Trouble in Jamaica

Discontent with Sunday Night and 60 Minutes? There is always Dateline on SBS.

This week video journalist Ginny Stein (pictured) travels to Jamaica to look at murders, violence and police corruption. Last year alone, there were more than one thousand six hundred murders in the capital, two hundred and twenty eight people were killed by police.

On one side, there are heavily-armed street gangs; on the other, police who often shoot first and ask questions later.

A high-ranking British cop has been brought in to help rid the force of violence and corruption but there’s been little improvement so far.

A second story Phnom Penh features David O’Shea reporting on the growing number of youths who’ve been deported from America to Cambodia after they ended up in trouble with the law in the US.

They are the sons and daughters of Cambodian refugees who fled the Killing Fields, sent back ‘home’ as part of a ‘clean-up’ campaign activated by new anti-terror laws introduced in America after September 11. But many of the deportees have no understanding of Cambodia’s language or culture.

While the deportees are hoping new US President Obama might allow them to return to America, some are now making a positive contribution to their new homeland. But even for them, their new lives are shadowed by the memory of what they’ve left behind, possibly forever: homes, children, parents, friends… and the American Dream.

Hosted by George Negus, Dateline airs 8:30pm Sundays on SBS.