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From Our Own Correspondent
Ebola in the DRC: Fear and Conspiracy Theories
00:28:46
As the latest Ebola outbreak spreads, so too do conspiracy theories about its cause.
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Hello. Today we're in Kherson, where we meet the bus drivers shuttling locals through the city every day despite Russian drone attacks. In Oregon, we're rafting down the recently restored Klamat river, but locals say property prices have been washed away. Ethnic tensions escalate in the Indian state of Manipur between the Kuki and Metay people. And finally in Croatia, we're on the lookout for high flying Griffon vultures now making a long awaited comeback. But first to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak of the Ebola virus has spread rapidly. Nearly 400 confirmed cases have been reported, having increased Eightfold in less than two weeks. More than 60 people are now confirmed dead. Although the DRC has experienced 16 Ebola outbreaks before, aid groups have warned this could be the deadliest yet. With no vaccine to combat this particular strain, Olivia Ackland was embedded with the Congolese army and travelled to the border between North Kivu and Ituri provinces, where many have been displaced by violent conflict and the insecurity is compounding Ebola relief and tracing.
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As we jolt along a mud track slicing through the jungle, our fixer, a Congolese journalist, Siros Moisa, notices the worried expression on my face. We'll be fine, he says, chuckling as he pats my arm. We're embedded with the Congolese army and are hurtling ever deeper into the forests where ADF rebels lurk. This rebel group, Congo's deadliest, has slaughtered more than 5,000 people in the past decade. Its fighters storm villages at night, hacking people to death with machetes. Violence in the region has intensified just as aid organizations have pulled back following deep funding cuts. Millions of people are now displaced, living in sprawling tarpaulin shelters with scarce access to clean water, food and healthcare. As we rattle past roofless, charred homes recently torched in ADF attacks, I find myself thinking that things couldn't get much worse. But unbeknownst to us, a silent killer is already creeping through the region, already infecting people in these remote, conflict battered villages. Ebola? It's not until three weeks later, in the middle of May, once I'm back in Europe, that an outbreak is declared. But Ebola has been spreading undetected across the region for at least two months. This lag in detection could cost hundreds of lives. By now, it's believed that over 1000 people have been infected. Siros, who's now reporting at the Diseases Epicentre, calls me one evening. C' est shawds, Olivia, he tells me down the phone. It was hot, dangerous he means. He describes a scene at Rampara Hospital on the edge of the city of Bunya, where several patients and two doctors have already died of Ebola. Siros arrived to find a group of people in front of the hospital, some wailing, others screaming that Ebola doesn't exist. They were protesting because hospital staff wouldn't release a man's body to his family. Ebola spreads through bodily fluids, and traditional funeral rites, which involve washing and touching the dead, can be a lethal source of transmission. The dead man is well known. He played football for a local team and ferried people around on his motorbike taxi. When word spread that he died unexpectedly, rumours followed fast. Some said he'd been killed by doctors, his death falsely recorded as Ebola. This follows a popular yet untrue conspiracy theory that the outbreak was invented for the DRC government. To attract donor funds, dozens gathered outside the hospital seeking answers and demanding to see the body. Then suddenly, an Ebola treatment center was set alight. Nobody quite knows what happened. They presumed somebody hurled a petrol bomb at it. Staff and patients fled as the PVC walls melted away. Black smoke rose from the wilting plastic while mattresses went up in flames. The only person left inside was an Ebola patient who had already died. His corpse burned after soldiers fired into the air and the crowd dispersed. A young man in a tight black T shirt and drainpipe trousers was still pacing around near the hospital. Siros approached him. He was the younger brother of the dead footballer and said he refused to leave without the body. My brother was okay this morning. He was walking around, he said, his voice cracking with fury. They said he died and they won't let us see the body. I'm sure they injected him with something. The young man hinted that hospital staff might have wanted to kill his brother for ethnic reasons. Our family are not from around here, he said in the same taut, angry voice. To an outsider, the theory might sound far fetched, But Siros unpacks it. Every ethnic group has its own self defense militia, he explains, and people are suspicious of each other. They ask, why is this so called Ebola affecting only our community and not others? For more than 30 years, war has ravaged eastern Congo. Children have grown up amid rebel attacks, displacement and government neglect. Now there is a deep well of mistrust. Rumors spread as fast as the flames that tore down the treatment center. I think back to a girl we met the day before we embedded with the Army. She was 16 and had a four month old baby conceived after she was abducted by ADF rebels sitting on a stool inside her dimly lit tin roofed house, she spoke quietly, her eyes fixed on the ground. People are frightened of me, she said. They know this is a rebel baby and they fear us. With little money, she worries about how she'll provide for her child. She's also haunted by what happened to her in the camp. Now, as Ebola spreads through the region, another threat hangs over her future.
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Olivia Ackland now to Ukraine, which this week came under one of the heaviest Russian assaults in months. A barrage of drones and missiles killed at least 22 people people across the country, and once again, energy infrastructure was hit hard. Vitaly Shevchenko has been in Kherson in southern Ukraine, where he learned how public transport is now becoming a target for Russian drone operators, too.
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In Ukraine, the horror of war meets the prose of life in tragic but sometimes uplifting ways. On the way to Kyiv, I got to chat to a couple of traffic policemen at the site of a minor car crash. Working in central Ukraine is easy, one of them told me, but try processing motor vehicle collisions on the front line. They happen there too, you know, he went on. And when we're deployed there, we get given anti drone guns and then we have to process all this red tape. With drones buzzing overhead a few hundred miles south in Kherson, right on the front line, it's business as usual for the local buses, which are still running, even though they are two targeted by Russian drones. I spoke to four bus drivers from the city. All four were wounded recently, and all four went back to driving buses. Who else is going to get all the people who've stayed in the city to their shops, pharmacies and hospitals? One of them asked. Some 65,000 people are still thought to be living in Kherson, about a quarter of the city's population before the war. Many of those who have stayed say they are too old to leave or drive a car. Many others do not have the money to afford one. So without buses their life would be even more difficult. Russian drones are as unpredictable as they are lethal. Some are just hovering, waiting. Others are scout drones. Rita Dobrinova from the municipal bus company told me. They look the driver right in the eye through the windscreen. Anatoly Dmitrov was driving his bus on Route 14 earlier this month. The bus was full and people were standing in the aisle with when it reached an intersection and was hit by a Russian drone. All the windows got smashed. I barely made it to the next stop where there was a shelter. I looked in the mirror and I saw blood. Anatoly told me. I thought, oh, I need to get to the shelter quickly because sometimes they send a second drone immediately. He went on. The authorities in Kherson have taken steps to protect bus drivers and their passengers. Some of the busiest streets are covered with anti drone nets protecting pedestrians and traffic underneath. And authorities have given drone detectors, helmets and bulletproof vests to bus drivers. Shortly after I arrived in the Ukrainian capital, I experienced my first air raid. We were two floors underground, and yet the impact of a dozen missile strikes thundered around us. Then Russian drones followed, scouting out the damage done by the missiles. Then more missiles. This was one of the worst attacks since the start of the war. We were in our hotel's basement, but that night, a record 41,000 people sought shelter in the Kyiv Metro. It was so packed that it was difficult to find a spot on the floor to bed down. But sleep isn't easy when the ground above is shaking. As daylight broke, the scale of the damage was revealed. Several apartment blocks hit, at least seven people killed. We visited Vinohradar, normally a sleepy suburb of Kyiv, where we were confronted with a scene of utter devastation. Smoke and dust in the air, empty windows, glass crunching underfoot. Cars turned into lumps of twisted metal. Locals told us they had heard at least three massive explosions. Several of their neighbors were taken to hospital with severe injuries. One local resident told me she was most worried about her cat during the attack back. Thankfully, both Isaac the cat and Anna, his owner, escaped unhurt. But Anna was still tearful. They'll fix the building, but not our souls, she told me. The whole of the building, the whole of Ukraine is in grief. What have we done to deserve this? Nearby, some neighbourhood boys joined municipal workers in clearing rubble from a children's activity centre with painted purple butterflies still visible in in what was left of its windows. It was nearly lunch, and one worker in a high vis vest put down her shovel to call her son. Have you had your soup? She asked, standing next to a car wheel torn off by the blast, which had landed in a patch of grass. But step away from the epicentre of the attack and a sense of normality begins to return. Around the corner from Anna's house, a couple of children were playing on a swing, looking in disbelief at all the bustle in their neighborhood. Further away, road workers were laying new tarmac and buses were running as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Just a short distance away. This is Ukraine's way of dealing with the war. No matter how hard it gets hit, people cling fast to their daily routines. Life must continue as normal.
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Vitaly Shevchenko around the world Many of the world's largest rivers have been dammed to generate electricity and to control water for agriculture, but often at some cost. The consequences can include significant ecological damage, such as cutting fish off from their spawning grounds and the displacement of people to make way for reservoirs. In America's Pacific Northwest, there's a growing movement calling for rivers to be undammed and restored. But it's not without resistance, especially from the new communities which built a way of life around the reservoirs. As Ash Bardwaj discovered, I'm rafting down
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a river that's flowing for the first time in a century. The riverbanks are freshly carved 10 foot cliffs of mud and stone. Because this channel is new, making its way through a hundred years worth of silt and sediment that until a year ago was at the bottom of a reservoir. Above me, lonely jetties project sadly into the air, marking the previous water level. The Klamath river rises in southern Oregon and flows through northern California to the Pacific. It once saw the largest salmon run in the continental United States, and its banks were home to the Modoc, Carrock, Klamath, Yurok and Shasta peoples. But from 1903, hydroelectric dams were installed along the Klamath and the land behind them flooded for reservoirs. The Pacific salmon were unable to reach their upstream spawning grounds, and whole sections of the river disappeared. The dams created stagnation, high water temperatures and toxic algal blooms, says Ren Brownell, the public information officer for the non profit Klamath river renewal corporation, the KRRC. In 2002, she continues, that contributed to 70,000 adult salmon dying in the lower reaches. The river was at breaking point. Members of local indigenous tribes began advocating for the removal of the dams then owned by the power company Pacificor. Given they only generated around 1 1/2% of the company's power, Pacificor realized it would be cheaper to decommission the dams than refurbish them. The KRRC was created in 2016 to deliver the dam's removal and restoration of the river. The estimated cost was $450 million, funded by Pacificor and the states of California and Oregon. But it's been a rocky road with various concerns raised about the impact on the environment and locals. There was a lot of misinformation, says Wren, who isn't indigenous herself but grew up on the river. Like arguments that the dams provided irrigation or drinking water and flood control. They didn't. They just generated power. There were two Main groups opposed to the removal, Wren says, those who felt the dams represented a sort of monument to Manifest Destiny and their settler ancestors. So the removal felt like an attack. And then those who lived around the reservoirs, particularly those with properties on the waterfront. Whilst a fund was set up to offset any property damage caused by the dams removal, there was no compensation for declining property values or losing access to the waterfront. Today, Copco Lake Township, which developed around one of the artificial dam created lakes, is full of for sale signs and the general store remains closed. The draining of the reservoirs also saw some 2,000 acres of land re emerge, which was returned to the Shasta Indian Nation, and a huge revegetation project began which required 18 billion seeds from 98 native species. It now looks like the first growth after a landslide, although some more mature trees have been planted after being flown in by helicopter. New challenges have emerged, too, as whitewater recreationists seek access to the river through tribal land, some of which is closed during traditional ceremonies. In native circles we say that water is life, says Sammy Joe Defentorum of the Shasta Nation. It sustains us the same with the fish, so we have a very personal relationship with both. When the dams were built, the reservoirs inundated our villages and we lost ceremonial sites and burial sites. But last June we had our salmon calling ceremony at a traditional area, she says, referring to the practice of welcoming the salmon back to their spawning ground with with drumming and prayers. It was the first time in four generations Sammy Joe went on. For a native person having our traditional ceremony, that's everything. It connects us as a people, to our history, to the land, to the water and to the fish. That season, coho salmon made it to the uppermost streams to breed for the first time in 60 years. She went on. On the river, we raft through the gates of a gorge where the final dam was removed in late 2024 into Kikiseki Canyon. When the dams were here, it was dry as the water was routed to the hydropower station in a pipe. Now it's the wildest rapid on the Klamath, and our boat plunges and soars over the waves, crashing into the water until I'm absolutely drenched. A bald eagle soars between the hexagonal basalt columns of the gorge, and I spot deer tracks at the water's edge. As we pass out the other side, the dams are gone, and all the people of the Klamath, like the river itself, are charting a path through new territory.
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Ash Bardwaj Three years ago, the state of Manipur in India's northeast erupted in violence. Hundreds of people were killed. After tensions between the Kuki and Mete communities sparked a wave of kidnappings, rapes and riots. The Indian central government sent in paramilitary forces who managed to impose relative calm, but only by turning the state into a patchwork of mutually hostile zones carved up by checkpoints. Since then, the deeper causes of the conflict haven't been resolved, and this year, communal violence broke out again. Raghavendra Rao was there.
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In Manipur, the sound that broke the night on the 7th of April was brief, but its echo has lingered. An explosion tore through a modest home in the village of Thronglauby in the Imphal Valley. Inside, two small children were asleep. They were killed instantly. Their mother survived, badly injured, only to learn of their deaths later reading a local newspaper in her hospital bed. For their grandfather, Babuton Oinam, the loss still defies comprehension. The family had been preparing for a ceremony to mark the infant granddaughter's transition to solid food, a small, hopeful milestone. Now, he says, he does not know what to do. The blast came just weeks before a grim anniversary. Nearly three years ago, ethnic violence erupted in Manipur, pitting the majority Metai community of the valley against Kukizo tribes who inhabit the surrounding hills. Since then, more than 260 people have been killed. Some 60,000 more have been displaced. And the state, which locals once crossed freely, has effectively been divided not by official borders, but by suspicion, fear, buffer zones and armed checkpoints. The roots of the conflict are tangled, but deeply felt. It began when Metis sought official tribal status, a move which would mean they are eligible to buy land in Kuki protected areas, which could also give them an economic advantage. Protests followed, then violence, and since then, though it ebbs and flows, it has never fully stopped. Back in Tronglauby, residents say the April explosion was caused by something resembling a rocket propelled grenade, a weapon whose very presence speaks to how far the conflict here has deepened. Authorities have handed the investigation to India's National Investigation Agency. The state's chief minister called the blast a barbaric act aimed at disturbing the peace. But more than a month on, there have been no arrests. Grief Air rarely stands alone. It often travels quickly, hardening into anger. Within hours of the explosion, a large crowd gathered outside a Central Reserve Police Force camp, accusing Cookies of orchestrating the attack and questioning how such a weapon could be deployed in a heavily guarded area. The protest escalated. Vehicles were set on fire. Troops fired tear gas, then live rounds. Three civilians were killed. One of them was Michael Huydrom, a man who had come to the village in search of work. His father, Mohan Singh, says he does not understand why his son was shot. They will say they were doing their duty, he told me. Quietly. Across the Imphal Valley, fear has begun to reshape everyday life. At night, groups of women sit by the roadside holding burning torches. Once symbolic protests, they now describe these vigils as acts of protection. Who doesn't want to sleep peacefully at home? Asks one of them. Anima Mairambam. We have to protect our children. People's trust in institutions, insecurity in each other, has eroded. In its place, rumors spread swiftly, sometimes violently. On a recent journey through the state, travelling from the Kuki dominated hills towards the Metei dominated Imphal Valley, that fragility was impossible to miss. Word spread that armed Kuki men were travelling through the Imphal Valley, an area that has been effectively off limits to cookies since May 2023. In reality, two vehicles had stopped on the road, and inside were Indian plain clothes security personnel who were carrying weapons and headed for a security operation. But suspicion flared. Vehicles were burned, stones were thrown. It took hours and tear gas for authorities to restore order. Three years into the conflict, some of its most shocking episodes remain unresolved. A case that drew national outrage. A video showing two kooky women being paraded naked in 2023 by an alleged Metai mob did lead to arrests. But for the victims and their families, justice still feels distant. Her physical wounds have healed, says the husband of one of the women. But the pain has not gone away. And then there are the displaced, tens of thousands of them, both Kuki and Methi people in relief camps across Kuki dominated areas. Temporary shelters have become something closer to permanently resettled communities. In the valley, Metai families express the same despair. Rooms in schools, college buildings and government offices serve as kitchens, classrooms, bedrooms, everything at once. Living here feels worse than jail, one woman said, who fled her Town in 2023. Cookies cannot travel into the valley. Metis cannot enter the hills. Buffer zones guarded by security forces have become de facto borders. In a state that once prided itself on its interwoven communities. Some now argue that separation may be the only workable reality. Others warn that these physical divisions risk becoming permanent psychological ones. State force alone has not resolved the crisis, nor have political solutions emerged. And for families like those in Tronglobi, the question is no longer about justice. It is about something more basic whether it is possible to feel safe again.
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Ragavendra Rau. And finally, to the coast of Croatia, where an island's once dwindling griffon Vulture population served as a reminder of their important role as waste management specialists. The birds also play a role in reducing disease by devouring carcasses, breeding grounds for dangerous pathogens and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mary Novakovich came across a community that takes conserving these birds, who nest on sea cliffs, very seriously.
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Vultures get a bad rap. They're often seen as sinister, ugly harbingers of death. I'm watching this misconception being turned on its head on the Croatian island of Sudes in the Kvana Gulf. Here on this island, where sheep outnumber people, the griffin vulture is a vital part of the ecosystem. For centuries, they would feed on sheep carcasses and keep the countryside clean. But when sheep farming in Sudes started to decline about 50 years ago, so did the number of griffon vultures. It's not just the dwindling sheep population that's been affecting vulture numbers. With a wingspan of about 9ft, the birds often get caught up in power lines. Or they might inadvertently eat poisoned meat left by sheep farmers to kill the jackals that attack their flocks. But one of the most common hazards is caused by the birds themselves. Most of the vultures in Tsures nest in the rocky cliffs on the eastern side of the island. But when young birds try to fly the nest, some of them don't get enough thermal uplift and they fall into the sea. Some clamber onto the rocks, but others are left stranded in the water. Because these vultures produce only one egg a year and don't reach sexual maturity until they're 5, the mortality rate for the birds on stress is a staggering 75%. This is where the Bailey Rescue Centre comes in. Since 1993, local fishermen and boat owners have been taking injured fledglings to the rescue centre in the village of Bailey in the north of the island. Here, they are looked after until the birds are strong enough to go back into the wild. They might need four to six weeks to recover, or they could be back out within 72 hours. If they're only mildly dazed, the birds will be tied with GPS devices so they can be monitored. Because it's become harder for the griffon vultures here to feed themselves, the Bailli Centre also provides feeding stations in Sirs and Uchka Nature park on the mainland. There's also a feeding station in the Italian city of Udine, which is about 130 miles. As a crow, or in this case, the vulture flies here, a meat processing plant passes on its leftover carcasses to the vultures. So Nothing goes to waste. I meet one of the centre staff, Elvis Vouletta, who takes me into the large grounds where the aviary stands. Elvis lowers his voice as he explains that we have to minimize our contact with the birds. I can see six of them standing and strutting about the highest point in the aviary. Elvis tells me that when the birds are healthy, they all want to be on the top. If you see them on the ground, he says, there's probably something wrong. The centre's main building used to be the village school, which dates from 1926, when the Italians had control over this part of Croatia. It's fitting that local school children are having a tour during my visit, as education is a key factor in maintaining vulture numbers, because another thing that endangers young griffon vultures is human behaviour. Elvis tells me about how some people who rent boats in the area want to see the vultures up close, so they shout and throw rocks at the nests to make the birds fly, often before they're ready. Elvis sees the look of disgust on my face and agrees, but says there's only so much the boat owners can do. My anger towards these irresponsible tourists grows when I look at the exhibits taking me into the world of the griffon vulture. They really are much more beautiful than I thought. And when I see a photo of one in full flight, I realize I had spotted one in the air. Earlier that morning, I learned that griffon vultures have no sense of smell, which is perhaps for the good, considering the role they play in the ecosystem. And their graceful necks have no feathers. Again, nature's way of keeping the birds clean when they're digging away at a sheep's carcass. Other exhibits show the history of Bailey, which was built by the Romans 4,000 years ago. The first time I visited cedres, which was 22 years ago, the rescue centre was more like an odd little sanctuary whose residents included a donkey, a single sheep, a dog and a lone vulture. At the time, there were probably about 90 breeding pairs of griffon vultures on Sudes. Now there are more than 150. In fact, Seres is home to Europe's largest colony of griffon vultures. They live across southern Europe, from Portugal to the Balkans. They have no natural predators apart from humans, but in this case, the humans are helping to keep them alive.
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Neri Novakovic and that's all for today, from our own correspondent was produced by Serena Tarling and Polly Hope. The editor was Richard Fenton Smith. I'm Kate Ady. And you can hear more stories from around the world on from our own correspondent on BBC Sounds, including dispatches on life under the fuel blockade in Cuba and why Greeks are up in arms about new labour laws. We'll be back with a new episode next Saturday.
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I'm Kate Lamble and From understand from BBC Radio 4, this is rinsed.
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Last time I was here there was a tampon and there was a condom.
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A sewage scandal damaging our rivers.
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We had an enormous range of animals in the garden and that also started
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to disappear, uncovered by ordinary folk taking on powerful people.
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And they told me there's nothing wrong with the river Windrush. Basically go away and stop troubling us.
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This is the story of how a centuries old battle between public good and private profit created an almighty stink. And who pays to clean it up? Rinsed Listen first on BBC Sounds.
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And I thought, nah, you're the problem.