← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Benin Voodoo
00:28:03
A voodoo priest visits in Benin; disappearances in Sri Lanka; a truce in Gaza and from...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello from Bush House in London, home to from our Own Correspondent. You can hear the World Service edition
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Jonathan Fryer
of our programme by going to the
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Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
From Our Own Correspondent website.
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Kate Adie
But this is a download of the
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Jonathan Fryer
latest broadcast on Radio 4.
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Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Programme Presenter
Good morning. Today a truce is holding in Gaza. We hear about the phone calls from Israeli intelligence. The civil war in Sri Lanka may be over, but what about the people who've disappeared or been abducted? There's a disturbed night's sleep for our correspondent in Benin. After a voodoo priest arrives in his canoe and shopping tips in Mexico City. We know where to go for a small pond, your own university degree certificate or a policeman's baton. An agreement suspending hostilities between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip is still holding 48 hours after it was brokered by the Egyptians. The agreement followed hints from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that his security forces were considering further military intervention in Gaza. They came amid an upsurge of violence which saw more than 20 Palestinians killed and some 200 rockets being fired at targets in southern Israel. Rupert Wingfield Hayes has been in Gaza this week looking at the sometimes bizarre nature of the conflict.
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Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
From the window of the BBC Gaza office, I could see the long white trails of the rockets streaking into the sky and on towards Israel. Then, minutes later, came the loud thunderclap as the Israeli Air Force struck back. But on the streets below, the cars were still jostling for position. The shops were still open. Groups of young men were hanging out on street corners, smoking and chatting. It's not that people in Gaza are inured to the violence, but there's a pattern to it, one they've learned to live with. People are more irritated by the power cuts than the air strikes, one of my local colleagues told me. The Israelis hit the power station three years ago, and since then we've only been getting six hours of electricity a day. Driving through the streets north of Gaza City with the sound of Israeli jets circling overhead was a little unnerving. But the locals appeared relaxed. If you hear the planes, it's ok, one young man told me reassuringly. You won't hear the missile that's going to kill you. This is a strange conflict in which the adversaries know each other extremely well. On the northern outskirts of Gaza, I found out just how well I was taken to see a house hit in an air raid the night before. The four story building had collapsed inwards, furniture spilling out of the sides like the contents from a torn shopping bag. The Air was still pungent with the smell of burning. There were 30 people sleeping inside the house when it was hit, and yet no one had been killed. We set off to the hospital to find the injured, but when we got there, the doctors told us they'd all been discharged. I asked the neighbors how this could be. Often the Israelis send a warning. One said they might call or drop a small bomb first. Then we tracked down the house's owner. The Israeli intelligence phoned me after the strike, he said they told me they'd done this because of my sons. It turned out that one of his sons was in Islamic Jihad, another in the Al Qassam Brigades, both militant groups fighting what they call Israel's occupation. My eldest son was already killed by the Israelis, the man said, and I'm prepared to sacrifice my other sons too. I was pretty horrified by this father's disregard for his sons lives, but also fascinated by the picture he drew. Israel occupied Gaza for nearly 40 years and its intelligence services know every inch of this territory, even in its enemies mobile phone numbers. But here, knowledge does not bring mutual empathy or understanding. Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that runs Gaza, do not even talk to each other. Instead, Israel has sealed Gaza off, surrounding it with anti missile systems and gun towers. Standing outside the ruined house, a group of young men pointed skywards, guiding my eyes towards the Israeli drones constantly circling overhead. I asked a 20 year old named Hamad whether there can ever be peace with Israel. There can be peace when the Jews leave our land, he said. I spent four years in an Israeli prison, he told me. They arrested me when I was 16. When they transferred me from one prison to another, I saw many of the places in Palestine. From the windows of the bus I saw how beautiful our land is. Then I said to myself, one day we will liberate this land. Standing next to him was his bright eyed 16 year old brother. Have you ever left Gaza? I asked him. No, he said, but sometimes I climb up on that hill over there. From there I can just about see the village where my family used to live. These young men's parents had a very different experience of Israel. Even in the 1990s, they could catch a bus from Gaza to Jerusalem for the day. Tens of thousands of Gazans crossed into Israel every day to work. The young people growing up in Gaza today have never been to Israel, except perhaps to a prison. Most have never met a Jew. It's an environment in which it's easy to hate. As I left, the young men asked me where I was going next To Al Quds. I said, jerusalem. Their eyes lit up. It is my dream to go to Jerusalem one day, one of them said. For me it would be an hour's drive. For them it may as well be on another planet.
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Programme Presenter
And that's Rupert Wingfield Hayes. There's still a huge sense of relief in Sri Lanka that the violence, the bloodshed and the bombings of the civil war era have come to an end. The government which finally defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels nearly three years ago, says Western countries are picking on it unfairly over human rights issues. And yet there are regular accounts of violations and and in recent times, a growing number of people abducted or simply going missing. Charles Haviland, who's in Colombo, says the reports come as the US prepares a resolution for the UN Human Rights Council. It calls on Sri Lanka to accelerate the process of post war reconciliation.
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Charles Haviland
I'd been in Sri Lanka just three weeks when I first heard of someone disappearing. It was May 2009 and I got an anonymous email telling me that Stephen Sundararaj was a human rights worker from northern Sri Lanka, had been abducted at gunpoint and taken away in a white van in the heart of Colombo. He had previously been detained by the police, then released for lack of evidence. Just before his abduction, I tried to contact one or two ministers, but I didn't get through and my work once more turned to the war then still raging in the north. I bitterly regretted not following up the case. Fast forward to this year. A month ago, Ramasami Prabhgaran, a businessman and like Stephen, a Tamil, was snatched in front of his wife and 3 year old daughter just as they were getting home. He too was spirited away in a white van. He too has not been seen since. When I visited his home, his wife Shiromani, with holy ash from the Hindu temple on her forehead, welcomed us with a smile. But her voice was anguished as she told of how the men wrestled with him as he screamed and tried to hang on to the gate, of how cars and people passed and did nothing to help. I haven't met the abducted man who's known as Prabha. It seems he's reasonably well off. A muscular man whose exercise treadmill we saw in the front room. He belongs to a small ethnic group, Tamils of Indian origin, who had nothing to do with the separatist war. But he had nevertheless been held by the security forces for over two years, accused of Tiger involvement, bitterly denying it and according to a government medical officer's report, showing signs of severe torture inflicted intentionally as it put it. But in September he was at last freed for lack of evidence. Two days before his complaint of torture came up in court, he was abducted. Where is he now? Unfortunately, white vans are the subject of a sort of grim humor in this small, intimate city. You talk with friends about someone doing something risky. Then you say, I hope a white van doesn't come for him. The history of these sinister vehicles with false number plates goes back at least 20 years. But the war has now been over for three. Yet the vans continue their cruel operations. Human rights campaigners documented 32 unexplained abductions and disappearances between October and February. There was another this week, plus an apparent attempted abduction. Only five of the victims escaped, while seven bodies were found, and the rest have vanished. Arumugan Viraraja is a laborer who struggled to educate his son Lalit. He asked him not to get involved in politics. But Lalit and a friend, Coogan, did. They organized demonstrations by families of disappeared people from the former war zone. In December, they themselves were disappeared in Jaffna in the north, as if being taught a grim lesson for daring to speak up. I've asked at all the police stations, but none can help me, said the father tearfully at a news conference. A shocking thing has been the brazenness of several incidents. Both Stephen a few years ago, and Prabha were taken after being cleared in court cases. Another man was whisked away from the very arms of prison guards outside the Colombo law courts. It isn't just government critics who have vanished or those it was seeking to implicate in terrorism. Some victims are those whom they denounce as being part of the criminal underworld. Even some figures, until recently associated with the government, are disappearing, especially since October, when there was a fatal shooting incident involving two rival government strongmen. When I met the genial police spokesman, Superintendent Ajit Rohana, he said time and again that the police were trying to solve these cases and the government wasn't involved. I asked him whether we aren't now talking about death squads in Sri Lanka. Not at all. We totally deny that allegation, he insisted. But if unaccountable gangs roam around in vans, removing people who are usually never seen again. Regardless of who sent these men, what are they other than death squads? In its report in December, the Internal War Commission set up by President Rajapaksa said, quoting one witness, disappearance is far worse than death. When a person has disappeared, it is an eternal suffering. So I would ask the two most powerful people in this country, the President and the Defence Secretary who are. Where is Ramasamy Prabhagaran? Where are Lalit and Coogan? Where is Stephen? Where are Pragit Upali and others whose cases I reported earlier? I wonder if I will get answers and whether their distraught families will.
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Programme Presenter
Charles Havilland in Colombo. Listeners to this program hear plenty of evidence that the world doesn't stand still for a moment. The way things were yesterday is usually quite different to how they are today. Talking this week to one correspondent just back from China, he told us how he was now able to travel through most of the country quite openly without government minders. He also found everyone had an opinion and no one was reluctant to express it. And in Moscow, while some say how little has changed politically, there does seem to have been movement in the art world. For the very first time, there's an exhibition of contemporary art inside the Kremlin. And as Rosie Goldsmith's been finding out, it features the work of the British sculptor Henry Moore.
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Rosie Goldsmith
After decades of being banned by the Kremlin, decried for being bourgeois and distorting the human body, Henry Moore's abstract sculptures are now on display inside the very stronghold of power, 80 of the world's most famous bronzes, marbles and carvings. It's the first time any modern art has ever been shown in any of the Kremlin's museums. It's astonishing to see the graceful reclining figures, monumental mothers and intimate family groups here in galleries normally full of Russian icons and imperial treasures. For his six most productive decades, from Stalin to Gorbachev, the works of Henry Moore and his Western colleagues were barred from the Soviet Union. The history of Western art in Russia stopped with Stalin. Izvestia newspapers. Art critic Dmitri Smolev looks around in delight. We can catch up. We've been deprived so long. The loans are from Britain. But the fact that this exhibition is happening now inside the Kremlin is largely thanks to a remarkable woman named Jelena Gagarina. She's the director of the Kremlin museums, a powerful figure and respected art historian. Powerful also as Soviet royalty. The daughter of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, immortalized by being buried here in the Kremlin walls. In a country where museum directors are mostly elderly appointees, Jelena counts as a dynamic reformer, only in her 50s and mad about more. I have always loved him and British art, she tells me. His sculpture is not aggressive. He was a real humanist and man of peace. But you're making a political statement by showing him here in the Kremlin. I suggest this is cultural politics in action. Yes, but politics are not just about power or war. A second Famous daughter is here for the launch. Henry Moore's daughter, Mary More, was a socialist. His wife Irina, Russian. This, though, is Mary's first visit to Moscow. My mother starved and suffered terribly during the Revolution. Mary explains she never wanted to return to Russia after settling in Britain. This, she adds, is a terrifically historic moment. My father would have been thrilled. So, an exhibition as much about diplomacy as art, with Henry More as a peace pawn. The political relationship between the UK and Russia has been strained since at least 2006, after the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. Then, in 2007, the Russian authorities closed down the 13 British Council offices. But when David Cameron met President Medvedev in the Kremlin six months ago, they both promised to support cultural ties to strengthen bilateral relations. In these tense times, the arts are upheld as neutral areas of trust and exchange. Huge UK Russian collaborations are planned. Theatre concerts and exhibitions featuring Shakespeare, Benjamin, Britain and the Pre Raphaelites, and overseen by none other than the once maligned British Council. At the Henry More launch, its head, Martin Davidson, describes this as a golden era of cultural relations between Russia and Britain. It'll be golden, one onlooking artist mutters, when a modern Russian sculptor is displayed in the Kremlin. There's never been any contemporary art here. Russia's contemporary art scene is fledgling and patchy outside the Kremlin walls. Dissatisfied young artists, intellectuals and cultural entreprene are bravely demanding reform and support for the arts from their government. I hear about a chronic neglect of cultural heritage, major museums without computers, security or climate control, untrained staff and shabby state run museum shops. Ironically, it may be Russia's wealthy oligarchs who will steer change. Possibly bored with buying newspapers and football clubs, some are turning to culture. Roman Abramovich has been buying art for years. His girlfriend, Dasha Sukhova, is locating her modern art gallery in Moscow's Gorky Park. Matthew Stevenson, managing director of Christie's Russia, says the biggest change has been the internationalisation of the Russian art market. It's opening up and letting the world in. Henry More in the Kremlin would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Galina Andreyeva from the Ministry of Culture is another enthusiastic Moor fan. This show, she points out, has been part funded by the Kremlin, but 3/4 by Russian business. In Soviet times we had a big budget, she says. Today we need to generate income. I meet many rich people and they ask me what high quality project they can support. Arts Patronage is now seen as a sign of prestige, she adds. And in a very modern twist, one of Henry Moore's reclining figures has just been sold by Christie's for a record sum, and it was bought by a
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Programme Presenter
Russian collector, Rosie Gilsmith, in Moscow. Some countries get a lot of mentions on this program. Is it because they're particularly newsworthy or just much visited? Benin in West Africa seems to be in neither category. It's made, as far as we can work out, a mere half dozen appearances in the past 10 years. And we did learn something about the legacy of slavery, panning for gold and a Benin perennial. This voodoo. Anyway, Jonathan Fryer's just been there. He went to Gonvier, where houses are built on stilts up above the waters of Lake Nokouy. He tells us that he was warned that his people can be suspicious of outsiders.
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Jonathan Fryer
Long before dawn, while the sky was still pitch black, I was woken by the shouts of local women lining up in canoes alongside the freshwater pump at Ganvier. Plastic buckets and jerry cans banged against the sides of the wooden jetty, and a girl screamed in mock protest at getting splashed. But the raucous banter was good natured, and as I crawled out from under the mosquito net in my first floor room to take in the scene below, I wondered why this town of about 20,000 people had acquired the reputation for being hostile to strangers, a place where you need to be on your guard. The name Gonvier means the people have been saved, which refers to the community's origins. About 400 years ago, members of the Tofinu tribe were in danger of being enslaved by a more powerful neighbour. But fortunately, that neighbour had a religious superstition that meant they couldn't cross water. So the Tofinu ruler gathered his people and set up home on top of Lake Nokue in thatched roofed huts built on stilts a meter or so above the shallow water. Legend has it that a friendly crocodile helped transport the Tofinu and the wood needed to build their homes. But these days canoes serve to move people and goods around along the narrow waterways between the rows of houses. Not surprisingly, fish is the staple diet, and the inhabitants of Ganvier have devised an ingenious way of harvesting them. From the lake, they construct stockades of palm tree branches, which attract fish that feed off the rotting foliage and breed there. The fishermen then erect nets round the stockade and wait several months before removing the remains of the palm branches. Then, hey, presto, the nets are full of fish. Some of it is later sold in a market comprised of a huddle of canoes in which women tout their wares. The market is in full swing by the time dozens of children paddle by in their own small craft on the way to school. One late, stifling tropical afternoon, the young grandson of the household in which I was staying proudly presented me with drawings he had made of a rake and a hoe with the French name for these implements written alongside. It struck me that he would never see either a rake or a hoe or as long as he lived on the lake. But he pointed to a neighbour's house where men were busy emptying soil brought from the far off shore into a small area in front of their hut, staked out with blue plastic sheets. They're rich, the boy mused as the neighbours continued fabricating Ganvier's ultimate status symbol, a tiny patch of dry land. But it was by water after dark that the voodoo priest arrived in his canoe, unannounced to see me. He was going to peer into my future with the aid of spirits too powerful to ignore. We sat on matting on a platform by the water's edge and offered beer to Legba, the protective deity who serves as a link between the human and spirit worlds. Nuts and huge seeds were thrown as I whispered into my hands the thing I most want to achieve in my life. A tiny amount of money was exchanged to buy biscuits and oranges to offer to the spirits the following morning. Then much beer was drunk before the priest paddled away and I climbed up to my room to sleep. In the middle of the night, I woke suddenly feeling frozen and aware of a strange presence. I couldn't stretch my arm out to reach for a candle and matches, but after a few minutes, the temperature returned to its steamy norm and my limbs came back to life. At breakfast the following morning, when I recounted this odd experience, the local guide who'd brought me to Ganvier declared with conviction that spirits had come in to try to steal my good fortune. But Legba had protected me. He then asked me to take him up to my room, where he knelt down and begged me to bless him. As far as he was concerned, it wasn't just the inhabitants of Ganvier who'd been saved. I had been too.
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Programme Presenter
Jonathan Fryer in Benin Cities around the world are trying to revitalise areas once abandoned to slow decline. As people continue relentlessly to migrate to urban areas. Competition for living space is fierce, and so governments and businesses push ahead with redevelopment, hoping to attract tourists and shoppers, as well as providing housing for all Those newcomers. Here in Britain, the cranes are at work in the skies over places like Solihull in the West Midlands, the Leith Docks and Western Harbour in Edinburgh and Stratford in East London, which is being transformed ahead of the Olympics. It's also happening in Mexico City, but Olaf Furniss is wondering if some of the charms of this teeming capital are in danger of being subsumed under rampant development.
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Kate Adie
Are you a cop? The unfriendly young man behind the counter asked me for a second time. Although I had just inquired about buying a Mexico City police cap, the question took me by surprise. Six years ago, I had no problem kitting myself out in an entire uniform and even turned down the offer to add a tear gas canister as an accessory. This time it was not going to be so easy to get a costume for my party. I was standing in a small alley close to the huge Sokolow Square, and like many of the streets and avenues in the historic center, the shop specialized in one particular product, in this case, police and military apparel. In 2001, one of the world's richest men, Carlos Slim, launched a foundation to renovate the heart of the Mexican capital. Since then, things have begun to change, and not just because somebody was adhering to the rules that you actually had to be a policeman to buy the uniform. Numerous thoroughfares have been pedestrianized, and retail rents in some avenues have risen sharply as global brands jostle for presence in the area. Streets, which used to be eerily silent after dark now bustle with people frequenting new bars or queuing to get into more traditional cantinas, which in the past depended on a hardcore of locals. While I welcomed new life being injected into the area, I was also concerned that the gentrification might have gone too far. After all, regardless of how obscure an item might be, whenever I asked somebody from Mexico City where I could buy it, they were guaranteed to answer, por el Centro in the center. The idea of the diverse range of shops being replaced by multinational chains was too grim to contemplate, but my fears appear to have been unfounded. Moving away from the spruced up avenues between the Sokolo and the Bellasartes palace, it's very much business as usual in one part of this vast grid of streets. Dozens of shops selling lamps give way to two blocks specializing in a vast selection of food blenders, which in turn border a small area devoted to the sale of water pumps and small ponds. The Centro still has a street for almost every product imaginable, including garish wedding outfits, classroom materials, religious kitsch, perfume, DJ equipment, second hand books, power tools, crockery, bicycles and ladies underwear. To my delight, the small Plaza Santo Domingo is still home to dozens of manual printing presses, where anyone who doesn't have time to study can buy a forged degree certificate. The only difference is that these days the deal is conducted from the relative discretion of a shop, away from the gaze of hundreds of police officers who are now omnipresent, chatting among themselves, sending text messages or filing their nails. One of the positive developments of the past decade is undoubtedly the restoration of dozens of colonial buildings, many of which have been turned into museums, galleries and theaters. The courtyards can offer a tranquil retreat from the noisy world outside, where megaphones and loudspeakers are often used to draw attention to merchandise. In the Centro, virtually every building's ground floor is given over to some form of commerce, and during festive periods, competition heats up as thousands of street traders set up stalls on the pavements. However, above the shops, many of the apartment buildings are still empty and have fallen into a state of disrepair. According to official statistics, 1.2 million people flock to the Centro every day, but the residential population is only around 10% of that number. Last spring, the city's mayor launched an initiative to encourage people to move back, but it looks set to be a gradual process. It was walking into one of these decaying old buildings and going up a dark flight of stairs, and that I found the shop I had been looking for. In reality, it was nothing more than a large room with a huge pile of truncheons in one corner and a wide variety of police clothing hanging from the walls. My luck had turned, and after getting measured up for a pair of trousers and walking out with a whistle and a gleaming new baton, I managed to get the remaining items for my costume in another shop nearby. While some things have certainly changed in this fascinating part of Mexico City, it's good to know that when someone asks where I got my police uniform, I can still answer por el Centro.
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Programme Presenter
Hola, Furness. And with his handy guide to shopping in Mexico City, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again on Saturday morning. There may be shopping tips. There will be stories. Do join us. Goodbye.