galleries  26 albums, 819 photos on 9 pages   [login]         1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9   Mira The family of Xhemal Balliu lives in a small barn in the village of Brretë, which is 50 km north of Tirana, the capital of Albania. Five adult members of this family are mentally ill. Due to this medical condition, the inability to provide food and the level of poverty, Lindita Balliu has lost 4 young children. Three year old Mira is the only child of the family. She is believed to be the product of many sexual attacks that her mother Lindita suffered. Mira did not officially exist until she was registered after her young brother accidentally died in a fire. This family's income is based on $4 a day that they receive from the government as handicap assistance for their three mentally ill family members. Aside from this assistance, they live on one goat and by selling wood and handmade brooms, materials for which they collect in a nearby forest, where Xhemali and his wife Memja live. Presumed Guilty New York City 2005. In the US, people were always told to be proud of their justice system, because “people are innocent until proven guilty”, but after 9/11 everyone is presumed to be guilty, and they must prove their innocence. Time Square faces gave me, visually, the same sense of guilt in people, the feeling of anxiety and the general distrust that has surged since the attacks of 9/11. The sense of being watched like never before has made many in the US more tense and suspicious. Cemetery of the Fallen Cemetery of Albanian partisans fallen in battle during the Second World War. Each year, on 29 September, the Albanian Liberation Day is commemorated in Tirana.The relatives of the fallen have followed this tradition since the end of the war and remember those who had somehow been forgotten by the communist regime. The actual government takes care and pays attributes to them on the national day, but politics is divided in two parts in a debate regarding the actuall date of Albania’s Liberation. The Democratic Party commemorates this day on 28 of November and the Socialist Party is convinced that the liberation date is 29 November. Both brining solitude to the fallen.       1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9