Supported projects

ANTWERP/BRUSSELS - To understand how citizens weigh ethics against the law, Suzanne Roes decided to conduct research into criminalised movements above and below ground.

ANTWERP - The Organisation Todt (OT) was a German paramilitary government organisation named after its founder, Fritz Todt. The group was involved in major construction projects (such as the Atlantic Wall), security assignments (such as guarding prisoner-of-war and concentration camps) and military operations and genocides (including those in Eastern Europe).

BOSASO - After almost a decade of silence on Somalia's northern coast, piracy seems to be making a comeback. Driven by hunger and desperation, old smuggling routes are being reopened and strategic ports are being targeted. 'The sea beckons as never before.'The comeback of Somali pirates

DAMASCUS - Trapped in the dusty cells of northeastern Syria are thousands of foreign IS fighters, all having come with one goal: to establish an Islamic caliphate. They come from 50 countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, as well as France, Britain and Belgium. Five years after the fall of IS, they are prisoners in a legal no-man's land, often without charge or trial, written off by their home countries.

MARTISSANT - "This is where I realise my days are numbered" Joselia, an old lady, confides. In her neighbourhood, one of Port-au-Prince's slums, gangs are fighting for control of the few economic assets the city still has to offer. Haiti, the eternal worry child of the Caribbean, is now truly a "failed state".

SOBIBOR - After Auschwitz, Sobibor is the largest Dutch mass grave with more than 34,000 Dutch victims. Starting in 1942, more than 170,000 Jews were gassed here in a year and a half immediately upon arrival. Yet few people know about this death camp. After a successful prisoner uprising in October 1943, the Nazis closed Sobibor, erasing as many traces as possible.

BRUSSELS - These women weren’t leading  the same battles, walking in the same streets or speaking in the same forums. Yet they were all victims of the same crime:  political feminicide.

BRUSSELS – ‘Once upon a time there was a man...’ Thus begins the story I was told as a little girl. In the podcast ‘Monsters don’t exist’ I revisit that story together with my contemporaries who grew up in 1990s turbulent Belgium, just like me. While we were busy with homework and playing in the streets, unsettling images and news reports seeped into our young lives and reshaped our understanding of the world forever.

SCHIPHOL - In Belgium and the Netherlands, Mexican laborers have raised a new branch of the drug industry: crystal meth. Arthur Debruyne portrays all those involved. 'Buying gloves? Just tell those mexi to work'.

BRUSSELS – A huge amount of art was stolen during World War II. The Nazis looted art from occupied countries and brought it to Germany, where they established ambitious collections. The story of what happened to Belgian art has yet to be told. How did paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Bruegel, Jordaens and Cranach leave the country so easily? The Nazis looted homes, stole art and forced owners to sell, spending millions of Reichsmarks in the process.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Vila Cruzeiro is one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slums. People are living in poverty surrounded by a drug war. After far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office, shootings between police and traffickers are much more frequent. Violence in the neighbourhoods is only increasing.

BRUSSELS - 'Less police force' is a podcast that wants to make police violence in Belgium visible and unravel it through testimonies and interviews with experts. We want to find out why police violence - also in our country - is so common. This automatically brings us to the question: what are the police for? Are the police the guardian of the law, or rather the armed arm of our social order? Is a world without police better? And in what way can justice be done to the victims of police violence?

NIVELLES - State police commander Léon François starts using questionable investigative methods in the fight against drug traffickers in the 1970s, without legal regulation. Who are the gangsters and who is the police? The boundaries blur. Top cops and politicians, ex-premier Vanden Boeynants in the lead, watch and do not intervene. François is convicted, but the case never really gets cleared up. A lot of serious crimes are never solved.

BRUSSELS - Overcrowding, striking staff, dilapidated infrastructure... With regularity our prisons are in the news in a way that leaves little to the imagination. What is less well known is that each prison has a Supervisory Committee that watches over the welfare of the inmates. About 450 volunteers, including doctors and lawyers, visit the prisons and report on the state of affairs. Complaints Committees were also established at the end of 2020: they are recognised as administrative tribunals within the prison walls.

What is the involvement of Belgian jihadists in the genocide that IS carried out against the Jezidi community? Now that the Belgian parliament has acknowledged the genocide, Brenda Stoter Boscolo and Bruno Struys went to Iraqi Kurdistan with that question in mind. They talked to official sources, but above all had hours of interviews with the Yezidis themselves.

BUJUMBURA - After sixty years, Ludo De Witte opens up about a murder that set Burundi on the road to internal division, ethnic tension and mass killings.

BRUSSELS - In 2013, the Belgian television programme Panorama delved into the world of urban black gangs. The members spoke openly about life and survival on the streets of Brussels. Now, eight years later, they look back on their tough youth. Did they succeed in choosing the right path? Does the past still haunt them?

MEXICO - La Civil tells the story of Cielo, a mother in search of her daughter, abducted by a criminal cartel in Northern Mexico. As the authorities fail to offer support in the search, Cielo takes matters into her own hands and turns from housewife into avenging activist. The story was inspired by true events.

BRUSSELS - “When discussing drug production, we rarely look at the environmental damage and costs. Belgium, together with The Netherlands, is the main producer of synthetic drugs in Europe, and the chemical waste deriving as a by-product from the production here remains.

ANTWERPEN - Antwerp is being undermined. The port of Antwerp is the biggest cocaine import port in Europe. The drug crime creates invisible criminality that affects life in the city.

ANTWERP - The port of Antwerp is considered to be the most important port for coca imports in Europe. Every year, tons of cocaine come here hidden on board container ships. The value of the smuggled cocaine is estimated to have a street value of tens of billions of kronor. 

BRUSSELS - Dog has been man's best friend for ages. While he used to work for his owner in the old days, he is spoiled by the whole family today. The changed status, fashion trends and online sales platforms ensure the demand for cute puppies continues to rise. For example, the European dog trade has grown over the past decade into a lucrative business that is almost as profitable as the trade in arms and drugs.

MECHELEN - Lon Landau is a promising Jewish set designer, whose life takes a dramatic turn during WWII. He's imprisoned in Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, but he decides to remain optimistic and to do what he can best: build dream worlds.

PALERMO - An investigation into the contemporary Italian mafia in Europe. Or how the mafia made its way to the Low Countries.

KABUL - Each year, 115 tonnes of heroin from Afghan poppy fields is exported to Europe. Who wins? Who loses? And what is the impact of lucrative drug smuggling on people who live along this Balkan route?

JUAREZ - "How much you own, that's how much you're worth. That's how it works here. For us poor people, there's no justice." Susana's daughter Lupita went into town 6 years ago to buy shoes. She never came back. There are thousands of Lupitas in Juárez, Mexico. Lynn Cornelis and Sofie Meelberghs want to know who's behind the wave of kidnappings and murders.

MANILA - There is a vast global and growing demand for webcam child sex. Every hour at least 750,000 pedophiles and other sex predators are cyber hunting minors. Investigative journalist Pierre Vandenbrugghe (alias) descends into this vastly expanding, new branch of cyber pornography in the Philippines.

MECHELEN - In April 2015 it will have been exactly five years since the start of the scandal involving Bruges bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was accused of having sexually abused several children. In the book Through my fault Machteld Libert, journalist for Flemish public broadcaster VRT, investigates how sexual abuse in the Church could have happened.

STANLEYTOWN - In 1964 some 2000 hostages were saved out of the hands of Congolese rebels by Belgian para troopers. But the events behind that success story paved the way for the autocratic regime of President Mobutu.

ANTWERP - Smuggling, fraud and tax evasion have been the order of the day in the diamond business in Antwerp for decades. The diamond merchants in the 'Square Mile' are living in a vacuum, in a social and judicial bubble that is sustained in part because of the cooperation of politicians and magistrates.