← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
15 Oct 2011
00:28:08
Is the name of Bahrain being dragged into the mire by a string of alleged human rights...
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BBC Presenter
You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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BBC Correspondent
This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the
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Frank Gardner
programme broadcast on the World Service by
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following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website.
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Frank Gardner
To keep up with our latest reports
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BBC Correspondent
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stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well.
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BBC Correspondent
But now, with the addition broadcast on
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BBC Presenter
Radio 4, here's Kate Ady a kingdom
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BBC Reporter
in turmoil, why Bahrain's simmering rebellion seems set to boil over again Also this morning, the scandal in Spain over the Ninos Robados, the baby stolen at birth and sold to families considered more deserving on the road home to Liberia with refugees who say it's a place of hope as well as goat soup and some joy in the morning. In a jail in Burma, even though Jeeves and Worcester will have to remain behind bars, allegations of murder, beatings and torture in police custody during Bahrain's failed spring uprising are currently being examined by an international team of human rights investigators. Their independent report, commissioned by the king of Bahrain, is almost ready for publication. Bahrain's Western allies have expressed their own concerns. This week, Democrats in the US Congress tried to hold up the proposed sale of almost $53 million worth of American military vehicles and missiles to the kingdom. Frank Gardner has been back to the Gulf state to assess the human rights situation and hear the testimonies of some of those who have given evidence to
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BBC Correspondent
the In a white walled village where the sun made me squint, I went to see a doctor. Fatima Hadji is petite and elegant, her headscarf framing her face, her eyes shining beneath plucked eyebrows. Please, she gestured, have a chocolate while I just put my son to sleep. Like several others in her profession, she stands accused of abandoning her ethics and joining the uprising earlier this year. She said she didn't. The prosecutors say she did, but I was more concerned with her treatment in custody. Looking me in the eye while choking back tears, she described how a female interrogator had beaten her with a hose, electrocuted her, then threatened to have her son abducted if she did not confess her crimes. She signed the papers. This and thousands of other alleged human rights abuses are dragging Bahrain's name back into the Middle Ages. A country fostered by the British was supposedly the most advanced judicial and educational system in the Gulf has gained a toxic reputation. The king, a genial Anglophile who went to Sandhurst, is appalled and slightly baffled by events, but he doesn't necessarily hold all the reins of power. A hardcore clique within the government want little or no concessions to the protesters. They in turn are having to fend off an even harder Sunni faction that want maximum penalties for troublesome Shiite demonstrators. They label them Kha' in traitors, accusing them of having more loyalty to Iran than to Bahrain. So when the invitation came to watch the state opening of parliament last week, it seemed a good opportunity to go and meet the people who run this island kingdom. At the entrance gate I witnessed a tiny power struggle, a microcosm of bigger things afoot. An army captain was refusing to allow in our vehicle. A man from the king's court waved our gilt edged invitation in his face, insisting we could come in while the standoff continued. I watched a policeman standing in the shade of a date palm, fidgeting with his submachine gun. He studied the trigger mechanism as if seeing it for the first time, waving the weapon around disconcertingly, pointing it at trees, at cars, at us, then eventually at his own feet. It was rather a relief to drive past him through a metal detector and into a large hall. I took in the scene. Robed sheikhs with trimmed beards and cloaks edged with gold thread were giving each other elaborate greetings, the men touching their noses to each other in the tribal tradition. There were clerics in white turbans, Western ambassadors in suits, police and army generals in full ceremonial dress, bereted soldiers with florid Saddam style moustaches, and women both veiled and unveiled. Suddenly a courtier was at my elbow. Mr. Frank, His Majesty would like to meet you. After my last report on Bahrain's troubles, which was less than flattering, this came as a surprise, but I rolled up with the rest of them, shorter than the king now that I'm in a wheelchair. The monarch smiled and held my hand, recalling when I had lived in his country in happier times. I passed down the line to the prime minister, a man who's held that job uninterrupted for 40 years, coming to power when Britain was still using shillings and pennies. I looked at his tired features, remembering that this was the man whose removal the protesters had demanded unsuccessfully, back in March. We met before I began. I know. He cut me short. It was in the hotel lobby three years ago. That sort of memory, I thought, is scary. The next night I got my wish to ride with the riot police and see how this controversial force does its job. While they are not the ones accused of the sort of abuses alleged by Dr. Fatima, there are countless stories from earlier in the year, some exaggerated, some true of them smashing their way into houses, beating and dragging activists off to undisclosed police cells. Tonight, they were at pains to point out their respect for human rights. We give them warnings with loudspeakers to disperse, said a police captain. Then we use tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs. But they have weapons, too gas canisters, slingshots and steel spikes, he said. As we drew up at a back street in a restive Shiite village, I could see the rubble of hurled rocks in the road while the tang of tear gas hung in the air. Down the road, a gaggle of young protesters waved a Bahraini flag and shouted slogans. They will go home soon, said the captain. It's a school night and they have homework. Sure enough, the youths dispersed. The police went back to their barracks. It seemed almost like a game of cat and mouse, but it left me with a disturbing feeling that Bahrain's simmering rebellion, by no means shared by all the country, is marking time, waiting for the moment when it will boil over once again.
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BBC Reporter
Frank Gardner in Bahrain and you can see the film he made in Bahrain on the 10 o' clock news next week. Egypt's ruling council has denied that troops opened fire and drove military vehicles into crowds during violent clashes between Coptic Christian protesters and police in Cairo last Sunday. The days which followed have seen a war of video clips. Some seem to support the view that the army had been heavy handed. Others appeared to show security forces coming under attack. Conspiracy theories have multiplied. Yesterday in Tahrir Square itself, a few thousand people, Muslims and Christians, demonstrated in a show of unity, Yolan Nell in Cairo tells us. The week's developments have left many Egyptians with a deepening sense of disenchantment.
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Mary Daniel
With his shaggy, shoulder length hair, Mina Daniel tried to cultivate a physical resemblance to his hero, that notorious revolutionary Che Guevara, and he often quoted his speeches in ordinary conversation. It was something his family and friends used to tease him about. But now, after the 19 year old was killed in last Sunday's clashes in Cairo, they find solace in the fact that the media is identifying him as the Egyptian Guevara. He lived like him and he died like him, one friend told me. A new Facebook page, We Are All Mina Daniel, has pictures of the young Christian activist taking part in this year's popular uprising. One shot shows him running away from a cloud of tear gas as police tried to put down the protests. And a video shows him smiling with his arm around a Muslim friend in Tahrir Square. The two belt out an old Egyptian song. They've changed the lyrics so that it goes why is Revolution so beautiful and you are with me. In those heady days of demonstrations, there were many inspiring scenes of Christian and Muslim solidarity. They offered an alternative utopian vision to the large number of Coptic Christians who'd long feared an Islamist takeover. People became more vocal in their complaints that the Mubarak regime had allowed discrimination against Egypt's Copts, who make up about 10% of the population. It was yet another of the country's social problems that had been left to fester. In February, I was in Tahrir Square for the night of jubilation as the military took control. But since then, with each month that's passed during this chaotic period of political transition, public frustration has mounted and Christians in particular have felt increasingly vulnerable. Instead of seeing reforms to try to stop sectarian division, they point out that Islamist extremists, known as Salafis, have gained freer reign. They're suspected of being behind many of the attacks on Copts. After a church was set on fire in southern Egypt last week, a protest march was organized in the capital. Mainly Christians joined with some Muslim activists. It started off relatively peacefully in in the mixed neighbourhood of Shubhra and headed to Egypt's state TV building, called Maspero, in the city centre by the Nile. By the time I arrived, just as darkness fell, chaos had been unleashed. There was choking tear gas and military vehicles on fire. Military police in riot gear had moved in and I saw gangs of young men throwing rocks at the demonstrators as they tried to run away. Video shot closer to Maspero shows Christians yelling threats at the army for failing to protect their community and an armoured vehicle driving erratically through the crowd. At least 25 people were killed that night, most of them Christians. A doctor at the Coptic hospital inspected the bodies of 17 of the dead. He said 11 were shot and six run over. As anger mounted about how the army had handled events, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces summoned journalists to a lengthy news conference. Christian protesters and enemies of the revolution were blamed for triggering the violence. They had swords, gas cylinders and petrol bombs, a general said. We were told that the military would never use live ammunition against Egyptians and that if an army vehicle had crushed anyone, then it would have been because the driver was in an unprecedented mental state. Some people I've talked to did feel greater sympathy for the military upon hearing its explanations. They point to unconfirmed reports that it lost three soldiers last Sunday. This week, Egypt also took a comforting step towards a return to civilian rule, beginning to register political candidates for a parliamentary election next month. Needless to say, though those who are close to the Coptic activist Mina Daniel are still angry. Outside St Mark's Cathedral, a man held up the blood stained clothes in which Mina died as worshippers entered the vast building for a memorial service nearby, Mary Daniel, a petite woman dressed from head to toe in black, stood among a group of her brother's friends. A mixture of Christians and Muslims, she told me she blamed the Egyptian army for her brother's death and wept as she remembered his dying wish to have his funeral procession pass through Tahrir Square. Now it's our job to make sure his dream for a new Egypt comes true, she said. Not a single drop of blood that he spilled will be in vain.
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BBC Reporter
Yoland Nil in Cairo, Spanish society has been shaken this year by a series of revelations about baby trafficking. The theft of newborns apparently went on for decades up to the 1990s, and respected doctors, nuns and priests were all said to be involved. Newspapers and television stations have devoted a huge amount of coverage to the subject. The first DNA matches have now been made between children taken away at birth. They are now adults, of course, and their biological mothers. But the Spanish government has yet to fulfill its promise to set up a national DNA database. In contrast to the press and public clamour, the reaction of Spain's authorities to the scandal has been muted. Katja Adler in Madrid has been exploring why that might be.
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Katja Adler
The ornate carriage clocks chimed irritably in the Justice Ministry, as if they sensed our urgency to get the interview there done. For months I tried to get the Spanish government to answer questions about traffic babies. At last, a spokesman was being put forward. Angel Nunez, the coordinator of the awkward issue as far as the authorities are concerned, of the so called Ninos robados, Spain's stolen children. Tanned, groomed and looking very comfortable in his gilded chair, Mr. Nunez seemed a world away from the people we were discussing. The ordinary working Spaniards who believe their babies were stolen at birth and then sold on firm evidence is hard to find, but some lawyers here believe there are up to 300,000 of them. Without a doubt, said Angel Nunez, babies were stolen. How Many? I asked. Mr. Nunez answered carefully. I don't dare to come up with figures, but from the volume of official investigations, I dare to say there were many. The practice of removing children from parents deemed undesirable and placing them with approved families gathered pace in the 1930s in Spain under the dictator General Franco. The motivation then may have been ideological, but years later it seemed to change. Babies began to be taken from parents considered morally or economically deficient and it became a money spinner too. The scandal is closely linked to the Catholic Church, so powerful in Spain. Until relatively recently, nuns and priests compiled waiting lists of would be adoptive parents. The doctors whose names repeatedly crop up in baby theft investigations tend to be right wing Catholics like the doctor who founded the clinic I recently gave birth in. Dr. Eduardo Vela refused to give the BBC an interview. So as a former patient of his clinic, I booked an appointment at his private practice in his smart home in Madrid. I said I was five months pregnant, hoping this would encourage him to see me. Dr. Vella stands accused of telling women their babies had died when they hadn't, and handing over those newborn children to other couples for cash. The man painted as a monster in the Spanish media was old and smiley, but his smile soon disappeared when I told him I was a BBC journalist. Dr. Vella grabbed a metal crucifix standing on his desk. He moved towards me, brandishing it in my face. Do you know what this is, Katya? He hissed. I have always acted in his name. Always. For the good of the children and to protect the mothers. Enough. Dr. Vella insists he always acted within the law. Spaniards had no idea of the scale of baby trafficking until this year, when two men, childhood friends from a seaside town near Barcelona, discovered they'd been bought from a nun. Their parents weren't their real parents. Their life was built on a lie. Hurt and angry, they told me they felt like two dogs bought at a pet shop. An adoption lawyer they turned to for advice said he came across cases like theirs all the time. They went to the press and suddenly the story was everywhere. Mothers began to come forward across Spain with disturbingly similar stories. I met Manoli Pagador in Getafe, a working class suburb of Madrid. The town hall had organized a Ninos Robados meeting. Manoli told me she'd been taking tranquilisers for 40 years. She'd come to think she was crazy for believing her firstborn was alive, not dead and buried, as hospital doctors had told her. In 1971, the 23 year old, not long married, Manoli gave birth to what she was told was a healthy baby boy. He was immediately taken away for what were called routine tests. Nine interminable hours passed. Then she told me a nun who was also a nurse, coldly informed me my baby had died. They wouldn't let her have her son's body, and no, they would not tell her when the funeral would be. So didn't she think to question the hospital staff? Doctors, nuns, she said to me almost in horror, I couldn't accuse them of lying. This was Franco Spain, a dictatorship. Even now, we Spaniards tend not to question authority. But today, Spaniards are taking matters into their own hands. DNA testing has already matched. Some traffic babies with their parents. Some people have hired private detectives. Others are exhuming graves. One contained only a pile of stones, while the grave of a baby girl revealed the remains of a little boy. No relation of the distraught parents. So far, there have been no court cases and no admissions of wrongdoing from those who stand accused. Just a string of doctors, nuns and priests who insist they acted for the good of the children.
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BBC Reporter
Katja Adler in Madrid. The forested corner of Ivory coast, close to the border with Liberia, is sometimes called the Wild West. It was the scene of heavy fighting during the battle for presidential power back in February. And it's a part of the country where. Where the state has traditionally had little influence. Just a few months ago, three quarters of the villages there were empty. 200,000 Devorians are still in Liberia, scared to come home. But some have begun to return to see what remains of their homes and to try planting rice in the paddy fields once again. But John James says they've missed the main planting season and the humanitarian agencies are concerned some returnees will find there's little to eat and nowhere to sleep.
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BBC Presenter
We're a long way from Abidjan and a long way from Monrovia. This is the back of beyond for both countries, a zone in which nature reserves hide militia groups and where the tall rainforest trees make way for cocoa and natural rubber trees that put the taste in our chocolate and the rubber in our car tyres. It's in this distant and frequently violent region that fighting first began at the start of the year, where one town after another fell to the advancing forces, building to an unstoppable wave that destroyed former Ivorian President Lauren Gbagbo's attempts to cling on to power. In the village of Glass, en bloc, the chief was the first to return after the violence. The villagers here didn't cross the nearby border to Liberia, but moved deep into the thick tropical forest. Vast, empty spaces. Even on the most detailed maps we had. We have secret places where no one can find us. Jean Louis Bowy tells me we're in a new phase. Like the calm after a violent storm. Much has been swept away. The militia groups that used to control this area appear to have vanished. While there are a few roadblocks on the principal routes, one by one, the villagers we meet from ethnic groups assumed to have voted for former President Gbagbo are coming out of the jungle. They have little left to return to. Every house is damaged in some way. All the metal sheeting has vanished. Thatched homes have been burned, food stores and every other possession looted. The forest undergrowth here has already reclaimed the primary school. It's the rainy season, but many are sleeping under the stars. The lucky ones get plastic sheeting from the Ivorian Red Cross to replace their vanished roofs. On the morning of our final day in the region, I wander out to look for breakfast and come across a battered minibus parked up outside the wooden street shack in Turuklu, where a man called Alpha can make you a sugary tea with omelette sandwiches while you listen to the BBC. The roof of the bus is loaded high with plastic water containers and bags of clothes. The travelers on this particular odyssey sit around enjoying the cool of the morning. These voyagers, it turned out, were on no ordinary road trip in this remote corner of the world. We'd stumbled on a group of Liberian refugees returning from camps in Ghana. Some had spent close to two decades in exile, Liberians crossing the stormy Francophone seas of Ivory Coast. And now, in touching distance of home. What a concept. Home. The day before, I'd been to the border post, little more than a few huts on a mud track in the forest. 600 Ivorian refugees had crossed over that morning. For many of them, Liberia was a hellish place where the food made them sick, while, as one woman said to me, all the children do is die. After which they are placed in cloth bags and buried without the usual ceremony. But these Liberians saw their country with quite different eyes. Spirits were high at the end of a long journey. There was much banter and even a certain optimism that this stranger who just strolled up to them out of the blue in this quiet, battered town might just buy them all breakfast. Liberia, for them, was a country of hope, a place to rebuild, rediscover family and the ancestral earth. It was a place of goat soup, rice bread and sweet potato pone, another kind of bread. It was a beautiful place, a place that had filled their dreams during those long years in exile, constantly reminded by the population around them that they didn't belong. They'd spent the last few days inside this tin can on wheels, at one point sweating it out for four hours at a roadblock manned by Ivorian soldiers who not so long ago were rebels. The soldiers were demanding a bribe of $200. The Liberians had bumped and scraped across one of Africa's freshest war zones through the Ivorian Wild west and were now just 30 minutes from the border. In the hills on the other side of the Nippur river lay their promised land. Their Ithaca home is home. There's peace back home, so we have to go back home, one woman, Grace, told me in an accent that hinted at the American South. She'd been away for 17 years. We have been out for so long, I think now we understand the evilness of war and we just want peace.
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BBC Reporter
And that's John James. There were scenes of joy in Burma this week as the first prisoners released as part of an amnesty were reunited with their families. The authorities say in all, more than 6,000 detainees will be set free. But the National League for Democracy, the party of the opposition leader Aung San Suun Kyi, says more political prisoners should be released. Those who have left prison include a prominent comedian called Zargana, who has featured on this program several times in the past. Andrew Harding kept in touch with him during his time in detention.
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Frank Gardner
The prison guards woke Sagar early on Wednesday morning. No explanations, no chance to say goodbye to the other men sharing his cramped, windowless cell. Silently, the guards escorted him to an office. Only then did they break the news. You're a free man. You can leave immediately. Oh, but we're keeping your books. Zeganer told me all this on the phone the next day in his deep, chuckling voice. He has a knack, handy for a professional joker, of seeing the funny side to almost everything. The phone connection kept breaking, so many people were trying to get through to congratulate him. Saganer used to be a dentist, but by the time I first met him in 2006, he'd transformed himself into Burma's most famous comedian. Performing on stage and screen, he had a soft spot for Benny Hill. The job inevitably involved regular spells in prison. Military dictatorships are not famous for their sense of humour. Whenever I'd sneak into Burma undercover, we'd meet up. Most people were too scared to speak out, but Zaganer was always bursting to tell another political joke. Then in 2008, he was sentenced to 59 years in jail for criticizing the government's sluggish response to a devastating cyclone. For a bald, overweight 47 year old with a heart condition, things suddenly didn't look too hopeful. It seemed the generals might have the last laugh after all. Zagana was sent to Mitkinna prison in the far north of the country. His family was already safely abroad in the United States. His daughter at college, his son writing protest rap songs, proud of his father but sanguine about his chances. Despite his isolation, Sagana managed to stay in touch. He wrote to me in secret. A guard agreed to trade a packet of instant coffee for a scrap of paper and a pen. Prisonomics, Zagana called it. The letter was smuggled out. In it, he described how he and other political prisoners were kept apart, unable to leave their cells, sleeping, eating, urinating, all in one, he wrote. So books are my best friends, but I'm fine, he went on sometimes. And to prove it, he ended the letter with a string of jokes. For my children. There was one about bananas and another about the two types of lawyers, those who know the law and those who know the judge. By then I'd moved to South Africa, but we wrote back to Zargoner and sent him jokes and books via his sister in law, who was allowed the occasional visit. I like the PG Wodehouse best, zargoner said. Joy in the Morning, Jeeves Worcester and the fearsome Aunt Agatha. It's difficult to understand, he said, but I've read it three times at least. And I used it as a pillow, too. Outside the prison, Burma was changing. The generals, insular and paranoid, were starting to look for a way to improve their international image and move towards what they dryly described as a managed democracy. So last year they held carefully controlled elections, and soon afterwards, Burma's most famous prisoner, Aung San SUU Kyi, was released from house arrest. In the last few months, the reform process has appeared to accelerate sharply. Suffocating media restrictions have been relaxed, new labour laws have been introduced, a human rights commission is being established, a wildly unpopular Chinese project to dam a key river has been suspended, and there's the amnesty for more than 6,000 prisoners. Down the phone, I could hear sounds of cheering and laughter from Zagona's house in Rangoon. I'm exhausted, he said happily. So much talking. And yet Burma is thought to have about 2,000 political prisoners, and so far only 200 of them have been released. I asked Sagina if he thought the authorities were just messing about, toying with reforms, as many suspect, he seemed unsure. Nothing has changed here, he said. But no, I don't think this is a trick. It's a preliminary test. I can say whatever words I wish now. They didn't warn me not to talk. And so he is talking non stop, his words devoured by hungry Burmese journalists as he probes the tolerance of Burma's new president, demanding that all political prisoners be freed immediately, including the 14 friends he left behind at Myitkin. I'm feeling fine now, he told me. My heart is almost good. His wife had just called from Los Angeles. She wants to come home. Maybe in six months, he said. In the meantime, he's working on some new sharp edged jokes. Politics is my priority, he said. I've left Jeeves and Worcester in jail.
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BBC Reporter
And with that from Andrew Harding, we've reached the end of this edition.