← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
A Mountain of Debt
00:28:16
Damian Grammaticas in China on how accounts of forced abortions from around the have a...
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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 we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, public outrage brings a once taboo subject out into the open. In China, a budget's being prepared to tackle Spain's huge mountain of debt. In Valencia, it's meant chemists running out of prescription drugs. There have been murderous clashes in Kenya and suggestions that politicians keen for votes may be behind the violence. And the lights have been going out in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. But still, there's time, it seems, for one more shopping spree. A subject which few Chinese dared to question is now being discussed quite openly all round the country. It's the notorious one child policy, under which most families are restricted in the number of children they can have. Many are now saying it's out of date and should be scrapped. The Chinese birth rate has been falling steadily in recent years. In the 1980s, there were 25 million births a year. Today, that figure, driven down by the policy, stands at just 15 million. Unless the rules are relaxed, some experts believe the population will fall into an irreversible decline. Damian Grammaticus tells us many Chinese people have been outraged by the graphic accounts of women who were forced by family planning officials to have abortions.
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As she talks, Huang Jieping has an empty, faraway look in her eyes. They surrounded our house. 20 people. They hammered on the iron door. We tried to hide inside, she remembers, almost in a trance. It's as if she's still there, trapped. At that awful moment, we are sitting talking outside her home in Hunan province in central China. Rice fields all around. She goes. My boy, who's one and a half, was crying. My husband switched on the computer and played some music to calm him. But they cut off the power from outside and said they would smash our windows. The people outside earlier this year were Chinese family planning officials, led by the local Communist Party boss of Metanba Town. They'd come because Huang Zhiping was pregnant with her second child. They were here to enforce the one child policy. Her voice is hollow, laced with loss and anger as she talks. They tricked me, she says. They told me they'd only take me for a check in the hospital. But they separated me from my husband and locked him in another room. My baby was crying for milk, they said. I couldn't leave until I signed their paper. The paper was a document authorising an abortion. Huang Zhiping is slim and wiry. She isn't wealthy or well connected. She earns an average wage, around 300 pounds a month making fireworks. But under China's complicated family planning rules, she is allowed two children because her family home is in a rural area, exempt from some of the restrictions. What's more, she was six months pregnant at the time. She says she pleaded with the officials, pointing out that under Chinese law, it was illegal to abort her baby at this stage age, even if they thought she had broken the rules. But the officials have targets to meet. If there are too many births in their area, they are punished. So they gave her an injection to force an abortion. To Huang Jieping, this was murder. My baby didn't die immediately, she remembers. The child kept struggling inside me. It broke my heart. The next day he was born. He was still alive. He cried for a few minutes, then died. The doctor said, don't look, you'll have nightmares. Her husband, Liu Yun, took the baby and buried him in an unmarked grave in the forest near their house. The couple live in a quiet village. Their home is bare, apart from a tv, a poster of Chairman Mao and some old chairs. In the past, Huang Jeping's forced abortion would have passed unnoticed. But today it's far harder to hide the brutal way the one child policy is still enforced. What's changed? Things are the Internet and the availability of cheap camera phones. In June in Shanxi Province in northern China, a husband took a photograph of his wife, Feng Jianmei. She was lying on a hospital bed next to the body of her dead son, a tiny baby boy streaked with blood, forcibly aborted at seven months. The photograph spread fast on China's Internet and caused outrage. The officials involved had to apologise and pay compensation. That story is what galvanised Huang Zhiping into speaking. But she wants more. She wants those who carried out her abortion punished. How can these officials have the last word on everything? She asks. They said to me, aborting at six months is no big deal. We've done it to women who were eight months pregnant. A new generation of Communist leaders is about to take power in China. What they will find is that the one child policy is suddenly being debated openly. Population scientists are saying it's no longer needed. In fact, China's birth rate has fallen too low. Businessmen are worried that it will mean fewer workers in future. Ordinary families are questioning whether the state has any business interfering in their lives in this way anymore. And a growing number of people are willing to call government officials to account all ways in which China is changing, and its new leaders will have to respond. How come? Asks Huang Zhiping, still staring blankly. When officials kill someone, nothing happens to them. If they take a life, they should pay with their lives or be imprisoned.
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And that was Damian Grammaticus. The Spanish prime minister is putting the finishing touches to a budget which he'll unveil next week. It's expected to contain tough proposals to curb public spending and bring down debt. There are claims and denials that the country's on the verge of seeking further bailout funds from the European Union. Debt is the word you hear everywhere in Spain at the moment. The country's up to its eyes in it families from Barcelona to Bilbao and beyond are unable to pay back what they owe. The Spanish regions are also in deep trouble. People depend on them for their free health and education services, but the regions, too, are finding it difficult to pay their bills. Paul Mason's been to see how they're coping. In Spain's third largest city, Valencia, you
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always know if an interview is going to be fun, if the interviewee has a sharp diagonal fringe. Paola, the pharmacist, has such a fringe and a grin that suggests she not only understands English but could crack a few jokes in it. But she chooses to speak in Spanish because what's happening in Valencia is no fun. The sign on the wall tells the story. Important information the Government of Valencia owes this pharmacy for all the medicine we have dispensed to you in February, March, April and May. And not just this pharmacy. The government of Valencia, which runs the health system, owes a grand total of half a billion euros to the region's pharmacies. Paola guides me into that back room that exists in all pharmacies, where the prescription drugs are kept. The problem is now there aren't many drugs left. Look, this drawer's usually full, she says, pointing to where the suppositories are kept. No, there are only two packets. She opens the fridge. Look, she says. We're down to our last packs of insulin. We've just no money to buy the stock. I ask what happens if several people come in on the same day for insulin? She makes two fingers walk along the back of her wrist. They have to go around the neighbourhood to see if anybody else has it. It's the same with drugs for heart disease, stroke, antiretrovirals. It's an ordinary pharmacy, clean, white, with the regulation green neon cross outside. Now quite a lot of the patients are having to do something for them Extraordinary. They're having to pay a bit for their medicines. There's a sign on the door explaining the new charges. The Spanish regions have an extraordinary problem. During the property boom which has now busted Spain, they were collecting some taxes from, yes, property. Now that source of revenue's gone, they're expecting the central government to provide them with the cash they need. But the central government's in trouble too. It can't borrow, except at punitive rates. The regions can't borrow either. Valencia's deep in debt, and who does pharmacist Paola blame? She smiles bitterly. That is a very hard question to answer, she says. In the baking heat outside Valencia's cathedral. There are people who don't find that question hard at all. They're holding up a banner, the root of waste. Journalists sacked when a local paper closed, have taken to doing citizen journalism, which today means organising a coach trip around all the various projects Valencia built in the good times. There's the Formula one race track, which runs right through the city, so the roads had to be redesigned. But the city's lost its Formula one race. There's the America's cup dock, with huge sheds for oceangoing yachts and a massive white control tower. But there's no more America's cup racing in Valencia. There's the Opera House, a cross between the one in Sydney and something you'd imagine only in your more disturbed dreams. €400 million to build, 40 million a year to run 15 performances a year. Yes, I'm proud of it, says Shabby, one of my tour guides. Yes, the architecture is spectacular, but I would rather have schools, whether by corruption and there's been a great deal of that maladministration or pure bad luck. Valencia is littered with vanity projects that tell their own story. The airport that's never seen a single plane land. The theme park built in a place where the summer heat rises above 40 degrees. The land bought at premium prices that is now worthless. The local press were also on this coach trip, and the next day I find out what they were working on. Headlines about me, they say. The BBC's Quotes star economics expert. Thanks for the compliment, guys. Has come to Valencia too. And here is the subject pour scorn on their wonderful infrastructure projects. The story makes the regional daily and the national conservative daily Abethe. And not only that, there are now angry demands in the official weekly press conference of the government. Why are the BBC here? Have you given them an interview? Will you give us an interview about what you told them in their interview? It's Spain SIGHS the financial controller of Valencia. Yes, Spain, where the arrival of the foreign media is a juicy story for the local papers, but where massive white elephant projects went unquestioned for a decade, and where the banks that funded them, boards stuffed with appointed politicians have now gone bust. And where, if you need some insulin from the health service, you'd better hope you're the first in the queue.
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Paul Mason in Spain. Police in Kenya have stopped digging up two alleged mass graves in the Tana Valley Delta, saying they suspect bodies have already been removed. In the past month, more than a hundred people have been killed in fighting in the area, which is near the coast to the east of the capital, Nairobi. There's long running tension there between farmers and cattle herders, but as Gabriel Gatehouse has been learning, others suggest national politics may be involved.
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I had never thought of the ibis as a carrion bird, but there they were, about a dozen of them with their long, curved beaks, picking away at the carcasses of slaughtered livestock. Perhaps it was the grubs they were after, feasting on the rotting flesh. Nearby, a square patch of freshly dug earth indicated the location of a shallow grave. The stench was so strong I had to cover my mouth and nose as I stepped through what remained of people's homes. Round mud huts, their walls blackened by fire, their thatched roofs reduced to a fine ash that caught in the back of the throat. The mosque was unscathed. The attackers must have been squeamish or superstitious about setting fire to a place of worship. But inside, one wall was smeared with blood. Had some of the victims fled here, thinking they'd be safe? If so, they were mistaken. At a hospital in a nearby town, we met some of the survivors of this massacre. Bit by bit, we pieced together a picture of what had happened. September 10th had started much like any other Monday morning in the village of Kililingwani. It's a cattle herders settlement. Some of the men had already left for the day in search of grazing ground for their herds. Suddenly, at around 7:30, the place was surrounded by hundreds of men. Some were armed with guns, but most carried spears, clubs and bows and arrows. Several witnesses remarked on the fact that the attackers wore a sort of uniform, red bandanas and oddly white shoes. They were divided into three groups, each with a clearly defined role. One doused the houses in petrol and set them on fire. Another carted off any attackers who'd been injured. A third group hacked people to death as they fled their burning homes. By the end of the morning, 38 people were dead. The victims included men, women and children, as well as nine policemen. Clashes over land and access to water, that was the initial explanation. The Tana Delta is inhabited principally by two communities, the Orma, who are mainly cattle herders, and the Pokomo, who are farmers. From time to time, the latter complained that the former allow their cows to graze in their fields, ruining their crops. Tensions, we were asked to believe, had suddenly boiled over. But something didn't quite add up. There's been no drought in the Tana of late, so there's plenty of uncultivated land on which the orma can graze their herds. Many of the Pokomos fields had already been harvested by the time the attack took place. Somehow, the notion of a spontaneous outburst of intercommunal anger didn't quite make sense. Back in Nairobi, I met the veteran anti corruption campaigner John Githongo. He had a different explanation. The motive, he said, was gerrymandering to scare people off the land ahead of a general election due in March. Many Kenyans believe this theory. One local MP has been sacked from his cabinet post, accused of inciting the killings. This country is no stranger to electoral violence. The last disputed general election was followed by months of vicious fighting between those who believed they'd had victories stolen from them and those they saw as benefiting from the result. In Kenya, an election is about more than just the expression of political choice. In fact, voting in Kenya has very little to do with politics at all. It's all about getting your candidate into power. Your candidate usually means someone from your tribe or your community. The success or failure of your candidate can mean the difference between getting a job or losing one and the success or failure of your community's electoral block can mean the difference between your region getting a new road or a new hospital or not. So elections in Kenya are a matter of poverty or prosperity. They can even be a matter of life and death. But why would anyone be prepared to carry out such acts of terrifying brutality in order merely to influence the outcome of the vote in in one or two constituencies in the Tana Delta? The answer, according to Mr. Githongo, is money. Land in the Tana is a valuable commodity. Investors are already showing interest in developing the region for large scale farming and biofuel crops. Anyone who wants to make a deal will have to go through the local mp. As John Githongo put it, government is where people go to get rich.
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Gabriel Gatehouse in Kenya, the Interior Ministry in Moscow says its forces have so far this year carried out more than 1600 operations against insurgents in the North Caucasus. 60 rebel bases have been destroyed and hundreds of bandits, as it terms them, have been killed or captured. Not so long ago, Russian soldiers were doing most of their fighting in that region in Chechnya. Today, most of the bombings, shootings and kidnappings are taking place in the neighbouring republics like Ingushetia and Dagestan. Chechnya is a very different place under its hardline president Ramzan Kadyrov. Steve Rosenberg's just been for a visit. The surprises, he says, started shortly after he touched down.
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In the arrivals hall of Grozny Airport, there's a large sign. It's so big you can't miss. Doesn't say welcome to Chechnya. The title is rather more mysterious. The path you are taking, where will it lead? Underneath, there are extracts from the Quran and a baffling array of charts, diagrams and arrows which, if you follow them, reveal your fate. In short, if you are not a good Muslim, then the arrows lead to various levels of hell, all described in distressing detail in a big box. I think I'd have preferred a simple welcome to Grosni sign, but at least this religious billboard prepared me for for what Chechnya has become in the six years since I was last here. A part of Russia where Islam takes centre stage. I left the arrivals hall, walked past the brand new Grozny Airport mosque and took a taxi to the city center. On Putin Avenue, I spotted several Islamic shops selling prayer books and CDs of religious music. There were advertising hoardings with quotes from the Quran. Across town, I discovered a segregated sports stadium. There was one ice rink for men and behind a wall, a separate one for women. I had to pinch myself. Was I still in Russia? After all, Russia, according to the country's constitution, is a secular state where the states and religion are totally separate. It didn't feel that way in Chechnya. Women in the street were dressed far more conservatively than the last time I was here, and most were wearing long skirts and headscarves. In a shopping center, one store was selling iPads and giving out free copies of the Quran. And when I reached my hotel room, I noticed another arrow. This one was painted onto the ceiling and pointing not to hell, but to Mecca. The man behind the Islamization of Chechnya is the head of the republic. Ramzan Kadyrov is a former warlord who once fought against Moscow. Now he's Putin's man, and his personal army has been crushing the insurgency as well as battling rebels. Kadyrov has been fighting to revive what he calls traditional Islam in Grozny. He's built one of the biggest mosques in Europe and named it after his late father. There's an imam present round the clock and the mosque has a new website which promises to answer any question about Islam. Among those posed so far online are can a Muslim have four wives? And what is the greatest sin? Ramzan Kadyrov has also arranged for holy relics to be flown to Grozny, including a bowl allegedly used by the Prophet Muhammad and some of the Prophet's hair. But Kadyrov has his critics. In a cafe, I met Fatima. That's not her real name. Fearing reprisals, she asked me to hide her identity. Fatima said she was concerned that Kadyrov's religious policy was turning Chechen women into second class citizens. In the past, she'd been threatened for not wearing a headscarf. But what worries her most today is the education system. Clerics are going into schools and telling six year old boys to control their sisters. Fatima told me they tell them that if their sisters won't wear headscarves, they'll. The boys will be held responsible and will be punished by God. At nursery school, Fatima's niece was asked to report on her parents about whether or not they prayed five times a day. I'm terrified, Fatima concluded, 10 years from now will have raised a whole generation of religious extremists. On my final day in Grozny, Ramzan Kadyrov agreed to an interview. We met in the grounds of his lavish presidential palace. The Chechen leader doesn't do flower beds and rockeries. In his garden, he's built a mock medieval Chechen village, complete with huts, chickens and old style stone watchtowers. Rather fitting for a leader who promotes traditional religion. I asked Kadyrov about his faith. We won't accept any other forms of Islam here, he told me. Only our traditional Chechen, Caucasian, Russian Islam. Only this kind of Islam existed in the days of the Prophet. But what about claims that increasing Islamization is violating women's rights? Kadyrov dismissed the allegations as rubbish, nonsense dreamt up by human rights groups who want to destroy Russia by attacking Chechnya. If you ask me what I think, Kadyrov said, I tell all women to dress properly and and follow the rules. But we're not forcing anyone to do that. Quite the opposite, he assured me, adding, this paradise lies at the feet of the mother. So how can a Chechen, a Muslim, violate women's rights? We treat all our women here like
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queens and That's Steve Rosenberg, back now at his base in Moscow. The French Foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, has been talking about the violence in Syria, and he too warns that it could spill over into neighbouring Lebanon. Syria's long been influential in Lebanese affairs and already there have been deadly clashes there between factions loyal and opposed to the beleaguered Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad. The instabilities hit tourism in Lebanon hard. It's also led to some residents of the capital, Beirut, people like Georgia, Paterson Dargham considering moving somewhere safer.
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While everyone outside Lebanon has been talking about serious troubles and what effect they will have on its neighbours, those inside Lebanon have been gripped by an issue that is already crippling daily life. For many, the constant strikes at the state owned electricity provider have meant far longer power cuts than normal. Some homes outside the capital are getting state electricity for only a couple of hours a day or less. Cut after cut has left the Lebanese slumped in the dark, without air conditioning or stuck in a lift between floors, wondering how long before their yoghurt sours. Striking isn't a common protest method here. And the employees of Electricite du Liban, though poorly paid, are far from the worst off in the country. It's political, my friends here tell me, like everything else, someone has been stirring them up for their own agenda. It sounds likely. After all, Lebanon has been the playground for so much proxy war. Why would domestic resource disputes be any different? Shopping centres, with their huge generators are about the only place you can bank on air conditioning in the relentless midday heat. In a department store in Beirut, as I hesitate over a pair of vibrant pink orange heels, I watch out of the corner of my eye the female members of a large Syrian family stocking up on glittering sandals, wedges and stilettos. I wonder if they will be taking them back home. They probably wish they knew, too. For several months now, Beirut's streets have seen an influx of cars with Homs, Aleppo or Damascus on the number plates. In the upmarket downtown, plenty of middle class Syrians who have fled destruction are looking for some retail therapy. In fact, they are to some degree compensating for this year's dearth in Lebanon's traditional retail tourists, those from the Gulf who are steering clear because of the very same conflict. Meanwhile, poorer Syrian families have settled in border regions with relatives or in temporary housing. Though the electricity waves in Lebanon haven't improved, Syria is beginning to encroach on local conversation. Will Lebanon be sucked into the crisis? And if so, when? For those able to leave the country, timing is vital. It takes very little to block the road to Lebanon's only commercial airport. What's more, unlike during previous conflicts, the land route out via Syria is no longer an option. Fleeing south never has been, since Lebanon is technically at war with its only other neighbour, Israel. Of course, living here has always been a roller coaster of political turmoil. In fact, six months into the Syrian conflict, the doorman of my building, Muhammad, sent his wife and kids back home to Syria to attend school there. There's trouble there, there's trouble here, he pointed out. He said school for the two boys was just too expensive in Lebanon, and his hometown wasn't affected so far. Muhammad, whose oldest boy, Bashar, is named after the Syrian president, is circumspect about the situation in his home country, evasive even. But I wonder if any corner of Syria can remain unaffected for much longer. The attentive employee who wants me to buy the flashy shoes is well into his sales pitch. I try on the heels. They're too bright to be a daily basic. If I have to pack up my life and leave Lebanon next month, next week, I know they won't make it into my suitcase. Yeah, maybe I should buy the tan version instead, just in case there's war. Or maybe I've been here too long already. But seriously, when is it time to leave? When the street battles spread to the capital? When the men in your home village take up arms? A lot depends on if you have a place to go or can afford to make one. My war tolerance threshold is a good deal lower than Muhammad's, and lower still since I became a mother. But then again, I have a place to go and the right passport to get out if I'm quick enough. In the store, we're abruptly cast into darkness and everyone grinds to a halt. Women pause, one shoe on the other in hand. Mothers reach for their children. The sales chatter ceases until the generator kicks in, the lights flicker back on, the music starts up again, and the show goes on like a toy that has been wound up again. The salesman is off. He pulls out his closing argument, his trump card. This colour, he tells me in all sincerity, is going to be in fashion until 2014. At least some things in life are sure.
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Georgia Patterson Dargham, wisely perhaps, steering clear of those pink orange heels and bringing another edition of the programme to a close. I'll be here again with reporters around the world next week on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Do join us. Goodbye.