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Outlook: The Child Gold Miner Buried Alive

Boy sorts through rocks at Congo gold mine

28/05/2015

The Child Gold Miner Buried Alive

BBC World Service - Outlook, The Child Gold Miner Buried Alive

The Ugandan man who was forced to work in an illegal gold mine at the age of 10

Denis Onyango was just 10 when he was forced to work in an illegal gold mine in eastern Uganda. He tells Matthew Bannister what life was like as a child miner.

Denis Onyango was just 10 years old when he left school to work in an illegal gold mine in eastern Uganda. Over the years there has been something of a gold rush in the area, with local people giving up their jobs in farming to become miners. But the authorities have struggled to keep pace with the influx and illegal mining operations have flourished.

Terry Waite was one of the British hostages held captive by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Beirut in the 1980s. At the time he was the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and had been trying to negotiate the release of other hostages. Instead he was held for almost five years - and for most of that time he was in solitary confinement and chained to a radiator. After his release, Terry famously went back to Lebanon for a reconciliation meeting with his captors. He wrote a book about his experiences. But now he has written his first work of fiction - and perhaps surprisingly - it is a comic novel set on a cruise ship, called The Voyage of the Golden Handshake. 

It is estimated that there are currently thousands of migrants stranded in the Andaman Sea. Stories of starvation, dehydration and even killings have been reported by the migrants who have been allowed ashore. Others have simply been sent back to sea by neighbouring countries unwilling to take in any more refugees. Twenty-two-year-old Muhammed Kamal Hussaini is one of the Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar who have made it across the sea to Indonesia. He is currently in a refugee camp in the North Aceh region.

Earlier this year a photo went viral on the internet. It showed a terminally ill woman on a stretcher, accompanied by nurses, in the middle of Holland's famous Rijksmuseum. The woman was there to fulfil her dying wish - to take one final look at her favourite Rembrandt painting. Her visit had been made possible by a Dutch charity called the Ambulance Wish Foundation, whose mission is to help terminally ill patients fulfil their final dreams. Matthew speaks to the founder of the charity, Kees Veldboer.

A boy sorts through rocks while looking for gold in DR Congo
Picture credit: Spencer Platt, Getty Images

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