← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Guns and Showers
00:27:06
Reporters' despatches from around the world, introduced by Kate Adie. Today, Will on a...
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- [00:00]
Chris Bockman
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on
- [00:13]
Kate Adie
BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:17]
Narrator/Reporter
Today we're with the guns, gangs and security guards of Central America. In Damascus, the cafes are empty, friends have gone and the phone rarely rings. In France, we scrub ourselves clean in the Douche municipal and we hear about an unlikely meeting with Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Colonel Gaddafi. The Northern Triangle in Central America, that's El Salvador. Honduras and Guatemala has one of the highest concentrations of private security guards in the world. Violent crime is a major problem in these countries, with powerful and well armed gangs involved in murder, extortion and robbery. Will Grant has been reporting from the region for some years and the sight of guns on the street is nothing new to him. But even he's surprised at how commonplace they've become.
- [01:07]
Kate Adie
It doesn't take long to notice the guns in Central America. Off the plane into San Salvador to Gusigalpa, Guatemala City. Even the relatively sleepy Costa Rican capital, San Jose, the arrivals halls are dotted with men sporting uniforms and rapid fire weapons. Nothing strange in that, perhaps. Airports around the world are notoriously tight on security. But step out into any of those cities and it soon becomes apparent that firearms aren't just for protecting government buildings. In Tagucigalpa, the chaotic and violent capital city of Honduras, we stayed in a faceless international hotel during the recent presidential election. Two men with pump action shotguns were never far from reception as you checked in or ordered a taxi. It was a similar story in a nearby shopping mall. Every entrance was covered by a security guard toting a machine gun as though it were the presidential palace rather than a temple of commerce. Inside, from hamburger restaurant to shoe shop, everywhere had a man on the door, semi automatic at the ready. Astonishingly, there are twice as many private security guards in Honduras as there are police officers. Add to that the wealth of riot police and military on patrol. At times it was hard to know who were private employees and who were government forces. In Honduras, the murder capital of the world, it seems guns are just part of the furniture of daily life, as common almost as mobile phones. In neighbouring El Salvador, the situation is even more stark. Elsewhere in Central America, at least, the security guards wear uniforms, giving them a veneer of officialdom. Not so in San Salvador. I was immediately struck by the sight of a man in jeans and an open necked shirt. Swivelling a rifle outside a hardware store. Is that normal? I asked our local cameraman, Ed Gardon, a journalist who regularly films nighttime raids with the police. He is no stranger to guns. Totally, he answered. They call them security guards, but really they're just guys with guns. Most worrying is the questionable origin and destination of these weapons. The country is awash with illegal guns, a legacy of its brutal civil war of the 1980s. In 2011, the government estimated that more than 1,700 firearms used by private security firms ended up on the black market after they were reported lost or stolen. That night, I joined Edgardo on one of his regular night shifts, chasing the police around dark neighbourhoods as they raided alleged gang hideouts. Abre la puerta, policia. The masked officers shouted, weapons raised, as they stormed a house on the outskirts of the city, dragging the family from their beds. The teenage boys and the men were quickly handcuffed as the place was ransacked for drugs and guns. Hours later, still awake on watery coffee and caffeinated drinks, a police chief issued a short statement about the night's operation. We have seized a rifle, a 10mm and two 9mm weapons, he said in a flat voice. We also found a police uniform which these individuals had in their possession, as well as 38 packages of a dry herb which appears to be marijuana. There is supposed to be a ceasefire in El Salvador between the two main gangs, the Marasalva Trucha and the Barrio Diesiocho. In the first year of the truce, the murder rate fell by around half. Now, however, the deaths are stacking up again, and critics say the fragile pact has fallen apart. In a nondescript house in a gang controlled neighbourhood called Ciudad Delgado, I met some of the men who have terrorized El Salvador for more than two decades. A dozen members of the Mara Salvatrucha were gathered in a dingy room eating pupusas, traditional Salvadoran tortillas filled with cheese and refried beans. They showed me their array of gang tattoos, some hidden from view on their torsos and arms, others more defiant about their gang allegiance, with ink on their faces and necks. One of the gang members, Blue, has lost more than most to illegal weapons. His right hand was blown off by a grenade in the 1990s. Now veterans of the gang life, Blue and his buddies have developed a slick rhetoric to match their new roles as political actors, lamenting the lack of government reinsertion programs for gang members. It's not true that after going to prison you want to go back into the streets, he says, gesticulating with one hand. But the system doesn't open any doors for you, so you go back to where your homeboys are to get back on your feet. As they drove off on motorcycles after our chat, news reached us of a body dumped on a roadside just a few blocks away. Who knows where the gun used to kill him came from? Edgardo and I wondered, who knows where it'll end up?
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Narrator/Reporter
Will Grant on gun life In El Salvador earlier this week, MPs held a debate to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, which is observed on Monday. Opening the debate, the former Foreign Office Minister Alastair Burt said it was important to acknowledge that the evil heart which created the Horror still beats. 27 January was chosen as Holocaust Memorial Day because it's the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau by Soviet troops in 1945. In Israel, the Holocaust is commemorated later, either in April or May. Commemorating is one thing, teaching another. A new debate has broken out in Israel on how to teach young school children about the Holocaust. As Josh Spero found out, it looks
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Josh Spero
like the sort of children's book you find the world over. Illustrations of a chubby 3 year old boy flying a plane or playing in snow, drawings of different food and animals. A standard educational tool. But this boy is Tommy, and the circumstances of this book's creation were anything but standard. In 1944, Tommy and his father, Bedrich Fritter, were trapped in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, Jews caught in the Nazis net. During the day, Bedrich was forced to draw propaganda posters, but at night he secretly painted this watercolor album to give his son a vision of normality amid the seething hell of the ghetto. Now this book is at the center of a row in Israel, where I have come for a conference at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial center high on a hill in Jerusalem. So high, in fact, that on the day I meet Shulamitimba, pedagogical director of the International School for Holocaust Studies, the whole complex is enclosed in a thick grey cloud while rain beats down ceaselessly across the campus. Imba, a smiling, square faced woman wearing a red felt hat and a red and white polka dotted dress complete with Minnie Mouse bow, has been devising a curriculum for Holocaust education for children as young as six. And this is where Tommy comes in. The book is to be course material for the youngest students. The author says. Imber is teaching Tommy what life has to offer. He wants to make him happy in the ghetto, she says. He wants to show him that there's a nice world outside the ghetto, and he wants to tell him he's going to build him a future. He's drawing him a world he can survive in. The book is a good tool, she says, because it concentrates on life rather than death, without ignoring the true circumstances. It will educate, but not traumatise. The storm, which broke out when Education Minister Shai Peron announced that Holocaust education was to become compulsory for all Israeli school children, precisely illustrated why a book like Tommy might be necessary. In newspaper opinion pieces, writers recalled the traumas they had suffered when Holocaust education had been done badly. One remembered being shown the movie Night in fog, aged 14, with its footage from the death camps of mountains of bodies being bulldozed, leaving him tormented, while another still suffered nightmares 30 years after a teacher showed him, aged seven or eight, photos of what he called walking corpses in striped pajamas. In Shula Mitimba's office, a modern academic cubbyhole with children's drawings on the wall, this atmosphere of trauma seems very distant. She explains that under the new curriculum, children will have 15 to 20 hours of Holocaust education a year, using materials that are age appropriate at the moment. Teachers deal with the subject as they think best, often in the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day, but they are rarely suitably trained. Hence the tales of children being forced to reenact agonizing life or death scenarios in the classroom. One story I heard was of a teacher who showed their class the nature of the Holocaust by making them write down their dreams, then putting them in a bucket and burning them. It is not an easy line to tread. I suggest to Imber, age 6, children have already heard the siren which goes off across Israel on Memorial Day, and probably ask their parents about it. So they may well already have knowledge that 6 million Jews died. But the curriculum's approach is to stress the lives those Jews led, she says. I don't think numbers and bodies have meaning. I in fact think that this is the Nazis method to dehumanise the people and actually we rescue the individual out of the pile of bodies. As I visited the museums and memorials of Yad Vashem, this emphasis on the individual recurred inside the children's memorial, a darkened structure of glass, mirrors and candles which seem to reflect forever. The names, ages and countries of some of the boys and girls who died in the Holocaust are read out. The art gallery displays piteous and angry portraits and self portraits made inside the ghettos and death camps, while the archive contains diaries and other artifacts left behind by those who died. I wouldn't say it was uplifting but it wasn't traumatic. Trauma, says Shulamit Imber, back in her office, is the opposite of education. Education has to lead to hope, and trauma doesn't have a meaning.
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Narrator/Reporter
Josh Spiro on Israelis wrestling with how to educate but not traumatise. In recent weeks, we've heard of sectarian attacks and lynchings in the Central African Republic. Christian and Muslim neighbours have turned against each other. In parts of Nigeria, too, there's been a history of communal violence between Christians and Muslims, and it's a similar picture in other parts of the world, not least in the Middle East. But in Sierra Leone, where Muslims make up the majority and where there's also a significant Christian minority, relations between the two faiths appear to be more relaxed, says Jake Wallace Simons, at least for now.
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Jake Wallace Simons
When I first entered the Assemblies of God car park church, it was completely dark save for a dim lantern on the table. The generator wasn't working and there was no mains electricity in this part of West Africa. Yet the sound of riotous singing and the clatter and crash of a drum kit played by a small boy filled the hot room. And all around me, adults and children were bopping away as if this was the best disco ever. This was the local Pentecostal church at Metro, near a mine in south central Sierra Leone. To reach the area, I had traveled for two days by jeep on fragmented jungle roads, through unofficial checkpoints and past scores of villages of mud huts and shacks. The humidity hung solidly in the air and the mosquito repellent stung my skin. I'd spent the day following a story and I was sweaty, dusty and exhausted. But when the opportunity arose to attend a local church service, I couldn't pass it up. Afterwards, amid the long shadows and the flickering light, I fell into conversation with two worshippers, 36 year old Patrick and his taciturn younger friend Ibrahim, who was a Muslim. Ibrahim had appointed Patrick as his groomsman, a mentor who is traditionally chosen by a man when he's due to get married. It didn't matter that they were of different faiths. After all, Patrick told me, they both worshiped the same God. This would be unheard of in many places, but in Sierra Leone, such cross fertilization is the norm. The population is split between Islam and Christianity, and there is mutual respect. Both Christmas and Ramadan are celebrated as national holidays, and churches and mosques are open to all. This laid back religious tolerance may seem like a beacon to the world, but it's under threat in Freetown. Before I set out for the interior, I met a Grey haired burly man whose forebears had been slaves who had returned to Sierra Leone. He introduced himself as Leslie Scott, joking that when hearing his name, people are always amazed that he isn't firstly a woman or secondly white. According to Leslie, many of his countrymen fear the growing influence of Arab Muslim fundamentalists. Five years ago, foreign Islamist hardliners built a three floor mosque and religious centre on Circular Road in central Freetown which gets busier with each passing year. They've also set up their own radio station called Voice of Islam. As a result, he said, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women who wear the veil and men who wear beards. With the country on high alert because of threats from Al Shabaab, Sierra Leone contributed troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia and there are fears of a Kenya style attack. People wearing Arab inspired Muslim costume made him feel jumpy. The climate of tolerance has been under assault from the Christian side too. Earlier this year, a pair of 20 Something Sisters by the names of Linda and Finda Ngouja caused deep religious divisions in the country. The story, as told to me by a plump matter of fact lady called Angela Johnson, who knew the sisters, went like Linda, fell ill one day and died in Finda's arms. Several minutes later, Linda's body stood bolt upright and started speaking in the voice of Jesus. Thus was delivered the uncompromising message that Muslims would not be admitted to the Kingdom of God and that all mosques should be replaced with churches. Jesus then left Linda's body, Angela continued and her own soul returned. While she was dead, she said she had visited hell. There she had met Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, the former President of the Republic of Guinea and Colonel Gaddafi. This unlikely group had told her that Jesus was poised to travel down to earth for the Second Coming. So if you're thinking about repenting, you'd better do it quickly. This story was splashed across every newspaper and media channel in Sierra Leone. It provoked outrage among Muslims. Two men were stabbed during an argument about the matter. It was only when church leaders issued a public statement denouncing the testimony that an uneasy peace was restored. The authorities seem determined to protect religious tolerance in Sierra Leone. The President, who's a Christian, regularly prays at a large mosque in central Freetown. One can only hope and perhaps even pray that the open minded spirit of places like the Assemblies of God car park church is sufficiently strong to endure.
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Narrator/Reporter
Jake Wallace Simons the war in Syria has now claimed well over 100,000 lives, according to the United Nations. Millions of others have fled the country. Meanwhile, the peace talks in Switzerland have not got very far, with both the government and opposition sides holding onto their entrenched positions on the ground. In Syria, the losses of war continue to mount up. People are killed, people flee, and the old ways of life are swept away. In Damascus, cafes used to be bustling with people. They were at the centre of life. Returning to her home city, Lina Sinjab says the cafes are now places of memories.
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Lina Sinjab
There's one table left at the cafe, which has the same customers every single day. They start with coffee and end up in the evening drinking locally made arrack and and smoke the affordable Hamra cigarettes made in the coastal city of Latakia. The four men at this table are almost the only ones left of the old customers in this cafe, which once bustled with Syrians from all walks of life. Music, nights, poetry, readings, exhibitions, gossip and cultural debate over wine and dinner. Day after day, the crowd diminished as one by one, the customers started disappearing. Some were arrested, others killed. Many said goodbye to this place and its memories. Little by little, the music faded and the paintings that decorated the walls were removed one after the other. The table facing the entrance of the Firdor's Cafe in the center of Damascus still has its regular customers, a theatre director, a poet, a musician and a novelist. Dressed in a red T shirt over dark blue jeans, with curly silver hair and stubble. Khalid Khalifa, the novelist, turned 50 on New Year's Eve. Every year he celebrates his birthday with his friends, moving from one party to another until dawn. He ends it drinking coffee on Mount Kasyoun, watching the sun come up over the city. But this year he had only three friends to celebrate with. They walked the empty streets of Damascus, ate shawarma, and then went home before the clock struck midnight. He lives in Berzeh, a neighborhood of Damascus on the slopes of Mount Qasyoun. Behind his house, the government has stationed artillery and rocket launchers which it uses to bombard the lower part of Berzeh. Khalid watches the war from his balcony and often jumps out of his bed when a rocket is fired. One night, he saw a neighbor on his balcony cursing President Bashar al Assad. Stop bombing, stop shelling. He was shouting. The man lost his mind, Khalid tells me with a bitter look on his face. Sipping some of his ark, Khalid recalls the day the revolution started in Egypt. He was sitting with friends in another cafe in downtown Damascus, the Havana, where all the intellectuals used to gather. That night, he remembers, I bet the revolution would start in my hometown, Aleppo, and it would take two weeks for all of us Syrians to get our freedom. He burst out laughing. I lost the bet and I keep on losing, he says, still giggling. But we will not lose hope. One day we will win. Khalid took part in many protests and wrote publicly about his opposition to the Assad regime. Yet when the Americans seemed set to launch an attack against Syria, he opposed it angrily. He told his friends back then, dictators bring invaders, but invaders never bring freedom. Khalid still believes in the cause of the revolution, even though it has turned into a war that has killed more than 100,000 civilians. We have no choice but to continue with all means of resistance, he argues. We need to gain our right to live in dignity and freedom. Like thousands of other Syrians, he is banned by the security forces from leaving the country. But he doesn't want to live outside Syria, even now, with the war turning his country into a grim and haunted place. I walk in the streets at night and it's dark and there is no one, he goes on. I shiver in sadness, missing the life that has been. Most of my friends have left, and my phone hardly rings these days. But Khalid is defiant and still tries to enjoy life when possible drinking, eating, smoking and making love. I live every day as the last day, and I try to enjoy it with whoever is left in the city and with whatever means of pleasure are left. But he is constantly saddened by the shelling and the killing. Just across the street from him, there are regular power cuts in Damascus. Shortages of cooking gas and heating fuel. Prices have gone up threefold, and there are queues of cars everywhere. Roads are blocked and checkpoints stand guard neighborhood by neighborhood, controlling who crosses in and out. A drive which used to take 10 minutes now takes two hours. But Khaled feels this hardship has brought people together. There is no more opposition or loyalists, he says. There are just Syrians who are suffering and want to regain their lives.
- [21:45]
Narrator/Reporter
Lena Sinjab in the emptying cafes of Damascus, the British and the French like to take the mickey out of each other. Traditionally, we've been easy targets when it comes to food, drink and a certain foir d'. Oeuvres. While we've portrayed our Gaelic neighbours as unfaithful, underworked and unreliable. And both sides accuse each other of being unwashed. Of course, it's just good fun, isn't it? Whatever the truth of all the ribbing, Chris Bockman has made sure he stays clean in the city of Toulouse in southwest France.
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Chris Bockman
I've come to take a shower. The address is the Douche Municipal. The public Showers run by the City hall. There used to be five in the city, but now there is just one left. It's in the suburb of Bonne Foix and has been here since 1929. The entrance is simple and low key in a nondescript street in a drab neighborhood literally on the other side of the railway tracks from the prosperous and attractive city centre. From the outside, the building looks a bit grubby, but inside I'm pleasantly surprised. Out on the street it might be unseasonably cold for this time of the year, but inside the clunky metal radiators are working overtime. The walls are bright, it's all freshly repainted. The look is simple, but most importantly, it seems clean. I've brought my own shampoo and towel, but I needn't have the attendant hands me a clean one and some shower gel. There are nine cubicles to choose from and there's a sign up saying I've got 20 minutes. The water is warm, 40 degrees and there's a hair dryer and mirror outside in the hallway. A long bench by the entrance allows users to stay warm next to the radiators after the shower, rather than head straight out into the winter cold. It costs €1 if you pay at the door, but you can bring the cost right down by buying vouchers at the main railway station. And in fact, unlike most things in life, the cost of this vicinity is lower than it used to be, providing a little dignity for the distressed. Many of those who come to use these municipal showers are what you might call traditional long time drifters, people who shuffle from city to city who prefer to clean up here rather than in a homeless shelter, which might have a less wholesome atmosphere. The attendant is a former boxer called Joo Prat. He sits in a tiny office which has a window hatch like the ticket office at a station. He makes sure his customers play by the rules. Alcohol and drugs are not allowed on the premises. Pets aren't permitted either. You sometimes see dogs tied up outside. He does admit that one customer managed to smuggle his poodle in under his trench coat. All was revealed though, when the dog started yapping in the shower. Joel has been in the job for nine years and says it's given him real insight into who is currently hardest hit in French society. While down and outs are not new, he says he's noticed the emergence of a new working poor amongst his clients. Men and women who have jobs but are finding it nearly impossible to make ends meet. They can't afford the rent and to get by, live in their cars or vans on quiet streets and come here to wash. Most live alone in their vehicles, but there are some with young children, and they come in together to get clean. Businessmen who've fallen on hard times also pass through. Everything was going well until they lost their jobs. Perhaps it was coupled with a costly divorce and suddenly their car is their only possession. Then there are students or low income families who can't afford to install a bathroom or to use their hot water as heating bills keep rising, and young squatters who live in abandoned or empty offices where there's no running water. Stefan Casso from Toulouse Social Services says the municipal showers aren't just about hygiene these days. He says they play an increasingly important role in a society that is more and more individualist and so made up of people who may be more isolated and cut off from each other. That's why, for some it's less a question of money but more the human contact that brings them here, especially the elderly. Rene, who's 82 years old, is one of them. This former painter comes three days a week for his morning wash. He does have a shower at home, but lives alone and admits he's here mainly for the company. It's the one moment in the day when he can have a conversation with other people, whether it's about politics or the latest rugby results. But Joel says not all of the reasons for using the facilities are sad ones. He runs a public service, he insists, telling me about the day one of the tallest, most beautiful blondes he'd ever set eyes on appeared in a panic, desperate to have a shower. It seems she had a romantic rendezvous and her boiler had just exploded.
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Narrator/Reporter
Chris Backman, all sparkly and fresh, ending this edition. I'll be back with more from our own correspondence next Thursday and Saturday. Goodbye.