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From Our Own Correspondent
Burmese Bling
00:28:08
Paul Mason meets protesters in Spain finding new ways to signal their worries and how...
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- [00:00]
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Hello, this is the from our own correspondent office at Bush House in London. You can check out what we're up to by signing up to our Twitter feed, but here's a download of our latest programme on BBC Radio 4, introduced as ever by Kate Ady.
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People are losing their homes. Families are living on the street. Angry Spaniards tell us their concerns as the big bank bailout does little to ease the country's financial plight. Burma's open again for business, but what's behind the government desire to drive through reforms and introduce democracy? There's a history lesson for the footballers visiting Auschwitz, but is it one that's been noted in the Polish villages nearby? And under a giant banyan tree close to the River Ganges, 10 generations of a family's history are finally uncovered. The huge cash bailout for the Spanish banks announced earlier this week calmed the fevered markets. But not for very long. Did anyone really think it would prove to be a turning point in the long drawn out euro crisis? It wasn't. Interest rates on government debt cap carried on rising. The country's borrowing costs are at record highs. So only days after that deal was reached, the concern about Spain's financial situation has, if anything, deepened. Paul Mason has been talking to people there, unhappy with the way their government's dealing with it.
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As we come out of the Socialist Party offices, past the bust of Karl Marx, which stands inside the doorway, suddenly we can hear it. A Casa Rolada. Protesters banging pots and pans. These protesters are women office workers, mostly aged over 40, well dressed. They've spread themselves in a line across the road at one of Madrid's intersections and they're blocking the traffic. You're late. One shouts into my face. Another points at her watch. Why didn't you come before it's nearly over? They bang the pots and pans and chant the bailouts, rewarding the banks, they say, but doing nothing to ease the suffering of families laid low by the economic crisis. People are losing their jobs, a woman tells me. Families with children living on the street, living off charity. As she delivers this tirade, the women hold up posters saying, extinct workers with rights. And then they all troop back into work, which turns out to be a courtroom, and the traffic can move again. I've seen a lot of Casa Roladas in the last two weeks, when Bankia, Spain's fourth biggest banking group, had to ask for a 4 billion euro bailout, and then another 19 billion. When 4 billion was not enough, I saw protesters banging pots and pans outside one of its branches. The tactic is copied from Argentina when it went bust in 2002. Later, I met a bunch of squatters who'd occupied a block of flats in Seville, and after losing their own homes to repossession, they were planning a casarelada of their own outside the electricity company, which has pulled the plug on them. Now in Madrid, the bailout of the entire Spanish banking system on unspecified terms, with up to 100 billion euros of EU taxpayers money, is greeted by a string of casareladas, so that the casarelada is fast becoming a kind of national dish. But Spain's problem is not just its banking system. The country's economy was buoyed up for a decade by the very property boom that the banking system fed. So now they have busted banks and a shrinking economy. And as the weeks ticked by, with many a casa rollada but no desicciones by the gobierno, massive capital flight with one in four adults unemployed, with people like the court workers seeing their pay and pension cuts, all kinds of ordinary people have taken to the street, using methods copied from and sometimes aided by the M15 movement of anti capitalist youth who occupied Spain's squares a year ago. But the protesters are well aware that in a way, the incessant banging of spoon on Teflon is a kind of release valve on the social discontent. Nieves, the woman who'd organized the Bankia protest, told me. People sit at home, they watch tv, they eat, they sleep. That's how they're coping with the crisis right now, I swear, she said. Many people are in denial, just wishing for it all to end. But some go further. At dawn, we drive along a red dirt road between crisp wheat fields outside Seville. The grouse scuttling out of the way of our tyres, drive for 11 kilometres and then look for the flags, says our fixer. The flags, of course, the depict the face of Che Guevara. This farm, it's called Somonte, has been occupied by members of the Land Workers Union. Apart from Che and some dogs and a pet goat, nobody's around to greet us because though they informed us with strict exactitude that the work day at simonte begins at 0730. Today is Sunday and they're not working. We roused them out of two small farm buildings where they're sleeping nose to toe on the floor. About 50 people, some jobless farm labourers, some itinerant anarchists, some both. They scoop vicious black coffee out of a pan. One wanders into a lettuce patch, picks a lettuce, strips the leaves off and serves us lettuce sandwiches with day old bread. Rosa, the organizer, gets them into the field in a line and we film them bending their backs, clearing the remains of turnips. Soon everything will be occupied land, factories, homes, she tells me. People have had enough. Then some men on powered microlights start buzzing around over the farm. This is fun for a while, and the workers wave at them until they see that one is trailing a Francoist flag and realize this is actually a counter demonstration by right wingers. Was the land here occupied during the civil war? I ask. Rosa takes a deep breath. No. She points to an old man shuffling at the edges of the farm. That's my dad, 83 years old. The landowners, the Francoists, made him eat olive oil and grasshoppers to make him vomit up the red inside him. She draws two stiff fingers down her cheeks to pre empt translation. He cannot tell the story without crying,
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and that's Paul Mason. The revolution in Libya may have brought about the downfall of President Gaddafi, but it has not, as yet anyway ushered in peace and harmony. This week there had been tank battles between rival tribes in the mountains of western Libya, which left several people dead. And in the city of Benghazi, the new authorities have been talking about the attack on a British diplomatic convoy earlier in the week. It was they resolved, the work of Islamist militants. Neither incident has caused much surprise among Libyans, who've become accustomed to a state of near anarchy in their country. Rana Jawad in Tripoli says many believe it's the price to be paid for liberation from years of Gaddafi tyranny.
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A permanent smirk was plastered on my face as I drove back home from work. It was the realization that I no longer needed CDs to provide in car entertainment. Now, to distract me from the road rage so prevalent on Libya's streets. There's entertaining radio, an explosion of new private stations, talk shows and music programs hosted by presenters, some professional, others much less so. Libya has changed in so many ways. There is a bottom line that most Libyans recognize today. The revolution freed them from the shackles of tyranny and has given them a voice which for so long was muted. But the rest, and the future is clearly up for debate. The voices of those who spent the better part of four decades glorifying a dictator and his iron rule have now been silenced. Many of Gaddafi's supporters are now languishing behind bars without formal charge. Some of them have been tortured. Discussing the concept of freedom of speech and human rights can be difficult, but it's a freedom Libyans relish Gaddafi's people spoke for 42 years. He kicked us back to the stone age and killed our sons, one man told me, concluding it's our turn to speak now. So men and women here are all speaking, criticizing or complaining these days, on tv, on the radio, online and on the streets, in Arabic and in English. For the first time in decades, it feels like you're in a crowded room with everyone speaking at the same time, jostling to be heard over all the noise. Life here can seem chaotic and dangerous when feuds over the theft of a car, a turf war over an abandoned building, or when an armed show of strength has killed a bystander or a rival militia member. There are times when an hour long battle using heavy weaponry can be heard in the dead of night. It's unexplained and sometimes goes unreported. You can get 10 different versions of the story. Who knows who's telling the truth? There are militias that take no orders from anyone but themselves. Not long ago, for example, they kidnapped a man in Tripoli because one of his neighbors had told them he had worked for a hated former Gaddafi henchman. He was held for two weeks and beaten. But after an investigation proved he, as they say here, had no blood on his hands, and his captors released him with an apology and a return ticket to Tunisia so his injuries could be treated. He still doesn't know what brigades, militia or security unit took him. As horrifying as that is, it doesn't surprise Libyans much. That's the way many Libyans were treated in the past. It will surely take a very long time for attitudes to change. Dictatorships can give a false sense of security and unity to Libya no longer exists. Trapped within a security blanket where everyone sings praise and undying love to their leader, it now has its very visible common criminals, jihadists, dissenters, opposition groups and transitional authorities who are accused of being ineffective. But post revolution, Libya is not all doom, gloom and abuse. Far from it. There are more fast food chains, cafes and shops than ever before. Corruption may be as rife as ever, but trade in oil and consumer goods is back to pre war levels. There are political parties launching on a weekly basis ranging from liberal democrats to conservative and moderate Islamists. There are civil society groups that at times speak with one voice and at times make no sense at all. There are politicians who some approve of, but many despise, distrust and mock. And of course, that proliferation of radio stations, many for the first time at liberty to broadcast in English, a language once considered a tool of enemies. Of the state. So when all these voices, opinions and noises are heard at the same time. People peering in from the four corners of the globe may call it chaos, but to many Libyans, it is freedom. It may be fragile. It has certainly come at a high price. It's one they will have to keep paying for many years to come. It is, as one Libyan succinctly put it, civilized anarchy. But it is the first freedom they've ever known.
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Rana Jawad in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. After 60 years of isolation, Burma is again open for business. The government says it's in the midst of radical economic and political reform. The Western world has responded by easing sanctions. Businessmen hoping for lucrative deals are falling over themselves to rebuild relations with this once pariah state. But the Burmese authorities still face serious problems. This week, army reinforcements were sent in to restore order in the west of the country after bitter fighting between Muslim and Buddhist communities. Lucy Hooker says the road to reform could turn out to be a long and hard one.
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A stroll around Rangoon's central Market is a bit like wandering through Aladdin's cave. The floor's dirty, but at eye level there are cascades of twinkling diamonds and strings of glistening pearls. There are intricate carved pieces of jade and sky blue sapphire necklaces. For years, sanctions have meant that Westerners didn't have direct access to Burma's riches. Western governments argued that buying them channeled funds directly to a regime responsible for human rights abuses, corruption and violence against its own people. But these restrictions are gradually being lifted now, and I'm wondering how long it'll take for the stigma attached to Burmese bling to fade. The woman behind the counter tells me the pigeon's blood ruby ring sitting temporarily on my finger is best quality, famous for its deep hue. But if I want to buy it, I'll have to hand over $50,000 in cash. Thanks largely to those sanctions, every transaction here still involves piles of banknotes. There's certainly no stigma attached to doing other business deals. Not if Rangoon's hotel lobbies are anything to go by. Businessmen are flocking in from all corners of the world, swapping name cards and phrases like the last Frontier, untapped market and strategic hotspot. But what sort of look in are these newcomers likely to get? Despite the reformist rhetoric, Burma's economy is still dominated by the military's holding companies and by a handful of powerful business tycoons. If you build a house or drink a beer, the chances are you're paying one or the other. So is the government serious about Allowing others to into these lucrative sectors. I want to ask them directly. So I take the 5 hour drive out of Rangoon to the country's new capital, Nayputor. Carved out of the wilderness a decade ago, this city is a boondoggle, a costly joke at the expense of Burma's impoverished population. It boasts 24 hour electricity, roads the width of a football pitch, but few cars. There's even a zoo with an air conditioned penguin house. Here, visiting foreign dignitaries don't see the squalor or poverty of real Burma. And the government isn't reminded of the country's many problems which need addressing. On the walls of the Ministry of Industry, there are life sized photographs of the generals who have run Burma for decades. The minister I've come to interview was once commander in chief of Burma's navy. And he was industry Minister in the previous government, just as he is in this one. So Thang is smiling like a Cheshire cat. He promises a completely new Burma, open to the world and to foreign investment. It's for the sake of the Burmese people, he says. Why this change? I ask. What's motivating you to do this? We are poor, he says. The army has always had Burma's best interests at heart, but their policies didn't work. Now we are poorer than Cambodia and Laos. Burmese national pride is clearly hurt. Naypyutor's apparently grandiose government buildings actually look less imposing close up. There are cracked tiles, peeling paint. I note there's a flowery curtain in place of a door. In the Ministry's washroom, a toilet seat is broken. 60 years of military rule then has not been an overwhelming success. Hence the plan for a carefully controlled transition. Usually revolutions don't work out as planned, but here the roadmap to democracy has been set out for the past decade and it's now being followed with literally military precision. Back in Rangoon's gem market, I look again at the carved jade animals. There's a charming little frog. If I buy this, I wonder who benefits. The ladies who want to sell me the ruby encrusted ring say their jewels come from a mine in Shan State, renowned for its gems, but equally famous for its intractable ethnic conflict. They tell me candidly that half of the jewels extracted from this mine are go to the military. I'd like to be able to send a more positive signal about the direction Burma's taking, but it seems much of the real work is yet to be done. So for now, I decide against buying the jade frog. And I doubt I can slip $50,000 through BBC expenses. So I say no to the ruby ring too.
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Lucy Hooker, back now from Burma. Auschwitz has been seeing a lot of footballers in the last week or two. The English team, the Italians too, were given guided tours of this former death camp ahead of the European Football Championships. There, and in camps nearby, the Nazis gust millions of people, mainly Jews, and the visits by the sportsmen confirm that the atrocities are not being forgotten. But does this history receive the same treatment away from the media spotlight? David Schucman has been to investigate in a small Polish village which is of particular to his family.
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Off a highway southeast of Warsaw, a lane winds through a backwater of old farms and storks nesting on top of telephone poles. A sign announces the village of Baranov. At its centre stands a handful of ugly concrete supermarkets. The main road is battered. Dust covers the windows and pavements. It's poor here, and the looks we get, though not hostile, are not friendly either. Baranov is not in the guidebooks and most people would have no reason to come here. But I do. Towards the end of the 19th century, Baranov was home to my grandfather David, after whom I'm named. For centuries, there'd been a Jewish community in the village and he'd been part of it. Like many, he was a tailor. But conditions had been tough, so he'd moved away, eventually to England, though some of his relations stayed behind. We don't know how many, but at some point in the Second World War, possibly 1942, all the Jews of Baranov were rounded up and sent to their deaths. My visit with my daughter Kitty is to see if there's any trace of the lives once led here. Our starting point is a small hill above the village, the traditional site for a Jewish cemetery. A sign states in Polish that this was indeed the burial ground for the Jewish community. An old man appears on a bike. At first he's suspicious. Are you here to claim back any land? I tell him I'm not. I'm just curious. And he relaxes. He's kept the site clear of rubbish, he says. After the war, the headstones were all stolen and in a final indignity, the place was used as a rubbish dump. A single piece of stone lies in the grass. It's inscribed in Hebrew, but very faded. I found it by the road, the old man says, and brought it back here. Kitty wants to know where the Jewish community lived. So we're led into the heart of the village, where the carpenters, shoemakers and tailors were told had their homes. I tried to picture My grandfather hunched over a sewing machine. But the houses have been replaced by the concrete. Supermarkets were shown a small bank built in the 1950s, also concrete. It's standing where there was once the synagogue. The only clue, a road sign. This is Synagogue Street. I see the bank has a cash machine. I do need some money, but can't bring myself to get it from here. We meet a man aged 95, Stanislav Stefaniak. He describes how the village had always been divided. Jews in the centre doing trades, Poles around the edge, farming the land. And then one day, the Jews were ordered to gather in the main square before being marched to the nearest railway station. A few, he says, were hidden by Poles. What happened to them? He hesitates. The easiest narrative here is that it was only the Nazis who killed the Jews. But Stanisaw admits an uncomfortable truth. After the war, he says, the Jews who came out of hiding were robbed and killed by Poles. I want to know if Stanislaw remembers what it was like, the village suddenly losing its shopkeepers, artisans, tailors, whole families. He doesn't answer. In the 20 years since the end of Communist rule, the Polish government has done a lot to raise the profile of the Holocaust. Its support for the museums at Auschwitz and other camps ensures that huge streams of visitors get a very vivid sense of the enormity of what went on here. But I wonder whether that motivation reaches down to a local level, to a village like Baranov. At one edge of the square, a map marks the farms and churches, the clinic and the school. But it makes no mention of an abandoned cemetery on a hill or a place of worship used by hundreds of people for several centuries. That's now been replaced by a bank. Kitty spots a war memorial outside the church. It records the losses of the Polish people. Their suffering was terrible, no question, during the war and after. But the history carved into this dark stone is incomplete. Half of the people of this village were dispatched to the death camps, and there's not a word about them. As we leave, I realize that we're on the road my grandfather must have used on his way to seek a better life. And we give thanks that he did.
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And that was David Shookman. And he's far from alone in wanting to learn more about his family's history. Genealogy is big business these days. The Internet has a lot to do with it. A click of the mouse can turn up intricately researched family trees, complete with roots and branches you didn't even know existed. Now, if you're from a Hindu family, tracing your ancestry can be a Little more demanding. As Anu Anand has been finding out, in India, the quest for one's roots can involve a pilgrimage, hereditary priests, and, in her case, a mysterious tree.
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Dusk falls over the holy city of Haridwar in northern India, turning amber, the waters of the Ganges river reflecting the flames from hundreds of small clay pots and towering candelabras. The river becomes luminous alive by day. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims wash away their sins or perform last rites with the ashes of their deceased loved ones. Now they gather on its banks to join in the chanting of evening prayers. My own pilgrimage to Haridwar is for a different reason. I grew up in the southern United States, where classmates often showcased copies of intricate family trees, each ancestor's name written in neat calligraphy. Their roots had been carefully unearthed through public records, family Bibles, and by whizzing through the black and white microfilm reels held in the big library downtown. But my own past was a mystery. Neither my parents nor I possessed birth certificates. My mother didn't even know her real date of birth. Like many of her generation, it had simply been concocted when officialdom required. Was only when I moved to India in my twenties that I heard of an ancient Hindu genealogical tradition, a tradition I'd finally come to see for myself. When Hindus make a pilgrimage to a holy place, they also reconnect with their personal family priest and record births, marriages and deaths on long paper scrolls. The earliest records written on palm leaves, have been lost to the elements. But there are sites across India where such records can still be found, and Haridwar remains the most comprehensive and well preserved repository. Today, there are some 300 hereditary priests, or bandas, still at work. As evening prayers ended, I set off into the warren of alleys to find my family priest. The only trouble is, in order to find your historian, you need to already know something of your family's history. I'm looking for the annals. They were from Ral Bindi, I think I told the priests loitering in carved wooden doorways. One invited me inside. He leafed through a scroll, its pages scrawled with names and dates, the script alternating between Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi, the three main languages of northern India. I felt my heart begin to race with anticipation. I wasn't expecting to find any kings or spies or luminaries in my family tree, just a confirmation that. That I belonged somewhere. Three priests later, and no joy. Without computerized records or even a local registry, the search for the right priest could take weeks. In desperation, I phoned my father in Florida. He'd met our family panda once, when my grandfather died. Perhaps he would remember where it was. 4:30am local time, he finally answered, his voice groggy with sleep. All I remember is a giant tree in a courtyard, he told me. That's where I found him. A tree. Great dusk had now turned to night and I was forced to abandon my search. Had I come so far only to fail? The next morning, I redoubled my efforts. A local man overheard my entreaties and tapped me on the shoulder. I know this tree, he said. A few minutes later. He unlatched heavy double doors onto a hidden courtyard, and in the middle was one of the thickest banyan trees I'd ever seen. Centuries of girth, hundreds of tangled roots reached for the ground, obscuring a doorway. Here finally lay the key to my past. Inside, Mahendra Kumar, a round, jovial man, laughed as I recounted my journey. Moments later, as my eyes watered with delight, he unraveled two scrolls dating back to the early 1800s. They contained entries written in the hand of my father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfathers going back a staggering 10 generations. My father's family originated from a village called Mianiwale and outside Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan. They were traders selling grain and dried fruit across India and the northwest frontier. Mr. Kumar then invited me to make my own entry. Under the date, I put my name as well as the names of my English husband and our two children. With hindsight, I'd be mad to bequeath my children a pre printed family tree with ancestors names already laid down in neat calligraphy when they could instead inherit a marvellous adventure. Right down to the search for a giant, mysterious tree and under its canopy, their hidden ancestral roots.
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And with Anu Anand finally getting acquainted with 10 generations of her family, we've reached the end of another program. I'll be here again with more tales from around the world on Saturday morning at half past eleven. I do hope you'll join us then.