← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
9 Feb, 2012
00:28:02
From Ambridge to Tunisia: Owen Bennett Jones meets a man at the heart of government in...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website.
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To keep up with our latest reports
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Twitter feed as well.
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But now, with the addition Broadcast on Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Today, the man at the heart of Tunisian government on why Britain is the most Islamic country he's ever lived in. Not so secret. Chinese police try to stop us hearing Tibetan complaints about political and religious oppression. We have a particularly pungent day learning that rubbish is a hot political issue in Mexico City. And why, in Libyan women's fashion, we're told there's a little for God and a little for the boys. It's been more than a year now since the revolution in Tunisia, which proved to be the trigger for the so called Arab Spring. One of the biggest changes since then has been the way some radical Islamic groups have tried to reinvent themselves as democratic parties. Owen Bennett Jones has been to Tunisia to meet a man at the heart of this change. He's the founder of the Islamist party now in power and his Islamists don't need to form religious states, they can work within a democratic framework.
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After the 911 attacks, it was perhaps inevitable that Western politicians, academics and journalists tended to concentrate on the divisions between Islam and the west. The history of bloody conflict, the precedents for a clash of civilizations, the reasons to fear the worst. And when both sides, for example, in Afghanistan, are hurling weapons at each other, distrustful and afraid, it's difficult to imagine them living in harmony. After all, are there not Quranic punishments, amputating thieves hands, for example, which Westerners simply can't accept? And don't many Muslims see the US and Europe as irretrievably hypocritical and decadent. Places of drunkenness and sexual depravity, where children are indulged and the elderly abandoned by their families and dumped in old people's homes. Never the twain shall meet. And yet there have also been times of peaceful coexistence. And that's the emphasis of a 70 year old Tunisian political Islamist called Rashid Ghanushi. When Tunisia was ruled by the Western backed and authoritarian Zina Al Abedin Ben Ali Ghanushi was tortured, imprisoned and forced into exile. And for 22 years he ended up in the UK living in places such as Ealing, Hemel, Hempstead and a village outside Newbury and his experiences here set him thinking. The Koran, he reasoned, upheld certain values, such as justice, compulsory charity and consultation in decision making. And what did he observe in Britain? Justice? Yes. The rule of law, compulsory charity, the welfare state, consultation. A functioning parliament. It led him to a rather striking conclusion. Britain was the most Islamic country he'd ever lived in. Now, you might think that someone saying that sort of thing could run into trouble in the Middle East. We should be more like the uk. It's hardly an obvious election pitch. In fact though, when he went back to Tunisia, he won over 40% of the vote. I met Rashigunushi in his party offices in Tunis. The lift didn't work and he had no security. His son did the translation. Should Muslims be able to drink alcohol? I would rather they didn't, but it's up to them. Can young Muslim women go to Tunisia's beaches wearing a bikini? I would rather they didn't, but it's up to them. Could one of Tunisia's very long standing Jewish minority become president if they are elected? We should respect the will of the people. No windows into men's souls. Perhaps Religion is a private matter and yet Gnushi remains an Islamist leader. He thinks Tunisia would benefit from greater religiosity. But he's saying that the constitution should be neutral on religion. And then he as an Islamist should be free to fight for votes, competing with liberals, nationalists and anyone else who thinks they've got an ideology worth putting forward. Now his party is in government, there is are difficult cases. At a college on the outskirts of Tunis, the secular university authorities told their female students that they couldn't attend lectures and their exams in the niqab. That's the full head to toe covering with just a slit for the eyes. I went there and found a bunch of unsmiling young men with full beards occupying a room to protest against that rule. And once they'd finished trying to convert me, they told me why they thought female students should be free to be completely covered if they so wished. And what do they think of Ghanushi's ideas? Well, as one of them put it, we're not even sure if he's a Muslim anymore. At the other end of the political spectrum are the highly educated, fashionable young Tunisians. Just as home in Paris as Tunis, they fear what Gnushi will bring. Even if he doesn't want an Islamic state, might he not succeed in achieving a more Islamic society in which alcohol, for example, might not be banned from, but just taxed until it's unaffordable maybe, but it's a long way from the Taliban. In recent years, books have been written about Londonistan arguing that the British authorities feebly allowed jihadi groups to use the UK as a base from which they spread global terror. But there is another way of looking at the UK hosting Islamists. When Paris and Washington were trying to curry favor with the Ben Ali regime banning Ghanushi from their countries, Britain let him in. Appeasement, maybe. Or rather, farsighted pragmatism. I came to the UK, a political exile, Rashid Ghanushi, said. Not once in 22 years did the British police arrest me or even question me. It's been said that it's better to live in a non Muslim society that is just than it is to live in a Muslim one that is unjust. And then Ghanushi told me, I listened to Radio 4, especially in the car. It was objective, he said. From Ambridge to Tunis. Surprising.
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And that's Owen Bennett Jones. The Chinese authorities have been tightening security in the far western province of Sichuan after a series of protests among the sizable Tibetan community there. The Chinese are accused of suppressing Tibetan culture, freedom of expression and worship. And some of the protests have been particularly gruesome. More than a dozen people, most of them monks and nuns, have set themselves on fire. Michael Bristow, who's been to Sichuan to investigate, says the Chinese response has been to blame the disorder on outside forces.
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I expected to see a police roadblock just off the main road, where cars have to stop at a toll booth before heading along a mountain highway and Tibetan areas. But there wasn't one, so I relaxed. Perhaps the area wasn't sealed off after all. I was soon proved wrong, though. Just five minutes down the road, I suddenly saw the police pulling over cars at a checkpoint with body armor and helmets. One female officer had added makeup, too. They were stopping vehicles heading into the mountains. Me and my colleagues, three Western faces in a remote part of China, were picked out straight away. I knew for that day at least, that this was as far as we were going. More than a dozen Tibetans in Sichuan, most of the monks and nuns, have, over the past year, started an unusual and grim form of protest. One by one, they've stood in the streets of small towns and villages and set themselves alight. Many have died. Images of their charred bodies frozen in positions of agony have circulated on the Internet. Many have burnt themselves alive while shouting for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. Others have cursed China and its heavy handed Rule in Tibet. Back at the roadblock, the police soon decided to turn us back for questioning. In the nearby city of Ya', an. We'd done nothing wrong. But an officious functionary was determined to prove otherwise, scouring large law books to find a legal formality that we'd fail to comply with. Occasionally, he played the good cop. Please, please, let's settle this like gentlemen, he would say. But then a darker mood would descend. He'd massage his temples and sigh loudly. You'll all be run out of China in two days, he threatened. Eventually, he gave up trying to find reasons to keep us. And so, nine hours after we were first stopped at the checkpoint, we were released in public. China seems confident about how it governs its Tibetan areas. On the main TV news bulletin the day after our detention, there were two reports about how well Tibetans are being treated. One gave details of a new heart unit for children in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The other showed how Tibetans who'd survived an earthquake two years ago would soon be moving into new homes, complete with showers and underfloor heating. China's message is simple. We're bringing the modern world to a backward region. There's nothing to complain about. But if that's true, why not let outsiders in to see for themselves? We thought we'd try one more time. Huangtibetn area is still open to foreigners to the north of Sichuan's capital, Chengdu, a place that's home to a popular national park called Zhoujai Go. We had hoped to blend in with the other foreigners traveling there to see its natural beauty, which in winter means snowy mountains and frozen waterfalls. But it was clear from the very start of our journey at Chengdu Airport that we weren't going to evade the secret police. We recognised one man outside our departure gate. He'd been following us since earlier that day. We'd originally spotted him in Starbucks, looking out of place and awkward. He was given away by the word police stitched into the lining of his coat. The undercover operatives in Zhou Jiago weren't that undercover either. We saw two men talking to our taxi driver. One of them dropped his police identity badge down the side of the front passenger seat. Later, I found it lying there. Jang Jun from Zhou Jai Go Public Security Bureau, it said. He stared out impassively from his photograph. I imagined him at that moment, frantically searching for his badge, wondering what he'd tell his boss. Undercover or not, the police didn't want us talking to Tibetans, even in this area, where many of them are better off because of the money spent by tourists visiting the park. We were detained again and questioned by yet another official who introduced himself as Mr. Joe. The Tibetans here are better off than I am, he said, as if there was no more to say on the subject. But of course there is. Tibetans talk of political and religious repression, harsh policies initiated in Beijing. But Mr. Zhou and all his colleagues in China's security machine are doing their very best to keep those voices quiet.
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Michael Bristow France could be heading for a new president, if the latest opinion poll is to be believed. The figures published in the daily Le Parisienne on Tuesday show the socialist Francois Hollande 10 points clear of the incumbent, Nicolas Saguzi. But as ever, much depends on how well the National Front Party does. Christian Fraser says that working class and younger voters especially feel they can relate to its leader, Marine Le Pen.
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A market in northern France and the politicians are out pressing the flesh of both fruit and prospective voters. Hmm, market in France. I know what you're thinking. Camembert and croissants, homemade jam and tablecloths. But this is post industrial Abbeville, a gritty town on the Somme, where people are feeling the pinch. The stalls are full of cheap electronics and drab clothes. The richest pickings are for the Front national politicians on the prowl for votes. Unemployment is running at 30% in Abbeville, non, coincidentally, the same figure as local support for the Front Nacional. Money and jobs are scarce in this town. It recently lost its cherished sugar beet plant, a source of civic pride for more than a century. The people blame the closure on EU directives that sent their jobs abroad. They're angry about the Eurozone crisis and the high price of their food. Little wonder then, that support for the Fronte Nationale and its patriotic focus on French jobs. French pride, French money is winning popular support. Some who once voted Communist are now joining hands with traditional right wing voters. Last week, the party's modernizing leader, Marine Le Pen, introduced the French media to her campaign group. It could scarcely be more culturally inclusive. There's the mother, whose family roots are in the Ivory Coast, a man from Guadeloupe who used to support President Sarkozy, a civilian police worker with Moroccan origins, a leading light in French Jewry and the director of human resources for the Marie Claire media group. Gone is the neo Nazi rhetoric that was the hallmark of the former FN leader, her father, Jean Marie. Purged, too, are the brutish skinheads who used to police entry to party meetings in Abbeville. I Meet a new model FN official, Christian mandos, a 40 something with a talent in new media. We're just normal people, shrugs Mr. Mandos, gesturing at his university lecturer clothes. You can't imagine the octogenarian Jean Marie Le Pen taking to Twitter or updating his Facebook status to ranting in reams. But Mr. Mandos is busy spreading the new party doctrine on social media. We refuse to be labelled far right, he says. In fact, we're turning a little bit to the left. We're the party of poor people. Immigration remains a key preoccupation. Ms. Le Pen would give French citizens priority over foreigners for jobs, housing and welfare. Because we.5 million French people unemployed, said Mr. Mandos. And there's no reason for us to have overseas people arriving each year. If we had a lot of work, I'd understand it, he says. But we've nothing to offer. Nothing. There is consternation in liberal France that Marine appears to attract so much support. She's currently running third, behind the President and the Socialist challenger, Francois Hollande. But neither man should underestimate the threat the FN poses. That was the mistake made in 2002, when Jean Marie, with just 18% of the vote, sensationally knocked out the Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, to reach the second round runoff. Both leading candidates have their problems. The President is seen as as a Marmite politician. People either love him or loathe him. By contrast, the bland Monsieur Hollande is strictly vanilla. One of his nicknames is flambi, a brand of pudding. Like Marine Le Pen, he's never had a ministerial job. Nonetheless, he leads Sarco in the polls with crowd pleasing pledges to tax the rich. Privately, the President is said to accuse Monsieur Hollande of peche d', argence, the sin of arrogance. That's a little rich, say the voters, referring either to the irony or perhaps the President's wealthy friends. Marine the Pen, meanwhile, steals votes from both sides. Critics insist she's a fascist with a nice face, pointing out that only last month she attended a far right ball in Vienna that was held on Holocaust Remembrance Day. And in Abbeville. I couldn't help but notice that for all the amiable assurances Christian Mandos had given me, there was that rather sticky moment when one market stall holder asked, what will you do for us, the French gypsies? Er, nothing, said Mr. Mandos, with perhaps more honesty than I might have expected. It's fair to say he didn't much want to engage. And perhaps that explains why 4/5 of the French electorate still don't want to engage with the Fronte Nacional either.
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Christian Fraser in northern France, Mexico City is in the grip of a dispute over rubbish at the end of last year, the city's mayor announced the closure of one of the biggest landfill sites in the world. The move, coming shortly before Christmas, saw huge piles of garbage building up as local authorities tried to find somewhere new to dump it. Will Grant, who's just spent the day with some of the city's bin men, says that although much of that rubbish has now been collected, there's a bigger and more long term problem how to deal with the mountains of waste left by some 13 million people.
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It is barely 6am and still bitterly cold on Mexico City's streets, yet Israel Baeza is shivering outside a Starbucks in his bright red boxer shorts. He quickly pulls on his overalls and shoves his own clothes into a plastic bag. He'll need something clean to travel home in, because today is going to be particularly pungent. Israel and his team are part of the city's small army of rubbish collectors, euphemistically called volunteers. These burly men don't earn a wage for cleaning the streets of the capital. Rather, they live on what they can recycle from the waste. Israel is just 32, but you'd be forgiven for placing him in his late 40s, streaks of grey running through his thick black hair. Perhaps the years working under the punishing sun have aged him prematurely, but he has a wide, toothy smile and a disarmingly friendly charm about him. We make about 10 pesos a kilo for aluminium, he says meekly. Paper and cardboard are worth much less. Altogether they earn around 70 pesos a man on a decent day, that's around 3 pounds each. It's not much, concedes Israel with understated humility, but it's enough to put food on the table. Although my translation doesn't do justice to his Spanish, he actually says it pays for the potatoes. Israel and the men scoop up the bags dumped outside the coffee house, rip them open and begin to sort through them with their bare hands. Coffee granules, paper napkins and plastic cups have been bundled in together, and with amazing efficiency they divide the useful from the useless, the valuable from the worthless. Once they're done, they get me to press a button alerting the driver, the only member of the team on a fixed wage, and the truck creeps forward as we hang off the back or stand atop the piles of fetid rubbish. As the sun slowly begins to rise, the truck pulls into A wealthy residential district and well heeled joggers come past an expensive Lycra with their dogs on leashes. I expect Israel to be critical of the people whose rubbish he lives off, but he is a generous sort of a soul and only lightly chides them. People here are wasteful, he says. Sometimes we find untouched bread and we'll take it home later. They find a box of picture frames which they can sell on to a vendor at one of the city's many flea markets. Israel's needs a few. A small wage would be nice, he says. If there's an accident, we have no one to turn to. A few years back, he fell from the truck and broke his wrist pulling up his shirt sleeves to show me the scar. I have plates and metal pins in there, he says. Rubbish is currently a hot political issue in Mexico City. At the end of last year, a vast landfill site on the outskirts of the capital called Puerto Poniente was closed by the mayor. Bordeaux was one of the biggest open air rubbish dumps in the world, with around 12,000 tonnes of waste arriving there every day. An argument is currently raging about where to send the mountains of waste the city produces, while the politicians argue it's down to people like Israel to simply gather it all up and recycle what they can along the way. Twelve hours later, the truck pulls up to one of the many smaller landfills, picking up the slack since El Bordo was closed. In the side streets, groups of men are standing around huge containers of paper and glass and plastic. This is where the day's hall is weighed and Israel and his team receive their paltry payment. The recycling industry is said to be run by mafia style groups, and you can certainly notice an edge of distrust at our presence. Israel isn't with the truck when it finally docks in to unload its putrid cargo. His daughter has been taken ill and he had to rush to the hospital. But as his colleagues unload the bales of paper and hundreds of plastic bottles they've accumulated throughout the day, I remember his comment from a little earlier. You soon get used to working around rubbish, he told me. After a while, you don't even notice the smell anymore. You adapt to it. This life is normal for us, Will
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Grant in Mexico City, the difficulties facing Libya as it tries to settle into the post Gaddafi era are certainly daunting. But while thorny questions about reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction are addressed, life must go on. And people do go to work. They see friends look after their families and they get married. The Libyan wedding wallet permitting can be a grand affair lasting many days. The there are processions, feasts, as well as a good deal of complicated ritual. Slaya Asan was invited to one part of the proceedings which most men are not allowed to witness.
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Here in Libya, men tend to rule the roost both at work and at home. This is even the case during a traditional wedding ceremony or fatiha. This is when the groom asks the bride's father for permission to marry his daughter. It's a very male affair, so not one I had access to, but I was recently invited to the Bride's day, which is strictly women only and no photographs allowed. The venue was a large purpose built hall on the outskirts of Succo Juma, a conservative part of Tripoli. Inside the large wooden double doors there was a screen. You had to walk around and behind it as you entered. This was so that male passers by couldn't peek in when the doors opened to let guests in and out. Women went through the doors covered in long black abayas and headscarves, but balancing on golden high heels. When I stepped inside, I stood for a moment taking in the scene. There was not a black abaya in sight. Instead, unveiled women were perched around tables looking very glamorous. The dresses were every shade of the rainbow, in a variety of styles, on the shoulder, off the shoulder, strapped and strapless. Makeup was heavy and colorful with eyeshadow shades I had never seen before. The hairstyles were mesmerizing works of art piled high or hanging long and loose. Some of the women here were looking for prospective brides for their own sons and brothers, so every effort had been made to look good. And these days women appear to outnumber men. And so there's a race on to find husbands. In the recent revolution, it's estimated that 30,000 men died in the fighting, with another 50,000 wounded. One taxi driver summed up the male perspective quite well. I asked him if it was a problem that there were more women than men in Libya. He laughed as he answered, no, I don't see that as a problem at all. It's great. Before they marry, single women live with their parents and with few opportunities for men and women to meet. Universities and workplaces have always been where people found potential spouses, now more than ever, and flirting in the workplace is some of the most overt I have ever seen. The majority of women wear headscarves and observe a religious coat of dress with minimum flesh exposed. But the jeans are skinny, the tops are tight, the makeup is thickly applied and the heels are high A current fashion trend is to wear the headscarf slipped back over the head with fringes of dyed blonde hair falling forward. Haytham, a male medical student, described the look to me, explaining that the girls say it's a little for God and a little for the boys. At the Tripoli Medical Centre, where I know a lot of the medics, single male doctors, come across a lot of eyelash fluttering. I was there the other day and saw a young female doctor place a central line into a patient's neck while she smiled attentively into the eyes of the male colleague who was assisting her. The music at the Bride's Day was a mix of Arab pop and revolutionary songs. The party was halted for the new national anthem. I had been invited by the bride's aunt, Dr. Wasila, a lecturer in engineering at Tripoli University. She proudly led the way by standing, placing her right hand over her left breast and singing the words. The rest of the room followed. As we sipped our fresh fruit juices, the music suddenly changed to something more fitting for a wedding. The lights went down. It took me a moment to recognize the tune. It was an Arabic version of Here Comes the Bride. The staircase leading down into the hall lit up with sparklers and in slow synchronized step the bride and her groom walked down. Once they descended, they passed an enormous five tiered cake on their way towards what resembled a stage set at the far end of the hall. And there in pride of place, was an ornate couch on which they both sat. She wore a western style ivory dress with a ruffle two metre train. The groom's eyes were fixed on his new wife. But despite his having eyes for only one woman here, as soon as he entered the room, all the other women who were not related to him quickly covered themselves up under their veils. My male Libyan friends were intrigued when I told them I'd been to a Bride's Day Grooms are the only men permitted entry and so my friends would have to wait for their own weddings to find out the secrets beyond these walls.
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And with that peek behind closed doors in Tripoli, Salea Assan brings this edition to a close. I'll be back with more from our own correspondence on Saturday morning and I do hope you'll join us. Goodbye.