one of the commanders he liked me a lot
he tried to give me an m16 rifle and he
said look you should fight for me
because i like you and i picked up my
camera i said no no i work with this not
not the guns you know
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my name is uh dai kurokawa i'm a
japanese photojournalist i've worked in
nairobi kenya
and in africa for the past decade
this is a photograph of congolese
government soldiers during a conflict
between the government and the rebel
group called m23
this shot was taken just before the
fighting broke out they were quite happy
and as you can see this man was drinking
and then i was basically told to go away
and i could not stay there anymore
because they threatened me with the gun
points
dr congo is the biggest country in
sub-saharan africa and it's best with
very rich natural resources
but unfortunately the natural wheels
doesn't look like they're doing any good
for the people
they've been fighting over the minerals
who controls the minerals a lot of times
that is the cars
next one is this
so i tried to go closer to the next town
called sake where the government soldier
has been retreated to me and this
japanese journal is named
tadashi sugyama we have to go through
checkpoints run by a local militia
called maimai
not many western journalists come across
the maimai soldiers they're not very
accessible and a lot of people think
they're very crazy they're very
unpredictable and which is i think is
true this rebel fighter in this
photograph he is smoking a cigarette
that i gave him
and he was standing in front of us with
a big gun telling us that he likes
tadashi sadashi is very white and thin
and you know that he's my type is this
guy trying to rape uttarashi you know
this is a problem so we have to do
something and we're all going to turn
back and tell him that we're going to
bring back more cigarettes and we're
going to pretend like we're going to
grab packs of cigarettes and bring it to
him but actually we're going to jump in
a car and just you know drive away and
that's exactly what we did
in congo rape
is
still being used as the weapon
of war it's very common in congo women
and
men working in africa does not come
without risks
i know many colleagues who's been hurt
while working
and i have myself come across quite
sticky
situations was covering this very small
minor peaceful protest i mean i've
covered these protests hundreds of them
in the past everything was going well
until at one point i remember i turned
around and to look at the police
officers he was raising a tear gas
launcher he was about less than 10
meters away from me he was aiming right
at me when i heard that
bang
i fell in pain and then you know some of
the protesters they came to rescue me
and they picked me up and
evacuated me and i went to the hospital
it was something that i realized that
you don't have to be in a war zone it
could happen a small minor protest like
this
this picture shows a government official
standing in front of illegal firearms
looking at them in kenya the government
organized this event in order to control
the flow of the illegal firearms in the
country
they made several piles of these rifles
and
they burnt them all on the ground there
were many spectators the local people
came to
watch the event these guns were
obviously all supposed to be not loaded
i don't think many of us trusted a
kenyan authority
and i don't think many locals did either
so when the when the guns start burning
we start hearing all these pops
when we start hearing these pups uh the
local people they started running they
started fleeing the scene you know you
know at one point the vice president you
know um he was there and he started
running away so
the first time i went to somalia the
country was suffering from the famine
that hit the whole region in east africa
region
more than a quarter of a million people
are said to have died and more than half
of them were children under five it was
devastating famine hospitals were
overwhelmed and mothers were desperate
because they couldn't do anything about
their children getting sick
there were private militia groups mali
national army and
governors who
this particular photo of the
african union soldier was taken in an
area called afgoe which was the front
line of the battle with al-shabab at
that time the front windshield of a
military truck it was visually striking
so i just took the shot and it was just
some something to show the intensity of
the fighting then
this picture was taken in the dhaba
refugee camp it's on the border with
between somalia and kenya in northern
kenya and this is a madras
like islamic school run by the refugees
this round ship was sort of interesting
so i climbed up on the tree and shot it
from the top of the street and the
children were used using these quran
bowls to practice their writing and the
recital of the quran verses
i was very impressed with this madrassa
their desire to educate and to be
educated in in
a time like this all they had with this
quran board you know and uh they were
still
trying to learn trying to be educated
and uh was uh it was very it was very
moving yes
this photograph shows a woman sleeping
in a chapel being used as a makeshift
idp camp in eastern congo in the
background here it says in swahili the
jesus is there these idp these people
women they were wrecked by rebel
fighters and the other would tell me
that they were abrupt by government
soldiers
you know so they were being attacked by
both sides the rebels and the government
soldiers
it's like any other war you know the
people
who suffer is always
the civilians i mean everybody loses war
in congo
people particularly in developed
countries often we forget that our
fortune is almost always built on
somebody else's misfortune
i would hope my pictures evoke this
sense of justice or the conscience among
people you know and bring out the
goodness that we all have in our hearts
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you