Shocking footage of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison aired on national television this week in 2004. But Abu Ghraib was notorious long before that. Torture and executions were a grim commonality for many of its prisoners—4,000 were executed in 1984 alone. When Saddam Hussein granted a rare general amnesty to virtually all Iraqi prisoners in 2002, families came to collect the remains of their loved ones and greet others more fortunate to have been freed. The next day, Abu Ghraib was nearly empty, but that did not last for long.
IRAQ—Abu Ghraib prison, after amnesty was announced, 2002.
The nightmare of Chernobyl continues to be a painful reality for those exposed to its radioactive fallout. In Chernobyl Legacy, Paul Fusco faces the human tragedy of the world's worst nuclear energy disaster.
Point and Shoot
by Philip Jones Griffiths
Throughout his long career, Phillip Jones Griffiths has poignantly documented violent conflict with unabashed honesty and disdain for its consequences. "I’ve covered many wars and seen what bullets do to flesh and I’m rather proud to say that I got all that macho stuff out of my system in my youth."
April 27 is Arbor Day. In a sequence of images that takes us on a journey through five continents, Franklin explores trees, that organic entity most adored, contemplated, used, protected, destroyed, and worked by man, and invites us to reflect upon the complex relationship between humans and the environment.
This week in 1986, the world’s worst nuclear explosion took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. After an attempted Soviet coverup, residents were evacuated, though thousands remained. The disaster caused toxic radiation to drift into the atmosphere of surrounding areas and to Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest, endangering livestock, and causing 32 immediate deaths and several thousand radiation-illness and cancer-related deaths later. The last reactor unit of the power station was closed in 2000. Magnum and Slate present the people of the areas surrounding the plant, with special attention paid to the young.