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From Our Own Correspondent
DRC - A Country On Hold?
00:27:52
Waiting for elections and trying to answer awkward questions about sex in the DRC.
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This is the BBC.
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Hello. Today, headlines here about sexual harassment, but our correspondent fears a backlash against MeToo in the United States or a suspicion that old habits die hard. Cuba, just 90 miles south of the U.S. was pulled a little closer diplomatically by Barack Obama, but President Trump is now widening the divide again from Bolivia to Russia. A homecoming for the old believers. Sect and border change a tricky political problem usually, but not in France. Or is it Spain? The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been waiting a long time to have their say on who runs their country. Elections that should have taken place in 2016 have now been delayed until December this year, and many are losing patience. There are regular protests organized by a body linked to the country's powerful Catholic Church. Last weekend, at least six people died after security forces stepped in to disperse demonstrators and dozens of other people have been killed over the past year. The uncertainty is taking its toll on the country and on the Congolese, as William Edmondson has found.
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It's called Dr. Love, says Immy Docteur Love, to be precise. Written the French way, it's a smartphone app to help the Congolese find answers to awkward questions about sex. Imi Lokulutu is proud of his creation. It's a Congolese solution to a Congolese problem. Talking about sex, he tells me in his deep, gravelly Barry White voice, is often taboo. The Love app is close to his heart. Before he qualified as a doctor, he'd got his then girlfriend pregnant. He'd heard that if a woman took two anti malaria tablets before sex, it wouldn't happen. His son, now 21, is a product of wrong information, so he's out to make sure others get it right. But Emi, like so many Congolese, has a problem. He needs investors. When protests loom, the government switches off the Internet, putting him and his staff out of a job. In this context, nobody will give you money, he says. It's impossible to plan because nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow. The protests stem from the president's reluctance to leave power. Joseph Kabila's second mandate ended more than a year ago. The constitution says he can't have a third, but he's still there. He says he needs another year in order to complete a census and prepare properly. The opposition says he had 15 years to do that before his second mandate ran out. They want to hear him say out loud that he will leave power. Meanwhile, like IMI's business plans, this country is on hold and there's so much catching up to do. One journey we made through the Forests of eastern Congo took a whole spine numbing day. On a good road, it would have taken an hour. You could fit 900 Luxembourgs into this country. But Luxembourg has twice as many miles of tarmac, schools and hospitals where they exist at all. Urgently need investment. And Congo has the buried treasure to pay for it. Huge reserves of copper, diamonds. It's the world's main producer of cobalt. That's the mineral needed to make the batteries for the electric cars we're all rushing to buy. Instead, the Congolese are looking in their rearview mirror and what they see approaching is a return to instability and conflict. The last war ended barely 15 years ago. For many, it's still a fresh memory. The east is a two hour flight from the capital. Government control there is weak and militias still hold sway. The map by a group monitoring them looks like a patchwork of more than 120 zones. The United nations is a major player here. With churches and charities. It tries to fill the gaps left by an overstretched and struggling government. General Derek Mgwebi heads the UN peacekeeping force. It's the largest in the world. But as the General knows, there are limits to what it can achieve. Addressing the nation on Radio Okapi, a station also funded by the un, he said that without a democratic transition, without an effort to end the political deadlock, there would always be conflict. And then there's those who are fleeing the violence, the Internally displaced people, or IDPs. Last year alone, violence in the central Kasai region forced another million into internal exile. But this isn't the message I want to leave you with, because it's never the message I leave Congo with. Let me tell you about Vumi. She lives near Uvira, a town in the east, recently attacked by militia. She's 17 and can't afford to go to school. Other girls fear they'll be attacked on their way to lessons. They prefer not to wear uniform, so they're learning by radio. In village halls, they sit quiet, attentive. The radio imposes discipline. Arrive late or talk and you'll miss the lesson. Vumi once saw doctors heal her mother. So now she wants to become a doctor. She wants to catch up on the years she's lost to the violence around her. The country might be on hold, but she's in a hurry. So for Immi, for Dr. Love, for Vumi, you have to hope the politicians can put peace first. You have to hope that they can find a way to make the Democratic Republic of Congo into a Democratic Republic.
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William Edmondson Social change is often effected by using the law and through education. Then it bumps into everyday ingrained behaviour. The cry of MeToo about sexual harassment is daily in the headlines and has spread worldwide, to be met in some places with scorn or disbelief. Following the allegations in the New York Times against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Katy K hoped the new willingness to speak out against bullying and harassment would make life easier for women in the U.S. but she says it's far from simple.
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It's hard to believe that there's only a month between elation and anxiety. Somehow between mid December and mid January, the the MeToo movement changed. It went from hope to concern. Or maybe it just grew up. We thought, I thought it was going to be simple and clear. The Harvey Weinstein case certainly made it look that way. Bad guys would be exposed and then punished and their fate would deter other bad guys. A reality of professional life that every woman knew about and remarkably few men were aware of was about to change for the better. We hoped young women wouldn't have to go through the corporate trial by lechery that my generation almost took for granted because of MeToo. Our daughters wouldn't have to worry about who they were left alone in the office with, or who to avoid in the lift, or how to deflect that tedious, hopeless come on from an aging superior. This was a revolution long past its due. Last year I saw men I knew and was friends with and axed from their jobs. It was sad, but it was also clear that in most of those cases, the multiple accounts of egregious behavior certainly suggested they deserved to be fired. But the revolution has recently grown more complicated. It's not that the ultimate goal of a safe, harassment free work environment is any less clear. There's just a dispute over how to get there. Perhaps it's part of the American character to leap in full steam ahead to the latest new cause, only to find that a moment of pause and reflection is actually needed. Dispiritingly, in the past fortnight we've had women turn on women for being so called bad feminists and failing to support the cause. And what do we make now of the situation where a man is fired because of that wonderfully ambiguous terminapropriate behavior, but then insists that the behavior was actually consensual? Or how do we react when there is not the telltale string of abuse allegations but just one bad hookup? And how will we resist fake accusations? These days, news travels fast across the web. If it's reliant on unverified information this movement could crack, and the credibility of real victims could be undermined. There's also a growing concern that even those men who have been largely supportive of exposing sexual harassment so far may start to feel that it's all gone too far, too fast. Many men are clearly nervous about this movement, some of them, no doubt with good cause. There are certainly still a lot more harassers at large than have been publicly exposed. But many other decent men are nervous because they've been thrown off balance. They don't know how to act anymore. Several times in the past few weeks, an interviewee I've known for years or a colleague I've worked with for ages has lent in for a hug, only to draw back and say, with an awkward laugh, oh no, you'll probably accuse me of harassment. Or they'll stop halfway through a benign compliment and mutter, embarrassed. I guess I can't say that anymore. Maybe that is the office environment that we'll end up with, one where there are no references to the way a woman looks, where there are no innocent hugs and certainly no flings between colleagues. Maybe that is the only way to secure a safe work environment for all women. And so what if men are under pressure? Some women ask. Let them suffer, they add, as women have for decades. And if a few innocent men are falsely accused or made to feel uncomfortable, it's a price worth paying. That sentiment is entirely understandable, but it's a precarious route. Of course, anyone who has abused their power and harassed women at work should be exposed and should be punished. But there needs to be a reasonable review process, and this cannot be about vengeance. Historically, women suffer when men get mad at us. I remember the mayor of a small town in Louisiana telling me that after the BP oil spill in 2010, he saw a 300% rise in domestic violence as men who'd been laid off work took out their frustration on their wives. That story's always struck me as a warning. Right now, men should quite rightly be examining their behavior and their consciences. A backlash against women is best avoided, however, if men are kept on side. And that means treading this MeToo path with courage and determination, but also with care and caution. This movement has become more complicated because it is complicated, and it should be complicated. We are dealing with human relationships. They've never been simple.
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Kati K. During Donald Trump's first year in office, he's made great play of undoing his predecessor's policies on Obamacare, the Iran deal, the Paris climate accord, and Cuba. Under President Obama, U.S. cuba relations thawed, and new trade and travel ties with the Communist run island made it easier for US Citizens to visit. President Trump, however, has unpicked much of that closer diplomatic relationship. And as Will Grant reports from Havana, Cubans are feeling the effects in unexpected ways.
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The fire engines sprayed two tall flumes of water into a perfect arc, producing a curtain of mist and tiny rainbows against the sun, which the passenger jet taxied into. The band struck up the national anthem, and a collection of baggage handlers, airport staff and dignitaries broke into applause. Quite a welcome for a flight that had barely spent an hour in the air as the passengers of Flight 387 disembarked on the last day of August 2016 clutching promotional Cuban flags and mini Stars and Stripes. They had, as the airline JetBlue never tired of repeating, made a little bit of history. Corporate hyperbole aside, it was pretty historic. The short hop from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Clara was the first direct commercial flight between the US and Cuba in over 50 years. The world already has enough bad stuff going on, said Giselle Cortes, one of the Cuban American crew members selected to be on the flight. We need to pause and remember that we're all humans. It's about making it a better place together. Lofty sentiments, maybe, but no doubt heartfelt ones. Such was the sense of bridges being built, of barriers being torn down during those heady days of bilateral engagement. Other airlines soon followed suit, unveiling scores more flights from US Cities to airports across Cuba. By then, things had moved fast. The US Embassy had reopened in Havana to great pomp and ceremony, and only a few months earlier, President Obama had walked the streets of Old Havana. That really was historic. All of which only makes the contrast with today even starker. On my last flight from Miami to Cuba, I doubt there were more than 20 people on board. I've got three seats to myself, an Argentinian teenager excitedly told her friend on the phone before we took off. Truth be told, we all had three seats to ourselves. Admittedly, it was low season, but surely this was not what the airline executives had in mind when they proudly announced their expansion into Cuba. At least one has already fallen by the wayside. Quietly and discreetly, Alaska Airlines has dropped its direct flight from Los Angeles to Havana, the only route linking the US west coast and the Cuban capital. We constantly evaluate to ensure we have the right number of seats to match the number of people who want to go there, the company said in a statement. Put simply, there weren't enough bums on seats. The airline blamed changes to Cuba travel policies. Specifically, that meant the Trump administration's new approach to the communist run island. Critics, of course, call it an old approach in combative form. At a rally in Miami last June, President Trump rolled back on his predecessor's thaw. In particular, he restricted the travel category under which most Americans had visited the once forbidden island. Officially, US citizens can't come to Cuba simply as tourists. So under Obama, on the US paperwork required before traveling to the country, most had been ticking a box marked People to people Exchange. It was a suitably vague term which could encompass everything from fine dining to deep sea diving. Ticking that box was enough to keep an unwelcome investigation by the Treasury Department at bay. Now, People to people has been all but scrapped in favor of a new support for the Cuban people. In Havana itself, the biggest impact has not been on the American visitors. Rather, it's on those Cubans wanting to go in the other direction. The US Embassy has practically shut down since a string of strange alleged sonic attacks left 24 US diplomats injured in Havana, and only a skeleton staff is left to run the office. Normally you'd find queues of Cubans outside the US Embassy building, paperwork in hand and a hopeful look in their eyes. Their fingers crossed that theirs would be the lucky visa application approved that day. It almost never would be. Only around 20,000 visas to emigrate to the US are issued each year. Today, the park around the embassy is empty. The once bustling placer is forlorn and devoid of life, leaves blowing around where children had played while their parents waited patiently to be called. Now those trying to reunite with their families in the US must take the long way round. They're queuing outside the Colombian Embassy, trying to reach Bogota to obtain the same US visas there that used to be issued in Havana. This is absurd, a 72 year old man with wispy white hair said, tears in his eyes as he bought coffee for his daughter, who was standing in line. The mad Year in the White House, ran the headline in Cuba's state owned newspaper, summing up President Trump's first 12 months. It's certainly been a bumpy ride so far, and many Cubans fear more turbulence
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ahead will grant the first Old Believers settled in the Far east of Russia in the 17th century, seeking refuge from persecution after their split with the rest of the Russian Orthodox Church. Opposition to liturgical reforms led to torture and the mass execution of those who didn't want to give up the old rites. The Revolution of 1917 led to a further exodus, with some Old Believers fleeing as far as Latin America, where they lived in isolated communes. But a few years ago, the Russian government asked them to come back. Financial assistance was offered to those who'd agreed to relocate to the remote lands of their ancestors and bolster rapidly declining rural populations close to Russia's border with China. Natalia Goliasheva tried to find out how they'd fared.
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Before I left, I was told I would fail. They will not talk to you, said one Russian journalist who I had hoped might join me on the trip. I remembered his words as I stood in front of a dimly lit chapel in the remote village of Dersu. It was foggy and uncomfortably cold. Out of the darkness, a bearded man appeared, dressed like a peasant from the Middle Ages, in a sheepskin hat and dark robe on top of his long traditional shirt. Called. He stood impassively as I introduced myself, and then politely but firmly announced, we cannot receive you today, and disappeared back into the darkness. I gulped. To get here, I traveled for eight hours by plane from Moscow, seven hours by train and five hours by car before boarding a flimsy ferry to cross the powerful Balshaya Usurka River. You only come to Dersu if you don't want to be found, and I couldn't even leave. The last ferry had left, and with no mobile phone reception, I couldn't even call for help. The Old Believers of Dersu arrived from Bolivia in 2012. They were promised their own land and 46 million rubles, around 600,000 pounds, to build their own houses. But only a fraction of the money ever reached them. The community had to use their own savings and the help of private sponsors to settle and buy cattle, so they could live off selling milk locally. But without their own land, there's no real economy, just cows wandering among rusting tractors. At first, I was told, the locals welcomed the newcomers. But some became jealous of the financial support the repatriates received at first, others resent the Old Believers determined self isolation. Their neighbors see them as stuck up and uncooperative. Not long ago, two houses belonging to the large extended family of Ulyan Murochev, the head of the village was, were burned down and their cattle were poisoned. Even their appearance gets criticized. The women here wear long dresses or sara fans, and men are obliged to grow beards. They do speak Russian, but not the kind that I do, the kind that they used to speak centuries ago. I felt uneasy as I waited in the darkness. The Old Believers had initially agreed to host me, but I'd intruded on the community that quite obviously did not want to be found. I decided to back off. Remarkably, seeing my apprehension, Ulyan Muruchev changed his mind and invited me to his house later that evening. Apparently, I'd unwittingly passed his test, having had their trust betrayed more than once. The old believers haven't turned sour and everything is God's will, they say. But they need to see humility as the truest sign of your value. We talked long into the night. Born in Brazil, Ulian spent most of his life in Bolivia, farming his own land. But he always wanted to return to sacred Russia, which his grandfather had escaped in the 1920s. And so Ulian sold half of his land and and moved his extended family of over 50 people to Dersu, in the Russian Far East. Now the times are tough. We're not living but surviving, he told me. Ulian apologized for turning me away earlier. Ever since they arrived in Russia, they've been swamped by journalists. Their faith requires solitude, but their survival depends on outside help as well as land ownership. Education is another constant source of anxiety. Children in Russia are required to obtain a general education, but old Believers are firmly opposed to state schools. What if they return and start smoking and drinking? Ulian asked. Ulian's house is bustling with noise. Six of his 12 children still live here, and a constant stream of relatives and other visitors pass by. The central room, serving as a shared bedroom, sitting room and dining room, is lit by a single light bulb stuck to the ceiling. There are heaps of clothes in every corner and definitely no sign of good fortune. I asked if he had any regrets about returning. Ask anyone, even the small children. Nobody wants to go back to Bolivia, he insisted. At the end of our conversation, Ulian asked where I come from. From the Russian north, I said. But you live in England. I do now. But will you be coming back? I don't know. Maybe. Every Russian will be coming back, he said with an unbeatable conviction, his piercing blue eyes burning into mine.
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Natalia Goliasheva when correspondents talk of borders, it usually spells trouble. Border disputes, closed borders, troublesome border guards. But next week, France will hand over three square metres of its territory to Spain. And that's without a single shot being fired. There will be no troop movements, no victory parades. Hardly anyone will notice. Chris Bockmann has been finding out more about what must be one of the world's strangest frontier anomalies.
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The French Basque beach resort of Andai is the last town before the border with Spain. Out of season, its beautiful, curved, sandy bay seems to be occupied by hundreds of seals. But look more closely and they are in fact defiant winter surfers in wetsuits. Just beyond a long breakwater is the historic Spanish town of Hondaribia and its sprawling, built up neighbour Irun. The natural border is the river Bidasoa, which flows into an estuary dividing the two countries. As you go upstream from the river mouth, the view changes. Imposing and colorful Basque buildings give way to industrial warehouses on the French side and unappealing residential tower blocks on the Spanish. But what I've come to see is the island of Faisance. It's not easy to find. When I ask for directions, nobody understands why I want to go there. They tell me there's nothing to see and warn me you can't visit it. No one lives there. It's not a tourist destination like Mont St. Michelin. But there it is. A peaceful, inaccessible island in the middle of the river, with tree cover and neatly trimmed grass, and an old monument which pays tribute to a remarkable historical event which happened here in 1659. For three months, the Spanish and French negotiated the end to their long war on the island as it was considered neutral territory. Wooden bridges were extended from both sides. The army stood ready. As the negotiations began, a peace agreement was signed. It was called the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Territory was swapped and the border demarcated and the deal was sealed with a royal wedding as the French king Louis XIV married the daughter of the Spanish king Philip iv. One other detail was that the island itself was to be shared between the two countries, with control rotating from one to the other. For six months of the year, from February 1st to 31st July, it's under Spanish rule, and for the following six months it's French. This sort of joint sovereignty is called a condominium, and Faison's island is one of the oldest in existence. The naval commander in the Spanish town of San Sebastian and his French counterpart in Bayonne act as governors or viceroys of the island. In reality, they have bigger fish to deal with. So it's up to the mayors of Irun and Ondai to take turns looking after the island. Bornwa Ogadamendia runs the parks division for the local council in Ondai. He told me he sends a small team once a year by boat to the island to cut the grass, trim the tree branches, and that's about it. Since the river is tidal, you can sometimes reach the island by foot from Spain. The so, as well as cutting the grass, the Spanish police chase off illegal campers. Very occasionally, the public is invited to visit on heritage open days, but Bonoir says it only interests older people. Younger people know nothing of its historical importance. These days, crossing from France to Spain by land is a seamless experience, except for the gridlock traffic. But under the Franco dictatorship, the border was heavily policed. The mayor of Ondai, Corte Esenaro, told me there used to be Sentry points every 100 meters along the river facing the island to prevent opponents getting in or out. The mayors of Irune and Andai meet about a dozen times a year to discuss issues like water quality and fishing rights. In the past, Spanish fishermen have complained about the shape of French boats and lately have been upset with French holidaymakers in canoes, disrupting their business. The island itself is a low priority. It's being eroded. It has lost nearly half of its size over the centuries, as snow melt rushes down from the Pyrenees and into the river. But neither country wants to spend money building up the island's defences. This year, there will be no ceremony marking the handover. There was an idea to fly the flag of whichever country was currently in charge. But Mr. Esenaro, the mayor, told me that until recently, that would have only encouraged the Basque separatists to take it down or replace it with their own. So in a few days time, perhaps the world's most undisputed border island will change ownership again. And in August, Spain will hand it back once more, unless it suddenly decides to renege on that 450-year-old treaty.
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Chris Buckman. And that's all from us today. We'll be back with more from our correspondence on Saturday morning, as usual. Do join us. Goodbye.