← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
A Tap You Can't Turn Off
00:27:59
The European Union's announced plans to support, but not replace, efforts being made...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest
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edition from BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, it's like a tap. You can't turn off. An Italian mayor on the migrants still coming ashore in a Europe that neither wants them nor knows what to do with them. A clampdown on Islamic extremists in Kosovo. How do you come to terms with a jihadi in the family? Still no sign of a ceasefire taking hold in eastern Ukraine, but in the west of the country they can dine out on the conflict with Russia. And do beautiful Ugandan women really have goats on their heads? We've had to go to central China for an answer to that one. The European Union this week announced it was launching a new maritime operation aimed at saving migrants in the Mediterranean. Hundreds have died this year attempting the dangerous crossing from North Africa, and the Italian government has been demanding that Brussels take full control of the problem and the vast expense it entails. The EU says it will send two planes and three patrol vessels as part of the new mission, which it's calling Triton. But it stressed the idea was to support rather than replace the efforts being made by Italy. Emma Jane Kirby's been to the port town of Syracusa to see some of the difficulties the Italians face on their southern shoreline.
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The sick are led off the cargo ship first, followed by the pregnant women. I count five who must be full term. The ship is three hours late docking because one lady has already gone into labour on board and has had to be airlifted to hospital. Most of the migrants are African, Nigerian, Sudanese and Eritrean. They all file down the gangplank onto the quayside with the same impassive, bewildered gaze, squinting into the sulphur floodlights at the swarms of police, charity workers and doctors who surround the boat, documenting and dividing them into groups. The barefoot and poorly shod are handed fluorescent coloured flip flops and garish plastic sandals. The migrants hold them in front of them as if they were visa or identity papers, some proof of belonging. A chubby boy of about 10, wearing a chequered bomber jacket, suddenly jumps in front of our camera and gives us a double thumbs up, jiggling with excitement about being on the telly. His headscarfed mother puts her arm around him proudly and beams into the lens, chattering quickly in Arabic and indicating that the two other teenage children behind her are also hers. With the help of an NGO worker. I snatch fragments of her story. Her husband's been killed, she's a Christian, I think she's Syrian, and she's come to Europe to give her children a future. She's gesticulating, anxious to make me understand the details of her narrative. But a policeman shouts angrily at us and herds her away into a holding area. 130,000 migrants have arrived on Italy's shores so far this year, so it's fallen to Rome to foot the bill for the search and rescue missions. At the programme's coordination centre there, a giant electronic map is marked with green dots indicating interceptions. The incidents are now so frequent that off the coast of Libya there's barely a chink of blue sea visible. The Mediterranean has been permanently stained emerald. In the coastal town of Syracuse, the local mayor has just been informed of the 200 new arrivals on the cargo ship. It's like a tap, he tells me, shaking his head wearily, that you can't turn off. Every day there are more. We walk together along the seafront and he bangs the railings with his hand. Am I wrong? He asks rhetorically. Or is this frontier Europe's frontier as well as Italy's son? So isn't this Europe's problem and not just ours? The Italian government says it's sinking under the exorbitant costs of saving lives at sea, and it's calling upon the European Union's border agency, Frontex, to take over. Frontex's real remit is to protect Europe's frontiers and to detect who is crossing them illegally. Ironically, it's now no longer repelling illegal immigrants. The but is caught up in the mission to rescue them. 800 metres above Syracuse, in a small plane on loan to Frontex from Spain, the tanned young pilot, Captain Theodath, shows me the sophisticated radar and surveillance equipment the crew is using to detect boats in trouble on the sea beneath us. Frontex has no operational equipment of its own. This plane is one of only two the agency currently has. It's not allowed to fly over the North African coast, where most of the shipwrecks have occurred, but must stay, explains Captain Theodath as I join him in the cockpit. Closer to Europe's shores. The captain and his plane are only here for a month. After that, Frontex must rely on the goodwill of another EU member state to replace them. Frontex has called urgent meetings to try to rally its partners. The mission is also running out of money. We're forced to break off our interview because of sudden turbulence. We're flying into a storm and I need to fasten my seat belt. The rain thrashes against my window and the wind hurls and boots the aircraft over and under the heavy clouds. Winter's on the way, and the Mediterranean below us will only get more treacherous. On the quayside, the steady drip feed of migrants from the cargo ship continues. This time all were saved, but next time I spot the chubby Syrian boy in the bomber jacket dancing impatiently as he waits with his family to be bussed to the already heaving asylum centres. His mother catches my eye and grins at me confidently, raising her hands to the heavens in a gesture implying, thank God it's all over. It's only just beginning, I think. How long before she understands that she's washed up on the shores of a European that neither wants her nor knows what to do with her?
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Emma Jen Kirby On Italy's southern shore, the Muslim Eid festival was a relatively low key affair in Nigeria's northeast. The authorities closed roads and ordered a travel ban throughout the holiday weekend to guard against attacks by the militants of Boko Haram. The travel lockdown kept families apart and prevented many residents from getting to market to buy the sheep and other livestock traditionally used in sacrifices during the festivities activities. The rebels, who are said to have killed 10,000 people in the last five years, are now thought to be in control of more than two dozen towns and villagers in the north east. Will Ross has been to meet some of those displaced by the violence.
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I want paper and pencil, the girl said. I want to write my name. Hadeezah is four years old and sounds like she's itching to get to school, but along with thousands of others of all ages, she's stuck in a camp because of the war in northeast Nigeria. Sitting in the shade, I met Fatih Goni Bukha, relentlessly counting her prayer beads. She's 90 years old and has no possessions with her except the clothes she's wearing, including a colorful headscarf that frames her well lined face with gunfire and explosions. My room was shaking, fatih tells me, describing the moment Boko Haram jihadist fighters stormed her hometown. Everybody ran, but I hid in my room alone. It was terrifying. Just before dawn when it was pouring with rain and the rebels were off the streets, her younger brother sneaked into the house and helped her escape. They walked for eight hours over hills and across rivers to safety, but days later she was on the run again as Boko Haram closed in on another town. It's a show of considerable resilience that Fatih made it to the camp in Yola City. But then I realized it was an even more remarkable feat when the 90 year old told me she'd almost entirely lost her sight. She held onto her brother's shirt all the way because these days all she can make out are vague shapes. My family is scattered, she said, adding that she'd been reunited with one of her daughters and just two of her 30 grandchildren. This war is tearing families apart. It's now almost six months since more than 200 teenage girls were abducted from their school in Chibok. As the agony continues for the relatives, Nigerians of all backgrounds are still marching and chanting bring back our girls. But each week there are more abductions. At the camp in Yola, it was heartbreaking meeting children separated from their parents. 14 year old Abubakar says his elder brother was abducted when his town was attacked. I came here alone, he told me. Somebody said he saw my mother in another town, but I haven't been able to speak to her for three weeks. Another 14 year old, Salki, wiped away a single tear as she told me she'd lost touch with her mother, who doesn't have a mobile phone. Rejoice is 19 and is struggling to adjust to life without her parents. When they drove into town they rounded us up, they shot my father and then they burnt my mother alive right in front of me. Rejoice's family is Christian, but there are just as many Muslims in the camp because anyone who disagrees with the jihadists own interpretation of Islam is in danger. The chilling stories I hear in the camp remind me of another conflict I covered 10 years ago. Then in northern Uganda, the Lord's Resistance army, which called itself a Christian group, use the same tactics as Boko Haram, abducting children and ruling through fear by killing anyone who dared cross them. Farming is the way of life in both these communities and once again I'm hearing adults speak about the loss of dignity as they're forced to line up for food handouts. I'm also hearing the same questions about why the army cannot protect towns and villages. From my small shop where I recharge mobile phone batteries, I saw the gunman arriving in town. 18 year old Aliyu told me there was a military roadblock near my shop, but I was shocked when I saw the soldiers running away. He said Aliyu's parents, brother and nephew were all killed in his home. There were no funerals. Ghoza is still in rebel hands and it's far too dangerous to visit. There have been many reports of Nigerian soldiers refusing to go and fight the jihadists because they complain they don't have the weapons to take them on. That may be changing. On the main street in Yola, there was pandemonium recently when gunfire erupted. It turns out some soldiers were so happy to receive new weapons, they celebrated by firing them in the air. Their task now is to take back the towns and villages and to keep them safe. Only then can all these people go home, including 90 year old Fatih. I don't know why Boko Haram is fighting, she tells me, but what I do know is everyone's afraid.
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And that's Will Ross. EU interior ministers are meeting today to discuss how to stop Europeans who fought in Syria from carrying out attacks on home soil. A number of schemes are being debated, among them an air passenger database to identify known jihadis. But one version of that has already been rejected by the European Parliament. It argued that monitoring millions of passengers would be a breach of civil liberties. The ministers will also discuss how to stop Islamists using social media as a recruiting tool. In Kosovo, some 70 people have recently been detained in connection with extremism. The authorities there say that up to 200 Kosovans could now be fighting with militant groups in the Middle East. For relatives left behind at home, as Linda Presley's been finding out, there's often huge upset and disbelief. How do you come to terms with the fact there's a jihadi in the family?
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It isn't until we're leaving that I notice Arietta's necklace. It's a fine chain fastened to gold letters that spell out her brother's name, Blerim. Arietta's embarrassed. I've seen it. She normally wears it tucked away inside her top, close to her heart. When I ask her about it, her hand moves instinctively to cover this very personal piece of jewellery. She says her husband bought it for her. A keepsake, a memorial. Something lovely to remember a beautiful boy. A beautiful boy who did something ugly. Always we ask ourselves why. Why did he do that? Arietta says over coffee in her immaculate flat in a small Kosovan town. There's nothing traditional in Arieta's home. It's sleek, with ultra modern sofas in fashionable shades of grey. A nod, perhaps, to a childhood spent in Germany. It was after the Kosovo war ended in 1999 that Ariete's parents brought her and her younger brother back to their homeland. Blerin was bright. He spoke German, English and was a whiz with computers. The two siblings spent a lot of time together, watching movies, eating ice cream, going out for coffee. It was a wonderful life. He had money, Arietta says. Okay, he had an Opel, not a Mercedes. But we were a happy family. When Arietta's child was born, Blerin was a doting uncle. But this clear eyed young man was undergoing a religious metamorphosis. Like many Kosovan families, Ariettas identifies culturally as Muslim, but they've never been a Moscowing family. Blerm started to attend prayers and he began hanging out with another young man who Arietta still sees sometimes on the street. He took Blerim to the places where they said jihad was good. She says she hopes one day that that young man will be judged for what he did. Three months before Blerim left Kosovo, he changed his style of dress. He started to wear his trousers short like some Muslim men in the Middle east. And he grew a beard. In Kosovo, beards have become a symbol of extremism and a way to identify men who might support militant groups like ISIS investigating radical Islam in Kosovo. We spent a lot of time in cafes close to mosques and this is something I've never done anywhere in the world, watching for men with, well, beards. One middle aged man in a police, a traditional Albanian felt brimless hat, who described radical Islam to us as a virus, was very concerned we didn't mistake his beard for one of their beards. Even the mufti, the head of Kosovo's Islamic community, clean shaven apart from his moustache, launched an animated attack on those he believe responsible for promoting a radical agenda. Men from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria and God knows where, he said, who come to Kosovo with their long beards. Arieta thinks the family should have seen Blerhem's beard as a warning. And there are other signs her little brother was becoming radicalised. The time he spent watching imams preaching on YouTube. The arguments she had with him because he wanted her to pray, cover her hair, read the Quran. Blerim left home in August last year without saying a word to the family. Two days later, Arieta got a text from him saying he was in Turkey. She didn't worry because he often travelled to hear different preachers. Then one day she called his number and in some kind of digital blip, a message flashed up on her welcome to Syria. Then she knew he was lying. Blerim told Arietta he was there because he wanted to die for Allah. Arietta says she began to cry and she screamed at him. What kind of religion do you have that you have to kill people, kill yourself. On March 24th this year, Arietta was with her mum when Blerin phoned. It must have been from Iraq. She asked him if he was coming home. Blerim told her that maybe that day or the next, he would meet Allah. Then he talked to their mother. Just forgive me, he said. Forgive me all I've done. The next day, March 25, Arietta's brother, Blerim Hetta, killed himself and 52 Iraqis in a suicide bombing. He was 24. Six months on, Arietta takes a few minutes every day to cry on her own. And she is angry, very angry with her brother, but especially with those who call for jihad but have no intention of leaving their own comfortable homes and families in Europe for the bloody chaos of Syria and Iraq. Those people, she says, should be in jail.
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Linda Pressley Ukrainians go to the polls later this month to vote for new MPs. So far, the election campaign's heard a great deal of talk about the economy and corruption, but the war which festers on in the east of the country is uppermost in the minds of many. There's been heavy fighting around the airport in Donetsk, and this morning the main terminal appears to be in ruins. A dramatic photograph shows the bent and gnarled skeleton of the building falling to the ground with the huge sign Sergei Prokofiev International Airport in tatters. Jamie Kumarasamy has been travelling in the west of Ukraine. It's a part of the country hundreds of miles away from the conflict, a region always less inclined to lean towards Moscow and which supported overtures being made to and by the European Union.
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It was a stern faced Ukrainian soldier who asked my Russian colleague Dina whether she was a Moscow and a bad Russian who wants to kill Ukrainians or a Russianka. A friendly neighbour with good intentions. He stood in an old fashioned green uniform, a machine gun at the ready, waiting for her answer. Luckily, it was the right one. I'm a Rasianka, of course, she said. This triggered a smile, a shout of glory to Ukraine, and earned Dina both a shot of honey vodka and entry to a rather particular restaurant. Yes, the east of Ukraine may be at war, but here in Lviv on its western edge, a good night out can involve laughing at an older conflict between Russians and Ukrainians. Partisan resistance to Soviet troops during the Second World War is the inspiration for a popular theme restaurant called Kriivka, or underground shelter, whose checkpoint we had successfully negotiated downstairs. The wooden interior is decorated in the sparse style of a partisan bunker, its hearty menu featuring such delicacies as spicy slices of lard served with whole cloves of garlic and a filling pork and cabbage stew called bigos, a far cry from the food on offer to the real Ukrainian resistance force headed by the divisive figure of Stepan Bandera, nationalist hero for some, Nazi sympathiser for others. The restaurant's been open for several years, but the contemporary resonance of its theme is seems to be attracting new customers. Although some of its regular clients, Russian tourists after a different view of their history, aren't coming to Lviv in the numbers they used to. Still, the place was packed on the evening we went, and while the references and photographs date Back to the 1940s, the events of 2014 weren't far from people's minds. As the waiting staff ended their shift, during which they brought food, sang songs and fired cap guns, they were required to line up and shout Glory to Ukraine. To general amusement. One of the waiters, who was a little slow off the mark, was told he would be sent to today's front line to learn what patriotism meant. His forced smile suggested a bout of indigestion at the prospect. This mockingly defiant attitude to the current conflict isn't confined to one playful restaurant. Just look at the display cabinets in Lviv's gift shops, where rolls of toilet paper with the face of president put share space with trinkets. Taking a swipe at Russia's version of recent events, a popular fridge magnet depicts the black and red business card of Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the ultra nationalist Right Sector political party, the face for Moscow of contemporary fascism. In April, after a fatal shootout in the Donetsk region, a pro Kremlin television channel reported that Yarosh had inconveniently or conveniently left his business card at the scene. The reporter holding it up to the camera. For Ukrainians, that was nothing more than a crude rectangular piece of propaganda, and by sticking it on their fridges, they may feel as though they're sticking it to Moscow. On Freedom Avenue, among the pop up stalls of political parties standing in this month's elections, there is a bigger green tent where volunteers collect money for Ukrainian soldiers to bring home the war to people who've largely watched it on their televisions. A mortar has been placed in a paving stone in front of the tent, a work of Western Ukrainian street art, giving a fleeting flavour of a less settled life in the East. Yet for all Lviv's unruffled exterior, you can find people here with first hand experience of the current conflict. Soldiers from the nearby 24th Mechanized Infantry Brigade have spent months on the front line, while some locals signed up for the volunteer battalions, which are playing an increasingly important role. At a central cafe, surrounded by teenagers sipping lattes and tapping on tablets, I met two of those volunteers, economist Roman and lawyer Ostap, erudite young professionals who had retrained as soldiers with the Donbas battalion. Theirs had been an unhappy experience. Evacuated from the combat zone after getting injured in a murky, ill fated operation near the town of Ilovaisk, their battalion was told it had been granted safe passage only to find itself ambushed. Recovering from their shrapnel wounds, they both feel ambushed by politicians in Kiev who've granted self rule to the rebel held parts of Ukraine where they fought, although they're sure that the division is temporary. When this is all over, roman told me, the people in those regions will realize that Ukraine is one country, one country that's better than Russia.
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Jamie Kumarasamy in Lviv Now One of the biggest stories in international trade and business in recent years has been the ever expanding ties between China and Africa. Trade between the two was valued at more than £125 billion last year, and some estimate it could almost double in the next 12 months. The Chinese want natural resources of all kinds timber, metals, coal and oil. The Africans electronics, building materials, clothes. And as Sam Piranti's been finding out, that's not all.
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In a tiny village in Hunan province, central China, a man dressed in a white vest and shorts rides around the dusty streets on a rusty bicycle, shouting and ringing his bell. I stop him and ask him what he's up to. I'm collecting hair, he says. When I ring my bell, women come out and I cut their hair. I make hair extensions. I ask him how much he pays women for their hair. I offer them a good price, but I need to make a profit, he says with a smile. The streets of the village are covered in hair, drying beneath the scorching sun. Some of the hair is definitely human, yet the number of shaven goats wandering the streets suggests otherwise. After collection, the hair goes to a small factory where 10 women weave it together into extensions. Looking on, I can see that some of the hair being woven together is human, and some of it definitely is not. It's then sold to larger factories where it is treated with chemicals before being sold to shops around the country. I left Hunan wanting to see where the hair went next, so I visited the megacity of Guangzhou. The city formerly known as Canton has always been wealthy, one of China's most important trading hubs. Massive hotels and office blocks dominate the skyline close to the vast and murky Brown Pearl River. The tops of the skyscrapers are hidden amidst the thick, palpable pollution. Beneath the smog is where I met Lily. She owns a shop selling wigs and hair extensions in Guangzhou's enormous Beauty Exchange center in an area known as Sanyuanli. Here you can buy anything from nail polish and night cream to foot spas and foundation. The lower floor of the market, however, is dedicated to hair. Terrifying mannequins sport wigs and weaves of every colour the rainbow has to offer. Lily sits on a stool in her shop, bunching the recently delivered hair together into fringes, curls and meter long straight extensions. The hair is held together with labels which supposedly tell us its country of origin. Here, apparently one can buy hair from Peru, India and Brazil. There are no Chinese customers here, though every buyer seems to be from Africa. Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, South Africans, Angolans and Ugandans scour the impressive haul for the best priced hair extensions available. They tell me they can triple their money selling them on when they get home. Towards the end of a busy day, I ask shop owner Lily how her business is doing. It's okay, she says. We used to sell to Europe and America, but now nearly 100% of my clients are in Africa. Lily shows me a list of the nationalities of the traders she sells to. Of the 39 countries on the list, 37 are in Africa, reflecting the large African community in this city. It's good business for me, she says, but the problem is we pay more for the hair now as living and production costs in China are higher and the Africans want to pay very little. Lily then describes how in order to make her business profitable, she has to use fake scales when weighing out hair to customers and buy a mixture of human hair and synthetic or goat hair to lower costs. We say it is Indian hair or Brazilian hair, but in fact it's normally Chinese hair or even goat hair. They never realize this is the only way we can keep things cheap. And Africans always want things cheap. Africans bargain too much. Before we can finish our conversation, Marie from Uganda comes in demanding, I want Brazilian hair. Only Brazilian. Give me your best quality and best price. The negotiation goes on for hours under the watchful eye of the wig wearing, angry looking mannequins. As the sun sinks and the moon begins to rise over Guangzhou's polluted skyline, Marie leaves empty handed. I run after her as she leaves the shop to ask if she knows that some of the hair isn't human. Of course I know, she says. The Chinese think we're stupid. I come all the way from Uganda and they think, I don't know hair. Marie pauses and then lets out a huge, hearty laugh before coming close to whisper in my ear. I laugh a lot when I go home and I know that the beautiful women of Kampala have goats on their heads.
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So that's what makes a Ugandan laugh. In Guangzhou, Sam Peranti there. And there'll be more insight from correspondents far and wide on Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.