Podcast – Human trafficking

Christchurch City Libraries blog hosts a series of regular podcasts from specialist human rights radio show Speak up – Kōrerotia. This show is created by Sally Carlton.

One of the major human rights problems facing the world today, human trafficking is a growing – and worldwide – problem. Ralph Simpson from NZ-founded anti-trafficking organisation Nvader, Nikki Prendergast and Michelle Pratt, founders of NZ group Child Labor Free, and anti-trafficking researcher Christina Stringer (the Human Trafficking Research Coalition – ECPAT NZ, Hagar NZ, Stand Against Slavery, and The Préscha Initiative), join Sally to talk about the issue, and our responsibilities in this sphere.

• Part I: What is human trafficking and who does it affect?
• Part II: Scale of the problem; motivations for engaging in trafficking
• Part III: Anti-trafficking measures; what success?; prosecutions, including 2016 prosecution in NZ
• Part IV: Systems in place to protect victims; suggestions

Transcript – Human trafficking

Find out more in our collection

• Find titles Human Trafficking
• Find titles on Forced Labour
• Find titles on Slavery
• Find articles about Human Trafficking (access with your library card & password / PIN)
• Find streaming video about Human Trafficking (access with your library card & password / PIN)

 

More about Speak up – Kōrerotia

• Speak up – Kōrerotia on Facebook
• Contact the host of the show via speakupkorerotia@gmail.com.

The show is also available on the following platforms:

• Plains FM website
• SoundCloud
• iTunes

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki – bombed 72 years ago

The atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was dropped by American airmen on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Three days later on 9 August 1945, the atomic bomb “Fat Man” was dropped over Nagasaki.

The Hiroshima explosion destroyed 90 percent of the city and killed approximately 80,000 people; tens of thousands more died later from radiation exposure. The Nagasaki A-bomb killed approximately 40,000 people.

UNESCO’s call today resonates:

Never forget the victims. Never forget History.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki plaque by the Avon River. 4 August 2017.

Hiroshima – Small child with baby on back searching for anything of usefulness. New Zealand. Department of Internal Affairs. War History Branch :Photographs relating to World War 1914-1918, World War 1939-1945, occupation of Japan, Korean War, and Malayan Emergency. Ref: J-0012-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23130201

The atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, this day in 1945. https://t.co/aroaOcq8st pic.twitter.com/meiEzhCybh

— The New York Times Archives (@NYTArchives) August 6, 2017

Never forget the victims, never forget History. On #Hiroshima anniversary, let's recall our commitment to #peace https://t.co/YGjfQwI3UX pic.twitter.com/xwY7LpEuPf

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) August 6, 2017

Today’s the 72nd anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb. I wrote a comic about my family’s connection last year. https://t.co/vqF8qRPPOI pic.twitter.com/fWoHvEyZfA

— Jem Yoshioka (@jemyoshioka) August 5, 2017

Find out more about Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• A set of images and articles related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on DigitalNZ.
• Find information about Hiroshima in our catalogue.
• Find information about Nagasaki in our catalogue.
• Hiroshima Peace Site – the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (in English and Japanese)
• Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki History.com

Find out more about the World Peace Bell in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and its connection to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Flowers under the Peace Bell, Flickr CCL-2014-02-22-22February2014 DSC_1215.JPG

Men without women

When Haruki Murakami came out of his study earlier this year and said to his wife: “I’m going to call my latest collection of short stories ‘Men Without Women’“, I wonder if she thought to say to him: “Hasn’t that title already been used darling?”

Because it has. Ninety years ago in fact, when none other than Ernest Hemingway named his latest offering of short stories Men Without Women. I’m sitting looking at both these books right now as I write this blog. Hemingway’s with its pugilistic cover and tribute by Joseph Wood Krutch (The Nation) – “painfully good”. And Murakami’s book, beautiful to behold, the hard cover version that I have bought (yes, I know!) strokable and with a satisfying heft.

I love Murakami’s writing, that deft thing he does where you are simultaneously drawn in and kept at arms length. And this book of  seven stories about men and their complex relations with women is no exception. It is a long time since I have read Hemingway, but it is resolutely muscular writing. In his fourteen stories you are pulled right into the fray, be it in the boxing ring or in a touching dialogue on a railway siding.

There are no books in Christchurch City Libraries with the title Women Without Men. To be frank I was so taken aback that I checked several times. The nearest I got to it is a book by Virginia Nicholson Singled Out (How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War).

Something about all of this is niggling me. Why did Murakami give his book this name?

Two such brilliant writers. Two great works – 90 years apart. Both made up of short stories. One title. I fear that Murakami, in this one act, has doomed himself forever-more to endless queries about his choice of title at writers’ festival after writers’ festival in the up-and-coming year.

I almost feel sorry for him.