← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:26:16
Christian families are leaving Iraq in large numbers amid continuing sectarian Jim has...
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BBC Radio Announcer
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BBC Radio Announcer
like to hear our World Service programme,
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BBC Radio Producer
you'll find it on the BBC iplayer.
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BBC Radio Announcer
This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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BBC Radio Producer
It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
Good morning. Today, the exodus of Iraq's Christians gathers pace amid a fresh wave of bombings and mortar attacks. The great gamble for the Communist rulers in Beijing can they ensure future prosperity for China without ripping their country apart? On Armistice Day, a South African who fought for king and country remembers the horrors of war in the Western desert. And in the limpid waters of the Indian Ocean, we go swimming with a peaceful giant. Iraqi leaders are gathering at the parliament building in Baghdad this morning amid reports that their deeply divided political factions have reached a deal on the shape of a new government. It comes more than eight months after a general election took place. Meanwhile, bombs continue to go off. Every religious community in Iraq has suffered appalling violence in recent years, and yesterday the series of explosions in Baghdad was targeting Christian areas. This follows an attack on the Roman Catholic cathedral in the capital two Sundays ago in which more than 40 worshippers were killed. There have been Christians in Iraq for nearly 2,000 years, but Jim Muir says their numbers are dwindling fast. More and more of them are leaving the country every day.
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Jim Muir
We were in one of the churches near where we live in central Baghdad, and they were preparing to bury some of the dead from the disaster in the cathedral, just a stone's throw away, there was already a row of coffins draped in the Iraqi flag, lined up in front of the altar. Every so often, the doors would open and more coffins would be carried in, one after the other, bringing fresh waves of sobs and applause from the grieving congregation. On her knees, slumped over the end of the coffin laid out closest to me was a young mother who had obviously just lost her husband. Their bright little daughter, less than two years old, was playing on the coffin, running back and forth, obviously just too young to understand. Every so often, she would ask her mother, where's Papa? And the reply would come, papa's with Jesus. You could tell from the dull, faraway look in the mother's eyes that she was looking back on the life she had been living and that had just been abruptly ended and ahead to a new and harder life as a widow with young children to bring up in a place where life and loved ones could be taken away at any moment without warning. Perhaps it was a small comfort to those stricken with grief that among the many who came to honor their dead were people and leaders from other communities, Sunni and Shia Muslims, politicians and clerics. What happened at the Catholic cathedral sent a huge shockwave through the Christian communities here, but it was also felt by all the others, despite the many unspeakable atrocities they themselves have suffered in recent years. Think of the many Shia mosques and shrines that have been massively bombed. The funeral processions and pilgrim groups attacked, the markets and crowded streets devastated, and the thousands of Sunnis abducted, tortured and killed just for being Sunnis. But many instinctively felt that the attack on the church was something special. The Christians are a minority, less than 5% of the population. They're not involved in the struggle for power or mastery. So for most Iraqis, attacking them is haram, which means not just forbidden, but also something that just shouldn't happen, something reprehensible and pitiful and wrong. Because the Christians are a threatened and dwindling minority. Many probably also felt that this was an attack on the very fabric of Iraqi society, on the coexistence that has to survive if Iraq itself is to survive. It was Bishop Meti Metoq's cathedral that was attacked. He lost two of his priests killed and half his regular congregation dead or wounded. When his flock ask him now should they stay or try to leave, he says they should stay to bear witness to their faith. But he says sadly, he knows he can't stop them going. Everybody knows that nobody is truly safe. The government may step up security around churches, but the community is scattered everywhere, impossible to protect as this latest rash of bomb attacks shows. And going many of them already are. Fadhya and her family are leaving this week for California. They've been waiting two years for their American visas, so it's not a spur of the moment thing. She says she just wants not to be afraid anymore, afraid for herself and for her four and eight year old boys, as well as Arabic. The family speak their own Assyrian language, as their community here has since biblical times. But there's hardly a word of English between them. These are not posh people, not middle class. Fadia worked for us as a cleaner. She's never been on a plane before. It's sad to think that if I ever see Fadya again, she'll be different. And her boys, Issa and Edmond, will be little Americans. Her mother's still here, though, and her brothers. But other Christians are leaving every day. They know it's not a question of just protecting them, but of mending Iraq, perhaps out of the current intense political struggle. Will emerge the foundations of a stable future. That's all the Christians who remain behind here can pray for, so that these ancient communities can cling on. And eventually people like Fadya can think about coming back.
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
Jim Muir in Baghdad. David Cameron must about now be tucking into dinner at the end of the first day's proceedings at the G20 summit in South Korea. Earlier, he was in China, making a speech setting out the case for economic and political freedom. He said a parliamentary democracy and a free media and judiciary were the best guarantors of prosperity and stability. He hoped China would, in time, go down the path of greater political openness. As Mr. Cameron and his team left London for the Far East, Radio 4's John Humphreys was travelling in the opposite direction. He'd just spent several days reporting in China for the Today programme. As he returned home, he considered whether the country's march to prosperity might run into trouble.
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BBC Radio Producer
It was a long time since I'd last reported from China, and when my editor asked me to go back, I was pretty reluctant. I remembered how it was you couldn't go anywhere without a minder. Everyone regarded you with great suspicion. So many areas were off limits and the chances of getting anything remotely like a frank interview with a senior figure in the Communist Party, what about the same as a dinner invitation from Mao. And he'd been dead for a decade, so I knew it would be frustrating and I'd regret coming. I was wrong. No minders and few restrictions on who I could talk to or where I could go. I had one visit from the police. That was in Chongqing, a city that should stand as a warning to everyone of what can happen when growth is unchecked, and the only question is how many high rise buildings and factories you can throw up and how fast. The pollution in what was once a beautiful city set in the hills rising from the Yangtze river is quite literally breathtaking. You can't see the top of the skyscrapers many days, and they're so crowded together they look like pencils crammed into a jar that's not quite big enough for them all. But the police officer was charming. His only word of warning was to suggest that when I spoke to local people, I should remember that many of them are unsophisticated and he'd appreciated if I tried not to embarrass them. Fair enough. But let me enter two big caveats. One, life is much more difficult for many correspondents actually based in China. Some of them have a very hard time of it. And two, I couldn't Talk to everyone I wanted not. For instance, China's most famous dissident, Liu Xiaobo. He won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, and he's been feted by Western countries as a hero in the democratic cause. But the Chinese threw him in jail for 11 years for inciting subversion. No one is allowed to visit him or even talk to his wife when a man like Liu is in jail. It may seem odd to talk about greater freedom in China, but perhaps we should remember that this is much more than a country. It is an ancient civilization that has survived to emerge as a serious world power. And it's done it by endlessly reinventing itself. If the fear of the Communist Party leadership is losing its monopoly on power, the fear of many Chinese people is returning to instability. When we British talk about unstable government, we think of no party being able to command an overall majority in Parliament, for instance. When the Chinese talk about instability, they mean civil war, chaos, mass starvation. They mean tens of millions dying in a divided nation as its rulers fight for power. The last massive change began in the early 80s, the great economic Reform. That's when the leadership decided that China would become an economic power. And it has. Most experts calculate it will soon overtake the United States. The implications of that for the world are enormous. And for China, well, the poor people here and there are still vast numbers of them want to get richer. Of course they do. It's estimated that the very poorest, more than 20 million, live on the equivalent of £60 a year. But what everyone I spoke to said they want most is stability. They are terrified of returning to the dark days of chaos. And the fact is, China is still in a state of turmoil. How can it be otherwise when 8 million people leave their homes in rural areas every year and travel to the cities to find work, ending up as migrant workers living in foul dormitories, seeing their families perhaps only once a year. That's 8 million every year. The dangers are obvious. The leadership is about to publish a new five year plan which will promise to raise the wages of those who are paid pathetically little. But it is those low wages that keep the price of their goods low enough for the west to buy them in such huge quantities. If that means exports beginning to dry up, the jobs may disappear. And what happens to the migrant workers then? Social unrest is a real danger. And if wages rise, and the effect is to create a much larger educated middle class, there's another danger. The new middle class may well demand political reform that goes a long way beyond what the leadership is prepared to countenance the Communist Party is gambling that it can restore and maintain China's greatness without ripping the country apart. If it fails, none of us in this globalised, interdependent world can escape the fallout.
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
John Humphries Armistice Day is observed in nearly all the Commonwealth countries. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked in the ceremonies refers to the moment in 1918 when the first World War finally came to an end. The largest ceremonies commemorating the event in South Africa are in Johannesburg. The service at the Cenotaph there has been held for 84 consecutive years. Hamilton Wendy has been talking to one South African who, back in October 1942, was among the Commonwealth troops trying to stop the advance of the German armies across the deserts of North Africa.
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Hamilton Wendy
All across South Africa, people sweltered in the heat and waited for the cooling rains and for news from the war. For young Vic Campbell of the Rand Light infantry, who was in Egypt watching the Allied army stream across the desert, it was a sad thing to know that the Germans were chasing us. It was frightening. At 19, he was a combat veteran. He was a medic, and by 1942 he had been fighting for nearly two and a half years. I'm sitting with Vic, now 88, in the front veranda of his home in Johannesburg. The distant sound of thunder of the first rains seems uncannily to echo that past summer, 68 years ago. He smiles as he remembers. I joined the army straight from school. I was only 17 and my parents had to sign the forms allowing me to do it. I sip the tea Vic has made for me and let him take me back to another world, a series of lives barely remembered today. He has lived in the same house since he came back from the war and married Eileen, who died two years ago. Why did you go? I ask him. To fight for king and country, he says without hesitation. His words have the deep cadences of a personal truth. We were all school kids together, he says. It was the thing to do. The desert war quickly swallowed him up. There were nightly bombings by the German and Italian air forces. He pauses, trying to explain the paradox of youth and of war. We were happy to be there. It was something new in our lives. Soon, though, he was in the thick of the fighting. We were under constant bombardment, he tells me. The Germans set the shells to explode in the air so that we were sprayed with shrapnel. I was bloody scared, he says. And then Duggie McKay had his legs blown off right next to me. I patched him up as best I could, gave him a shot of morphine. Vic shakes his head slowly, but I knew he was going to die. There was more horror. Davis was in a slit trench and his officer told him to stop bobbing his head up because of German snipers. He was shot with his helmet on and the bullets circled the steel inside, he says, his voice soft. When I undid the chin strap, his skull came off in a ring and I could see his brain beneath. Vic shows me with his large fingers the hands of a man who, after the war, worked for over 30 years on the mines. He folds him into his lap and hesitates. That was the worst thing I saw. Finally, on 23rd October 1942, the biggest artillery barrage ever by the Allies began. I was there, he says, and I'll never forget it, the screaming of the shells and the explosions lighting up the sky like daylight. It was the beginning of the Battle of El Alamein. We had to clear out the enemy, and my unit was the first to signal. All clear. Vic's blue eyes shine. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. Then he smiles broadly. But the proudest moment was when I married Eileen. Meeting her was the best thing in my life. He shows me a picture of their wedding day from 1946. They are young and beautiful. The war was over, and they smile at us through the black and white tones of the photograph. Would you go to the war again now? I ask when we are back together on his veranda outside, the first hesitant drops of the summer rain have begun and the air is cooling. The war was a wonderful experience, he tells me. But I wouldn't go back and fight again. I wouldn't like there to be another war where our youth would have to fight. I have a hatred for war. He shifts in his chair, his eyes bright. He looks over at me carefully. All those dead bodies, he says. I'll never forget them.
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
Hamilton Wendy in Johannesburg the American authorities say they want to work more closely with Yemen on counter terrorist matters. The move comes after a Yemen based group said to be affiliated to Al Qaeda was accused of trying to bring down US Bound aircraft with explosives hidden in computers. Printers. Scotland Yard said yesterday one of the devices was timed to go off on a plane as it flew over America's eastern seaboard. There's already substantial cooperation between the U.S. and Yemen. American special operations trainers work with the country's military. Their pilotless drone aircraft fly over Yemeni territory. But Lina Sinjab says many local people are upset that the west sees their country as A source of danger. They feel it does little to help them deal with their extensive political, economic and social problems.
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Lina Sinjab
As a first time visitor to Sana', A, Yemen's capital, two things strike you immediately. The intense security presence and the poverty. Army patrols are everywhere. Military planes fly overhead. Columns of armored vehicles move constantly around the city. And then there's the parallel image. The lack of development and building controls, the bumpy roads and the beggars. They are everywhere, old and young, men and women. But these aren't necessarily the images of Yemen which many outsiders see. To them, this country is associated with terrorism, and that's having a savage effect on its economy. How can the nation develop when all the focus is on fighting terrorism? This will not help a man called Fares Senebani tells me bitterly. He publishes an English language magazine. And why is the country being punished collectively? To fight terrorism, he goes on, you should develop and create jobs and not only use force. It was a message I heard from almost everyone I encountered in Yemen. People here clearly have a lot of pride and seem to have been hurt by the way the world portrays them. I talked to two women I met in the street. They are traditional Yemenis wearing full facial veils or niqab. I could only see their eyes, but that didn't prevent me from talking to them, nor did it stop them speaking their minds. They rejected any idea that pursuing a conservative Islamic agenda inevitably led to militancy and violence. They insisted they were against Al Qaeda and against terrorism. What we wear and how we live is only our tradition, they said, insisting, but just because we are different doesn't mean that we support terrorism. Nevertheless, the meeting left me with the question marks about a society where most of the women are covered in black and most of the men have very conservative views. Yet it struck me that people here are free to express their views. They are not worried about talking to journalists. And the niqab doesn't seem to prevent women from working and being active in society. Illiteracy, though, is high among women, and many radical imams believe they should stay at home as housewives. At Friday prayers, I listened to an anti Western imam preaching not only against extremism, but also against Western influence. I was soon surrounded by local women, their faces covered, asking me questions. They weren't happy when they saw me taking a photograph. I thought I was in trouble. But when I told them I only took a picture of a little girl praying. They greeted me warmly again, trying to explain that they were against Al Qaeda. Wearing the niqab didn't mean they were bad. Yemenis are frustrated. Men and women, old and young, rich and poor, all say the outside world has the wrong impression. They are not terrorists. I went to a private university. Boys were in jeans, while some of the girls were in full niqab. Others wore headscarves and had their faces uncovered. The girls were playing a game of volleyball against the boys. Others sat on benches alongside, chatting. Taha and Hiam, who are both in their early 20s, came up to me and told me in fluent English how they are working hard and trying to bring change to their country and to help the poor. When they're not studying, they told me they teach, distribute food, try to help out where they can. Again, they spoke of the world's negative image of them. If we only think negative, they told me, we won't be able to move ahead. And we do want to move forward. It's us who are paying the price. He em said this image means we can't get scholarships overseas, so we can't travel and interact with the world. How can we bring about change, she asked in frustration, if we don't have the tools for it? This is clearly not a place geared up for work. Yemenis start their day late. They finish very early for lunch and then spend long hours in the afternoon chewing the mildly narcotic leaf cut. This cannot be a productive country. While the working day is so short, there are young, well educated people here keen to bring about change. But while everyone insists on equating Yemen with terrorism, this might be difficult for them to achieve.
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
And that was Leena Sinjab. Now, if your specialist subject is the study of giant manta rays, you won't need me to tell you that the best place in the world to examine these extraordinary creatures is a small lagoon in the Maldives, far away in the Indian Ocean. The manta ray, with its huge wingspan, looks a bit like a stingray, but is in fact harmless to human beings. Tim Eckhart's been to Hanifaru Bay in the Maldives to swim with the rays as they gather to feed. And he's discovered that preserving their habitat is a cause close to the heart of the Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed.
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BBC Radio Announcer
I stare into the eye of the manta ray as it cruises past me just inches from my face. Great black wings, 3 meters wide. Behind it, there's another manta, and another, and another, forming an orderly queue as they open their mouths wide to scoop up the tiny black specks of plankton on which they feed. I'm soon surrounded by more than 40 of these flat but Graceful creatures swooping and soaring through the water as gracefully as any bird on the wing. From above, they're like black shadows. But from below, it's as if I can see their working parts. Vast white bellies covered in spots, rippling gills like silk curtains. And those curious mouths located right at the front of the head into which I can peer, like Jonah about to descend into the jaws of the whale. But these are peaceful giants, going about their business, seemingly unafraid of me and the other divers who get in their way. Above water, I watch from the diving boat as the manta rays congregate in the shallows inside the reef. Standing on the prow is Guy Stevens, a British marine biologist who studied the mantas at Hanifaru for several years. They come into the bay at high tide, he explains, and sometimes There can be 200 rays in this one spot, which is only the size of a football pitch. The challenge for Stevens is that local hotels and the so called safari boats that carry scuba divers around the Maldives have also discovered the secret of Hanifaru. The government has declared the bay a protected area, says Stevens. But we need a patrol boat or a ranger to monitor just how many people can swim with the mantas at any one time. Sometimes the rays have to compete with a hundred swimmers and divers crowded in here. The government has declared manta rays off limits to fishermen, along with sharks. But elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, both mantas and sharks are being increasingly targeted because they're valued either as food or or as ingredients in Chinese medicine. The manta's life cycle is more like that of a mammal than a fish. They don't reproduce until they're about 15 years old and produce only one baby a year at most. Guy Stevens tells me that manta rays have the largest brain in relation to their body size of any fish. There are even several documented cases of them seeking out human contact to help them disentangle themselves from nets or fishing lines, which cut into their flesh and cause serious injury. Protecting the rays of Hanifaru is just one of the underwater challenges facing the Maldives government. Corals in the Maldives and virtually everywhere in the tropics face a terminal decline, damaged by rising sea temperatures and pressure from man made development. At the Four Seasons resort, not far from Hanifaru, an experiment is taking place to transplant fragments of broken corals to create an artificial reef. When I visited the resort, there was a VIP visitor snorkeling above the new reef. President Mohammed Nasheed, accompanied by his wife and two young children. A few European and Japanese tourists watched with bemusement as the president and his family emerged from the water surrounded by security officers and advisors, still dripping wet and wearing his swimsuit. The president shook my hand and we sat close to the beach sipping ginger tea as we discussed the marine environment. Growing coral like this may be the future for protecting our shoreline from the sea, a kind of bioengineering more effective than concrete and steel barriers, said Nasheed. The marine world is a beautiful attraction for tourists, but remember, it's where almost all of our food comes from. Tourism and scuba diving are just the latest ways in which the reefs and the ocean have sustained our islands. Our lives, he mused, depend upon a healthy relationship with the Indian Ocean. In 2009, President Nasheed attracted media attention from around the world by getting his cabinet to sign a declaration on climate change. What was unusual was that the cabinet convened underwater wearing scuba gear. With nowhere in the Maldives more than 2 meters above sea level, the threat from climate change is very real. Nasheed's decision to protect the manta rays of Hanifaru and is also a matter of economics. It's calculated that tourism to see the schooling mantas in this one bay alone is worth almost half a million pounds a year. These friendly giant fish are a valuable asset for now. They're safe if a little crowded. But they'll be safer still if funding can be found for that patrol boat
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Programme Presenter (Kate Adie)
at Hanewharu Tim ercot watching the mantas mass in the Maldives and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here with more from our own correspondence on Saturday morning. Why don't you join us? Good bye.