Articles by Paolo Martino

Young people's EU 33

09/12/2021 -  Serena EpisOrnaldo GjergjiPaolo MartinoValentina PacificiMaria Francesca Rita

78 young people from all over Europe gathered in the EU-Balkan Youth Forum to discuss the future of the EU and enlargement towards the Western Balkans

Figli di Idomeni

17/06/2016 -  Paolo Martino

Lo sgombero del campo di Idomeni in Grecia, la condizione dei rifugiati, il destino del popolo siriano e la balbuzie degli stati europei. Un commento

La sabbia aspra della memoria

28/12/2015 -  Paolo Martino

"Ero partito con una guerra in tasca e ne portavo una nuova negli occhi". Genocidio armeno e guerra civile in Siria, tragedie che si intrecciano nei ricordi e nei vicoli stretti di Burj Hammoud, quartiere armeno di Beirut

Storie di confini e impronte digitali

30/10/2013 -  Paolo Martino

Aveva raccontato su OBC il suo viaggio sulle tracce di Mussa Khan, la difficile strada dei "muhajirin" afghani e del loro sogno chiamato "Europa". Ha poi deciso di tornare in Grecia per narrare la loro storia in video. Ne è nato "Just about my fingers", documentario che ha recentemente vinto il premio "Yalla Italia 2013". Paolo Martino ci rivela come è nato il film

Saint Lazarus, the persecuted

23/10/2012 -  Paolo Martino

‘Everybody talks about Syria, but nobody does anything. Instead of stopping the whips, people count while we are being flogged. How is that possible?’ Ibrahim is twenty years-old, lives in Damascus and longs for a different Syria. The last episode of “From the Caucasus to Beirut”, a journey on the discovery of the Middle-Eastern Armenian diaspora

A tourist in Damascus

10/10/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Damascus. When I get there, in December 2011, the uprising against Bashar Al Assad has been going on for ten months. In the city, under the ever-present eye of the dictator, everything seems calm, though at the same time absent and precarious. Even for the historical Armenian community, once again prey to its destiny of chronic lack of safety. The thirteenth episode of “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

It’s your sister, Vartuhi

25/09/2012 -  Paolo Martino

‘With time, the Countries we live in - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq - have become our home. Arabic has become our language. Unleavened bread has become our food. But let’s not forget it: we belong to a different history’. In the twelfth episode of the series “From the Caucasus to Beirut”, Paolo Martino returns among the Armenians of Lebanon

Sunsets and the printer of Amman

18/09/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Amman is the capital of a Country hovering between remaining faithful to a pro-Western monarchy and the shock wave of the Arab Spring. A community of three thousand Armenians, a small star in the firmament of the diaspora, lives and survives the contradictions of the Middle-East. The eleventh episode of our report “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

The Armenians of Musa Dagh

14/09/2012 -  Paolo Martino

An Armenian, a Syrian and a Turk are playing cards in the only inn in town. The three eldersliven up an empty room with ritual jokes, amidst the vapor of coffee. Each of their lives is asynthesis of individual and collective stories gone bad, forsaken like this place. The tenth episode of the story “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

The burden of truth

03/09/2012 -  Paolo Martino

1915: in the countryside around Diyarbakyr, Armenians and Kurds have been living together for centuries. The Ottoman empire, on the verge of collapse, is about to launch its witch-hunt. Ethnic cleansing in Anatolia is systematic. But some men, helped by luck or their neighbors, manage to save themselves. The ninth episode of our report, “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Tamara and Van, a same fate

27/08/2012 -  Paolo Martino

A city symbol of the Armenian resistance. Razed twice to the ground, first by the Ottoman troops and then by the terrible earthquake of last winter, Van seems to share its destiny with the beautiful Tamara, a legendary figure disappeared in the abysses of the lake it looked over. The eighth episode of our report, “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Sarkan, the guardian

20/08/2012 -  Paolo Martino

When a State is founded on a myth, that myth is to be defended at all costs. These words by an Armenian university professor come to Paolo’s mind while walking through the cold rooms of the Turkish Genocide Museum, in Igdir. Here, history becomes myth and the past is turned upside down. The seventh episode of the story “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Pastures for Angora flocks

13/08/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Desolate lands, where the mountains of the Caucasus descend towards the Anatolian plateau in big steps, and names come from politics rather than history. The sixth episode of our report “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

The portrait and the hawk

30/07/2012 -  Paolo Martino

The meeting with Vartuhi and with the fate that divided her from her sister in 1946. She lives in Musa Dagh, in Armenia, where a huge hawk reminds travellers of the Armenian fighters who in 1915 opposed the Ottoman troops. The fifth episode of the story “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

On board the Pobeda

25/07/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Vartuhi left Beirut in 1946, to reach Soviet Armenia aboard a ship called "Pobeda". In Stalin's land, however, the survivors of the genocide saw the dream of a homeland turn into a nightmare. Travelling to the Caucasus on the paths of migrations. Fourth episode of the story "From the Caucasus to Beirut"

Nostalgia before memories

16/07/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Professor Adakessian’s slow pacing up and down the halls of the Armenian University of Haigazian, Rafi and his shoe factory in centre city Beirut, the present that shows up again in the old pictures of the Pobeda, the Russian ship that carried thousands of Armenians from the Lebanon to Soviet Armenia. The third episode of the story “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Sarop’s armed struggle

12/07/2012 -  Paolo Martino

Arafat’s bodyguard, then on the front line in the Armenian armed struggle and for 10 years a prisoner in a Syrian jail. “When I came out, everything had changed. The USSR no longer existed”. The meeting with Sarop, in Beirut’s Armenian quarter. The second episode of the report “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Welcome among Armenians in Lebanon

10/07/2012 -  Paolo Martino

In the Bekaa valley, in Lebanon, in the company of Hrayer, a boy from the local Armenian community. Among fruit trees, vegetables and a tragic past. The first episode of the report “From the Caucasus to Beirut”

Mussa Khan. When roads do not end in Rome

11/03/2011 -  Paolo Martino Rome

They say all roads lead to Rome. Even that of Mussa Khan and the thousands of Afghan muhajirins for whom Italy is just a stop in the restless and tormented search for a better life. Among the building sites along the Ostiense Station stops the story of a journey that has no end

Mussa Khan. An asylum roulette

07/03/2011 -  Paolo Martino Ancona

Ancona, Italy. Here is the “Europe” dreamed of by Mussa Khan. Here too, though, welcoming the muhajirins are metal fences and procedures that make applications for asylum a runaway and distant prospect