← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
03 Feb 2011
00:28:06
President Mubarak of Egypt is desperate to leave office with a degree of dignity, but...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the BBC World Service and presented by Alan Johnston by going from our own correspondent website or indeed to that of the BBC World Service. But here's the edition which goes out on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, two young men, two grieving mothers, part of the unfolding story of change in the Arab world. There's a flamboyant show of defiance in Uganda after the murder of a gay activist. A tour of the ghost town in Ukraine where once they lived the Soviet dream and how the mobile phone is fueling a demand for education in the lawless provinces of southern Afghanistan. There's palpable tension this morning in the Egyptian capital Cairo after further violent clashes between supporters and opponents of President Hosni Mubarak. A number of people are reported to have been killed and injured amid chaotic scenes in Tahrir Square. There have been running battles between the two sides. Repeated bursts of gunfire, petrol bombs and stones were thrown. Yesterday, pro Mubarak demonstrators entered the square in force, trying to drive out the thousands of protesters who've been calling for the President to step down. Lee's Doucet has been watching this revolution unfold on the banks of the Nile.
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Qasr Nil Bridge spans Cairo's fabled river. Flanked by large stone lines, it takes you to the edge of a now famous square, Maidan Tahrir Freedom Square. It's a journey now taken by thousands of Egyptians by day and night as they march towards a public place transformed into the largest political space Egypt has ever known. Look to the left as you cross the mighty Nile. You can't help but gawk at the blackened hulk of the headquarters of Egypt's ruling party. It was burned down by protesters during what they call their days of rage. But strangely, a white billboard still hangs, untouched by flames, a bright canvas of smiling boys and girls. I asked an Egyptian friend, what was it advertising? Oh, he said dismissively as we strolled along the bridge, it's about a fund to invest in your children's future. But everyone knows, he said with a wry chuckle, the money would just be stolen. It's no laughing matter now. In the past few months, the Arab world has learned, ignore the young at your peril. In Egypt, more than 60% of the population is under the age of 30. Some of them are the so called Facebook generation, turning to social media to make their voices heard in countries where their views are stifled by authoritarian states. Some are part of a faceless mass of poor, unemployed, angry young men and women too. But now they're making their own history. Let me tell you the story of just two of these 20 something year olds who helped change their country's fate. 28 year old Khalid Said loved computers. One day last year, sitting at a cyber cafe in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, he was picked up by police and beaten to death. The authorities said he suffocated trying to swallow hashish. But no one bought that story. His family said he had videos implicating police in a drug deal. His friends put up a Facebook page entitled we are all Khalid said. Their numbers grew and grew and Khalid stories spread. But the protests in Egypt then were as they have always been, contained, controlled. Then in December in Tunisia, another young man lit a bigger fire. 26 year old Mohamed Wazizi simply couldn't take it anymore. The local authorities took his cart in electronic scales and as legend has it, a female officer slapped him in the face. Humiliated the fruit vendor in his town of Sidi Bouzid set himself alight. Little did he know his story also ended up on Facebook and on the streets. He inflamed the passions of a nation, ignited a revolution in Tunisia that's inspired so much of the Arab world, including Egypt. Last week, I went to visit Muhammad's mother, Manubiya, still convulsed by grief. A mother enveloped in black told of a son who was cheerful and hard working, who supported his family of seven siblings and his widowed mother. He didn't deserve what happened, Manubia wailed. He was just trying to fight his way out of poverty. As she told her story, her neighbor Aisha wandered into the small courtyard. An elderly woman, petite, with sad, piercing eyes. While Manubia sobbed, Aisha seized the moment to tearfully rattle off her own story. She'd also lost her 25 year old son, Taliyah. He'd left five years ago for Italy, taking a smuggler's route to try to find a job. He never came back, never sent a word, never a sign he was dead or alive. But his was just the plight of countless other young Arabs whose individual stories are rarely told. Muhammad and tlili grew up in one small, drab town, a town like countless others across the Arab world. Two young men, two grieving mothers. Here in Egypt, Umm Said, the mother of Khalid Said, the young man in the cyber cafe, still speaks of her unbearable pain. Last week, before Egyptians unleashed a wave of unprecedented protests, Umm Said spoke to Egyptian media. My son did Nothing wrong, she said. She urged Egyptians to leave their homes and take to the streets. She spoke of 10 other young men she says were also tortured to death. Their names may never be known, but this week I've seen the names of Khalid Said and Mohamed Bouazizi on placards borne by Egyptians as they cross Casernil across a river, glinting in the sun towards what they hope will be a brighter future.
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Lise Doucet in Cairo, one of the senior American generals in Afghanistan is predicting a change of strategy from the Taliban in the months ahead. Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez forecast that they'd try to kill more Afghan political leaders in a bid to undermine support for the government of Hamid Karzai. Robert Fox, who's just back from Helmand Province, says the Taliban are having to face the fact that American and British troops and aid are now bringing real change to parts of the province.
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Noah, in some of the most fertile land in Helmand, isn't so much a one horse town as as a one ditch town. The open irrigation channel dug with American aid in the 1950s is what passes for the main drag in the little town. On its banks runs the sprawl of shops and stalls of the main bazaar. Here now you can buy anything from saffron to sweets, motorbikes and wool from Iran, bicycles from China, gaudy cloaks and shawls and mobile phones. Two years ago, it wasn't like this. Only six stalls did business in the bazaar. The Taliban were in the village and fought daily battles with the company of British soldiers, which had come to train a local unit of the Afghan army. Not that there was much time for the training. They spent most of the time fending off attacks from the Taliban, dodging in and out of the surrounding orchards. Then came the American marines, over a thousand of them. In a three day battle in which they used fighter planes and helicopters, they drove the Taliban back from the town in the fields south towards Majah, whence it has taken a long campaign to dislodge them. Nawa is now a place transformed even from when I last saw it, on the eve of the festival of Eid, towards the end of November the year before last. Then the district council had been up and running for only a few weeks and the US marines were helping build a district centre compound and clinic and repair the old school on the edge of the bazaar. Even then, the price of the new peace and government had been high. The chairman of the council and two of his councillors had been killed by the Taliban, one dragged into the desert to be Ritually executed. Today, Nawa has become the poster child of stabilization. The whole district is home to about 80,000 Afghans, Pashtuns from five main tribes and clans. Most live by agriculture and are now experimenting with new cultures of grapes, aubergines, alfalfa grass and tomatoes, and vines in plastic polytunnels, which allow three or four crops a year. The big changes, though, are the roads and that one ditch through the bazaar. The farmers can now travel the roads with a freedom not experienced for years from either marauding Taliban or rogue police, roadblocks and patrols. Provincial Governor Mangal has now told officials to drive themselves to and from the provincial capital, Lashkaga. It's about an hour away. At a fairly raucous meeting of the district council executive, I caught a glimpse of Nahwa, old and new. The governor, Abdulmanaf, a 67 year old veteran of the Mujahideen campaign against the Russians in the 80s bosses. The meeting encouraging colleagues and admonishing old rivals like the hugely overworked chief administrator. International aid money is requested for new businesses, heaters for offices and books and materials for the school. Hardest worked is the Hakuk, the judicial officer charged with settling land and family disputes by traditional justice. Abdul Satter, a 46 year old father and grandfather of 25, has served as a public prosecutor and police counter narcotics inspector. He won his present position, quite unusually, by passing a public exam. When I ask him about his duties, he reels off a list of six principal tribes and clans in his district. Barakzai, Populzai, Asheczai, Alakazai, Noor Sai and Lakarazai. He says that most of his work is settling disputes over land and money, wives, children and dowries between these groups. On average, he handles about 10 disputes a week, settling a few on the spot and sending others to the public prosecutor. He says he likes his job, but he's worried about the lack of security. His wives and children are intimidated by threatening letters from the Taliban, usually delivered at night, and he has no personal protection, and all for a salary of around 125 pounds a month. He's a direct threat to the Taliban, whose big claim is to settle disputes and dispense justice swiftly, often quite brutally. The other challenge to the Taliban manifests itself, though not obviously, in the clangor of mobile phones throughout the council, meeting in a variety of wonderful arabesque ringtones. The mobile revolution, now reaching 80% of Afghans, has brought a tsunami of demand for learning to be able to read a text message and use a computer. The Nawabazaar sells up to 50 mobiles a week, complete with dodgy SIM cards and, if necessary, solar panels from China to power them. The mobile is a game changer in Afghanistan today and the heart of Nahua's cultural revolution. And Nahua once boasted Helmand's biggest and best opium poppy fields. Now there's no poppy, except in two patches. But they're in the badlands of the border with Marja.
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And that was Robert Fox. Lawmakers in Uganda are believed to be thinking again about a proposed law which would make some homosexual activities punishable by death. Their proposals met with a shocked reaction around the world. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda. Those found guilty in the courts can be sent to prison for up to 14 years. On Friday, hundreds of people turned out for the funeral income parlour of a gay rights campaigner called David Catto, who was murdered at his home in the city earlier last week. Anna Cavell says gay people in Uganda face constant harassment.
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David Katto was a small man by Ugandan standards. He wore glasses and had the air of an intellectual. He wore particularly well cut suits and was softly spoken. And he was very brave. Homophobia in Uganda is different to homophobia in Europe. It's not just that people don't like homosexuality or they don't like to consider what homosexuals might do together. Out here, it's seen as an abomination. Gay people are reviled in a similar way to rapists in other countries. It's not surprising then that few gay people in this country disclose their sexuality and that fewer still are prepared to challenge the views of society. David wasn't one of these people. He had been campaigning for the right to live openly as himself for years, and many times he'd suffered the consequences. He'd been physically attacked in the past. Recently, he'd become too frightened to travel alone. Just before Christmas, there was a hearing at Uganda's Media Council. David and two others had challenged a tabloid newspaper called Rolling Stone. This isn't the well known music and politics magazine, but a small circulation Kampala publication which had printed the names of gay people under the headline Hang them. Although many people were named as gay in that article, David was the only one who came to the hearing. The staff of this paper, all young men, resembled nothing so much as school bullies. Summoned to the headmaster's office with more dignity than I could have managed, David ignored the sniggering, swaggering men as they prowled about the room waiting for proceedings to begin. He kept his eyes on the papers in front of him, making notes and perhaps trying not to remember an earlier hearing when these same men had turned up accompanied by a gang calling for him to be killed. On that occasion, David had managed to escape. He'd literally run away from the courthouse. Despite the threats, though, homosexuals in Uganda are growing bolder. In August last year, the first openly gay bar, Sappho Islands, arrived in the capital. It provides a focal point for the community. And it was here that the eventual victory over Rolling Stone was celebrated. This is also where David's funeral party set out from. It's a place, I was told, where gay people feel safe, where they can be themselves. At the weekend, members of Kampala's gay community organized a drag fashion show in another bar downtown. The event had been in the diary for a while, but going ahead with it, just a few days after David's murder, seemed bold. The audience was modest in size, the community understandably nervous. But what it lacked in numbers, it more than made up for in enthusiasm. Each besieged diva was greeted with shrieks and cheers from the audience. These weren't the most sophisticated drag artists I've ever seen. One of the queens was wearing a skirt with a slit so high there really was no ambiguity at all about his gender. At one point, the excitable MC leapt on stage to demonstrate how the act of concealment should be achieved. All in all, it wasn't a very polished performance, but it was a joyful one. The people on stage were elated. This was a rare opportunity to dress as they liked and be who they wanted. And just one day after they'd buried the elder statesmen of their movement, the now infamous anti homosexuality bill. As a double edged sword for Uganda's gay people, of course, it incited a level of hatred not seen before, but it also invigorated their campaign. The legal battle against Rolling Stone was fought with the help of money from gay rights and other interest groups. And demonstrations in support of the campaign were held around the world. But there's a flip side to this international backing. It started to breed resentment internally. There's a growing perception among Ugandans that gay people here are rich just because foreigners give them money and that they don't need to work anymore. And that kind of bitterness in a country as poor as this one is likely to have a corrosive effect. We don't yet know why David Katto was killed. The police say it was likely to have been a case of aggravated robbery. Friends and colleagues say otherwise, though no one denies that homosexuals here are at risk of physical attack. Talking to the media. After the victory over Rolling Stone, Kasia, the owner of the Sappho Islands bar and herself a courageous activist, said, I'd like to thank all those who continue to walk the journey of freedom with us. You are the true heroes and undoubtedly the likes of Kasha and David take heart from outside support. But it requires bravery like David's to come out and make a stand by yourself. His lawyer told me that in the hearing against Rolling Stone, there hadn't been an international organisation to hide behind. David had come forward as an individual. He was there to fight for himself.
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Anna Cavell in Kampala. It's 25 years now since a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear accident. It's believed thousands of people were killed. Today there's still deep concern about the accident site. In Ukraine, work's underway to try to neutralize the threat from the 200 tons of melted nuclear fuel rods which still lie within the reactor. After the explosion, a huge no go area the size of Lancashire was established around Chernobyl. Today it's a desolated landscape of rampant wildlife and abandoned homes. Richard Hollingham's been to visit one of the towns which died, a place called Pripyat.
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Andrei Glukov looks down at the mound of books strewn across the floor of the library. Their pages rustle in the breeze from the broken windows. The high concrete frames cast harsh shadows across the room. It's as if it was an overexposed photograph, heightening the sense that something terrible has happened here. The library is on the second floor of the Pripyat Cultural Centre, the heart of this Soviet model town, two miles from the nuclear plant it was built to serve. If you lived in Pripyat, you were living the Soviet dream. The average age of residents was 26. There was a disco, a cinema and theatre. Workers could relax with a game of football and the sports hall before a drink in the bar and perhaps a meal in one of the restaurants. The flats were fitted out with the latest appliances and visitors could stay in the modern hotel overlooking the fountains in the town square. 49,000 people lived in Pripyat. Well paid young families working in skilled jobs in the state of the art power plant just along the road. Andre was a safety officer at chernobyl and on the 26th of April 1986 was due on shift to oversee and an experimental shutdown of reactor number four. They carried out tests all the time, so it was no big deal. For some reason the test was delayed and when Andre called his supervisor. He was told there was no need to go in. A friend was visiting, so instead they went for a drink. The reactor exploded just after 1:00 clock in the morning. The blast could be heard from the town, but people thought it was probably just a safety valve going off. That happened all the time too. We walk down the corridor past the theatre, the few remaining seats overlooking a forever empty stage. We pass another room, once a dance studio, before stepping through a doorway into the place where Andre spent most of his spare time. It's nothing now. An overturned table, peeling paint on the walls, wires hanging from the ceiling. But Andre knows what he's looking for and points out some curled pieces of card pinned to the wall. One from Japan, another from Italy. This was where the amateur radio enthusiasts met to speak over the airwaves with other radio hams around the world. I'm surprised that workers at a modern nuclear plant in the Soviet Union were allowed to chat so freely. Andre says it was OK as long as they didn't talk about their work. On the morning of the 27th of April, Andre tried to ring the reactor 4 control room. No one answered the phone. That was never supposed to happen. In their panic, the authorities had imposed a news blackout. But rumours started to circulate about an explosion, a fire in the distance. A pool of smoke rose from the reactor. Andre told his family to stay inside. As gradually people began to realize the full extent of the disaster. The corridor opens up into the sports hall. A shoe lies on the five A side pitch. A rope hangs from the ceiling and there's a tree growing through the floor. It's only when you see how the buildings are being overgrown with vegetation that you appreciate the disaster was 25 years ago. Accompanying Andre, it seems like yesterday. We stand by the window. The view is dominated by a red Ferris wheel with bright yellow gondolas. Andre's voice cracks with emotion. He sobs, but covers it up with a cough. The town amusement park was due to open on May 1. All the children were looking forward to it. But no one ever got to ride the Ferris wheel or the dodgems. On 27 April 1986, residents were given just two hours to leave the town. A convoy of buses drove them away. They were told they'd be allowed back, so left most of their possessions they never were, along with other essential workers at Chernobyl. And Andre stayed behind. He shared the town with hundreds of abandoned pets. A few weeks later, no one was left. Andre says the land is so contaminated with radioactivity that it will be thousands of years before it's safe to live in Pripyat again. I ask him to smile for a photograph, but he says it's not appropriate to smile. He's right, of course.
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Richard Hollingham in Ukraine. There are certain things that link Britain with India Railways, cricket and curry, to name a few. But one thing that divides the two countries as much as it unites them is tea. The brew was introduced to India by the British in the 1800s, but the Indians didn't like the way we drank it, so they developed their own way of preparing and drinking chai, as they called it. Today, chai is as popular as ever, and as Judy Swallow explains, often you get the taste of Mother India in every cup.
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Chai. Chai. It's the hawker's call you hear all over India. The call I first heard more than 30 years ago at the start of my first long overnight train journey out of the city, then called Bombay chai tea, but not as we know it. Chai on that first tasting was like a joke played by the Indians on the British habit of to Eastern taste buds bastardising this delicate exotic brew. The recipe for chai. Start with a big battered pot of rapidly boiling water. Add a packet of powdered milk, 1 of sugar, and then chuck in a generous measure, of course, tea leaves, and carry on boiling until you have a thick, sticky, stewed, cloying mix. And there's one last essential ingredient for the total experience. The gritty aftertaste of red Indian clay. Chai always came in tiny, rough hewn pottery cups, lightly fired, unglazed, always with a bit of grit at the bottom. That first time I tried it, I thought it was utterly disgusting and tipped it out the window, much to the horror of my fellow passengers. Then, to my horror, they threw their cups out the window. Ugh. Not only had I been given a vile drink, but witnessed a national vile habit, littering on a criminal scale. Or so I thought. I had a lot to learn about India. The next morning, after a sleepless night on that sleeper train, the point of chai became clear. Weary, shaky and hungry. It was the total restorative. The caffeine hit of the long stewed tea, the energy of the sugar and the nourishment of the double strength milk. It was all this soft, overfed Westerner needed to face the day, and all for one rupee, less than two pence. That rupees worth will be all that many a rickshaw driver would have to keep running or pedalling on for hours. And as for the littering wrong again. A day or two in the baking summer sun or the monsoon rains and these crude cups disintegrated. Indian clay, returning to Indian soil. A perfect ecological model. But that was old India. These primitive little pots didn't fit the modern image of new India. Out they went and in came plastic. The result can be seen on every street, pavement and park and railway tracks are no longer lined with red, but with mountains. Of these tiny plastic cups, the traditional clay have become a rare sight, except here in Kolkata, at stalls in front of the majestic law courts or the back streets of slums. Indians gather in Kolkata for their traditional brew, still costing only a pittance, three rupees a cup and still served in the traditional way. It's part of the taste, said one bank clerk to me during his lunchtime break. The taste of Mother India. And he might have added, mother India doesn't get trashed. And the clay cups can have an economic benefit as well. Too many of India's poor have been left behind in the new India. For every it whiz kid, there's an illiterate villager with no skill to sell. But the Prajapati brothers, Ashok, Ajay and Pidjoy show there is money to be made from the old way of doing things. I met these three wiry, shaggy haired guys in their baggy shorts and singlets, squatting on their haunches on the mud floor of their workshop, a small open air shed that was little more than a corrugated iron roof on a bamboo scaffold. Their business, for that's what it was, was on the banks of a reeking cesspit of a river tucked behind the red light district and slum. But for the three of them, this is their families living and their children's future. Millions of impoverished villagers come to Kolkata to survive. These three were potters from rural Bihar. With no demand there, no work, they came here and now they're flat out, dawn to dusk. They don't get much per cup, of course, not when the tea costs only three rupees. But they turn out thousands of cups a day on muscle power alone. Their potter's wheels are just big flat stones which they get spinning faster and faster with a stick. It's pretty primitive, but Ashok's speed was pure production line efficiency, 8 seconds average per cup. Racks of them were drying on the riverbank and on the roof of their shack. What they earn here supports all their three wives and many young sons and daughters back in their village, thanks to the Chai cup trademark, the Prajapati children don't have to work. I asked Ashok if he wanted his son to be a posher like him. Oh, no, he said. This is very hard labour. Very hard and very boring work. No, my sons, they go to school. My son be businessman. And with those words, he sliced another clay cup off his wheel.
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And with Judy Swallow, exploring chai culture down by the river in Kolkata. We've reached the end of this edition. There'll be a fresh delivery of dispatches from correspondents around the world on Saturday morning. So please join us then. Goodbye.