Original subtitles

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

Welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service. Each week,

we bring you the best of the World Service's investigative journalism,

as well as unmissable reporting from BBC teams around the world.

I'm Stephanie Hegarty,

the BBC's global population correspondent,

and I'm here in the Peruvian Amazon to report on

one of the largest groups of people still living

in voluntary isolation from the rest of the world.

The Mashco-Piro have remained uncontacted for over a century.

It's thought that their ancestors fled here into the forest to escape

the rubber barons of the 1890s,

who massacred and enslaved hundreds of thousands of indigenous people.

Now they're under threat again.

I've been speaking to the indigenous villagers who live alongside them

to understand more about the challenges

this unique group of people face.

Also in this week's programme, BBC Eye hears from women who say

they were lured to the United Arab Emirates...

So you have to tell me which girls you want.

We've got, like, 25 girls.

..often under false promises of work,

and exposes an illegal prostitution ring,

systematically exploiting young Ugandan women.

Away from the rainforest, on the streets of Peru's capital, Lima,

the government has been rocked by massive protests.

The demonstrators were angry

about official corruption and out-of-control crime.

Former President Boluarte has been removed from office,

but protesters are now mounting against her successor,

Peru's seventh president in nine years.

Among the pressing challenges President Jose Jeri faces

is a push for the formal recognition of all indigenous territories,

putting them off-limits to industry.

There are at least 25 uncontacted groups living in Peru.

Last month, after 20 years of debate,

the Peruvian government rejected the establishment

of a new reserve for uncontacted people in the north of the country,

prompting accusations they were violating human rights

and allowing loggers and miners

to threaten these communities' very existence.

Just over there on the banks of

the Tahuamanu River in the Peruvian Amazon,

the Mashco-Piro people live in isolation,

avoiding regular contact with the rest of the world.

This is dense, remote jungle.

It's hard to navigate, and it's hot and humid all year round.

But here, the Mashco-Piro people have survived and thrived

for well over a century.

It's not clear, but it's thought there's now more than

750 Mashco-Piro people living in an area the size of Ireland.

The people in this village have been living peacefully

alongside their Mashco-Piro neighbours for decades,

but recently, tensions have been mounting.

The NGO Survival International says that half of all uncontacted people

around the world could be wiped out in the next ten years

if their governments don't do more to protect them.

HE WHISTLES

Tomas is warning his neighbours he's here.

HE WHISTLES

He's trying to avoid a tense encounter,

like what happened just a week before.

Tomas has been living alongside this isolated tribe for decades.

But for most of that time, he rarely saw them.

His neighbours are the Mashco-Piro,

a tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers who've cut themselves off

from the rest of society for over a century.

They hunt with longbows and arrows and gather plants and fruit to eat.

They rely on the forest for everything.

But recently, logging companies have been operating here.

This part of the forest is not protected.

Tomas' home, Nueva Oceania, is a tiny fishing village

of eight families high on the banks of the Tahuamanu River.

As he took us back there from his garden plot just upstream,

a young woman called Leticia was rushing back from the forest.

She was picking fruit

when she encountered the Mashco-Piro for the first time.

HIGH-PITCHED WAIL

Peru has a policy of no contact with isolated people, to protect groups

like the Mashco-Piro from disease and exploitation.

It means it's illegal to initiate contact with them.

But the people of Nueva Oceania feel they've been left alone

to protect themselves and their isolated neighbours.

It's a very different story in other parts of Mashco-Piro territory,

where the government have been running control posts

for many years.

When the Mashco-Piro come out of the forest,

agents are here to manage any interaction.

The agents have been able to learn the Mashco-Piro's language,

because it's similar to their own.

This control post was set up in 2015,

after interaction between Mashco-Piro and local villages

led to several killings.

As head of the control post,

Antonio's job is to stop that from happening again.

It's just over the other side of this river,

on that beach right there, where several Mashco-Piro families

regularly appear. They shout over the river at

the agents here, asking for banana or plantain.

And they came on Monday, actually. And the agents here said

they didn't have any, but they told them to come back in three days.

You have all their names. Sus nombres.

The agents give the Mashco-Piro some crops,

to stop them raiding nearby villages.

I asked Antonio why the policy of no contact is so important.

Antonio has worked here for ten years, and in that time

he's learnt a little about how the Mashco-Piro live.

In the four years he's been here,

Pancho has come to know some people well.

But any time the agents ask about life in the forest,

the Mashco-Piro shut the conversation down.

The Mashco-Piro here are well protected, for now,

though the government plans to build a road that would connect

this area to a place where illegal mining is widespread.

We approached the Peruvian government for a response

to the claim that this road and logging operations could put

the Mashco-Piro at risk, but we didn't receive a reply.

In Nueva Oceania, the people of the village are doing what they can

to protect their isolated neighbours.

Now here's some of the other thought-provoking content

available this week from the BBC World Service.

The Focus On Africa podcast brings

an African perspective on global stories every weekday.

A recent episode focused on a new turn in the Sudanese Civil War,

where the Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, claimed to take control

of Al Fashir, the last remaining foothold

of the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Darfur region.

And each week, The Global Story analyses America's

complex relationship with the rest of the world.

This week, as President Trump toured Asia,

they ask, what would Trump do if China attacked Taiwan?

Now we're taking you to Dubai.

BBC Eye spent two years investigating stories

of women who say they were lured to

the Middle East under false promises of work.

Using undercover footage, testimonies from these women

and open source intelligence journalism,

they were able to expose an illegal prostitution ring

run by a man known as "the Untouchable".

Here's Runako Celina.

Across social media,

Ugandans like Monic Karungi - or Mona Kizz -

are being sold a dream...

..the glitz and glamour of Dubai and a better life.

But for some, the reality is nothing short of a nightmare.

I'm Runako Celina.

I'm an investigative journalist for the BBC.

I've travelled from London

to this farm in Uganda to meet Ronah, Monic's niece.

This is you.

So that means she is... Mm-hm.

She's the baby? Really, that's her?

She's gorgeous.

Like so many other Ugandans,

Monic moved to Dubai, hoping for a job and a better life.

Monic died four months after leaving her family in Uganda.

On the 1st of May, 2022,

she fell to her death from a Dubai high rise.

And she isn't the only one.

Another woman, called Kayla, also fell to her death

in Dubai in 2021.

Both Kayla and Monic were from Uganda,

and both knew the same people in Dubai.

What's really going on here?

As Uganda wrestles with rising youth unemployment,

sending Ugandans to work abroad -

mainly in the Gulf states -

has become a huge industry that contributes

$1.2 billion of tax revenue to Uganda annually.

Most Ugandans head to Dubai through safe channels,

but according to anti-trafficking activist Marriam Mwiza

many are less fortunate.

Mwiza runs an NGO that helps Ugandans being exploited abroad.

She has rescued more than 700 people.

How big is the problem?

With the exploitation of women so prevalent,

could this be what happened to Monic?

And what about Kayla -

who also fell to her death in Dubai - the year before Monic?

Both Monic and Kayla posted on social media

from the same area in Dubai,

Al Barsha.

Through comments, bits of Kayla's story become clear.

Her name is Kayla Birungi,

and she was 21 years old.

Kayla and Monic have tons of mutual friends.

I reach out to a handful of them,

hoping someone will reply to me.

While I wait to hear back,

I look into a couple of phone numbers.

The first is a number that came from Monic's family.

They say that this is the man she was working for

while she was in Dubai.

The second number came from Kayla's family,

for a man they were told was her landlord in Dubai.

I start with the number Monic's family gave me.

It doesn't take long to see a result.

Variations of the same name twice -

Abbey.

One record has the word Tecom attached to it.

It's an area in Dubai that most people know as Al Barsha.

This is where we know Kayla and Monic lived in Dubai.

I can't do much with just one name, Abbey,

so I try the number I got from Kayla's family.

It's a UK number.

It's also been saved as Abby -

same name as the first number -

and it's connected to a Facebook page.

It shows another name, Charles Mwesigwa.

But still, there's no photo of him -

just a tiny square image

of an Arabic English keyboard.

Across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok,

I find almost 250 accounts for men called Charles Mwesigwa.

But I see this profile picture on four of them,

and one of them follows Monic's account on Instagram.

Charles Mwesigwa,

also known as Abbey,

the man Kayla's family were told was her landlord,

and Abby,

the man Monic's family were told was her boss in Dubai -

it's the same man.

I've had a response from one of Kayla and Monic's

mutual friends in Dubai.

Wow.

She says...

She's back in Uganda,

having managed to get out of Dubai just under a year ago.

It's dangerous for her to speak,

so we've anonymized her using AI.

Who's the person who was bringing girls to Dubai?

50 girls? Living there?

Wow.

Do you have any pictures of this man, Abbey?

This is him?

I now have the face and the name of the man

who we believe took Monic to Dubai.

Charles Mwesigwa, or Abbey.

I've been mapping out the men who work for him.

A source confirms that this guy, Troy, has left Abbey.

He's agreed to meet me.

How is Abbey able to get girls from Uganda?

Tracking down Abbey has proven challenging.

But I've enlisted an undercover team and they've had a breakthrough.

OK...

To get close to Abbey,

our undercover operative is posing as an events organiser

for high net worth individuals

looking for women for their parties.

He's managed to secure a meeting with Abbey.

LAUGHTER

His driving licence confirmed that he is indeed Charles Mwesigwa,

the man we believe Monic was working for in Dubai.

It's become part of me. Uh-huh.

LAUGHTER

OPERATIVE SIGHS

A relative of Monic's was in the UAE when she died.

He's asked us to protect his identity

for fear of retribution.

After Monic fell to her death,

he went to confront the man he believed was her boss.

We have a photo of...

What happened to Mona?

It's time to try to talk to Abbey.

We call him on the number he gave to our undercover operative

who was posing as a client.

Hi, Mr Mwesigwa,

Runako Celina for the BBC.

We have evidence that you are operating

a prostitution ring in Dubai.

What do you have to say to this?

Is it 25 young women that you have working...?

He's hung up already.

So now he's sending...

"Bro, please stop tarnishing my name.

"If I went where girls do their business

"and they follow me to my parties and do their stuff,

"is it anyone's problem?

"When they go to hotels and rent rooms,

"did you find me seated by their sides?

"If they send me messages that they have gotten a visa

"and I connect them with landlords, is it my fault?

"I'm a party animal in Dubai

"and party with very wealthy people.

"That's why girls always come onto our tables

"and look for me."

As Abbey is engaging,

I put more questions to him about Monic and Kayla.

"Both were very heavy users of substances

"and were like mad people,

"especially Mon."

Which I guess is Monic.

He completely disassociates himself from everything

that's happened in Dubai,

from this entire industry, from any wrongdoing.

And you can watch a longer version of Runako's report

on BBC Two on Wednesday at 11:30pm.

Thanks for joining me here in Peru.

Global Eye will be back again next week.