← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:28:00
After years of conflict in Uganda, the people of Acholiland are returning home; but of...
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You are about to listen to from our own correspondent. We make two versions of the program. If you would like to hear the edition broadcast on the BBC World Service, please visit the BBC iPlayer. This is a podcast of the version broadcast on BBC Radio 4, presented by Kate Ady.
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Today, going home proves a challenge. After long years of conflict in Uganda, Sri Lankans talk of what really happened during the final days of their brutal civil war. There's an encounter on death row in Texas with a British woman who once sang for Prince Charles. And the Chinese take to the open road in search of new friends and perhaps romance. Life has ever so slowly been returning to normal in northern Uganda for two decades. This was where one of Africa's most horrific conflicts took place, as local rebels, calling themselves the Lord's Resistance army, preyed upon the local Acholi people. In recent years, Ugandan troops forced the LRA out of the country, although some of its fighters do still operate in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and other parts of the region. But the people of Acholiland, who were displaced by the fighting, have been going home. Richard Dowden's been finding out that their return hasn't always gone smoothly.
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The only problem I had on the road north from Karooma Falls, where we crossed the Nile, was raining. It started at dusk and hit the windscreen as if we were in a car wash. The driver's response was to go faster, get to goo more quickly. Although there were scores of cars and lorries, pedestrians and cyclists on the two lane road, not so long ago this road would have been empty when I travelled along it last. We went in convoy. No one travelled by night. This was the territory of the Demonic Lords Resistance army, the lra, who attacked their own Acholi people, seizing their sons and daughters and forcing them to fight or carry their loot or act as sex slaves. To make sure their victims could never go home again, the rebel commanders would sometimes force children to kill their parents or commit some other atrocity, like cutting off lips or noses. To fight the rebels, the government herded almost a million people off their land and and into camps, telling them that if they refused, they would be treated as rebels. All over Acholand, around small towns and army bases, thousands of traditional little round huts, thatched neatly with dried grass, sprung up like fields of giant toadstools. At one time, these camps had the worst recorded levels of mortality and disease of any displacement camps in the world. In most of them, the people were eventually fed and provided with health care and education, thanks to the hundreds of UN and non governmental organizations that flocked to the area. Four years ago, the war began to end and a truce was signed. Although peace talks eventually broke down in 2008, the LRA had been driven out of Uganda. The NGOs, mostly left, and the people of Acholiland were able to go home. Most people made their way back on foot, recreating paths that had disappeared and rediscovering their farms, which lay untouched and overgrown for years. The houses have collapsed, the wells fallen in. They might as well be returning to virgin bush. Most went back without any assistance from the government, carrying what pathetically meagre possessions they still owned. In the camps, they were cared for, but a generation grew up there without learning how to farm or support themselves. Food came off the back of a United nations truck. Only a few have been given tools for farming or seeds for planting. But does a new generation know how to use them? The handouts that kept them alive in the camps did not prepare them for self sufficiency. Although some aid agencies, such as the Norwegian Refugee Council, are providing support for the returnees, most are going back to areas without schools or health clinics. And their most valuable and traditional asset, cattle, has gone. Acholi people once valued their cattle only slightly less than their children. Every family kept them a walking savings account to be used as bride price or to pay for a funeral. As the people were herded into camps, the cattle were herded into trucks before being driven to the markets of Kampala, the capital, to be sold. Now all they have is land, some of the most fertile on earth and at the moment, lush with rain. But who can remember who owns what? The elders, those who might remember the boundary markers, like streams, trees or stones, have died. Everyone I spoke to talked about the growing number of land disputes. Squatters are told to move, families fall out. Many disputes turn violent and overall hangs a fear, almost paranoia, that the government will steal their land and sell it to outsiders. Olweni Wilson, a local administrator, said many people had given up, sold their land for a pittance, gone back to town and are drinking the money away. The other return is even more difficult. Only the core of the LRA rebel movement fled Uganda. Some 32,000 fighters surrendered or were captured and are now being reintegrated into society. Most have been given amnesty. But how should their families and victims respond to them? How do you reconcile with individuals who killed your mother in cold blood or cut the ears or lips off your sister? And the former fighters themselves, abducted as children, are now young men and women, traumatised by their experience, but with little or no support or counseling, a fierce argument rages over whether a traditional system of forgiveness called matoput can achieve reconciliation within families and communities. Two that I spoke to said they had come back but are not really accepted. So people may be going home at last, but they're returning to an area without resources or investment, an area that is going nowhere. For many, it's proving to be anything but a happy homecoming.
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And that was Richard Dowden. There's been much comment about the execution in the American state of Virginia last week of a 41 year old woman said to have severe learning difficulties. With an IQ of only 42, Teresa Lewis had admitted hiring hitmen to kill her husband and stepson. Even in America, where the death penalty is deployed, on average once or twice a week, it's still rare for a woman to be sent to the death chamber. The woman who fears she could be the next to face a lethal injection is a British national. She's on death row in Texas, and Peter Marshall has been to see her.
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I'd last been to death row some 12 years ago, just as America's current enthusiasm for what they call the ultimate deterrent was taking off. After a lengthy moratorium in the 60s and 70s, there have now been over 1200 executions in in 35 years, half of them in the last 10, but only 1% 12 of those to die were female. Sitting before me behind bulletproof glass is the woman preparing to become the unlucky 13th. We're in the misleadingly named Mountain View unit. In Texas, there are no mountains and the view is razor wire and sky. This is an exclusive piece of real estate, the women's death row. Even in a state responsible for more than a third of all America's executions, only three have involved women. Her name is Linda Carty and she is, by any standards, an extraordinary character. For one thing, she sings beautifully. Amazing Grace is her jailhouse hymn, the performance of a woman who's lived several lives before ending up here facing death. She once sang for Prince Charles back in St. Kitts, the former British colony in the Caribbean where she was raised and became a much praised schoolteacher. But that was long ago, before her move to America and her next life, the one where she became an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The details of the murder she denies are disputed. What's agreed is that nine years ago, three armed men burst into an apartment in Houston demanding money and drugs. The prosecution said the gang took a telephone call from Linda Carty, who it's Alleged was commanding the operation. They then abducted a 25 year old woman and her four day old baby. The following day the baby was found unharmed in a car Linda Carty had reported stolen. The mother was dead in the boot. She'd been suffocated. The prosecution said that to save her failing marriage, Linda Carty wanted the baby to pass off as her own. Her eyes widen as she insists the tale is ridiculous. She wanted no baby and was framed by a drugs cartel. I knew too much, he says, and for me to survive would have brought the entire cartel down. If the alleged motive sounds bizarre and her counterclaim far fetched, what's clear is the court which condemned her to death never heard the half of it. Linda Carty's connection with drug enforcement, the DEA was real and stretched back years. Charley Mathis, her DEA handler, was regarded as family Uncle Charlie to Linda's daughter. Who'd worry about her mother's dangerous double life? Charlie Mathis told me he could have testified that Linda, his trusted informant, is not a violent person, let alone a cold blooded murderer. But he wasn't asked. Linda Carty's court appointed trial lawyer, Gerry Gerrino, didn't call him. Mr. Gerrino's record on death penalty cases is spectacularly unsuccessful. Of 39 of his clients charged with capital crimes, no fewer than 20 ended up on death row. That's more than any single prosecutor can claim. Repeatedly, Mr. Guerino has been accused of failing defendants. In some cases he confused their identities. And some clients he rarely met. He met Linda Carty for just 15 minutes before she went on trial for her life. He also failed to inform the British Consul in Texas that through her Caribbean background, Linda Carty was British. The UK government, committed to opposing the death penalty and supporting its nationals in capital cases, knew nothing of Linda Carty until after her conviction. The Consul says the lawyer's conduct was woeful and the UK government is now pressing for a retrial. They've hired one of America's swankiest law firms. The former Secretary of State James Baker is a partner. These lawyers say there's been a gross miscarriage of justice. But all the appeals up to the Supreme Court have come to nothing. The last time I went to death row, the man facing execution was one Nathaniel Barley. Two years later he was dead from leukemia. No lethal injection required. So did he do it? Did Linda Carty do it? Were either of them killers? In neither case was there any physical evidence. Both were condemned in Texas by their co accused who in so doing saved their own skins. On the face of it, there's far more than reasonable doubt about the conviction of Linda Carty. Languishing on death row, she prays for clemency from a governor who's only once in over 200 cases commuted a death sentence. She sings of Amazing grace, but it's mercy she needs.
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Peter Marshall the rapid pace of development in China seems to be creating a new society which bears little resemblance to the one I encountered on my first visit there more than 20 years ago. Being run over by ancient flying pigeon. Bicycle was the greatest traffic hazard back then. Now you take your chance amongst the Mercedes, and the growing middle classes are using their cars not just for transport, but as a way of making new friends as well. Martin Patience has been out for a spin in the Chinese countryside.
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Going for a drive, I used to think, was a particularly British pastime. But having recently arrived in China, I found a country that takes the this concept to a whole different level. In the burgeoning middle classes here, everyone wants a car, and when they've got one, many join car clubs. There are hundreds of them in Beijing alone. Generally, the model of your car dictates which club you join. There's one for Volkswagen owners, others for those who drive Renaults or even Porsches. This means the vehicles generally move at a similar pace and. And everyone's roughly from the same income bracket, and that probably increases the chances of dating. And what do you do in these car clubs? Well, you go for a drive, but it's not just about the vehicle, it's about the experience, the freedom of the open road. And for many Chinese who've just become car owners, those emotions are keenly felt. At 7:31 Sunday morning, I joined one of these car clubs. As we rallied on the outskirts of Beij, and after the 20 or so cars arrived, all QQs, the Chinese made equivalent of, say, a Mini. We set off in convoy. The team leaders had radios. There was a lead car showing the way and then a tail car making sure no one got lost. I rode with Ms. Song, who was driving, and Ms. Zing, a couple of friends in their mid-30s. We listened to some slushy Chinese pop ballads while my knees slipped deeper and deeper into Ms. Song's back. It was a very small car and an uncomfortable ride, but Ms. Song proved irrepressible. She told me through a translator, also packed into the car, that driving out into the countryside was like freeing a bird from its cage. And as we left the grey concrete city behind and reached the rolling green mountains where the CICADAS drowned out speech. It was easy to see what she meant. We got lost three times. The QQs are cheap cars. They have no GPS or sat nav and for the record, aren't terribly good at going up hills when loaded with four people. But it was wonderful. It was an experience. It really was. Going for a drive after two hours motoring, we reached a farmhouse cum restaurant with the biggest pile of walnuts I'd ever seen lying in the drive. All the car clubbers were in their 20s or 30s. They were middle class Chinese, mainly doing IT jobs or working in finance. Some were couples. One was a vole like young man who wore a chunky gold chain, smoked incessantly and spoke in a rat a tat fashion. For the trip, his girlfriend had decided to wear, along with a red Nike dress, a pair of white stilettos. She must have struggled along the narrow, muddy path as we walked through a gorge into a national park. The park itself was charming. Lots of pools of water, people lying in hammocks, girls carrying umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun, families picnicking. Over lunch at the farmhouse, I got to chat to many of the members. One couple at the end of the table puffed on cigarettes and told me that they found city life lonely. That's why they enjoyed coming out with the car club. Back in the city during weeknights when they wanted to chat to people, they cook their noodles, take a couple of chairs and sit on the street outside so they could eat and talk to passersby. Other members agreed that the club was a way of creating a community and a society experiencing so much change that it has become disorientating and for some, just lonely. After the meal, it was souvenir time. The group photograph the cars were carefully arranged up a steep slope so they would all be in shot. Then the group gathered in front of the vehicles and perhaps inevitably, one voice cried, martin. And the coordinator gestured with his hand, beckoning me over. And so, as the camera shutters clicked, there I was, proudly holding a corner of the red banner which read the Drive around the World Car Club.
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Martin, Patience. Back now in Beijing, what really happened? In the closing stages of Sri Lanka's civil war, there had been numerous allegations that both government troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels committed war crimes, causing the deaths of thousands of civilians. The authorities in Colombo rejected demands that there should be an international investigation. Instead, they launched their own commission of inquiry, which they say will establish important facts, promote reconciliation and prevent future wars. Some of its witnesses have testified in private, but our man In Sri Lanka, Charles Havilland has been attending some of its public hearings.
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In a green and beautiful part of Colombo stands an old white timber framed house. Its verandas look out onto a garden which this season is wet with rain. This oasis is home to a think tank named after Lakshman Kadigama, a foreign minister assassinated by a Tamil Tiger Sniper in 2005. And since early August it's been hosting what's known as the Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation. A host of people have come into the chamber where the eight member panel sits looking down on the desk where witnesses speak. Testifying the other day was a multi faith group of clergy. There have been ministers, ambassadors, the top military. True to the panel's broad remit, they've talked about many things, from the need to rectify the bias against the Tamil language to controversial issues of war tactics. This is a government appointed panel of Sri Lankan lawyers and diplomats, not the international Commission that the UN's Human Rights Chief has called for. Yet if skeptics had predicted that the witnesses would give the government an easy ride, that's not been the case. So far. Of course, there has been strong condemnation of the defeated Tigers. The Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rejapaksa, said the now vanquished rebels shot at people as they tried to flee their territory. Other witnesses spoke of how they used Tamil civilians as human shields as the military closed in on them. There's also been scathing criticism of Western nations, which nationalistic Sri Lankans portray as Tiger huggers. Some have poured scorn on a favorite whipping boy, Norway, which facilitated a failed 2002 ceasefire, an episode now denounced here as it's viewed as a time of appeasement. Yet many more testimonies will have caused discomfiture to the government itself. A prominent businessman has urged the authorities to make a public apology for years of war and suffering. A Muslim woman. Until recently, a government minister said that enforced disappearances were still a huge problem in the former war zone, a place now dominated by the army. A retired Sri Lankan diplomat condemned the government for holding 2,000 young Tamils in prisons, many detained for years merely on suspicion under draconian anti terrorist laws. People in Sri Lanka generally don't venture to air these subjects, yet they are now being raised in this public forum, and not only by the powerful. At a hearing in northern Sri Lanka, ordinary Tamil people boldly came forward. In the town of Vavunia, I watched as an elderly tailor said his son was picked up by The army in 2008. Released the next day but immediately abducted. A woman said her son disappeared from an army run camp. There were many more. These people are still missing. Tough words for the government also came out last week in the formerly rebel controlled zone. The Defence Ministry blocked me as the BBC correspondent from attending these public hearings. But we now know that people said their family members, formerly conscripts with the Tigers, disappeared after surrendering to the army. Or that the military's bombing of rebel territory led to many civilian deaths. The Tamil Tigers faced equally serious allegations that they killed people, purloined food aid, gave their families priority over wounded people for evacuation. It seems that people are finding the courage to talk openly to this commission, feeling they have little left to lose. The war panel's work is being bedeviled, however, by the government's allergy to free information. Not only was the BBC kept away from the latest northern hearings, many of the Sri Lankan media, fearing reprisals by the state, have covered the commission sessions in a heavily one sided way, largely ignoring the more controversial testimony. And how much does the public really know about this commission, before which almost anyone can theoretically testify? As far as I can tell, not much. It has an extraordinarily low profile. It seems that when the panel came to the north, most local people had no idea it was visiting and had difficulty getting the information they needed to come and testify. A website commentator said it even appeared that witnesses were being photographed by plainclothes police, raising serious questions on witness protection. This commission has many weeks still to go. The government has set a lofty yardstick, saying it's comparable to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Although the military has swiftly denied some ordinary people's testimony, there's been little official reaction to the proceedings. Sri Lankans wait to see what other testimony will emerge from the hearings around the country and from that White House in Colombo. And what the panel will then write in its report, should it ever be made public.
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Charles Havilland in Colombo. Correspondents can spend so much time travelling, they overlook stories unfolding on their own front doorstep. But not our Andrew Harding, who crisscrosses Africa for a living. As you may have heard on this program and elsewhere, he covers stories ranging from pirates in Somalia to tribal struggles in Kenya and in Mali. He even told us a tale of turban Tuaregs who like to text. Andrew is based in Johannesburg, but he's on the move so much he may well know the airport there better than he knows his own house. Nevertheless, the good correspondent's eye is never closed. And recently he found himself turning his gaze on something quite close to home.
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The first time I saw it, I thought it was a mirage, a sudden glittering shimmer of lights and colour down a gloomy side street a few blocks from our house. The next time, a week later, I turned the car around to get a closer look. The northern suburbs of Johannesburg are a pleasant sprawl of tree lined avenues and comfortable houses hidden behind high security walls and electric fences. The Mirage turned out to be a trolley, a supermarket trolley enclosed within a wire cage and carefully, extravagantly dec with hundreds of shiny compact discs and ribbons. A tall, lean man in a black raincoat was pushing the whole precarious structure along the road. It seemed such an absurd, beautiful sight that I realised I was grinning broadly. And for almost two years now, it's had the same effect on me. Every time I catch a glimpse of the trolley, it's like a snatch of song or a warm memory. It's actually seven years since Solly Radilli first started work on his walking Mirage. She is art, he told me the other day as we sat in a patch of shade. I am her spokesman. Solly is not sure how old he is, but he was born in a rural settlement not far from the border with what is now Zimbabwe. He never went to school, had an arranged marriage at the age of 17 to a girl called Maria, and soon afterwards, in about 1955, came to racially segregated Johannesburg alone, looking for work. He got a job cleaning and gardening for a white family. I was a houseboy, he says, an apartheid label that still lingers in these suburbs even today. For a short while, Solly left the city to work on a building site near the coast. But he drifted back to Johannesburg and ended up walking the streets looking for scrap metal to sell and sleeping rough. The decades slipped by. He sent a little money home and visited Maria from time to time. They had four children, but Maria became an alcoholic, he says. Not me. I never drank. Once, in 2003, Solly was pushing a trolley through a smart neighborhood looking for more scrap metal, when a white woman came out of her house and gave him three old CDs. I put them on the front, he says. I liked the way it looked, and that's how I started. As we're talking, he takes a pair of scissors out of his pocket and carefully cuts a strip of cloth. His long nails are caked with dirt, his brown trousers and woolen hat threadbare, but somehow he manages to look almost dapper, like a tailor. As he neatly threads the cloth to the back of the trolley. Solly is on his fourth trolley now. Two were stolen by scrap metal hunters. One was confiscated by the police when he was visiting his family. This one, number four, is my best yet, he says. He parks it every day on the pavement near a small shopping centre. People stop and give him money. Some want to take my photo, he says. In a day, he can earn 70 rand, about 6 pounds. It's noon, and a white woman walks up the street and hands him a sandwich. I try to give him one every day, she says. We love to see his art. Solly sometimes features in the local newspaper. He's portrayed, perhaps a little patronizingly, as a rather mystical figure, a man with no past, driven by some instinctive force to create art. Solly shrugs. They say this is art and it makes them happy. And because of that, I don't starve. But I'm not trying to make a statement. A local art gallery offered to buy his trolley, but he refused. Not just because it's his livelihood, but because he felt the gallery would somehow be cheating, taking a shortcut. It takes time to make this, he says proudly. He seems to be growing into the role of an artist. Someday I will make something else, he says. Something very different. These days, he's no longer sleeping rough. One of his admirers lets him roll out a mattress in his storeroom every evening. It's not safe on the streets at night, Solly says. There are criminals everywhere today, and no truth in politics. It was better before. On cold mornings, he sometimes considers retirement. I'm broken, he grumbles. He must be at least 70. But then he takes another bite of his sandwich, puts his scissors away and stands up to admire his trolley, glittering in the afternoon sun. I'm fit, he says. I'm healthy. I can go on for years.
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Ah, Solly's trolley. But is it odd? With that question, it's time for us to go. I'll be here again on Saturday morning with more from our own correspondents around the world. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.