← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
13 Oct, 2011
00:28:00
'I'll Not Do It Again!' That's the verdict of some foreign businessmen, out of pocket...
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BBC Announcer
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the
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Mark Dummett
programme broadcast on the World Service by
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BBC Announcer
following the link to the iplayer on
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Rick Birch
the top of our website.
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Mark Dummett
To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well.
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BBC Announcer
But now, with the addition Broadcast on
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Mark Dummett
Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Chris Bachmann
Today, India. Is it really one of the worst places in the world to do business? Why? The French authorities are paying the hotel bills of people who plotted to blow up the Eiffel Tower. We're in Dublin two weeks before polling day, where all the talk's about the one time IRA man who wants to be President of Ireland. And there's a question in a small town in Sierra Leone. Are those two muddy looking rocks really uncut diamonds? These may be troubled times for Western economies with grim news on unemployment, stagnant production and jittery stock markets. But India continues to power. It has a growth rate of more than 8% and a massive middle class which has more money to spend than ever before. Many foreign companies therefore see entry into the Indian market as one way of riding out the global financial storm. But Mark Dummett in Delhi says that doing business in India is not for the faint hearted.
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Rick Birch
Rick Birch has worked all over the world. He's an impresario who organises the opening ceremonies of major international sporting events. He's done six Olympics, including Beijing, Sydney and Barcelona. He's helped design extravaganzas in Mexico, Singapore and his native Australia. He's also worked in India, where he produced the curtain raiser for Delhi's Commonwealth Games one year ago. It wasn't easy. The biggest sporting event in India's history was supposed to be its chance to show off, much as China had done with the Beijing Games. But to those of us watching from the sidelines, the plan seemed to backfire appallingly. Indeed, the weeks leading up to the games only seemed to reveal problems. Parts of Delhi were flooded by the heaviest monsoon in years. Work on the venues wasn't finished, even though the whole thing had run massively over budget. A bridge collapsed, there was an outbreak of dengue fever, and the athletes bedrooms were slept in by stray dogs. However, as one government minister had correctly predicted, everything came together at the last minute. Just like at an Indian wedding. Rick's team worked like heroes. Their opening ceremony was a grand success. And as a giant helium balloon was launched into the Delhi night sky, 60,000 proud spectators bellowed out the NATIONAL ANTHEM so does Rick ever want to work here again? No, absolutely not. India, he says, stands for I'll not do it again. The final straw for Rick is the fact that he still hasn't been paid. He says he's owed £225,000 and the Indian government still hasn't told him why he hasn't received his money. They don't answer correspondence, they've changed their phone numbers, they've changed their email address. He told me it's a rogue action. Rick isn't the only one in this situation. According to a list compiled by foreign governments, of the 32 international contractors employed to help run the games, only two have been paid in full. The total debt amounts to more than 50 million pounds, and some of the companies are now in danger of folding. Their experience seems to support a recent World bank survey which found that India was one of the hardest places in the world in which to do business, coming a lowly 134th out of 183 countries. More damningly still, when it comes to enforcing contracts, the World bank says that India is actually the second worst, coming only higher than East Timor. The Commonwealth Games companies I've spoken to said that the Indian government has still not given them any indication as to why they're not being paid. But the reason is hardly a secret, and it has to do with the biggest scandal of the Games corruption. The man at the centre of things is Suresh Kalmadi, a veteran ruling party politician who sat on Parliament's ethics committee and was appointed to run the Delhi Games. He's now behind bars, facing charges of taking bribes from contractors. The government has made it clear that until all the contracts that Calmadi issued are fully investigated, the remaining money won't be released. And two independent committees claimed that some of the contracts issued to foreign firms were indeed suspicious. One of the British companies they named was SIS Live, which televised the Games and is owed more than £15 million. A spokesman for SIS Live angrily rejected the allegations it had done anything dodgy. Terence Fane Saunders described to me the committee's report as grotesquely wrong and inaccurate for full, he said, of easily provable errors. He claimed that no one from either committee had ever contacted SIS Live to check their facts. The UK High Commission in Delhi agrees with SIS Live and has written to the Indian government asking it to reconsider its treatment of the company. That letter was followed up by a second one regarding the fate of all the firms signed jointly by the embassies of Germany, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Britain. The Netherlands and Britain. Neither letter received an official reply, and nobody seems to know if and when the money will ever be paid. Legal action could take years. One frustrated Western diplomat admitted to me that it was possible that a few of the companies might indeed have paid bribes, but it was inconceivable that all of them had. The whole thing, he said, sends out a terrible message that doing business in India is just too risky. The global economic crisis is now forcing foreign firms to look at India like never before. BP is the latest major firm to invest, recently announcing a joint venture worth more than four and a half billion pounds. But Rick Birch, whose company hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, won't be coming back. I'll be very happy to ignore India, he told me. There are plenty of other places where they pay their bills, and that's Mark Dummett.
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Chris Bachmann
Now, what you do when you have convicted foreign Islamic radicals on your soil, you can't send them back home. And no one else is prepared to take them in either. This is a situation currently faced by the authorities in France. A group of Islamists, most of them Algerians, were sentenced to long jail terms for plotting a series of attacks in Paris. They've now been released, but the courts won't allow them to be sent back to Algeria because of fears for their safety there. So is Chris Bock. Hockman's been finding out they're staying on in France, where they're proving something of an embarrassment for those in charge.
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BBC Announcer
You have to make a real effort to find the small town of Aige Belles surrounded by stunning countryside in the foothills of the French Alps. It has a population of just over 1,001 hotel on the main street that has seen better days. In fact, when I visited, it only had one guest. Meruan Ben Ahmed arrived there on the 16th of June and for the time being has no scheduled checkout date. To paraphrase the famous song Hotel California by the Eagles, he can try and check out any time he likes, but he can never leave. That's because Marijuan Ben Ahmed was and may still be considered one of the most dangerous Islamic radicals on French soil. He's just spent 10 years in jail, accused of being part of the so called Chechen Connection, a group of Islamic military, mainly from Algeria, who fought alongside Chechen rebels against the Russians from the mid-1990s onwards. After being returned to Paris, they were charged and sentenced to long jail terms for planning terrorist attacks on the Russian Embassy and the Eiffel Tower in the French capital around 10 of the group have now been released, but the courts won't allow the French government to send them back to Algeria because. Because their safety can't be guaranteed there. As Marawan Ben Ahmed told me, in the dingy, poorly lit hotel room where he cooks, eats and sleeps, a death sentence hangs over his head and al jeers because he also took part in the civil war against the military backed government there. For many of the other members of the Chechen connection, it's the same story. The French state is stuck. It can't send them home, nobody else wants them, and yet they have served their sentences. So until a solution emerges, they are being housed separately in cheap, out of the way hotels in small villages and towns across France. Their hotels, food and pocket money are being paid for by the French taxpayer. And this situation could go on for years. Another of the group who was released three years ago has been living like this ever since then. He is regularly moved on from region to region after the hotel owners and their unwilling guest get sick of each other. You could say it's his own personal Tour de France. Meruan Ben Ahmed's average day is punctuated by four daily visits to the local police station or gendarmerie, where he has to check in at 9am, 1, 3 and 6pm without fail. If he doesn't, he could be sent back to jail. He's also strictly confined to the village limits, meaning he'll never get a chance to visit the beautiful national park just outside. He told me that he's been released from one jail and simply put in another, far from his family and friends and with nothing to do. He's also obliged to show evidence each month that he's actively seeking a country prepare to take him in. Needless to say, with his record and background, takers are thin on the ground. Sitting at his new local cafe within the inclusion zone, he asked me if I could think of any country that might be willing to give him a second chance to resume a normal life. My geopolitical knowledge failed me. I admit I was lost for words. Menad Benshilali is another member of the Chechen connection. He was nicknamed the Chemist by the French media, which when he was sentenced because prosecutors alleged he had tried to create chemical explosives in his flat. He spent nine years in jail too, but unlike the rest of the group, has greater freedom of movement because he has French as well as Algerian citizenship. Yet he is still closely monitored by the French police. He now spends his time visiting the rest of the group, isolated in their village hotel rooms, trying to keep up their morale. He says the situation is ludicrous. They have served their time, given them a chance to rebuild their lives in France. Since nobody else wants them. He says, they're unlikely to receive much compassion from the French state or much support from the general public. So their French lawyer, Beranger Tournay, is taking a different approach by talking of wasteful state spending. With the French government, like most of its neighbors, desperate to cut its budget deficit, he stresses that the French taxpayer is coughing up around €600,000 a year. That's more than half a million pounds to look after his clients. Surely, he suggests, it would be cheaper to relax the restrictions over them and let them work and even pay taxes. On the surface, it doesn't seem the strongest of arguments. But neither does it seem that the French state or the long term hotel residents have a lot of other options available.
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Chris Bachmann
Chris Bachmann in southeast France. Liberia is to release the first official results of its presidential election later today. Unofficial partial results suggest it's been a close contest with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who seeking a second term just ahead of her main rival, Winston Tubman. Judges in the Hague, meanwhile, are still considering their verdict in the case against a former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor. He faces serious charges connected with the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. During the trial, he was accused of selling so called blood diamonds for weapons which were used in the fighting there. Thomas and Ford has been to visit a town called Kenema, which is at the centre of Sierra Leone's diamond trade.
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Thomasin Ford
Children are plying the streets selling pouches of cold water. Women dressed in brightly coloured lappers, the traditional cloth in West Africa, carefully balance on their heads. Enamel trays filled with groundnuts. Kenema looks like any other town in Sierra Leone. But then you notice the diamond shops lining the streets. Dozens of beautifully hand painted signs adorned with pictures of blue and white diamonds are everywhere. They're pasted to the walls, they hang from signposts. It seems everyone is a diamond exporter or a diamond buyer here. The shop owners sit on their porches behind thick steel window bars waiting for their next customer during the fighting here. Most of the diamond mines in this region were controlled by the notorious rebels of the Revolutionary United Front. Children, women and men were forced to work in appalling conditions for little or no money. They would scour the streams and riverbeds searching for stones washed down from the diamond bearing rocks. Hiding a find or even stopping for a drink of water could result in a severe beating or even death. That is why they are called Blood diamonds. And it's these blood diamonds that have been accused of fuelling wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Angola and the Congo. Waiting at the bus station in Kenema, I had a first hand glimpse of the diamond fever that has caused this country so many problems in the past. A man walked into the ticket office with a hopeful heir. Clutching two muddy looking stones. He went round the waiting passengers asking if they thought his ROC were diamonds or not. Each passenger took a look, held them in their hands. One man even scratched them on the concrete floor like pieces of chalk, as if that would give him some clues. But no one really had an answer. When it came to my turn to have a look, I had no idea. They were heavy and they had a certain glint to them when you held them up to the light. But as I held the stones in my hands, the words of a British supermodel came to mind. The Naomi Campbell's account of Charles Taylor's little gift to her. Back in 1997, the British supermodel had been invited to Nelson Mandela's presidential compound in South Africa. Charles Taylor was also there. She told the Special Court in the Hague how that evening two men appeared at her door late at night with a little pouch full of what she described as dirty pebbles. They were actually uncut diamonds. In Kenema, people seem to have little or no knowledge about the goings on at the Special Court. But at a camp in Grafton set up for amputees and people wounded during the war, it's a different story. Kadiatou Fafana told me what happened when the rebels attacked her Village in 1999. As she ran with her baby on her back, they started hacking at her with machetes. She was left in a hut for days while her legs rotted. Eventually she made it to a hospital where they were both amputated. She now sits in a wheelchair outside her concrete hut selling cold water and soft drinks. It's rainy season and she tells me that this is the time when she feels the pain the most. This was a war in which tens of thousands of people were killed and many more suffered brutal acts of torture. At least 2 million were displaced from their homes, close to half the entire population of Sierra Leone. For many here, there is no doubt who they hold responsible, and that is Charles Taylor. But if you cross the border into Mr. Taylor's homeland of Liberia, you hear other opinions. I went to the famous Hatay shops where people drink tea, play Scrabble and talk politics or sport. They are filled with people from morning until night. At One of them. I introduced the topic of Charles Taylor. Guilty or not guilty. I shouted over the top of the heads bent over the scrub boards. The whole place erupted. A vibrant, energetic debate bubbled out onto the streets. I sat and listened as people talked about their experiences of the war. I left with the debate still raging, walking out onto the street to the sound of one man screaming, charles Taylor will never come back. While right behind him another man replied, charles Taylor will come back.
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Chris Bachmann
Thomasin Ford In West Africa, every district in China's towns and cities has its own neighbourhood committee. They're the first line of government, and people have very differing opinions about them. Some think they're stuffed by aggressive busybodies. Others say they make life easier for the people they serve. Michael Bristow has been making up his own mind. After spending an afternoon at one neighbourhood
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Michael Bristow
committee in Shanghai, Pan Jin Hwa sorts out problems. She's the woman to go to if you want another child or if your neighbours are annoying you. She's also on the front line of the government's efforts to control this populous nation, passing on information about new policies and making sure everyone follows them. Occasionally, she arranges a celebration. The compound where Mrs. Pan lives in Shanghai has just marked its 60th anniversary. She was there handing out commemorative mugs. Pan Jinhua is one of tens of thousands of mostly women who work in China's neighbourhood committees. Every district, in every town and every city has one. They're the country's most basic unit of government and based in the communities they watch over. They're at the very heart of everyday life in China. I meet Mrs. Pan by accident. I was looking for a 94 year old woman, Ma Bao Di, who joined the Chinese Communist Party a lifetime ago. But I can't just walk up to Mrs. Ma's front door and ask her for an interview. For a start, no one wants to tell me where she lives. I'm directed to the neighbourhood committee. These institutions guard their districts like a mother watching over a newborn child. It's one of their primary roles keep watch, monitor all strangers and report back. If I want to chat to anyone, I'll have to go through the committee. That's how I meet Mrs. Pan. In China, it's not easy to ask direct questions. Everyone wants to avoid the embarrassment of a negative reply. Mrs. Pan has heard of what I want, but I can't just blurt it out. So after introducing myself, I follow her up a narrow wooden staircase to an office. We sit down to chat and drink tea. Maybe I can edge my request into our conversation. As we chat, she deals with a steady stream of visitors. A young woman comes in clutching two marriage certificates, one for her, one for her husband. She needs the committee to get her another vital piece of paper, one that will prove that she's legally entitled to have a child. The neighbourhood committee makes sure everyone follows China's strict family planning regulations. Some complain these guardians are occasionally overzealous, forcing women to be sterilised or have abortions. But this neighbourhood worker seems happy to help. She disappears into another room to do the paperwork. Pan Jinhua is a cheerful woman who happily grumbles about this part of her job. Chinese society is in flux. People would previously be born, raised and die in the same place. Not anymore. Mrs. Pan's domain, like others in China's big cities, has a growing population of migrant workers, farmers who've given up their land and moved in search of more lucrative employment. But they often come from areas where the family planning rules are different. Some can have two children instead of just one. It's not easy keeping tabs on everyone, sighs Mrs. Pan. As we gaze out of the window across the district's three storey homes, the Panjinqua is reminded of another frequent problem roused between neighbours. When these homes were first built, they were modern model houses for model workers. But that was more than half a century ago. They now look old and shabby. There are three families to one kitchen. Some residents have built an extra storey on the roof of their homes to get a little more living space. If they get on well with their neighbours, everything is fine, says Mrs. Pant. No one complains. But if they don't, she has to step in and help resolve the resulting argument. Suddenly, we're descending the stairs and off to meet Ma Baodie, the elderly woman I'd almost forgotten I wanted to interview. She'll have got up from her nap by now, says Mrs. Pan. The neighbourhood committee has decided the interview can go ahead. What Mrs. Ma thinks seems immaterial. As I reflect on what's just happened, I'm reminded of something that it took me a long time to learn in China. The country has thousands of laws and many more rules and regulations. Sometimes it seems there's an obstacle to everything, particularly for a foreign journalist. And then, after a little time, a friendly chat and a cup of tea, the impossible suddenly becomes possible.
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Chris Bachmann
Michael Bristow in Shanghai the election of a new president in Ireland is normally a restrained affair. Elected for a seven year term, this is a head of state with few powers who stays well out of the hurly Burly of everyday politics. Yet the race this time around, voters go to the polls on October 27 is a colourful affair. Among the seven contenders, a poet, a past winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, and a James Joyce scholar who boasts of being the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in Ireland. But as Kieran Cook tells us from Dublin, it's the participation in the race of a former leading member of the IRA which is causing the biggest stir.
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Mark Dummett
There are countries where people make eye contact, others where it's avoided or thought impolite. Ireland definitely falls into the former category. It could be an innate Irish friendliness or curiosity that provokes so many searching looks. The country has a small population. You don't have to go far to bump into someone you know. So on a Dublin morning, with the weak autumn sun lighting up the city's stern Granite State buildings, it's perhaps only natural. I see a familiar figure coming up the street by the Doyle, the Irish Parliament. A look, a wink, a quick sideways nod of the head, like a pigeon on the alert. How are you doing? A hand is held out. The sheik firm. And we move on. Presidential hopeful Martin McGuinness, former IRA member turned peacemaker in Northern Ireland, is out pumping the flesh. The style is relaxed, jokey, informal. In Ireland's politics, it's essential to come across as a man or woman of the people. Though the two most recent incumbents of the office, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, have brought considerable stature to the post, the duties of an Irish president are mainly ceremonial. Shaking hands with rugby players, cutting ribbons, greeting ambassadors. Some say that Ireland, down on its economic knees, needs a presidential election like a hole in the head. Yet the political dust is flying in this contest, and it's Mr. McGuinness and his past who is attracting most attention. He probably doesn't remember me, but I vividly recall our first meeting. It was a cold, wet Belfast winter's day, and we were laying on the ground a short distance apart at an IRA funeral. A gunman was shooting at the large Republican cemetery crowd, at the assembled media and at the IRA leadership, Mr. McGuinness prominent among them. There were explosions nearby. Bullets pinged off gravestones. Amid the confusion, I nearly garrotted myself on the iron spikes round one grave. Martin McGinnis was soon up on his feet, telling mourners to lay low, looking where the shooting was coming from. Three people died that day. About 50 were injured. Mr. McGuinness role in the IRA and in nearly three decades of violence in Northern Ireland the period, somewhat quaintly referred to as the Troubles is a subject of great speculation in this presidential campaign. The trouble is, says the stranger I'm sharing a breakfast table with in a Dublin Cafe, that McGinnis man brings so much baggage with him. All that stuff about the IRA and violence, we don't want that down here. My new companion takes a big gurgle of tea. I was reading your notes upside down, he winks. Just checking you're getting things right. Once at a time when the bombs and bullets were flying and the IRA was very active, an editor breezily suggested I have lunch with Mr. McGinnis, use the informal atmosphere to try and get under his skin. I was told it was not a relaxed affair. Mr. McGinnis's minders hovered round the dimly lit hotel dining room, eyes ever alert over the vegetable Soup. I asked Mr. McGinnis whether he had ever killed anyone. That sort of question tends to stop conversation. There were long silences. He used great heaps of salt on his food, making patterns of it round his plate. He denied any killing. The atmosphere only improved when I can't remember how the subject turned to fishing. Mr. McGinnis is obviously a passionate angler. He became animated. He had even written a poem about fishing. Would I like to see it? An ode to the trout. So I ask my inquisitive breakfast companion, who will he vote for? Will it be for McGuinness? Or Dana Scanlan, whose main claim to fame is winning the Eurovision Song Contest 40 years ago? Or perhaps Senator David Norris, never short of a word or ten, fond of reciting great chunks of James Joyce at the slightest encouragement? Or will his vote go to Michael D. Higgins, a West of Ireland longtime politician, a poet and international human rights campaigner? Or any of the other candidates? My newly found friend uses a thick slice of bread to chase stray egg yolk round his plate. I would never betray my political allegiances to a complete stranger, he airily proclaims, before tilting back and almost falling off his chair with laughter. Now let me see your notes again. I want to make sure you've got everything right.
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Chris Bachmann
And with Kieran Cook's work coming under close scrutiny in Dublin, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again on Saturday with more from correspondents far and wide. I hope you'll join us. Good bye.