American world become much more clear about just how much of an abusive military power they still are, even though they’re getting away with this veneer of being a democratic country,” Cioffi said by phone from Seattle.

For a mother to take her child to a hospital, for example, she must go by boat – roads have not been built – and pass by four or five army checkpoints where she may face harassment or sexual assault. “I have footage of villages burned to the ground, with women and children in them, by these troops,” she said.

Nigeria’s daily oil production has dropped to 40 percent of what it was before the militant campaign began three years ago, the state oil company said yesterday. Americans have a stake in the situation not just because of the oil, but also because of the Pentagon’s plan for an African military command.

“Given the security interests that we have and the oil interests, and the humanitarian crisis that is waiting to burst, it’s shocking that Americans don’t know what an actual military dictatorship it really is,” Cioffi said. “It’s really not a democracy, and that’s the story they don’t want out there.”

Cioffi believes the violence can be quelled through a process like the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland, where negotiations are monitored by a third party. Threatening to withhold travel visas could also press Nigerian officials to be accountable, she said.

Berends’ documentary, “Delta Boys,” will focus on personal stories about life in the Delta area.

“Those that have money have insane amounts,” said Berends, back home in Brooklyn after his 10-day detention. “There are many people who don’t have any – and I mean any.”

He and Cioffi hope their films will complement each other and provide a full picture of the situation. “Sweet Crude” is almost finished, and Cioffi hopes to see it premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival.

Both filmmakers said their experience had made them more committed to their projects.

“There is a pattern of Nigerian officials suppressing press freedom,” Berends said. “It doesn’t work. It only makes people like me want to work harder.”