← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Decision Time for the Aborigines
00:27:46
What price can you put on memory? Neil Trevithick is with the Aborigines whose in for...
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This is a download from the BBC. It's the latest edition of From Our Own correspondent, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady Today.
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What are ancient memories worth? It's a crucial question for Australia's Aborigines as they find themselves thrust into the frontline of global economics. Six years on we learn no one's been brought to court for atrocities carried out during the civil war in Nepal. There's a final glimpse of Venezuela's Comandante as calm in death as he was loud in life. And once there were hundreds of hermits living in caves in the mountains of Lebanon. Today there are just three. We're off to meet one of these defenders of an ancient faith. The long and wild western coast of Australia is fringed by hundreds of miles of pristine beaches. But this is also the part of the country which powers the nation's economy. Australia has gold, diamonds, cobalt and coal. But this is primarily iron ore country. Huge amounts are dug out of the red soil here, much of it bound for China. Many of these mines are in Aboriginal territory and Neil Trevithick says some Aborigines have now begun to share in this mineral wealth.
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The trains clank into Dampier Port day and night to be loaded with iron ore. I watch as the red earth pours in a constant stream into the huge bulk carrier wagons. And yet there's nobody here in this vast landscape. The loading's all being done by somebody moving a computer joystick in the mining company's office. 3 hours flight away in Perth. Emptiness is what the early settlers saw here. Terra nullius. The conflict that began as the longest continuous culture on the planet began to appear out of the bush 200 years ago is still going on. The Aboriginal population continues to fight for what is called native title over their lands and thus the right to negotiate with mining companies for some small share in their wealth. Some Aboriginal communities have come into millions of Australian dollars. Others have nothing. I stand in deep gorge on the Burrup Peninsula amongst one of the highest concentrations of Aboriginal rock art on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of drawings are etched into the red rocks covering a period of some 30,000 years. Here is a pre ice age flat tailed kangaroo overlaid with a drawing of a turtle. In the time that has elapsed between these two works of art, the sea moved inland by more than five miles and the diet changed from meat to seafood. It's 38 degrees at 10 o' clock in the morning and the sweat from my hands makes the microphone slippery. A few hundred yards away, a Six foot tall kangaroo looks at me before thumping around a corner of rock. The ground bakes. The flies buzz so loud around my head that I record them as I try to take in artistic endeavour on a geological time scale. On the way out of the valley, my guide points to another drawing. We think that's Dampier's ship. He says ships and sailing are my other life. And I pounce on this drawing like a man finding water in the desert. I photograph it, run my hands over it. William Dampier landed here looking for water in 1699 from his ship the Roebuck. My emotional reaction to seeing it drawn on that rock was different to my appreciation of the Aboriginal drawings. And I now reflect on the amount of cultural baggage I was able to bring to bear on that ship. But I have nothing to bring to bear on the thousands of astonishing drawings that the Aboriginal people have left all around me. I just don't know how to engage with them. The question of Aboriginal land rights and heritage is a canker in the heart of modern Australia. You can diminish Aboriginal numbers statistically to 2% of the total population. But here in the rural Northwest they're more like 30%. Before the mining boom, this burning vastness was their last line of retreat. But now they've been thrust into the front line of global economics. Already mining earns Western Australia more than $100 billion a year. But how does one compare dollars earned to the value of what we might learn from a culture for whom land is a religion? What is the value of a unique civilization in comparison with a 30 year mining boom? How do you compare them? Back in Perth, I put these questions to Colin Barnett, the premier of Western Australia who makes all the big decisions granting mining licen government building with Aboriginal art on the walls. His answer is as follows and I quote. I understand the philosophical point you make but I also understand that someone has to make a decision and that is a government. After thousands of years of occupancy for the Aborigines this is the one roll of the dice. This is the critical decision they are making. This is their one opportunity for economic self determination. So it seems the only way the modern world can find a valuing Aboriginal culture is to throw money at it. It's all we have. As we leave the heat haze of deep gorge a large bird appears in the hard blue sky circling above us. An eagle. It cruises along the escarpment and then spins tightly over our heads. Ken A our guiding anthropologist, nods upwards. The Aborigines would say that he's an ancestor checking we haven't damaged the rocks of this sacred site. But I reply your post enlightenment whitefellow would say that you're bound to get birds congregating in the thermals rising from this hot rock. Aye, grins Ken. But why now, at this moment, just as we're leaving?
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And that was Neil Trevithick. It's six years now since the end of a long insurgency in Nepal, which saw the death or disappearance of more than 17,000 people. When the Maoist inspired rebels finally signed a peace agreement with the authorities in 2006, both sides promised to bring those accused of war crimes to court. But nothing's happened. Joanna Jolly's been to the foothills of the Himalayas to hear from some of those Nepalese still waiting for justice.
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There's a game you can play when you're traveling through Nepal. You can look up into the cornflower blue sky and wonder whether the white smudges on the horizon are clouds or mountains. The air is clear. Long shadows fall over hills carved into staircases by farmed terraces. Mud houses the color of the orange Himalayan soil dot the landscape. Corrugated iron roofs reflect the glare of the sun. This is not a place that brings to mind brutality. But it's these hills that saw the worst of Nepal's civil war, A conflict mostly overlooked by the rest of the world. Maoist inspired rebels promised equality for all in this ancient caste dominated society. But like most wars, the conflict also became a cover for the settling of old grudges, for the theft of money and property, and for other more horrific crimes. I joined Dewi Sonua, a 45 year old who's returning to the village where she once lived with her daughter Mina. Mina, who is named after the mynah bird, was 15 years old, a slight and pretty schoolgirl who had ambitions to become a journalist. That was until nine years ago, she was forcibly taken from her home by soldiers and never seen again. Her mother, Dewi, doesn't know why she was taken, but she's a forceful woman, not easily intimidated. And back then she'd been speaking out against army abuses. She thinks Mina was taken as punishment. Dewi went straight to the local barracks to try to find her daughter, but was told she wasn't there. It took her nearly three years to find out the truth. It came from an internal army report leaked to a local newspaper. The report describes in disturbing detail how Minor was first held underwater, an attempt to force her to admit to being a Maoist. A soldier then administered electric shocks to the girl's wet hands and feet. Miner's wrists started to bleed. The report said the soldier had stepped back in fear. But other officers took over and within a few hours Miner was dead. During the war, it was convenient for both sides to describe all deaths as the result of clashes between state forces and Maoist rebels. These were known as encounters. The officer in charge of Miner's interrogation attempted to make her death look like the result of an encounter. He ordered a soldier to shoot her dead body in the back. The leaked army report led to an investigation. Miner's body was exhumed. She had been buried in the army barracks right next to the kitchen block. Dewey was there to see this. She recognised a string of blue glass beads on the remains, a necklace she'd given to her daughter. Dewi took us to the barracks, which is still being used to train soldiers from the Nepal army to work on United nations peacekeeping operations. As Dewi was pointing out the gravesite, a soldier shouted at us to move on. Dewi shouted back, calling him a son of a bitch. Dewi is not the only Nepali to be angry at the lack of justice for atrocities committed during the war. Nepal's leaders, when they signed a peace agreement, promised to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and to prosecute those accused of serious crimes. That was six years ago, but nothing's happened. Abuses were committed by both sides. Although Nepal's courts have issued arrest warrants for both Maoists and members of the security forces, no one has been prosecuted. The army conducted their own court martial into the death of minor Sinewar. We went to meet their spokesman to talk about this. Brigadier General Suresh Raj Sharma is a sophisticated man. He explained how in Nepali culture it's considered wrong to harm females, even to slaughter or eat female animals. How then, I asked, did a 15 year old schoolgirl come to be tortured and killed by the army? He faltered. It was a lapse, he said, but one which had been dealt with by the court martial. But had it. The sentences handed out by the army amounted to fines of no more than a few hundred pounds and six months confinement to barracks. And arrest warrants issued by the district court have been consistently ignored. The officers remain free until Nepal's politicians fulfil their promise to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's likely all those responsible for war crimes will remain free. As long as that happens, the anger of victims like Dohi Sonua will continue to grow. As we leave her village in the shadow of Nepal's pristine white mountains, the fate of Dowi's daughter Maina remains a dark and rotten crime. The country's dirty little war, it seems, is still far from over.
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Joanna Jolly and she'll have more about that in assignment on the BBC World Service Today and tomorrow. Venezuela is still officially in mourning for Hugo Chavez, the colorful, controversial and divisive socialist president who died last week. His body has been lying in state at the military academy in Caracas, where he trained as a cadet. Huge numbers of his followers have been filing past his open casket. The government now plans to change the constitution so that he can finally be laid to rest in the National Pantheon building next to the country's independence hero, Simon Bolivar. Will Grant, who was the BBC's correspondent in Venezuela for several years, was looking on as the crowds paid their final respects.
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For hours they had waited, holding umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun, bottles of water in their hands and children in their arms with red T shirts on their backs, and one man, Hugo Chavez, in their hearts. 10 million had already passed that way by the time we arrived, said the revolutionary government he formed and which hung on his every word. His untimely death from cancer has sent these supporters into shock, even though in their quiet moments, away from the noise and bustle of the revolution, they must have known it was coming. So they came here to the military academy in Caracas to say goodbye to their leader, their comandante. From across Venezuela, states with names like Anzawategui, Lara, Falcon, Carabobo, Bolivar, and Mr. Chavez's native Barinas, they came, and when they got here, they began to queue. In the first few days, the lines were chaotic and snaked back for kilometers. People lined up for over 12 hours to glimpse him, some fainting from the heat and the emotion along the way. Others simply turned back and vowed to come again when things were calmer. Things were calmer now. We joined the queues on the ninth day of mourning, and the wait had been cut in half, about five or six hours. A man called Orlando said he'd been out there as he turned into the final stretch. His brown face was streaked with sweat, and his red and black football shirt contrasted with his snow white hair. We've come from Maracaibo, he told me, Venezuela's second city near the border with Colombia. Orlando had tried earlier in the week, but this time was determined to see him. Ahead of us, a young girl, Maria Fernanda, the tops of her arms sunburnt, cradled her baby Sofia, asleep inside a blanket. Aged one month and one day. She was born under Chavez, maria Fernanda said with pride. Suddenly I fast forwarded in my mind to a moment when Sofia's mother tells her of the day she took her to see Chavez. If it didn't feel like history in the making before, it certainly did now. Underneath the tiny lights of the shanty town opposite called El Valle, the cadets were standing on parade under a massive Venezuelan flag fluttering at half mast. The Chavistas were winding their way towards the chapel where Chavez lay. An array of every pro government T shirt designed slogans such as Forward Comandante or With Chavez Pride were emblazoned across their chests and their backs. They had images of Che Guevara on their hats and Venezuelan flags painted on their faces. The air was filled with the scent of oranges they'd handed out to revitalize the weary. The chatter was of conspiracy theories. Chavez had been poisoned by the CIA, they insisted. Beware of the lies, a middle aged man called Andres said, a handkerchief covering his bald head, about opposition claims that Chavez had actually died in December. Apart from the occasional chant, a hush descended on the crowd as we drew closer to the chapel. There was a noticeable rise in tension as we turned the final corner and orders began to be barked by the military. Bags on the right. Switch off your phones and put them away, they demanded. I was reminded of the moment before a press conference when Chavez was about to enter the room. Being around him always made people a little nervous. Even in death, that residual tension remained. And then, suddenly we were there. Inside the modern but ornate church was Hugo Chavez, surrounded by candles laid out for his devotees, serene, quiet and at rest. His eyes and lips were closed. The thick make up gave him a slightly waxy appearance. Yet here he was, the man deified by so many who'd provoked such love among his own, but such ire among his opponents, as calm in death as he was loud in life. In the cool Caracas night, I felt a little dazed, caught up in my thoughts about a man who'd been the center of sometimes the bane of my professional life for years. The woman ahead of me was in tears, being comforted by her elderly mother. Others outside were holding each other too. Perhaps this adulation, this love, which his opponents could never quite understand nor recreate, will be Hugo Chavez's true legacy, best summarized in the words of his supporters. Dodos Somos Chavez, we're all.
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Chavez will grant. In Venezuela, a damaging dispute over oil exports between Sudan and its neighbour, South Sudan, appears to have been resolved. The pipelines, which carry the precious cargo north through the border and onto an export terminal on the Red Sea, are said to reopen before the end of the month. Both Countries rely on the oil exports to provide them with the foreign currency they need to import food and other essential supplies. And in the south, as Richard Neill's been observing, a weakened economy has meant the local population living with frequent power cuts.
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It's hard to find anywhere in Juba where you can't hear the drone of a power generator. The smallest of shops have them. Hotels and restaurants have them. Health clinics and houses have them. The sound is so commonplace that the only time you really ever notice it is that blissful moment when a generator is turned off and you are suddenly enveloped in a long forgotten feeling of peace. Generators have always been an indispensable part of life in Juba, supplementing electricity from the creaking town grid during frequent down times. But since South Sudan stopped exporting oil, its main source of income after a spat with Sudan early last year, generators have become the only source of power for all but the briefest of interludes. Generators might be noisy, but it is only the most fortunate that can afford them. Each one costs the equivalent of hundreds of pounds and can eat up more than 50 pounds a week, even if it is only on for a few hours. In a country where the majority of people live on less than a pound a day, this is well beyond their reach. As the government's new austerity budget begins to bite, many official buildings cannot afford a generator either. In one ministry I go to, work has come to a standstill because the battery has run down on the one laptop shared by several officials. No power not only means no light, but also no electric fans to provide respite from the searing heat and the oppressive humidity. And no fridge to prevent food from going off or keep medication cool. In a country where there is so much poverty and disease, a power source can often be the difference between life and death. When I fall ill from food poisoning, a local friend tells me to go to the clinic immediately. In South Sudan, diarrhea is a killer, he says. With no gas network either, those fortunate enough to have a cooker have to power it from gas canisters. These, too, are often unsafe. The last time I used one, a ball of flames scorched my toes. Rising costs are making life even more difficult for local people. In recent months, the price of generator fuel has gone up by more than a third, and a bag of charcoal used for cooking has shot up to £100 South Sudanese pounds, or about £15 sterling. Food prices have also increased by more than a third in the past year. The lack of money is stimulating. Hard work and ingenuity Among a population that, after decades of civil war, has grown used to operating in survival mode. A local clergyman fortunate enough to have a well paid job says that everything is so expensive that even he has to supplement his earnings by cultivating more on his land. In an effort to bridge the country's food deficit, the government has granted all its employees Friday afternoons off to grow food, but it is a duty that not everyone takes seriously. Poverty is also breeding crime and extortion. Roadblocks are growing ever more frequent as officials look for ways to derive income from the slightest of infringements, real or imaginary. Amos, a jovial young Kenyan with a thriving taxi business, says that he is stopped several times a day on the most spurious of charges and forced to pay off officials so that he can carry on with his business. Security is deteriorating too late. Last year, the night air was perforated by gunshots, and there were reports of armed robberies by army and security officials who hadn't been paid for months and needed money for Christmas. Most drivers are now reluctant to take fares late at night for fear of being stopped or worse. The line between ingenuity and extortion is becoming increasingly blurred. On my most recent arrival at Juve's makeshift airport terminal, a graying elderly man insisted that I couldn't use a luggage trolley without him being in attendance. When I paid him what I thought was a fair price for his services, a threatening crowd surrounded me, demanding I pay him the equivalent of 30 pounds sterling. The group's ringleader, I later learned, was a policeman. Police are all thieves, says Tony, another Kenyan, as he drives me to my hotel. As South Sudan waits to see whether the agreement to allow the resumption of oil exports holds, there is a feeling of defiance that if it doesn't, the economy will somehow hold on. The south has never had an economy, one local man tells me, so why should now be any different? But while the government may be able to survive, the people are suffering more and more.
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And that was Richard Neild. The new Pope faces an awesome array of tasks as he gets down to work at the Vatican. Perhaps he'll want to address the plight of the 14 million or so Christians who live in the Middle East. They face problems in a number of countries. Lebanon was home to some of the world's very first Christians. Most of the people there were Maronite Catholics when the country gained independence from France in 1943. Today, because of emigration, they make up only a third of the population. John Laurenson has been to the mountains in the north of the country. To a place called Holy Valley to meet some of the defenders of this ancient faith.
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I've got one of those hard wheelie suitcases that are built to the maximum size for hand baggage on low cost airlines. You feel pretty clever when you get to boarding and it slides into the baggage gauge like the well lubricated part of a nicely crafted machine tool with. But not when your taxi driver says he's not going any further and leaves you and your easy baggage in the middle of the Lebanese mountains. It's just down there, he said, and disappeared into the mist. It was very quiet once he'd gone. Well, it was once I'd given up wheeling and was carrying my case instead. Craggy rocks above, a stream rushing somewhere below and waterfalls tumbling down hundreds of metres in between. The Convent of Canubeen, which is where I was headed, was never supposed to be easy to get to. That's why in the 15th century, the patriarchs, the Popes if you like, of the Maronite faith, came here to hide from the terrifying slave warriors of the Arab and then Ottoman empires who were occupying their country. And they hid in caves. They prayed and said mass, ate and slept in the bare rock and disappeared down secret tunnels when their persecutors came. Raid. They lived like this for 400 years. I climb up to the convent built into the mountainside. Three nuns live there very, very quietly. It gets dark and I talk to one of them outside as the night birds twit and twoo. We live with nature, says Sister Lina. She and her sisters have stopped eating animals, but listen to them scurrying about at night. I feel God's presence in everything, she says, her voice soft and calm. Must be the low protein diet. She tells me about her work as an icon painter. I start with the clothes, concentrating hard on all those folds of cloth. But when I get to Christ's face, I'm not thinking anymore. I'm very calm, very peaceful. And there's this joy that rises inside me that ends up overwhelming me. And I see before me the face that's finished. I'm in ecstasy, she says, and giggles. In a tiny chapel in that bare rock, she and her sisters light candles that flicker before the golden faces of Mary and the Christ Child. Praise him, you mountains and all you hills, they sing. You fruit trees and all you cedars. The following morning, I strike out along a path that leads further up the valley, scrunching over acorns and the occasional porcupine quill. Way above the snow line, a century's old Cedars, the tree on the Lebanese flag. Huge trees which gave the wood that Solomon used to build his temple. And watching, too, over this holy valley, every bit as extraordinarily, are hermits, perpetuating a Maronite tradition that goes back to the origins of this religion, because Saint Maron himself was a hermit. In the glory days of Lebanese hermits, there was barely a cave in this valley that didn't have a monk in it. There were 800 of them. There are still three. I find the cave of one of them, a kindly looking man called Dario, with the black robes of the Lebanese Maronite order and a long grey beard. I ask him what his life's like. Fourteen hours of prayer each day, three for work, two for study and five for sleep. One meal a day, no meat during Lent, and five other times a year when he fasts. He also gives up milk, fruit and anything sweet. He sleeps on the floor with a stone for a pillow. My life is a sacrifice for everyone, he says. For peace in the world, for the sick, for all hearts. His pale blue eyes, as he tells me this, are full of kindness and delight with the world. Back in Beirut, my suitcase rolling again, I go to visit the Archbishop Paul Matard. In the large and airy study of his palace, aged but splendid in his purple robes, he motions me to be seated, sinks into a throne of dark carved cedar and sighs. You are a European, he starts gloomily. Europe doesn't care anymore about religion. But you should, he tells me, care about religious freedom, our right to exist. Ask him about the future of Christians in the Middle East. Many have already left, he shrugs. Things have been difficult since the seventh century, the birth of Islam, he says. His Excellency is not one to take the short term view. As I'm leaving, he offers me a chocolate and I think of Lena and Dario in their wintry caves up in that mountain valley. The Christians in Lebanon know their history, know what they've been through to remain in this land. And these ones, at least, are here to stay.
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John Laurenson in the mountains of northern Lebanon. That's it. More from correspondence around the world in our Saturday program at 11:30. Until then, goodbye.