Javier Bauluz
Finalist : Features

Spanish
"Spain, South Border"
Shot Sept/ Oct 2000
Self-funded / TELE 5 Spain

"Every day that the East wind is stopped, zodiacs with immigrants Moroccans or subsaharans arrive. More than 10,000 thousands got arrested this year on the Tarifa coast -and a lot of them died." Javier Bauluz

Judge's Comment "This is amazing.... great pictures need no commentary and the pictures of the refugees coming out of the sea and running and hiding, speak for themselves."

This extraordinarily close-shot account documents what really happens to the illegal immigrants who arrive on the southern Spanish coast. For 40 days, Javier Bauluz worked alone, filming as immigrants disembarked from their dinghys at Tarifa and hurried furtively across the beach into the shelter of the dunes. As they run, hiding from the police, he closely follows their progress, reassuring them as they gaze fearfully into his lens, recording their fear as they crouch shivering in the fields. Some are caught by police and others are helped secretly by Spanish neighbours. Helping immigrants is illegal. For the Moroccan immigrants, being caught by the police means being sent back to Morocco within 24 hours. For black immigrants, the situation is much worse. In his film, Bauluz shows black immigrants from the South Sahara (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mali etc.) arriving in very bad physical condition. "They are arrested by police and have no humanitarian help for three to four hours. They lie like dogs on the freezing ground..."

Bauluz' camera is unafraid to show the lack of humanitarian help for the ill and exhausted immigrants.

Javier Bauluz is a freelance photojournalist who, since 1984, has been covering conflicts in Israel, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, El Salvador, Rwanda, Bosnia. His work has appeared in many publications worldwide. In 1995, he was awarded a Pulitzer prize for his work on the cholera story in Rwanda with the AP team. Javier is involved in international aid work, and since 1997 has been Director of the "International Festival of Photojournalism of Gijón".

He has also found time to be "father of a wonderful child named Javier III."

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