Like the boys, they favor Chuck Taylors, patched jeans and band T-shirts. A guy named Taufik said they may call themselves punks, but they’re not doing anything wrong.

“We’re not breaking Sharia by being punk. It’s just how we dress. We’re not whores, we’re not gay, and we’re not corruptors,” Taufik said.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia governed by Sharia or Islamic law. Aceh’s government adopted Sharia in 2005, shortly after gaining some political autonomy from Jakarta. Now some critics say the local government is going too far. Case in point is a police raid on a punk rock concert in Banda Aceh in late December. Authorities arrested 65 concertgoers.

They shaved off the punks’ hair and threw them into a pond for symbolic cleansing. Police held them for 10 days for “moral rehabilitation.”

Taufik now has stubble covering his head. So does Yudi — both were among the dozens who were shaved in the mass arrest.

“The police punched us and stomped on us,” Yudi said. “We were treated like animals. It hurt a lot because we didn’t know what we did wrong.”

The police deny using violence. And Yudi and the others were never actually charged with a crime. Still, many in Banda Aceh view the punks with suspicion. A lot of the punks live on the streets. Yudi concedes some of them are involved in drugs, but he said it’s not fair to assume all of them are drug users.

Banda Aceh’s deputy Mayor Illiza Sa’aduddin Djamal, who wears pink lipstick and a bejeweled headscarf, said the punks are a threat to Aceh’s Islamic values. She describes the arrests as a form of tough love.

“The law says every homeless child should be taken care of by the country. We can define the punks as homeless because they sleep everywhere and rarely take a bath. As a mother I will feel very bad if I see my child live like that,” Illiza said.

The raid wasn’t the city’s first crackdown on the punks, but it was the largest. In the past, only locals were arrested. But this time, most of the people detained came from more secular parts of Indonesia. Illiza insists that visitors have to abide by Aceh’s rules and norms.

“Perhaps our freedom is different from other places,” she said. “But we are in Banda Aceh.”

Now that they’ve been released, the local punks are expected to continue their rehabilitation, with job skill training. Illiza insists the young men are grateful for the opportunity.

But Reza Idria scoffs at the idea that Aceh’s punks are embracing their re-education.

“They say that all of punks are happy now,” said Reza.

Reza used to play guitar in a band. Now he teaches Islamic law at the state university. He rejects the idea that Aceh’s punks are somehow anti-Islam. He said government officials are interpreting Islamic law to justify their actions.

“The way they treat punks, they never used any law, just put them in the pool and shaved them. We don’t have a law like that, but they did it. And this is the government,” Reza said.

The truth is, said Reza, many Acehnese think the punks are a public nuisance, and with regional elections coming up, the government crackdown may have been an effort to score points on a winning issue.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch loves a scandal because scandals sell newspapers. But, Murdoch can’t be very pleased with the phone hacking scandal in Britain, and that’s because it’s enveloping his own company, News International. The scandal has already lead to the closure of Murdoch’s bestselling News of the World newspaper, and allegations that some of Murdoch’s staff have engaged in hacking, deception and privacy violations continue to surface. Peter Kirkham is a former chief inspector with London’s Metropolitan Police. Mister Kirkham, the police chief leading Scotland Yard’s phone hacking probe revealed today that just 170 of more than 4000 potential victims have been contacted so far. How can this investigation be conducted fairly by the Metropolitan Police when Metropolitan Police officers provided the phone numbers that were hacked in the first place?

Peter Kirkham: Well, I’m not sure that the Metropolitan Police officers provided all the phone numbers that were hacked in the first place. There are allegations that certain members of the Royalty Protection Group provided some of the family phone numbers.

Werman: But they provided some of them.

Kirkham: It’s investigated wrong doing by the members. There’s a professional standards department and there’s a long history of below police services dealing with their own internal investigations. We, since the 1990s, have the Independent Police Complaints Commission set up here, where investigations are overseen by people that by law cannot have previously served as placed officers. So, there’s an independent aspect to that, and I think the IPCC, if they haven’t already, must be considering taking over control of this investigation.

Werman: Now, John Yates, an Assistant Commissioner with London’s Metropolitan Police has said it was inevitable that some officers were corrupt. Tell us who, at the end of the day, is responsible for corruption in the police force.

Kirkham: In terms of being responsible for why it’s happening, I would suggest that the situation is far more likely to turn out to be that journalists and others’ intent on getting information that they know that police officers have, has actually encouraged police officers by offering corrupt payments, as opposed to police officers with information have taken to taunting around to see if anybody wants to buy. In relation to responsibility for making sure there are no corrupt officers, that’s a police government’s issue and it’s a message for the commissioner.

Werman: But that makes it sound like it’s a given that there are bad cops out there and it’s the journalists’ fault. I mean, it does take two people to play tennis, after all.

Kirkham: It does indeed, but there will be bad cops out there. But police officers are human beings with other problems that human beings have. You will not find a police department anywhere in the world that doesn’t have corrupt members. It is not widespread, it will not prove to be widespread, I’m totally confident about that, but it’s inevitable that there will be some people who succumb to offers of corruption.

Werman: Now, Rupert Murdoch has been called before a Parliamentary Committee next week. What would you like to see happen now to Mister Murdoch and his holdings?

Kirkham: I mean, it’s not for me to say what should happen to Mister Murdoch. If there is wrong doing by members of his staff, then I would expect a responsible organization, an international organization to be caught coming with that information, and to expose it and to hand it over to the authorities; it’s blatantly obvious that they didn’t do that at an earlier stage. If it comes down to the fact of would an organization that knowingly corrupts police officers to get unlawfully obtained information, that doesn’t sound to me like someone must fit some proper to hold a broadcasting or a media license, so far as any license is required.

Werman: Mister Kirkham, you’ve got a lot of experience with London’s Metropolitan Police. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever seen anything like this episode, or have you ever seen an episode that made you think someday this whole press thing and hacking is going to get really bad and out of control?

Kirkham: This is the first time that the subject of the operation of the media, and the dodgy practices in terms of seeking information and the dodgy dealings with the Metropolitan Police and others has come to light. In terms of if I have seen anything like this before, no, they’ve got a perfect storm here, a political media in police interest or mixing and coming together, people shackling scores, people recognizing that they had the chance to have a bit of a free-shot at what was a very powerful media machine. And so I think that with some score shackling going on, it’s a perfect storm of problems and now the Metropolitan Police isn’t going to come out of it looking good any more than anybody else is.

Werman: Peter Kirkham, former chief inspector with London’s Metropolitan Police. Thank you very much, indeed.

Kirkham: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

'The conditions in our detention centers really leave much to be desired,' says Father Joseph Cassar, Malta Director of Jesuit Relief Services, JRS

Day after day, Daniel sits on a wooden crate on a busy corner in the oldest piazza in Malta’s capital, Valletta. After leaving his native Ghana and trekking through desert and seven African countries, Daniel arrived in Malta eighteen months later, only to spend another 18 months in mandatory detention:

“After I came out I could not get any proper documents,” he said. “So I’m in Malta here for nothing.”

I ask him how long has he been looking for work.

“I’ve been here so many times. Since I’ve started to come to this corner, I haven’t received what I like. So I’m still waiting. We are just sitting here for nothing, no work to do. So we don’t know what to do here. Even though you can see many, many blacks, and many immigrants here, they are just roaming about, doing nothing.”

At the outdoor bus terminal, dozens of dark-skinned men tell similar stories:

“The situation in Malta is critical.”

Salif came from Nigeria, and like many migrants stuck her in Malta, he had hoped to get to mainland Europe.

“The immigrant here is suffering.”

I ask him: “why Malta? why did you come here?”

“Well we were going to Italy but along the line we get to Malta.”

“If you can’t stay in Malta, where would you like to go,” I ask:

“I would like to go to Italy, Spain, but they cannot give me passport. “

“So you have no passport, so you are basically stuck here in Malta?”

“Yes, I do not have passport to leave. That’s why I’m here.”

Malta’s Justice Minister, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, is sympathetic, but only to a point.

“And so this Nigerian fellow feels that he has got the wrong deal because had he come to Italy the situation would have been completely different. Because he would have been an asylum applicant there and that would have allowed him to move along. I have only one solution. To send them back to their countries of origin, which is difficult.”
Difficult because Malta doesn’t have repatriation agreements with most of Africa.

“How to repatriate persons who are economic migrants, who are not in any way involved in the labor market , is an issue.”
That means it can’t send these migrants home; and it can’t send them on to third countries, SO many languish here in Malta. And for many white Maltese, that’s a problem: Yuriken Borsch, A 16-year-old student, fears the migrants are overwhelming his tiny island nation.

“We’re a small country and we have many illegal immigrants for a small country that we are. Every immigrant someday will have to buy a home in Malta and there’s no place for them.”

That is why most Africans in Malta end up in the Hal Far open centre.

“It was an airplane hanger here,” a Somali man said, who asked to be identified as “Ahmed.”

Ahmed took me on tour of the restricted Maltese facility. It is an old airplane hanger, lined with bunk beds and home to African men and women released from detention. The men and women live in separate facilities. Despite the rank odor of porta-potties and overflowing kitchen waste, no one appears to be malnourished or abused. But Ahmed said Hal Far is unfit for human habitation:

“I can’t live in this situation. I told them, the government, I would prefer to go to my home country to living here. I have no place to sleep; Nothing to eat. I don’t have anything, so I prefer to go to Somalia, and they told me you can’t go to Somalia because Somalia is a dangerous place.”

“These large numbers of people who are new comers to our society need to be housed somewhere,” said Alexander Tortell, the director of the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers.

“We cannot house them on ships. We cannot house them in the countryside, which we do not have. And, therefore, these people are placed either in open centers or else when they leave the open centers, they themselves make their own arrangements to live in the community.

Some also live IN the Rainbow House outside of the capital city. True to its name, a spectrum of bright colors decorates the front door. This is one of several government-run homes for migrant women, children and families, most of them from Somalia. Herta Tropinai, a social worker who runs this facility, said the neighbors aren’t happy.
“To say the truth we have had a lot of complaints—about the noise, about the fact that we’ve got a lot of rubbish outside. They are petty things, but they sometimes have a good reason for it. But they wouldn’t cause these problems if they were Maltese people.”

Alexander Tortell does not disagree:

“Well I think it (skin color) is a factor, and I would add sadly that a persons appearance determines the success or otherwise of integration. The difference between the Bosnian, and I would add, Albanian arrivals, is that it was more silent in the sense that, let’s just take 2008 arrivals, for example, 2775 persons arriving all at once practically in the space of a few months.”

Until recently, Rainbow House resident Abdul Aziz and his family lived in the open camps.

“This house is better. Before I lived in Hal far. But this house is better for me. It’s near my job.”

“What is your job?” I ask.

“Paint.”

“You’re a painter. Is it full-time?”

“Not full time. Maybe six hours, five hours, always.”

“Was it difficult to find a job?”

“Yes.”

The Maltese government gives each asylum seeker a stipend of about one hundred Euros per month. But even that meager amount has stirred resentment among some Maltese who believe that Europe is being overwhelmed by African asylum seekers. In some instances, that has led to violence against migrants AND their supporters:
“On two instances, someone came on the grounds of two of our communities and cars were set alight,” said Father Joseph Cassar of Jesuit Refugee Service of Malta – OR JRS.

“And then just one month later. It was the car on the front door of our human rights lawyer while the family was inside at night. Although no one has been caught or indicted or anything of this sort, we can very much say that this has to do with the position which JRS has been taken advocating the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.”

Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici accuses the right wing media and others of stirring up racist anti-immigrant opposition.

“Unfortunately we had a rise of political speeches from different parties saying you should get these persons as soon as they come here and get them another boat and send them back from where they came. These arte all the roots of an alarmist approach, because in point of fact we have in this country less than 5000 persons resident here, so we are speaking of one person who is a colored skin to a thousand.”

But with more than 5,000 migrants stuck in this tiny country, government officials like Alex Tortell fear a greater backlash if the migrants cannot be integrated into society.

“The experience of integration all over Europe is that integration cannot start—in the strict sense of the word—before a person has a full time legal job. Unfortunately, because of Malta’s limitations, we have thousands of people who haven’t gotten to that point and we have to admit, they won’t get to that point because we can not get to that point because the limitations, the limitations are real.”

Some illegal migrants qualify for what’s known as subsidiary status, which allows them to go to another European Union country. But thousands remain stuck in Malta, jobless and living in difficult conditions – eager but unable to leave this tiny island nation. Download MP3

• The color initiative

The fastest growing minority group in Port Richmond is Mexican

The working-class neighborhood of Port Richmond on New York City’s Staten Island has recently been the site of attacks against immigrants, all of them Mexicans. Police say most of the suspected attackers are young black men. There’ve been ten reported incidents since April. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
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Staten Island has long been home to newly-arrived immigrants – now a wave of attacks against Latinos has both officials and residents worried, as PRI’s The World reporter Alex Gallafent reports from the New York City borough.

Since April there have been 10 reported incidents of violence against Hispanic immigrants on Staten Island, a borough of New York City.

The attacks have all occurred on the island’s North Shore, principally in the community of Port Richmond.

The most recent attack came on Saturday, when an 18-year-old student was beaten and robbed by a group of young African-American men while on his way home from working at a late-night restaurant.

Juan Paz Guatemalan Juan Paz feels more at risk than at any time in the last decade

His attackers reportedly shouted anti-Mexican slurs.

At a news conference in Port Richmond, New York City council member Debi Rose condemned the violence.

“We will never give up on our youth, we will never give up on our neighborhoods and we will never give up on our island,” she said.

“This is our home and we will do whatever it takes to make it safe and welcoming for everyone.”

Ms Rose announced plans to combat the wave of violence, including the addition of security cameras and the expansion of diversity training in the community.

‘Always afraid’

Staten Island has long been home to generations of new immigrants.

A sign offers a reward for help solving a violent crime Officials have announced measures to curb the violence

Officials on Staten Island have announced a raft of measures intended to curb the violence.

Port Richmond was once a destination for Jews from Eastern Europe and immigrants from Ireland.

Economic shifts meant that by the 1980s and 1990s, African Americans formed the dominant population.

Today the fastest growing minority group in Port Richmond is Mexican.

Mexico’s Consul General in New York, Ruben Beltran, says he is “angry and frustrated” at the string of attacks.

Earlier this week, he sent a consular representative to support Mexican immigrants in the neighborhood.

“We are travelling around Port Richmond to take stock of what’s happening and also to let them know that the consulate is here,” he said.

Not all of the Hispanic members of the community are Mexican, and others are also feeling threatened.

Juan Paz, a restaurant worker from Guatemala, has lived in the area for more than a decade. He says things have never been this bad before.

“It’s very dangerous now. When I come from work I have to be very careful,” he says.

“I don’t put in gas at night because I’m always afraid of something happening. I go straight home.”

Economic pain

Civic leaders say there are many possible reasons for the violence, from racism to summertime boredom.

Lloyd Land says people are economically depressed and hurting financially

But a local pastor, Lloyd Land, says it boils down to economic pain.

“People are economically depressed and hurting financially. Mexicans come and work for less money and they work longer hours than average people,” he says.

“So they feel that Mexicans are taking jobs whereas in reality the Mexicans are hard-working people; they want to put a meal on the table just like everyone else.”

Mr Land says it will take attention from the Obama administration to fix the problems of Port Richmond.

He complains that last year’s massive government stimulus had little effect on his community.

“I love Obama, I respect Obama. But here on Staten Island, whatever it is he’s doing, it isn’t working.”

• Read the full story “‘Hate crimes’ plague Staten Island”
• Slideshow: See Alex Gallafent’s photos from Port Richmond
• Alex Gallafent on the BBC

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

DAVID BARON: For eight years, Jackie Selebi was South Africa’s chief of police. Not only that, he was president of the international police body, Interpol, for four of those years. Now, Jackie Selebi is looking at 15 years, in prison for accepting bribes from a convicted drug dealer. A South African judge sentenced Selebi today, but first, he had some choice words for the country’s former top cop. The judge called Selebi “an embarrassment to all right-thinking citizens in this country.” The BBC’s Jonah Fisher is in Johannesburg. Jonah, for months now, South Africans have been hearing testimony about their former police chief and his dealings with a convicted drug smuggler. What was Jackie Selebi ultimately found guilty of?

JOHAN FISHER:  Well, Jackie Selebi was effectively convicted on corruption charges in relation to his friendship with a man called Glenn Agliotti, who as you mentioned is a convicted drug dealer. Also one of the leading figures in Johannesburg’s crime underworld. And what happened was that these two men became friends. They’d go on shopping trips together and that Mr. Agliotti, the drug dealer, would give money and presents to Jackie Selebi. Now, throughout the course of this eight-month trial, South Africa has been transfixed by the various details of this rather bizarre relationship. Mr. Selebi insisting that there was nothing wrong, nothing inappropriate about this relationship, but the judge, Judge Meyer Joffe, had other ideas. He said it was a corrupt relationship and that’s why today we saw the culmination of this legal process with Jackie Selebi sentenced to 15 years in prison.

BARON:  So some of these shopping trips were to Harrod’s to get clothes?

FISHER: To all sorts. We have a lot of shopping malls here in Johannesburg, so many of those trips were to shopping malls where the two men would meet, have a drink of coffee, and then go around the shops and then anything that Mr. Selebi fancied as they walked around the shop, it would all go on Mr. Agliotti’s credit card. So it was that particular relationship that I think so many people found hard to swallow. That the man in charge with trying to keep South Africans safe, trying to win this war on crime here in South Africa, was in fact hanging out, if you like, socially and accepting presents from a man who many people knew within the legal framework here in Johannesburg was a criminal heavily involved in drug dealing and various other criminal activities.

BARON: Now, I should point out Jackie Selebi who was convicted, he was not only police chief, he was a prominent official in the African National Congress and South Africans aren’t accustomed to seeing high ranking ANC officials head off to prison. What’s been the reaction there?

FISHER: Yes, he was a highly respected figure within the African National Congress. He’d fought against apartheid from exile. He held prominent positions within the United Nations when he was an ambassador there in Geneva. So, yeah, a well-respected figure and that’s why I think people found it so hard to come to terms that he could be so stupid as to have this clearly inappropriate relationship with Glenn Agliotti, the convicted drug dealer.

BARON: Well, what do you think his sentencing means for efforts to fight corruption in South Africa? I mean is this evidence of the country heading in the right direction? I mean he was caught. Or does it show just how widespread the corruption is?

FISHER: Well, that’s really the big question. Is this case the turning of the tide against corruption after a series of setbacks for the prosecuting authorities here or is this just a drop in the ocean? Everyday the newspapers here are filled with stories about corruption, about ministerial excess, but I think one of the prevailing thoughts about this is Jackie Selebi thought that because he had such good-value political contacts at the highest level, that would protect him from prosecution. What we’ve seen today and over the last few months with the returning of this verdict is that you may have those political friends, but they may not be able to protect you forever.

BARON: The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg. Thank you.

FISHER: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Patrick and I were stuck in pretty horrendous, yet typical, Monrovia mid-day traffic. A police officer was walking through the cars stuck in traffic. He spotted us, tapped on our window, and asked Patrick for his papers.

A bit about John Patrick Van Rensburg: He’s a very tall, white South African 20-something with long locks of brown hair. Let’s just say he stands out like a sore thumb in Liberia.

A bit about Joseph Richards: He’s Patrick’s older half-brother, also a South African, and has been doing business in Liberia for seven years – selling diamonds, fixing potholes, and opening a beachside resort. Joe knows a lot of powerful people in Liberia.

When the officer approached our car, Patrick was very friendly, greeting the cop as if they were old friends. (Patrick says they had met a few times before.) But Patrick didn’t give him his license. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge the request.

After a few minutes with the police officer repeatedly asking Patrick for his license, and Patrick steadfastly ignoring him and making chit-chat, the police officer said he was going to take Patrick down to the station. Or, the officer offered an alternative: Patrick could pay him $20 Liberian dollars, about 30 US cents, and we could go on our way.

Patrick refused to acknowledge any of this was happening.

At this point, I couldn’t figure out what was going on here. I thought: Just give him your license. Or let’s pay the tiny bribe and be on our way. (Being the generous guy I am, I offered to pay the entire bribe myself.) Patrick wouldn’t budge though. He knew the game.

If Patrick handed over his license, the police officer would be in total control of the situation. The officer could walk away with the documents, as cops have a habit of doing in Liberia, and dramatically increase the asking price of the bribe.

On the other hand, if Patrick paid the bribe, Patrick could easily get a reputation as the guy who is willing to pay bribes. Word gets around quick. This cop, and every other cop in town, would be stopping Patrick all the time. (Not like they weren’t already.)

Patrick also knew the cop had no real authority to do anything. Patrick wasn’t breaking any laws when the cop asked to see his license. There’s no real system for writing tickets in Liberia. And the cop wasn’t going to throw Patrick in jail.

So, the three of us waited.

After about 10 minutes with the cop standing in the street beside our stopped car, he actually got inside and sat with us.

How long would the cop detain us before he got what he wanted? Would Patrick lose his patience and pay the fine?

Then the game began to shift in our favor. After about a minute in the car, the cop noticed my microphone and recorder. He asked, “What’s this?” Patrick quickly blurted out (in Liberian English), “The man a reporter for BBC. He going to report on Liberia now like this. You must make a good picture of Liberia, not like this.” Strike one against the cop

Now the cop was in a tough spot: He’d been caught on tape asking for a bribe. Patrick sensed his advantage and pressed the cop: Why had he pulled over only OUR car? The cop tersely replied, “I don’t discriminate,” then invoked his right not to incriminate himself by putting his finger over his mouth, refusing to talk. (This was a new one to me, seeing a cop refuse to talk.)

Next, Patrick started to lose his patience. We’d been detained about 15 minutes. Patrick got out his cell phone and dialed up his big brother, Joe. Strike two.

After a few seconds with Patrick on the phone to Joe, the cop broke his silence: We could go. Patrick refused. We were now in total control. The cop was on tape asking for a bribe, and perhaps worse, he was about to endure the wrath of Joe.

Then Patrick blew his top. He started yelling at the cop, “Shameful. Shameful. Shameful,” and demanded that the cop get out of his car.

The cop got out of the car very quickly.

Then, Joe arrived. Nobody messes with Joe. (There are a lot of Joe stories in Liberia. Click here for my favorite…) Joe stormed over to the cop, and began cussing like you wouldn’t believe. Within 10, maybe 15, seconds, the police officer walked over to our car and began apologizing for the confusion. Before he could finish his sentence, Patrick slammed on the accelerator and peeled off.

OK, an interesting tale. But what conclusions can be drawn from the incident? I drew three.

First, police officers have very limited power in Liberia.
Second, many police officers are corrupt.
Third, it’s hard to blame them for their corruption.

To point number three… Police officers make a small salary in Liberia, about $80 a month. They take bribes to take home a little extra pocket money to put more food on the table. They’re not getting rich by doing this.

And it’s not just the cops taking bribes. Corruption is endemic in Liberia. The mentality of taking what you can get, when you can get it, goes back to former Liberian warlord turned president Charles Taylor. Taylor paid his soldiers the same way the Caribbean pirates of old were paid: Your salary was whatever you could plunder. That mentality – take what you can get – still exists, to a certain degree, in Liberia.

The day I spent with Patrick, we drove close to three hours on the road together passing through many checkpoints, which basically serve no purpose other than for cops to put up a rope, stop your car, and demand a bribe. The cops seemed to let the cars freely pass, but when the tall foreign man with flowing hair approached the checkpoint, we got pulled over every single time. The game was exhausting. (Let’s also be fair to Liberia, there are many countries where bribery is a way of life.)

Despite Patrick and Joe’s anger, and embarrassment, over the bribery incident, they said they did feel some compassion for the cop. What would they do if they were in his shoes? They agreed: probably the same thing.
(Photos: Jason Margolis)

• Audio Slideshow: Idi Amin Slept Here
• Jason Margolis’ Rebuilding Liberia series
• Jason Margolis’ interview with President Sirleaf (MP3, 12:55)

In Western countries people mostly take for granted that the police are there ‘to protect and to serve’. The BBC’s Caroline Duffield has found this might be quite different in Nigeria – at least in one city. A hospital in the south-eastern city of Enugu has experienced an overwhelming flow of dead bodies in recent months, so many that mass burials have taken place. There are suspicions that the police might be implicated, particularly the feared SARS unit – the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This has been denied by the authorities.

• Read Caroline Duffield’s online story
• Amnesty International: Nigerian police “kill at will”
• Nigeria’s police say Amnesty brutality claims are unfair

The city we’re looking for can get quite chilly. It’s also looking for recruits for its police force. This city is north of the border — in the Canadian province of Alberta.

It’s the capital of Alberta in fact. The city has about a million residents and the largest shopping mall in North America. But the recruitment drive isn’t for mall cops!

It’s for regular, street-patrolling police officers.

And guess what? Americans can apply too. We’ll tell you more about that — when we unveil the answer in a few minutes.

And we mean that.

For today’s Geo Quiz we asked you which chilly Canadian city was looking for police recruits.

The answer is Edmonton, Alberta.

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Constable Geoff Hood is in New York City today on a recruitment drive for the Edmonton Police Service.

We asked him why Edmonton is looking for Americans to fill these jobs.

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Jake in Tokyo-Ayano Sato. Japanese graffiti in traditional mode. Photo: Ayano Sato

Jake Adelstein reads an excerpt:

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• Book information: Tokyo Vice
• www.japansubculture.com

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Japan’s version of the Mafia is known as the Yakuza and its activities are about what you’d expect.  The Yakuza engages in extortion, blackmail, smuggling, drugs, and gambling.  And, as Jake Adelstein learned when he was a reporter for Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yakuza is heavily involved in the sex industry and the human trafficking that feeds it.  Mr. Adelstein details the workings of Japanese organized crime in his book, “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.”  He’s in the studios of KUOW in Seattle.  Jake Adelstein, I want to find out more about the Yakuza in a moment, but start out by telling me how you, an American kid from Missouri, ends up on the crime beat for Japan’s biggest newspaper.

JAKE ADELSTEIN:  Well, I went to Japan in 1988 because I was very interested in Japanese culture and I was very lucky to quickly find lodgings in a Zen Buddhist temple in the sort of suburbs of Tokyo.  And that gave me the cultural immersion thing going on there.  And as I was about to graduate in 1992, I decided that I would try and take the newspaper examinations so that I could test my Japanese ability.  Newspapers in Japan, and there are five major ones, have a yearly test, which are kind of like the SATs for journalists.  Usually college students take them, and if your scores are good enough, you go onto a series of interviews.  And if you pass the interviews, you get hired.  It’s highly competitive.

WERMAN:  Right.  It’s not like in the United States where you work a small newspaper in a small market and eventually, with luck, you work your way up to the New York Times or the Washington Post.

ADELSTEIN:  No, no, no, no. You get a shot at the big leagues, right from the beginning.  However, while you may be entering a big company, you’re immediately going to be sent out to the boonies, or the New Jersey of Japan to do your stint in the countryside before you can come up and play in the big leagues.

WERMAN:  Now you got into the underworld of Japan very quickly after becoming a crime reporter.  And on the so-called “good” side of things, you spent a lot of time hanging out with the police in order to cultivate them as sources.

ADELSTEIN:  Yes.  You know, sometimes Japanese police reporters are referred to “male geisha,” “otoko geisha” because so much of your job appears to be wining and dining and schmoozing with the cops in the hope that they’ll leak you some kind of detail or story, so that you can get a scoop on the competition.

WERMAN:  And just how much time are you spending with the police officers?

ADELSTEIN:  It becomes all consuming.  When you’re on the police beat, there’s really not any days off.  Usually, typically, I would get done with work 7:00 or 8:00.  Then I would go out drinking with some cops, or maybe go to their houses, then come back and check the newspaper, to see all the headlines and everything were good, about 2:00 in the morning.  Then I’d get up at 5:30 in the morning and try and catch police officers before they were going to work to see what was going to happen for the evening edition of the paper, since we had a morning and evening edition.  All my time was consumed, spent with cops or criminals, or people in between.

WERMAN:  And buying gifts for them as well.  Did you have a family at the time?  You had just come out of college.  Would you have a family or girlfriend who might have been upset by this amount of time you were spending with the cops?

ADELSTEIN:  Oh yes, my college girlfriend basically dumped me when we were in the middle of making out and I had to leave to go cover a murder, with the ultimatum, “If you leave now, you’ll never see me again,” and that was true.  I said, “Gotta go.  Gotta go to this murder scene,” and when I came back, she’d actually cleaned up the apartment and left me a very nice note, like; “I never want to see you again.”  But at least she cleaned the apartment.

WERMAN:  So the cops were among some of your better sources.  Your reporting also took you into the Japanese underworld, especially the sex industry.  In Kabukicho, this is the red light district, you provide a pretty, no-nonsense, vivid description of the place.  At one point, you go to what you call a no-panty, shabu shabu restaurant.  It’s where they cook soup and stuff, where half nude young women prepare beef dishes at your table and flirted with you while you ate.  And this is just a restaurant. What is the rest of the place like?

ADELSTEIN:  The Japanese sex industry is very, very legal.  Essentially, it works like this: anything besides actual sexual intercourse is permitted.  That leaves a variety of possibilities, and because actual intercourse is forbidden, according to the law, they spice up the menu with very strange things like girls in schoolgirl outfits or nun outfits.  There’s a place to cater to every particular whim you might have.  There was an infamous place called “Child” in which men would go in and have their genitalia shaved and diapered, and then all the women there were lactating.  The police busted them for sanitation violations because they weren’t keeping the bottled milk, mothers’ milk, in the right refrigerator kind of containers.  That’s one of the more bizarre ones.  There are clubs that are designed to look like the insides of subway cars, where you can pretend to molest a woman while she’s commuting to work.  Or you can pay money and have a woman molest you while you’re commuting to work.  And they have an actual subway car built inside the shop.

WERMAN:  And just how mainstream is this stuff?  How mainstream are the people who visit these clubs?

ADELSTEIN:  This would happen now and then: a couple of my colleagues on the newspaper would want to go out to one of these sexual massage places.  And I could never go, because they don’t accept foreigners, not that I was particularly upset about that.  But it’s very common.  The Japanese attitude towards sex and marriage is very different from what we have here.  Essentially, traditionally, it’s not considered infidelity if the man is paying for it and he’s careful.

WERMAN:  That’s extraordinary.  Now immediately, you are brought into the circle and start to cover the Japanese mafia.  That’s presumably part of the cop beat when you’re working for a newspaper in Tokyo.  Is the Yakuza like the mafia, with different families, each with a different turf and a different collection of extortion businesses?

ADELSTEIN:  The Yakuza in Japan are very interesting.  The very first time I ever met a Yakuza, I actually went to the guy’s office.  I mean, he had an office and a business card.  It wasn’t hidden at all.  In Japan, they have fan magazines.  If I wanted to know who’s running the Yamaguchi-gumi, which is the largest group with 40,000 members, I’ll just go to the newsstand, you know, pick up this month’s copy of Jitsuwa Jidai and it’ll tell me the latest personnel changes, probably with photos.

WERMAN:  Now your book focuses on one major Yakuza player, Mr. Goto, and a strange tale of how he came to the United States to get a liver transplant.  And effectively, that story that you’ve told essentially ended your newspaper career.  It’s a complicated story, but tell us what happened.

ADELSTEIN:  First of all, I should say that Goto Tadamasa is probably one of the most– was one of the richest and most powerful Yakuza in Japan.  But here’s the story.  I heard that Goto Tadamasa had come to the United States and gotten a liver transplant in the year 2001.  I thought it was an incredible story, because this man was so infamous and so definitely blacklisted by the United States.  I couldn’t figure out any way that he could have gotten into the United States.  So while I was working on that story and gathering all the facts, it leaked out to the Goto-gumi and by March of 2008, I was under police protection, and the police were telling me, if you want to deal with this guy, you need to write up everything you know about his liver transplant and that will neutralize him.  And that’s what I did.  Except I couldn’t get a Japanese periodical to write the story, so I ended up writing it for the Washington Post.

WERMAN:  Among these Yakuza, vengeance is valued and justice is theirs.  So you’ve published this book now.  Does it put you in danger?

ADELSTEIN:  Well, there was a political calculation done before I published this book, or even before I wrote the Washington Post story, is that Goto has been seen as a troublemaker by people in his own organization. And the Yamaguchi-gumi is like 40,000 people.  He is one faction.  So I approached another faction and I showed them essentially what I was about to write and I asked them for a comment.  They didn’t give me a commentary, but they did try to bribe me to not write this story.  But essentially, I was able to play one Yakuza faction against another and they kicked him out of the Yamaguchi-gumi in October of 2008, and then I felt much safer.  There’s only one other organized crime group that’s still slightly angry with me.  I’m working out an apology to those guys.

WERMAN:  Jake Adelstein, author of “Tokyo Vice,” thanks very much for your time.

ADELSTEIN:  Thank you.

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