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From Our Own Correspondent
Bitter Harvests
00:27:54
Kate Adie introduces reports from Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, Italy and South Korea.
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Transcript12 lines
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Thank you for downloading from our own correspondent. This edition was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 8th October 2016. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, Mexico has to deal with kidnappings, people smuggling and the drug trade. But when organized crime started to steal trees, we hear how the criminals met their match. Students have been protesting in South Africa, but their demands have shifted since the days of apartheid celebrations in Shakespeare's anniversary year. In Italy, there's a famous balcony for star crossed lovers in Verona which is pulling in the tourists. And how South Koreans not only have to cope with the crazy nuclear armed regime next door, but with seemingly more dangerous bus drivers at home, Bangladesh is yet another country beset by the threat of Islamist violence. The attack in July on a cafe in the capital Dhaka was a grim example of the threat to national security. However, with the government riven with political infighting, Justin Rolatt has been wondering why the politicians go after each other rather than the terrorists.
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In muggy traffic, snarled Dhaka. The Holy Artisan Cafe was a haven of peace. And as the air cooled in the late afternoon, customers would throw down rugs on its generous lawn beside a large lake. They'd drink tea and eat its famously delicious sticky buns and other treats. And they would laugh and talk. Bangladesh, all of Bengal, has a long tradition of liberalism and open debate. The conversation stopped abruptly when terrorists attacked on the night of July 1st. Five Bangladeshi men, three of them privileged scions of the elite, overran the place, armed with machetes, pistols and crude homemade grenades. In total, 20 hostages died. It was 12 hours before an assault by Bangladeshi commandos finally broke the siege. All five attackers were killed. Three months later, and armed police roll back a large metal gate and let us into the cafe compound. The BBC team are the first journalists allowed back inside. The grass has grown wild on the lawn and creepers snake in through the broken windows to cling to the sides of overturned chairs. We step through drifts of broken glass and find the place frozen in time. Half eaten meals have rotted on the plates on which they were served. The floor is covered with great slicks of dried blood. And then there is the smell. It is overwhelming and unforgettable, truly horrible. What happened at Holy Artisan brought home to the world the scale of Bangladesh's growing problem with Islamist militancy. It was by far the worst terrorist attack Bangladesh has experienced, but it was not the first. Over the last three years, more than 40 people have been killed in a series of gruesome attacks. Atheist bloggers, religious minorities, Foreigners and gay activists have all been targeted. It isn't that the government didn't do anything at all, a veteran journalist tells me over a delicious Bengali dinner of steaming platters of curried prawns and lemon dahl. It's just that its efforts were focused more on going after its enemies in the opposition than the militants themselves. The two main parties in Bangladesh are both headed by women. The battling begums. They call them the battling ladies. The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, heads the ruling Awami League. Her great rival, Khalida Zia, runs the Bangladesh National Party. Politics here has little to do with debates over policy. It is almost all driven by the deep enmity these two feel for each other. In the last three years, dozens of opposition politicians and political activists have mysteriously disappeared. Human rights groups say they're part of an epidemic of kidnappings and extrajudicial killings orchestrated by the security forces. They say there have been almost 300 in the last seven years. The Awami League presents the claims as yet another attempt by the Bangladesh National Party to smear the government. But a leading Supreme Court lawyer sees things differently. I meet him in his scruffy office, incongruously lined with leather bound legal tomes. There is a general erosion of all sorts of freedoms, says Shahadin Malik, blinking nervously as he speaks. This is a foretelling of a story of authoritarian rule, he believes. Democracy and rights, they are shrinking. One cannot but worry when you don't have the institutions that are supposed to protect you. Jarred by the horror at Holy Artisan, the government's efforts have become more focused. More than 150 suspected terrorists have been arrested, 20 killed in shootouts with the security forces, the Jovial Law minister Anisul Haq tells me he believes Bangladesh is now much safer. But as I walk away from the wreckage of the Holy Artisan Cafe and hear that big iron gate crash closed again behind me, it is hard not to worry for the country. Terrorists destroyed this relaxed refuge. The government seems determined to restrict the public space for debate. It strikes me that blanket repression is not a very promising strategy to defuse the Islamist threat.
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Justin Rolat the state of Michoacan, west of Mexico City, was the birthplace of the country's drug war. Murder, kidnappings and extortion by the cartels became a part of daily life, and the criminals extended their tentacles into the pine forests, stealing the trees. After three years of these attacks on its lucrative timber industry, one community rebelled. Linda Presley has been to meet the women of Cheran, who took a stand.
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Bibir Omari Live or die. These are the words burnt into the rusting carcass of a 4x4 pickup truck. It's one of several that rests, stripped, abandoned and artfully placed among the pine trees on the edge of Charan, an indigenous community of some 20,000 people. All of these vehicles once belonged to the men who used to steal timber, the foundation of the town's economy. Until 2011. Dozens of trucks like these would journey up into the forest every day. They returned, wobbly with wood, piled high with freshly felled tree trunks, and carried their booties straight out of town. The people of Charan looked on, tight lipped and unsmiling. Everyone was cowed by the men with guns until they weren't. Margarita's just turned 50. She's small, compact and wears a candy pink hoodie with heavy gold earrings. She's an unlikely looking conspirator, but that's exactly what she is. Five years ago, at the beginning of 2011, a group of women met secretly and planned what everyone here calls an uprising against organised crime. The catalyst was a threat to one of the town's water sources. The loggers were getting closer and closer to a forest spring. We were worried, Margarita tells us. The women thought that if the trees were cut, there'd be less water. Our husbands keep cattle, she went on. Where would they drink if the spring were gone? The women were supported by their local priest. He'd berated his parishioners for doing nothing to stop the loggers. Are you sleepwalking? He'd asked them one morning in church. But fear paralyzes, and the people of Churan had experienced enough to keep them scared. The killings, kidnappings and disappearances, the masked men who hung around town demanding money from small businesses. The original plan was to confront the loggers at the spring, but that was abandoned, isolated and too dangerous. The women thought they'd have more chance of success if they took their stand in town, where their neighbors would support them. Early on 15 April 2011, as the first pickup trucks of the day snaked their way past the church of El Calvario, the women blocked the road. Armed with stones and sticks, they took hostages. Neighbours came running as the church bells rang out and fireworks exploded in the sky, alerting the community to danger. Hotheads wanted to hang the loggers from an ancient tree opposite the church. Margarita and the other women talked them out of it. The police and local politicians arrived. Unknown armed men came to free their hostage friends. It was like a horror film, remembers Margarita, close to tears. But she says it was the best thing they could have done. When the dust settled and the standoff ended, everything had changed in Charan in the days following the uprising. The police and politicians, long suspected of being in cahoots with the criminals, were were driven out of town. Political parties were banned, and in many ways, Churan returned to its indigenous roots, electing its own governing council and founding an armed militia to patrol its forest and defend the town. Those two pillars of stability in Chiran have remained in place since 2011. There are regular local elections, and the militia now numbers around 90 men and women, all of them from the town. Political parties are still proscribed, a state of affairs unique in Michoacan, but backed by a court order. Five years on, Charan has stayed united, and it's begun to replant some of the thousands of hectares of pine that were devastated by the loggers. Security is tight. All vehicles travelling in or out are stopped at the town's checkpoints by rifle toting guards. But with its ice cream shops and chaotic central plaza, it's a delightful place to spend a few days. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is Michoacan, one of Mexico's bloodiest states, where severed human heads have been rolled onto dance floors and grenades lobbed into crowded squares. In the last year, Charan has had no reports of murder, kidnap or extortion, a complete contrast to the stories we hear in the neighbouring towns. The people of Charan call the place where they've displayed those abandoned, burnt out shells of vehicles that once belonged to organised crime their museum. As we wander around, I reflect on how remarkable it is that this town has survived in such a cruel but beautiful region. It's been a great trip and for me, a pleasure to report a Mexican story of resilience and hope. A story where, so far it seems, the bad guys haven't won.
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Linda Presley In South Africa this week, the police met stone throwing students with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. The government had announced that it would not subsidise all students, only those from the poorest backgrounds. FEES have risen 80% in the last decade and are the university's main source of income. Milton Ncosi found himself recalling earlier protests
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for me, covering the standoff between university students and the police at Vets campus in Johannesburg brought back memories. The students have been demanding for some time now that university education must be free for all South Africans. They called their movement fees must fall. It started here at the University of the Witwatersrand, also known as wits, and then spread like wildfire throughout the nation, students at all the country's universities joined the call for fees to fall. They've been chanting slogans, dancing and singing old liberation songs, which I had many times when I covered the anti apartheid protests of the late 1980s. So memories came flooding back. In my mind's eye I could see some of the leaders who now hold high office when they were still young firebrand activists. I remember them from those days when they demanded that the doors of learning be opened for all. The sound and smell of tear gas which I first tasted as a small township boy in the streets of Soweto back in the 1970s was in the air this week. The booming sound of the stun grenade was deafening. It rudely interrupted my interview with one of the student leaders. Vuyani Pambo. The tall, lean and militant young man wearing round half rimmed spectacles and bearing a slight resemblance to Malcolm X, was explaining to me that the promise of free education was made by liberation movements at the end of apartheid. He felt betrayed, he said, because the government, the African National Congress, is now denying that it promised free tuition for higher education. Praveen Gordon, the finance minister, said this week that free education for the poor was on the table, but not for everybody. The Minister for higher Education, Blade Nzimande, has proposed to keep fees down for most students next year. Adam Habib, the Vice chancellor of Wirths University, supports the students right to protest. But he said it was unfair for a small group to hold the majority of undergraduates to ransom by threatening disruptive protests which usually end in violence or damage to property. He had asked students how many of them wanted to complete the 2016 academic year and how many wanted an indefinite strike. 77% wanted to go back to class. But many of the students who were demonstrating told me about their frustration most of all with the cancer of corruption eating away at this new post apartheid South Africa. As an example, they mentioned the scandal over expensive renovation to President Jacob Zuma's private home in the village of Ngandla. After a lengthy and rather public squabble with the corruption watchdog, Mr. Zuma was forced by the Constitutional Court to pay back some of the public money which had been spent on non security features like the swimming pool, cattle crawl and chicken enclosure. It is stories like these of blatant looting of state assets which fuel the students anger and their protests as some of them torch and treasure university property. In response, President Zuma has set up a judicial commission to look into the possibility of abolishing fees altogether. It is expected to report early next year. Not soon enough, say the students. They want free education, and they want it now. They told me that 22 years since the end of apartheid have been too long to wait. I thought we were different from other African states, one young drama student told me. I didn't think we were going to follow the same route as our brothers north of the Limpopo river, she lamented. One bright spot here is that in today's South Africa, the people do have the legal right to protest. A senior police officer was proud to tell me that he's grateful and relieved that amid all this unrest, the police have not yet fired a single round of live ammunition, he said. For South Africa, with its violent history, this is good. From the steps of the university's great hall, I could glimpse the jacaranda trees blooming on the horizon. Even with the chaos all around me, the lavender leaves of the trees of northern Johannesburg filled me with hope that these angry young people will someday be happy, prosperous graduates, just as the generations before them who were tear gassed, kicked and locked up under apartheid have now moved from oppression to freedom.
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Did Shakespeare ever travel to Italy? No. Even though Venice, Rome and Verona figure in his plays, that hasn't stopped enterprising Italians locating a number of choice venues as the right place to celebrate his anniversary year. But soft what light through yonder window breaks? Yes, our own Juliet Ricks, that is, who's joined the crowds under that balcony today.
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In Verona, there is always a crowd outside number 23 via Capello. The scrum extends through an ancient archway and into a medieval courtyard. I squeeze past. This is my house, after all. Well, it's Juliet's house. In the heart of historic Verona. Despite the city's first century Roman arena and even earlier amphitheatre, its medieval castle and gorgeous Romanesque churches, Casa di Giulietta is Verona's most visited tourist site. Like teenagers around a stage door, visitors jostle to take selfies with Juliet, a 20th century bronze statue, and to snap pictures of themselves, especially as loving couples, on and beneath the famous balcony where the star crossed lovers declared their love or not. The balcony is an attractive piece of carved stone, suitably medieval, but it was only added to this building in the 1930s when a canny head of Verona Museums saw a gold plated tourism opportunity. And there's the small fact that characters in plays are frequently fictional. Before you dismiss me as a heartless killjoy, though, there are one or two other things to say. Our entrepreneurial curator founded the myth of the balcony, but not of the house. This had long been known as Juliet's house with tourists as illustrious as Charles Dickens and John Ruskin seeking it out in the 19th century when it was still a run down inn. And if you actually read Shakespeare's play, there's no mention of a balcony. It states simply that Juliet appears above at a window. Juliet's house here in Verona has been standing since before the time when Romeo and Juliet is set. Or rather the time when Julietta and Romeos are said to have fallen in love in the True Tragedy written by local author Luigi da Porto in the 1520s, this was almost certainly a key source for Shakespeare's tale and places the lovers in the early 14th century. Deporto's source for the family names of the feuding parties, Romeo's Montagues and Juliet's Capulets was probably Dante. Banished from his native Florence, Dante came to live in Verona and here he wrote in his Divine Comedy of the destructive factionalism of Italy and named the Montagues the Montecchi and the Capulets Cappelletti. The Montecchi are known to have been a prominent Verona family of the time. There is however, no record of a family called Cappelletti. Amidst the crowd milling around Juliet's house, I meet up with Anna Larario, a local filmmaker who has spent many months researching the truth behind Romeo and Juliet in Verona. We find a quieter spot in a nearby cafe and Anna points up and down the street in the indicating the territory of the two main factions that feuded here in the late 13th century. The Montagues are known to have been on one side, but again there is no mention of the Capulets. Anna reminds me about a little stone carving above the archway in Juliet's courtyard, versions of which are also found inside. They depict a hat, a Capello. Documents show that a Capello family lived in this area 700 years ago. An inn of the same name is recorded from the 14th century and from the 17th. The address is given. It's Juliet's house and it lies in the territory of the faction opposed to the Montagues. Capello is not Cappelletti, Anna admits, but perhaps Dante and Daporto were referring to a faction, not a family. So did Juliet declare her love for Romeo from the window of number 23 Via Capello? Anna is cautious. In all honesty, she says the individual characters are probably fictional, but the historical and socio political setting is real. Back at Juliet's house, the tourists are scribbling Love lawn graffiti all over the thankfully removable walls under the Capello archway and queuing to pose with Juliet. Most of them also rub her bronze breast firmly for luck in love. What is that all about, I wonder? So popular is the rubbing, though, that Juliet recently developed a hole in her right breast and had to be replaced with a new Juliet. I have greatly enjoyed exploring my namesake's legendary historic residence, but I am profoundly glad that this particular myth has not rubbed off on humans of our name. As I nudge and excuse my way towards the exit, above the chatter of the crowd, I am sure I hear a a distant Renaissance chuckle. I think it's safe to assume that Shakespeare had a sense of humour. How he would have laughed at all this fuss. I think he would have loved it.
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Juliet Riggs this week the Americans and the South Koreans have been holding joint military exercises from Pyongyang in the north of the peninsula. This was met with blood curdling rhetoric, something the South Korean citizens had have had to learn to live with. But is that the only threat on their minds? Steve Evans thinks otherwise.
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There can't be many places where a stranger comes up to you in the rain and just gives you an umbrella, or where a woman alongside you at a crossing leans over and puts her umbrella over your bare head. This kindness of strangers feels like a blessing, and it's now been bestowed on me twice. I've been caught in a downpour and been sheltered by the brollies of people completely unknown to me, and that is pretty marvelous. It transformed my day. If I may get schmaltzy. Whatever the weather, there was sunshine in my heart. This is a city of trust. It is not a city of fear. Not even with the massed artillery of North Korea a mere 50 miles away. We're reminded of that threat every six weeks or so when the country conducts a civil defense drill. Sirens sound and some people scurry to shelters. Mostly, though, we sit it out at our desks. But even with these exercises, there's no real sense of fear. Even with Kim Jong Un's blood curdling threats to turn Seoul into a sea of fire or a heap of ashes, we do not flap. The last time North Korea exploded a nuclear device was on a Friday morning. Yet the Friday night was still a party, just like every other Friday night, with salarymen drinking far too much, unperturbed by the supreme Leader's nuclear efforts. Not that far away, there was no sign of panic buying of tin food, only the normal knocking back of soju, the fire water, which is the Korean national drink in the civil defense exercises. One scenario involves a Simulated attack on a prominent building by a bunch of gunmen. Smoke bombs are let off and heavily armed police, gas masks on, screech in and deal with the attack. This is not such a fanciful scenario. The flat where I live overlooks the road to the presidential palace. In 1968, just outside my window, a squad of North Korean commandos were confronted on their way to assassinate the President. There was a firefight, grenades were thrown, and the 31 members of unit 124 of the Korean People's army made a run for it. Most were hunted down and killed in the mountains and forests. It's true that this was nearly 50 years ago, but that's still within the memory of many people. It's not as though the threat from the north is too remote to be credible. It is just that people don't really believe Kim Jong Un will attack. He must know that retaliation would be swift and and massive, and for him, probably fatal. So we in Seoul remain unruffled even when the civil defense exercises happen. In fact, they offer a peaceful interlude. In a busy city, all traffic stops for about 20 minutes, which I think adds to the sense not of danger, but of safety. It is, you see, blissful relief from Seoul's manic drivers, for whom red lights at pedestrian crossings are invisible. South Korean cars have televisions installed on the dashboard, so taxi drivers watch TV as they hurtle towards you like barely guided missiles. There are theories about why the traffic here is is so anarchic. One academic posited that it's because this is a refugee society. The civil war which ended in 1953 displaced millions. And so the theory goes, Koreans still perpetually push forward for fear of being left behind. It's a theory. I used to cycle here, but gave it up after playing chicken with a bus and a game which I'm afraid the driver won. I gave way and the humiliation of defeat still hurts. The bus drivers of Seoul would have made good Japanese kamikaze pilots, their human exocets roaring towards bus stops. We poor passengers clinging on. Kim Jong Un's missiles are improving, traveling further with each test. His nuclear bangs get bigger every time. But logical or not, I still fear the bus drivers of Seoul more than the despot of Pyongyang. I wonder for how long.
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Steve Evans with the Cyclist's Guide to Survival in Seoul. And that's all from this edition. We'll be back on Thursday and Saturday next week with more from our own correspondence. Do join us. Goodbye.