Vice is bankrupt – these 5 video reports will not be forgotten Heavy artillery fire on Donetsk – the nightly update without photos

This is how the media portal Vice describes itself on its YouTube channel. However, this could soon be over: the Vice Media company filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

Originally founded as a magazine in Canada in 1994, Vice has grown into an ever-growing company that appeals primarily to a young audience with its provocative and outspoken contributions. Especially from 2006, when they focused on video reports, they gained great popularity.

Her approach was considered revolutionary in the media industry at the time, but the glamor of that time now seems to have faded: Vice is out of business. It is not yet known how it will proceed in concrete terms. The most likely is the acquisition of Vice by Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management. Vice has accumulated debt with both investors.

While Vice’s future is uncertain, her video reporting has left a lasting impression on many. Here are 5.

The cannibalistic warlords of Liberia

This report, which appeared in 2006, was filmed in Liberia, West Africa. A country that was in civil war for 14 years between 1989 and 2003. Vice reporters sought out warlords who were active at the time and willing to speak out about the period. One who agreed was General Butt Naked.

In the first 30 seconds of the post, you can find out why the warlord calls himself that. In preparation for battles, many of his men would suck and drink the blood of innocent children. It made him feel untouchable, which is why he went into battle naked. It is the beginning of a documentary that shows hell on earth.

A boy, barely a teenager, who smokes cocaine and brags about raping a woman. Blood-stained brothels where women sell themselves for a dollar to put food on the table. An entire beach that is used as a toilet in the capital because there is no running water anywhere nearby.

Eating human flesh was common during the worst times of the war, former warlord Rambo told Vice. The documentary does not shy away from showing corpses on the ground or a soldier with a heart in his hand.

And what is General Butt Naked doing today? In 1996 he converted to Christianity and has been active as a Protestant minister ever since.

Uganda’s moonshine epidemic

Kaliro is a small village 40 kilometers from the Ugandan capital Kampala. That’s where Vice reporters wanted to track down the “Waregi” in 2012. The illegally distilled schnapps, which translates to war gin in German, is heavily drunk there. This despite the fact that cheap booze can lead to blindness or even death.

Nearly 70 percent of the population only drinks locally produced alcohol. Many people earn their money by selling alcohol. So did a woman in Kaliro. She makes waregi from bananas, but people in the city also use sugar cane waste from factories.

The Vice reporter attends a party where Waregi is served as early as 4:00 PM. Everyone drinks: woman, man, young or old. Even children get filled cups. The documentary shows how poverty and lack of perspective make many people addicted.

“Devil’s Breath”

This report was published in 2007. It follows the drug Burundanga in Colombia – also called the devil’s breath. The drug is obtained from the trumpet of the angel, contains scopolamine and deprives the user of his free will without losing consciousness. A drug dealer tells Vice how the drug can be blown in an unsuspecting victim’s face, causing them to go “like a kid.” It’s the perfect drug for crime, explains toxicologist Miriam Gutierrez. The victim has no memory of the intoxication, which is why such incidents are rarely reported.

As part of the report, the reporters speak to a female victim who appears to have mixed the drug into her drink. Intoxicated, she handed the perpetrator all the money her partner had saved, as well as his cameras, which were located in their shared apartment. Another male victim was drugged by two women at a strip club. The next day he woke up beaten up in a park, he says. He can’t remember anything. However, security cameras show him running to an ATM and withdrawing money while two people wait for him.

Vice also speaks to a prostitute who openly admits to intoxicating her male clients. She has been robbing people this way since she was 15, the 21-year-old admits. Such is life on the street. She also tells herself that her life is useless so she can do whatever she wants.

Finally, another male victim tells the story, who was robbed in this way by two prostitutes and a pimp. As the man told Vice, he took revenge on them and brutally killed all three of them.

Crocodile – Russia’s deadliest drug

For the 2011 report, a Vice reporter traveled to Novokuznetsk, a city in Russian Siberia. At the time, according to Vice, 20 percent of people in the run-down former industrial city were addicted to heroin. Right at the beginning, the article shows an abandoned apartment building in which three young drug-addicted men live. They are all in their early 20s. They like to be filmed injecting the drugs.

In another abandoned building, the reporter not only finds countless syringes, but also tropicamide. Eye drops that are also injected shortly after the medication to enhance the effect. Tropicamide is a key ingredient in the crocodile drug, which was relatively new to the region at the time, the reporter discovered. The drug got its name from a side effect, after which the skin at the injection site begins to peel off like crocodile scales. In addition, the drug eats the user from the inside and can lead to limb rot, says an employee of a private rehabilitation clinic. The drug is easy to make yourself, because all the ingredients can be bought at the pharmacy. There is no law that prohibits that.

There are no rehab facilities offered by the state. The gap is therefore filled by small private organizations, but also by various Christian organizations and churches. Without any government support, they try to fight the drug epidemic and save lives. The battle seems unsuccessful: every day someone in town dies of an overdose, an undertaker tells Vice.

Finally, Vice visits a mother who lives with her son and grandson. Crocodile left both men permanent damage. While the son can barely talk or walk, the grandson can at least express himself a little. Mentally present, however, neither seems to be.

Interview with a cannibal

In 2011, Vice published an interview with Issei Sagawa. On June 11, 1985, the Japanese murdered a Dutch student who was studying literature with him in Paris. In an interview with Vice, he explains in detail how he first tried to bite her buttocks, but failed. For this reason he had to get a butcher knife. For the next two days, he ate her meat regularly and kept his favorite cuts in the fridge. In the video, Vice shows not only the pieces of meat on plates, but also the mutilated corpse of the victim – Renée Hartevelt.

In the interview, Sagawa also talks about how protected he grew up and when his first cannibalistic desires started. He also recalls being arrested in Paris and found insane and sent to a psychiatric prison. But he did not stay there for long: two years later he was deported to Japan. Japanese psychiatrists there believed that Sagawa was guilty at the time of the crime, so they had to release him from the institution. On August 13, 1985, Sagawa was released after only 15 months in a mental hospital.

He started giving interviews, writing books and articles to make money, he tells Vice. The business did not appear to have been lucrative, at least in the long run. In the interview, he admits that he has not paid his rent for five months and adds that he will kill himself if he is kicked out.

Sagawa, he died in hospital on November 24, 2022 from complications of pneumonia.