← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Come to Sunny Gaza!
00:28:10
Why is Bosnia seeing its most serious unrest since the country was at war in the How a...
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This is a download from the BBC.
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It's the latest edition of From Our Own Correspondent, broadcast on Radio 4, and
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it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, an angry crowd in Nigeria calls for homosexuals to be given the death penalty. Is America getting back to work? We're at the seaside in Maryland, looking for signs of a brightening economy. Our man from Radio 3 is on the most exotic of African islands, listening out for a fabled king of musical instruments. And the tension may be rising, but our reporter finds smiling faces and an invitation. Next time, why don't you bring your whole family? 30 years ago this week, Sarajevo was hosting the Winter Olympics. Torvill and Dean were about to make sporting history for Britain. Since then, life hasn't been easy for the capital of Bosnia. It was under siege for four years in the 1990s, with journalists running for cover from the ice stadium as it was shelled to a wreck. By the end of the war, the 10,000 people had been killed. Peace came eventually, but it did not bring the prosperity people were hoping would follow. And now the simmering frustration has boiled over. At the weekend, demonstrators set fire to government buildings in Sarajevo and in other towns across the country. Guy Delaunay has been talking to some of them.
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The lanes of Sarajevo's old Town are the best kind of kitsch. The tightly spaced single story buildings with their wooden facades and low tiled roofs are a fine example of fairly fairy tale architecture. You almost expect Mr. Geppetto and Pinocchio to come running out of one of the shops selling trinkets and traditional coffee, making sets for those who prefer their hot drinks ready made. There are dozens of cafes with low wooden tables outside and customers basking in the unseasonably warm weather. Some play backgammon or chess, and as the daylight fades, the lights start to twinkle on the hills which encircle the city. A set designer couldn't have done it better. The effect is utterly magical. I say something along these lines to my BBC colleague, cameraman Bata. He replies with the Serbian equivalent of pah and throws up his hands. This is nothing, he says. Foreigners wouldn't be so impressed if they'd been here before the war. They don't understand what it was like. Sarajevo was the happiest place. You'd start laughing as soon as you got here. Chuckles are thin on the ground as we move towards the government buildings a few minutes walk away. The unmistakable stench of burned building wafts into our nostrils. A couple of police cars, scorched to the bare metal, sit uselessly Outside the place they were supposed to protect, the headquarters of Sarajevo municipality, this yellow washed stone structure bears the marks of an outpouring of anger. The previous evening, thousands of protesters had gathered outside, calling for the resignation of the politicians they held responsible for Bosnia's descent into the economic mire. Then some of them broke in. What happened next can clearly be seen by the smashed glass and blackened window frames. The presidency building next door met a similar fate, and some of the national archives were destroyed. Documents which had survived two world wars and a four year siege reduced to ashes on an otherwise ordinary Friday evening. Bosnians of all ages have been affected by the years of grinding poverty and spiraling unemployment. I meet one elderly man with a black cap and a twinkle in his eye. He introduces himself as Tomislav and he fishes an ID card out of his wallet showing that he's a veteran of a concentration camp in the 1990s. Sarajevo was not a happy place for ethnic Croats then, but Tomislav still returned as soon as he could. But now he's wondering if he did the right thing. The Sarajevo he lives in is rather different to the place. Full of laughter, my cameraman remembers. Nobody's happy anymore, says Tomislav. Nobody smiles. I don't smile. Even the soil we're standing on is crying, crying out for justice. Tomaslav is 81 years old and survives on a tiny pension, which also has to support his wife and an adult son who hasn't been able to find work since the war. It's hard for him to stomach seeing politicians he views as incompetent and corrupt, taking home more than 10 times he receives, plus allowances. We walk on to the police station and find people crying, grown men begging to know what's happened to their children. One says the police came to his home and dragged his young son away. Tears roll down his face as he explains that officers insulted him when he tried to find out information. We've got nothing, he sobs. Another father seems more bemused than angry. The police arrested his teenage son after he'd gone for an afternoon walk, he says, but he's a good kid. He's an A student. There have been rumours that police have been beating up young people in custody and a group of protesters arrive and a 15 year old boy with a fat lip and blood stained sweatshirt stumbles out of the station. Riot police start lining up. They're carrying gas masks and some have baton round guns on their backs. It looks like things might turn nasty, but the police finally respond to the crowd's chants of take off your helmets, and suddenly everyone seems human again. The tension is broken. The Dayton Peace Agreement brought an end to the war, but it also set up an incredibly complicated system. Bosnia has three presidents, two federal governments, and more than 130 municipal governments for a population of fewer than 4 million. An international high representative is supposed to oversee all of this and step in when the ethnically divided politicians can't or won't do their jobs. Many Bosnians believe this simply isn't happening. As for the point of view of the man in charge, the so called high representative, it's difficult to say he cancelled all media engagements, including an interview with the BBC. But it's hard to see the laughter coming back to Sarajevo or the rest of Bosnia if there aren't major changes to the way the country's run. If only there were a magic wand to make it happen.
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And that was Guy Delaunay in Sarajevo. So the US economic recovery is still far from complete. According to the incoming Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, latest figures show the number of new jobs added in January, just over 100,000, was well short of most economists predictions. There's no doubt the jobless rate is a lot better than it was back in the dark days of the recession, 6.6% of the workforce now, down from a peak of 10% in 2009. But there are concerns that after strong growth in the back half of last year, the recovery may now be running out of steam. Recent numbers on U.S. manufacturing have also caused alarm bells to ring, but there is a hope that these, like the unemployment statistics, could mainly be the result of the bad weather suffered in many US States these past couple of months. Linda Yu has been out searching for signs that better times are on the way.
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Coming into Crisfield, a small town on the eastern seaboard of Maryland, the first site is of a deserted main street which with empty storefronts on either side. Driving further into town, I see rows of foreclosure signs hanging in front of derelict houses. So many people have been unable to keep up with their repayments. After driving three hours from Washington D.C. we are hungry but unable to find a restaurant to eat in. The ones that we see on the web are no longer open for business. The closest thing to a place to eat and is a store selling raw seafood. The clerk cooks some for us and allows us to sit in the corner to eat. A short drive through the town center and we reach the harbor. The frozen sheets of ice on the water mirror the economic deep freeze that small towns like this one have endured since the big banks in New York dragged the US into recession five years ago, but the people I meet blame the bankers, a popular pastime at dinner parties in the capital. Instead, the mayor of Crisfield, P.J. purnell, says, There's a joke that we tell around here. If there's a depression, It'd take us 10 years to see it because we've been depressed for so long. And that's been the reality for rural America. When I ask what could make a difference for his town, which suffers from high unemployment and few opportunities for its young people, PJ Says Hyundai could come and build a factory here that would create jobs. He asks me what it would take. As I look around the empty streets and the boarded up shops, it's hard to see what would attract the Korean carmaker, one of the biggest companies in the world, to come to this small town, or indeed to any small town in rural America. So this is the big challenge confronting America. How can it put the process of deindustrialization into reverse? No other countries managed it. So can the United States rebalance its economy towards manufacturing once again? I meet local businessman Eugene Evans, who owns a boat repair business. It's rather larger than a typical shop, more like a yard strewn with boats and commercial shipping vessels. When times were good, he wasn't just repairing boats. He tells me that he had 24 employees and they built up to 19 boats a year. Now he's down to five staff, including members of his family, and there's little activity when I visit on this cold afternoon. It's people like Eugene that the US Central bank, the Federal Reserve and the government are seeking to help with their stimulus and spending programs. The Fed has made bringing down unemployment one of its aims. It has pledged to keep interest rates low until there's a significant fall in the jobless rate. For the Fed's policy to work, it needs small businesses like Eugene's to hire. Eugene tells me that he sees nothing from the Fed or the government that makes him confident enough to do that. A pledge of low rates is clearly not enough to convince a business owner in a small town like Crisfield. Yet despite the odds, Eugene is hopeful that customers will return and the good times will come again. There are always better times ahead is the trait that I most associate with America. The sense that anything is possible if you work hard enough. It was the message in President Obama's State of the Union address that the American Dream was what defines the nation. A place where the son of a barkeeper could become speaker of The House of Representatives and the son of a single mom can become president. As I walk through the deprived town of Crisfield, I wonder if there really are better times to come. Here. I'm struck by the image of several retirees who are still working to put together steel mesh cages to catch the crabs that Maryland is known for. It makes me recall what a former American ambassador once said to me. He used to travel the world and marvel at how much better things were in the us. He now admires how other countries have the better airports and hotels. We have all heard about the relative decline of the US as emerging economies like China's outpace its growth. But we're reassured by the experts that America remains the most powerful nation on earth. Statistically, that may be the case, but for Crisfield, economic decline doesn't feel relative, but worryingly absolute.
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Linda Yu in the American state of Maryland. A new law in Nigeria means that homosexuals, if prosecuted, can be sent to jail for 14 years. Gay sex has been illegal there since colonial days. But the new legislation signed into statute by the President Goodluck Jonathan, carries new tougher sentences and there are harsher penalties still in parts of northern Nigeria where Sharia, or Islamic law, is practiced. In one state, Bauci, there's been a roundup of alleged homosexuals. The crackdown started after a newspaper published a story saying gays there had formed their own organisation. The authorities now want imams and priests to help them bring offenders to justice, as Will Ross has been finding out.
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So what exactly is the punishment for homosexuality in northern Nigeria? That was the question I put to the man in charge of the Islamic police, or Hizbah. It's a death sentence, Salisu Muhammad Bununu replied, either by stoning or by pushing the person off a high place or by hanging. Just over his shoulder was a bookshelf full of gold trimmed, leather bound copies of the Quran. He said it was this book that dictated the Sharia Commission's stance. But we're not just after homosexuals, we're against all social vices. Another official added. Alcohol used to be sold openly on the streets of Bouchie City, but we've stopped that. And many of the rooms in this city used to be occupied by harlots, so we've clamped down on prostitution as well as gambling. In another part of the city I visited a Sharia court, a dilapidated building with a rusty corrugated iron roof. The courtroom was packed and people were poking their heads through the windows, trying to follow proceedings over the din of the traffic A couple of weeks earlier, this had been the scene of bedlam during a bail hearing for seven men up on homosexuality charges. An angry mob had gathered outside and was calling for death sentences to be passed. Some of them even threw rocks at the court. Sitting nervously inside the sweltering room at the time was a brother of one of the accused. The fact that he asked me not to use his name shows how strong the stigma is here. I'll call him Hassan. The bail hearing was abruptly abandoned, and Hassan is grateful that the police fired into the air to disperse the crowd so that his brother and the others could be escorted safely to the police van and back to prison. He told me his brother was arrested in December because his brother's friend was gay. How's this case affecting your family? I asked. Hassan said it was especially tough for the married women as it's hard for them to witness the court sessions. They have to rely on me to tell them what's happening, he said. And they just keep asking, when is he going to be released? Hassan said their mother had been fearing the worst because she hadn't seen her son for over a month. I just keep telling them all to keep praying for the case to be over soon, he said. I went back to the Sharia commission as I'd been promised an opportunity to walk around the city of Bauchi to witness how the Hizbar carried out their patrols. But someone had changed their mind, and I was offered one of the most unusual excuses I've ever been told as a reporter. You see, we had no plans to go on patrol today, jibrin Dunlami Hassan, the commander of the Islamic police, told me. So if we go out with you now, it'll be a made up fictitious exercise. And that, he said, pointing to the heavens, would be a lie before Allah. After this trump card, there was, of course, no patrol. The commander explained that they rely on other people to turn in homosexuals. When people are doing these evil things, the community informs us and we storm into the area to make an arrest, he said. This part of the country is overwhelmingly Muslim, but whatever the religion, the views are similar. During one of the Sunday services at St. John's Catholic Cathedral, it was time for the collection. As a band played, people queued the length of the aisle and with wide smiles, swayed to the beat before dropping money into huge plastic laundry baskets. Outside after the service, all the churchgoers I talked to castigated gaze, sprinkling in references to Sodom and Gomorrah. Hassan is waiting for news of another trial date. He knows a death sentence is highly unlikely to be found guilty of a homosexual offence. Sharia law requires four witnesses to testify. But even if freed by the judge, his brother's life will have been turned upside down. If he's released, we'll have to find a safe place for him, he told me. His name's been all over the papers. There's still tension in the city. An extremist can take the law into their own hands, Hassan warned. Whatever the outcome, will you still love your brother? I asked. Yeah, definitely. I must love him. I'll try to show him what's right, he replied. I must love him because I believe that in any society, people make mistakes. And that's how homosexuality is viewed here. A mistake. A mistake for which the secular courts can send you to prison for 14 years and the Sharia courts can pass a death sentence.
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Will Ross in northern Nigeria now, the very name of Zanzibar seems to conjure up an atmosphere of romance and exoticism. This is not a place which features often in the headlines. Yet in recent times, the reputation of this mainly Muslim East African island has been damaged by a series of acid attacks on tourists and on Catholic priests. Its heritage is closely linked to the slave trade, which continued in Zanzibar much later than it did at elsewhere. A lot of the island's architecture dates from this period. But as Radio 3's Petroch Trelawney's been finding out, other buildings reflect a 1960s dalliance with Soviet East Germany.
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It's Sunday morning and I'm on my way to the 8 o' clock service at Zanzibar's Anglican Cathedral. It's a spectacular building made of local coral stone in the late 1870s. Above the barrelled roof, a spire stands taller than anything else in Stonetown, the historic heart of the island's capital. The cathedral's construction was heralded as a victory of good over evil. This was the site of the slave market, center of a vast East African trade. Where the altar is now, there used to be a post to which slaves were chained and then beaten until 1873, when slavery was finally outlawed. Here, men, women and children rounded up on the mainland would be brought to the market and sold to traders who shipped them on to the Middle East. A chillingly simple memorial in the churchyard shows five slaves in a pit, the statues linked together with iron shackles. I'm standing in front of it, contemplating the grim past of this beautiful island, when a young man in a white T shirt shouts across to ask if I'm coming In for the service, I follow him into a chapel under the cathedral where about 20 worshippers are sitting in silence. If I'm completely honest, I'll admit to being a little disappointed that we're downstairs rather than in the main cathedral itself. For me, one of the attractions of a service here was the chance to hear the still functioning pipe organ installed by the celebrated English organ makers Henry Willis and Sons over a century ago. In our little chapel, eight candles on the altar gutter gently in the breeze from the ceiling fans. Outside a window, the branches of a custard apple tree are heavy with fruit. A young woman with a confident soprano voice leads the worshippers in. Stand up, stand up for Jesus. She performs with obvious devotion. Our response is a little pathetic and rather tuneless, but it doesn't really matter. Our singing is soon drowned out by the Swahili language service in the main cathedral above. The organist suddenly pulls out a stop or two and in comes a great swell from the Willis organ. I get to hear this African king of instruments after all. The first lesson supplies the basis for an extended sermon, St. Paul's Warning against Idleness from Thessalonians, book 2. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. The priest uses this as the starting point for a lecture on the need for us to take individual responsibility for our lives. Don't rely on others to bail you out, is the clear message. I'm not sure Obeyed Kurumi would have agreed with that. He was president of the short lived People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba, which existed for a few months after independence from Britain and prior to federation with Tanganyika in 1964. Karumi continued as the island's president until his assassination in 1972. He wanted to reach out and improve the lives of poor Zanzibaris. He was particularly interested in East Germany's program of social housing and persuaded the GDR to send a team to build blocks of Eastern European commoner style apartments on the edge of Stone Town. Block after block of the buildings line a long wide avenue named after the president that stretches towards the cathedral. Forty years ago, every important visitor to Zanzibar would be taken on a tour of the flats, which represented a revolutionary move towards equality. The reality was many of the original occupants had to be coerced into moving in. According to legend, spies were sent out each evening to check residents were making use of the electric stoves in their new kitchens and not cooking with open fires on the balconies. Today there have been some attempts to Brighten up the slabs of grey concrete. A brilliant white balcony stands out. Someone else has painted their window frames lime green. One dweller has turned her front room into a business, Selena's Beauty salon and Spa. But the great dream never quite took off. Despite being the highest buildings in Zanzibar, there are no lifts. 500 litre water tanks sit outside many doorways. Water pressure is too weak to reach the upper floors. And as with many housing projects around the world, there is graffiti everywhere. Islam is the Only Way, written in large letters by one entrance hall. As I walk along the avenue, the height of these great blocks momentarily cuts out the sun. The effect is uncanny. The temperature falls and for a moment I feel as if I'm in the suburbs of Rostock or Bucharest, not in the capital of an exotically named African island.
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And that was Petroch Trelawney in Zanzibar. There's concern in the Middle east about a new confrontation between Israel and the Hamas movement, which has run Gaza since 2007. This week, Israel carried out a number of airstrikes on the Palestinian territory after rockets fired from inside the Gaza Strip landed in Israel. Since the start of 2014, the Israelis say they've been targeted in more than 30 rocket attacks. So when our colleague Simon Cox visited Gaza recently, he was fully aware that after a year of relative calm, tension between the two was again beginning to rise.
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Room 17 at the Aldira Hotel was a Moroccan style suite with a stylish bathroom, colourful rugs and a spectacular view of the Mediterranean lapping gently at a curve of golden sand. It wasn't what I was expecting in Gaza. I'd come prepared for trouble with a flak jacket and helmet, driven from the border with Israel in an armor plated car past a plethora of grey breeze block structures, unfinished due to a lack of cement. I wasn't here to report, though, but to train a group of journalists from Alwan Radio for a weekly programme they'd be making with other stations in the west bank as part of a wider BBC and British Council project. My hotel wasn't the only surprise. So too were the ten eager, smiling faces waiting to greet me at Alwan's offices on the 11th floor of a block in downtown Gaza. The majority were young women dressed in jeans and trainers and bold, bright headscarfs in a rich medley of mint greens, purples and blues. There was Tahrid, a young mum who'd presented a daily sports programme, Safa, who got her master's degree while working as a journalist for three different broadcasters. Ahmed A laid back business student who made stand up comedy videos for YouTube, and Rami, a softly spoken presenter who moments after meeting me, informed me that I was compassionate, thoughtful, but often impatient. It was no surprise Rami presented a show on astrology they were all keen to learn, but also to show me that Gaza's reputation as a violent, dangerous place wasn't deserved. We'd meet every morning by the lift, waiting for the power to come on. Rao an, my young translator, explained how the electricity was only on for eight hours a day, so work, shopping, everything had to be crammed into this brief window. Many businesses, though, have their own generators, like the enterprising barbers that I passed, filled with customers and powered by a wire running outside to what looked like an outboard motor. I expected the stories from my young team would be primarily about the hardship of daily life, but instead they recorded stories on their mobile phones about the strawberry season, a second hand shop where both the rich and poor came to pick up designer bargains, and an unemployed engineer who'd become a canary breeder. To make money, you need this kind of ingenuity when half the population is unemployed. Ahmed, who lives in a refugee camp in the north of Gaza, told me how his main wish was for a well paid, permanent job, without which it would be impossible to find a long term partner. He was volunteering at the station as he'd stopped making the comedy videos he filmed on the street, as he was tired of being constantly stopped by the police out on the station's roof terrace. He told me how he'd had decent jobs in the past with NGOs, but once the projects came to an end, he was back on the dole. In Gaza, he told me, you can be an executive one week and the next you're nothing. It was a learning experience for me too, finding out Gaza wasn't such a scary place at all. I began to venture out with my translator, Rawan, and Sajid, a young manager at the radio station, to downtown Gaza for a scoop of creamy pistachio at an ice cream parlour, or to a buzzing pizza restaurant, or the supermarket where Saji bought me dukkha, a spice mix best served on toasted flatbread drizzled with olive oil. As we strolled back to my hotel along pitch black roads, Sajid told me how hard it had been coping with the power cuts at first, but he shrugged. We're used to it now. We just get on with it. And that's exactly what his young team of journalists did too. Preparing for two separate live shows at the end of the week's training, there would be no political discussions or speculation about Middle east peace talks. Their audience were weary of this. They wanted to be entertained and Safa's team certainly did this in their show Alwan Extra, with lively items about photography, the lack of cinemas in Gaza and the health benefits of strawberries. Tak Reed's rival team interviewed Beggars, a 17 year old football commentator and even had a violinist in the studio to end the show. I was pleasantly surprised and proud of what they'd achieved as I left with gifts for me, my wife and daughters. Nessma, a perpetually smiling presenter, even asked me optimistically if next time maybe I'd like to return with my family holidays in Gaza.
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That's Simon Cox's future leave plans sorted. We'll be back with more portraits of life in various corners of the world on Saturday morning. Until then, goodbye.