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From Our Own Correspondent
April 16, 2011
00:27:58
'The Bahrain I had known wasn't there' - Frank Gardner, who used to live on the Gulf a...
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This is BBC Radio with a download of from our own correspondent. Here to introduce the program is Kate Ady.
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Today, hundreds detained. Some aren't coming back. Bahrain under its state of emergency. We're in a small Polish village where they remember a daughter lost in the 77 London bombings. India's huge but youthful population a demographic dividend or a looming disaster. And in the French Pyrenees, we seek advice on which mushrooms will kill and which will go nicely with that omelette. The security forces in the Gulf island state of Bahrain seem determined to crush the protest movement. Led by members of the Shiite community. Martial law was imposed after weeks of pro democracy demonstrations. Hundreds of suspected activists have been jailed. There have been deaths in custody. And this week the government ordered the disbanding of two of the opposition parties behind the protests. Frank Gardiner has been watching the crisis deepen and recalls a sleepier, gentler time many years ago when he lived on the island.
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The Sheik sounded nervous. I'm asking you not to go to that village, he said. If you do, the police will arrest you, take away your tapes and I will have to come and get you out of the police station. Our team was indignant. This was surely outrageous. Hadn't the Bahraini Foreign Ministry promised us freedom to interview whomever we wanted? They had, except that they were not calling the shots. What the Sheikh, a rather junior member of the ruling Al Khalifa family, was trying to tell us was that he did not have the power to protect us from the country's heavy handed security forces. Since the middle of March, when martial law was declared, the hard liners in this tiny but strategically important Gulf kingdom have triumphed over the moderates. For three weeks, the Western educated and reform minded Crown Prince held the police at bay while he negotiated with the opposition. He offered them, amongst other concessions, an elected parliament with proper executive powers. Something the rest of his family were less than comfortable with. But the Shiite opposition leaders hesitated. They saw what was happening in Egypt and Tunisia. Whole regimes were being swept away on a wave of popular protests. Maybe, thought the younger protesters, we can do the same here. I mean, why settle for sharing power when you've got a chance to have it all? The sizable Sunni minority and the expatriates were horrified. How far would this go, they wondered. Was cosy, liberal Bahrain heading to become an Iranian style Islamic republic? Meanwhile, the protests, which had already drawn lethal gunfire earlier by police, were getting out of hand. Vigilante roadblocks were being set up by youths with scarves across their faces and pickaxe handles at their sides, the capital was paralyzed. Economic activity was grinding to a halt. People were afraid to leave home. Just across the causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. The princes there were running out of patience. This could get contagious. Either you sort this out, they told Bahrain, or we do. A flurry of phone calls followed by and at a given signal, Saudi troops streamed into Bahrain while the security forces cleared the roadblocks. The time for dialogue was over. A state of emergency was being declared. So there we were last week, pitching up at the same hotel where I used to play backgammon with the RAF Tornado pilots as they rested from missions over Kuwait during operation Desert Storm 20 years ago. The Sheraton was running at less than 10% occupancy, its Iranian restaurant closed, its Chinese restaurant closed, its coffee shop totally deserted. An armored personnel carrier sat beneath my old office next door with a portrait of the prime minister plastered onto its side. Bahraini troops in body armor watched the traffic. And not far off, a row of very old cast off American tanks guarded the empty roads leading to the bulldozed remains of Pole Roundabout, the epicenter of the earlier protests. The capital seemed unnaturally quiet, as if it had been given some kind of sedative. But out in the Shiite villages we find a rather different picture. Night after night, burly men with black balaclavas and machine guns are crashing into homes and lifting suspected opposition activists. Over 400 have been detained, and some don't come back. We attended the funeral of one man who turned himself into the police, only for his death in custody to be announced a week later. The peeling walls of the impoverished back street was lined with mourners. Martyrdom has always been central to the Shiite culture, and to them. The body that arrived from the hospital morgue, battered, bruised and lacerated, was that of a martyr. The crowd erupted into chants of down with King Hamid. And down with the regime. A police helicopter hovered overhead, taking pictures, said some with a high definition camera. The crowd beat their fists in the air, shaking with defiance. The funeral procession surged past me, anger in motion, the women drawing their black abaya shrouds round their faces and shouting in unison. The helicopter peeled off. Perhaps they had enough photos for today. The next afternoon I grabbed the chance between interviews to revisit my old house, hidden in a village on the west coast of the island. Little had changed. Doves still called softly from the dusty fronds of date palms, and flies still drifted over from the nearby stables. This was Bahrain as I remembered it in the early 90s. Tranquil and untroubled. A place where I could wander over to a neighbor's house, sit on his carpet outdoors and chat in Arabic. As the heat of the day subsided and the sunset call to prayer went out across the palm groves, nothing would stir, save perhaps for the rustle of a mongoose in the undergrowth. Now that Bahrain was there before my eyes. And yet somehow, given all that has happened here, I felt if I reached out to touch it, it would vanish. The Bahrain I had known wasn't there.
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Frank Gardiner it's nearly six years now since suicide bombers targeted London's transport system at rush hour. The inquest into the Deaths of the 52 victims is due to come to an end early next month. The ages, professions and nationalities of those killed reflect the capital's diversity. As well as British, there were Vietnamese, Pakistani, Turkish, Mauritian and Kenyan people among the dead, and a 23 year old Polish girl called Monika Suhocka. Nick Beak has been to northern Poland to see what impact her death has had on the small rural community where she grew up.
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Their singing is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard, soaring up to the brilliant white high ceiling of the 15th century nave, hanging in the freezing air before evaporating in an instant. The semicircle of 10 singers is illuminated by light streaming through the stained glass window. They're dressed in traditional northern Polish choral robes, some scarlet, others deepest green, two a cool blue. In appearance, these choristers are a kaleidoscopic collection. In song they are as one. But a voice is missing. We performed this lament at Monika's funeral mass, Bjorksena, the conductor later explains. It felt as though she was with us. She was so talented, devoted to her singing, a fantastic person. In July 2005, 23 year old Monika Suhocka had been in London just two months. An accountancy firm had taken her on as a trainee. She was relishing the opportunity of exploring a city she'd read so much about and speaking the language she'd learned enthusiastically for the past seven years. Then, one drizzly Thursday morning on the London Underground, she found herself in the same crammed carriage as teenage suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay. She was one of 26 murdered on that train. The tiny village of Dombrka Malborska in northern Poland seems very far from the energy sapping commotion of central London. It's perched on gently undulating fields. Just 310 people call it home. When I visited, the ground was covered with snow, the only splash of color Amidst a blanket of white, that of the blue village phone box. It's hard to comprehend how events half a continent away in London almost six years ago, could have such a profound effect on this distant place. But they do. This is Monika's room. It's just how she left it. The words are Ella Sukhotzka's. She smiles gently, with maternal pride at the neatness of the university assignments organized on the desk. The wardrobe creaks open and to reveal thick woolen jumpers, carefully folded and stacked. At first I wanted to throw all this away, to forget, she tells me. But then I realized I couldn't. Now, every month or so, I come in here, I look round, sit down on Monika's bed. And then I cry. Mrs. Suhotska, a primary school headteacher, is a smiling, effervescent, bustling and strong woman in her 50s. One by one, she carefully takes from a cupboard numbered photo albums which chronicle Monika's all too short life. Here is the joyful scene of her 23rd and last birthday, one of cake, candles, university friends and remnants of a celebratory meal. What she produced next is something I know I will never be able to forget. This really is all I have left, she whispers. It's a plastic wallet, unopened, but still the smell, the smell of the burnt out tube carriage is overwhelming. There's a white sticker on it, embossed with the Metropolitan Police logo. Personal Possessions identifying Monika Suhotska, it says. Inside the plastic I can see emails printed on yellow paper, the ink faded, charred at the edges, and two creased five pound notes. Here, in this small bedroom in northern Poland, is a glimpse of the horror of that summer morning in London six years ago. But this is no community wallowing in pity. We don't ask why you took her. We only thank you for the gift of her life, reads the inscription on her grave in the cemetery, just 300 meters from the family home. Here they cannot forget, but they can forgive. Anya Koletska went to high school with Monika. She sat next to her in class. She's now a psychiatrist, helping young people overcome drink and drugs problems. She told me that when she found out some of the bombers had trained in Pakistan, she decided to go there. She thought it might help her better comprehend what they had done. Monika's mother gave me one of Monika's scarves so I could leave it in Pakistan. She said she wanted a memory of her daughter to be there, in the hills, forever. Any apples? Her own scarf? Closer to her neck protection from the icy wind. And for me, she added quietly, well, I wanted to try to forgive them. And did you? I ask. Yes, I did, she replies. We are nothing if we do not forgive.
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That's nick beak. The preliminary results of the latest Indian national census suggest that the rate of population growth is at last beginning to slow down. It means the government's goal of stabilising the number of Indians is now in sight. Nevertheless, India is still set to overtake China and become the world's most populous country. It will also be much more youthful than its neighbourhood. But will this young population be a boon or a burden to India as it pursues its ambition to be one of the world's economic superpowers? A question we put to Mark Tully, who's in Mumbai, to get an impression
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of India's population, stand outside that great cathedral of the railway age, Chhatrapati Shivaji Station, still much better known as VT or Victoria Terminus, during the Russia Watch the stream of humanity pouring out of the magnificent Victorian Gothic building, complete with gargoyles, which Lady Dufferin, the wife of one of the British Viceroys, described snootily as much too magnificent for a bustling crowd of railway passengers. Crowds bustle everywhere you go in India because with its population now, according to the census, 1.2 billion, it is a very crowded place. All those Indians are packed into a comparatively small country, one third the size of China, for instance. Now, at last, the census reveals that the population growth is slowing down, even in the poorest and most backward states of India. It has always been thought that poverty and large families go together, so the population of these states should still have grown rapidly. Some 15 years ago, it was brought home to me that one reason the poor who are outside or barely in the cash economy, have large families is that children are an economic asset for them. Children can be sent out to work at a young age, and all they need is a share in the family's frugal meals. Budram, a Dalit or former untouchable living in a village in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poor states, was featuring in a television documentary I was working on. He asked me and the rest of the crew to share his family's evening meal. I suggested this would be a burden on his wife and a strain on his purse. He replied, don't worry. Somehow there's always enough food to go round. And sure enough, when we sat down on the baked mud floor of his hut, there was enough rice and watery dahl to provide for us and his extended family. If my Memory serves me right. There were six men and their women were serving us. I realized that for Budram, another child represented no more cost than a little extra rice if it was available, or a little less rice if there wasn't enough. But one disturbing figure in the census reveals a possible tragedy behind Budram's economics. The ratio of boys to girls under the age of six is widening in favor of boys. It could be that a significant number of girls in poor families are too weak to resist diseases because they don't get an adequate share of the family meal to ensure their survival, while the boys are getting more than enough. The census demonstrates that the imbalance between boys and girls is also the result of comparatively prosperous Indians aborting female fetuses. This is in spite of the notices in many doctors waiting rooms warning that sex determination tests are illegal. On the other hand, it's encouraging that the number of both men and women who are literate is rising. And this brings me to the question of whether India's large young population is going to be a demographic dividend or a demographic disaster. Many argue that the workforce and the market the young will provide are going to boost the Indian economy, especially as China and the west both have aging populations. But so long as a large percentage of the young are not educated, there'll be a drag on the economy. Perhaps the literacy figures indicate that education for every Indian is in sight. So India's census is like the curate's egg, good in parts but bad in others. If the population does stabilize at about 1 1/2 billion in 2030, as the survey suggests, that still means there are going to be even more people to squeeze into a comparatively small. They will put more strain on public services. Education may be improving, but what about health? In a tribal village in central India recently, I found a young boy who was suffering from chronic skin irritation lying in the dust, unable to speak to us. The nearest hospital was a three hour walk away, so he'd been taken to a local quack. As a result, his tongue had swollen and he'd stopped speaking. Back in the state capital, I was told that skin diseases were rife among the forest dwellers because they didn't have clean drinking water. Much remains to be done if India is to have a healthy, educated population able to reap that demographic dividend.
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Mark Talley, Detroit, Michigan, once famed as Motor City, home of the mighty US Auto industry, is more commonly cited today as a symbol of the failure and decay in urban America. These days, it's not so much associated with gleaming cars rolling off the production lines more with abandoned skyscrapers, boarded up shops, failing schools and a population desperate to flee the inner city. But Petroch Trelawny has been finding out that this week the city has had some reason to celebrate as one of the most bitter US labour disputes in recent years finally reached a conclusion.
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The 80 odd people gathered in front of me didn't look particularly militant. The women wore black silk dresses, the men sober suits, their ties providing the only splash of individual color. They carried their tools with them, not the spanners of the motor production line, but valuable violins, black lacquered clarinets, highly polished horns. Their workplace, not a factory, but Orchestra hall, an ornate near century old auditorium with marble pillars, a gilt proscenium arch and freezes showing classical scenes. The musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra return to work after a strike that has led to the cancellation of every concert since last September. The DSO has a formidable reputation, but like its home city, its financial problems are enormous. It owes the banks $54 million in real estate debts, some £34 million. Its endowment fund has been hit by the stock market collapse. Worth $60 million three years ago, it now stands at little more than a third of that sum. Management proposed a radical recovery strategy that included players taking a pay cut. The dispute became increasingly bitter. Banned from Orchestra hall, the musicians started staging free concerts and using the Internet to make their case. Last year, the starting salary was $104,000, about 65,000 pounds. This year, the players will earn 23% less. Neither management nor musicians are claiming victory in this dispute. One veteran cellist, an orchestra member for more than half a century, told me he thought it would be a long time before the wounds finally healed. But the strike has had one positive effect. The orchestra's profile in Detroit is higher than it's been in years. Tickets were free for the much delayed season opening. The musicians came on stage to a three minute standing ovation. Hundreds of supporters were turned away. Detroit needs good news stories like the dso, says Joel Landy, a maverick property developer who lives a few blocks from Orchestra Hall. He's one of the people who have started the redevelopment of Detroit's midtown district, an area that still has its fair share of abandoned buildings and boarded up shops. The this area was full of prostitutes and junkies when we arrived, he says. Gradually it's begun to change. A veteran of 60s peace and civil rights protests, he's not your standard advocate of urban gentrification, but he's slowly improving his area. He's converted a ruined hotel into smart new flats and opened a restaurant underneath. He estimates he lost up to 10% of business each week while the orchestra was out. He says he hates classical music himself, but argues that the orchestra gives Detroit, and particularly his area of it, a real sense of identity. Landy recalls days when Woodward Avenue, the main route to downtown, was so quiet people would use it for games of basketball. Now it's getting busier again. Artisan bakeries and coffee shops have begun to open. There's even a rumour Whole Foods Market, the smartest of American convenience stores, is soon to open a branch here. As the sunshine of spring returns to Detroit's wide boulevards, there's a sense of hope. Patrons at Orchestra hall speak a little hesitantly, it must be said, of better times ahead of a corner being turned. The population is now what it was back in 1910, four years before Henry Ford offered workers a job here for $5 a day. But in midtown, population levels are actually rising. Young, educated Americans are slowly seeing the opportunity of low cost living that the city offers. I'm glad to be back in Detroit, says one trendy 20 something at Orchestra Hall. Wearing a second hand pinstripe suit with ironic bow tie, he's recently returned from New York to give my home city another chance. As the standing ovation subsides, music director Leonard Slatkin walks on stage and and picks up a microphone. His speech is to the point. Welcome home, he says. The future of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is still far from secure. There's no guarantee supporters will be prepared to pick up the tab for the millions it needs to survive. Detroit, too, is far from being out of the woods. This week, Mayor Dave Bing warned that unless radical steps were taken, the city's budget deficit will rise from $155 million to to 1.2 billion in just four years. At orchestra hall, the mood was one of celebration that a great source of civic pride was finally back in business. Maestro Slatkin picked up his baton and launched the orchestra into the overture to Candide, Leonard Bernstein's opera about optimism. Never has optimism been needed.
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More Petroch Trelawny in Detroit, and he's making a documentary about the city symphony orchestra. You can hear it on Radio 3 in June. Now, if all this news of conflict and suffering, urban decay and industrial dispute leaves you feeling a bit jaded, then perhaps we should suggest where help might be at hand. Look no further for a cure to a multitude of ills than the French Pyrenees, where natural hot springs, credited with a range of wondrous properties, gush from the ancient rocks but you will hardly be alone there. As from now till autumn, those hills are alive with the sound of people coming to take the waters. And for one local resident flower, this is a welcome sign that spring has arrived.
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The snows are melting and the rivers swirl down from the mountains, bearing their loot of uprooted trees and huge boulders. Spring in the French Pyrenees roars in on the fierce gusts of the tramontane, sweeping the sky clean of clouds and turning it deep blue. Vivid yellow flowers appear on thousands of mimosa trees in those fruit orchards which have survived both the harsh winter and the siren calls by the European Union to chop them down in return for hard cash. Cherry, peach and apricot trees are covered in blossom. This is the southernmost valley in France, and every spring it produces France's earliest crop of cherries. A basket of them is destined for the President in far away Paris. In the vineyards, tractors, ancient and modern, are working the rocky soil and clearing away fallen trees. My neighbour Janot revs up his trusty chainsaw and a pleasing smell of fried potatoes mingles with the mimosas as he adds a dash of cooking oil from his mother's chip pan to the petrol mixture. In the leafless treetops overhead, red squirrels wake and perform aerial ballets. Hoopoes have flown back from Africa sporting bright red crests like Mohican punk haircuts. Other spring migrants are on the move too. In spa towns like Amelie les Bains, plump creatures covered in white fur move purposefully through the elegant streets. On closer examination, the fur turns out to be the white dressing gowns worn by curistes who come to bathe in the hot thermal springs. The Pyrenees are particularly rich in spa towns. For two centuries, tourists flocked to them. But then taking the waters fell out of favour. Local factories, which had sold bottled spring waters across the French speaking world, closed down, declared unsafe by the European Union. But now the spars have reinvented themselves. As their brochures proclaim, they no longer reek of sulphur and the pleasures of another age. Instead, they offer a holistic approach to alleviating chronic conditions such as arthritis and multiple sclerosis. As well as bathing, curists drink 10 tiny glasses a day of the mineral rich waters. Between now and October, thousands of curistes, drawn mostly from France's retired population, will spend up to three weeks floating and gossiping in the hot pools. The spas are set in beautiful gardens and staffed by doctors, physiotherapists and dietitians, all of which comes at a hefty price. Most can only afford it because the bill is footed by the French healthcare system. One satisfied customer is Alain, a 65 year old fond of hunting wild boar and riding his mountain bike down vertiginous hillsides. Hardly someone who needs a cure. But he insisted it had helped his blood pressure and planned to return. When I asked why the state should pay for a glorified holiday, he looked hurt and pointed out that he and his wife paid their own hotel bills. Although if your income is low enough, medical insurance will foot that bill too, and even pay your train fare. So when the government talked of cutting back spending on cures, there was an outcry. Money from visitors is virtually the only income spa towns have. The idea was quietly dropped. Government in France meddles with healthcare at its peril. Our local pharmacy employs five pharmacists for a population of under 3,000, the norm for a village this size. It's always busy with villagers describing their own and their families ills at length. The staff are endlessly patient, and most medicine they recommend is refunded. As well as dispensing drugs and sympathy, pharmacists can identify the many kinds of mushrooms found on the wooded slopes of the Pyrenees. Take your basket of fungi into the pharmacy and they will tell you which are safe to eat and how to cook them. So when another health policy was floated recently, it didn't stand a chance. The government wanted supermarkets to sell everyday products such as aspirin. Pharmacies feared they would lose business and fought back. Customers stopped describing their symptoms for long enough to sign petitions, and the government retreated. After all, expecting big business to care about your arthritis or explain which wild mushrooms would go nicely with an omelette was never going to work.
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Cathy Flower on the many talents of the French pharmacist, bringing this edition to a close. I hope you'll join us all again next Saturday for more from our own correspondent. Until then, goodbye.