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From Our Own Correspondent
Hero or Villain?
00:28:01
June the 28th 1914 was the day Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand.
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You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and here to introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, hero or villain? The people of Sarajevo divided again, this time over the man whose gunshots ignited the First World War. Watch what you say. Government critics learn the value of silence in President El Sisi's new Egypt. We're in a sacred town in the Horn of Africa, known for its 82 mosques and its brewery, and learning how hands free pants are part of a new English revolution in India, the city of Sarajevo finds itself back in the spotlight today. It's the hundredth anniversary of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which triggered the First World War. The Serb community there has been paying tribute to the assassin Gavrilo Principal. Many there regard him as a hero whose actions led to the end of Austro Hungarian rule over Bosnia. But Alan Little, who reported from Sarajevo during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, says that others in this divided city see Princip as a terrorist. Today's centenary, they believe, is no cause for celebration.
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When I was a first year undergraduate studying history in the late 1970s, I put a pack on my back and trekked across Europe, heading southeast. I wanted to see Sarajevo where I imagined the 20th century had begun, with two fateful shots fired by a young revolutionary who at 19, had been my own age when he changed the world. I didn't know then how large Sarajevo would one day loom in my own life, or that I would come to think of the city not only as the place where the century had begun, but also where it would end, in another chapter of blood and thunder and sorrow. June 28, 1914, was supposed to be a day of great joy in Sarajevo. In the state archives, I found a copy of a Sarajevo newspaper called Sarajevsky List. Its front page said all Sarajevo would welcome the Archduke Franz Ferdinand with uncontainable joy. This edition is a powerful reminder of how enthusiastically Bosnia's ruling Muslim elite had transferred its loyalty from the declining Ottoman Empire to the Austro Hungarian one after Austria's invasion 40 years earlier. But June 28 was also one of the holiest days in the Serb religious calendar. St. Vitus Day, the day that marks the defeat of their army by the invading Turks in 1389, a defeat which ushered in five centuries of Ottoman imperial rule. Many Serbs in Bosnia viewed Austrian imperial rule with no more affection than they had that of the Ottoman Turks. I turn to the next edition of the same paper. Black Days, the headline read above. A portrait of the murdered Archduke edged in black. Back in 1979, I got off the train and tried to find my way to the place where the assassination had taken place. I asked people in the street, please, where is the place where Franz Ferdinand was killed? The name seemed to mean nothing to them. It was only when I mentioned Princip, the name of the assassin, that people responded and could direct me easily. Communist Yugoslavia had turned the young Serb gunman into a pan Yugoslav liberation hero. The bridge near where he had pulled the trigger had in 1914 been called the Latin Bridge, but was now renamed Princip's Bridge. It wasn't Princip's first posthumous reinvention. After the First World War, the newly founded Kingdom of Yugoslavia had had Princip's remains repatriated and buried in a little Eastern Orthodox chapel on a hillside overlooking the city. The inscription declares that he and the other conspirators interred there with him are the St. Vitus Day heroes. In his little chapel, Princip, the atheist revolutionary, had been recast as an Orthodox Christian martyr. Yesterday, in the Serb municipality of eastern Sarajevo, they were unveiling a new statue to Princip. Set at the heart of a newly landscaped park, he gazes out at what will be a children's playground. The mayor told me proudly that this unites the nation's past with its future. The children looked upon by the man whose actions had secured their freedom as Serbs. Back in the non Serb heart of Sarajevo, the world looks very different. 100 meters from the chapel where Princip's bones lie, there is a vast cemetery that until 1992 had been a playing field. Here lie the dead of the war of the early 1990s, when Serb nationalist forces laid siege to and bombarded the city for a thousand days. The memory of that war is raw. Those who survived it are in no mood to venerate a young, gun wielding Serb nationalist. One historian told me that during the siege, Serb soldiers were sometimes awarded the Gavrilo Princip medal for their actions. Sarajevo people, non Serbs, now draw a direct line from Princip's actions a hundred years ago to their own, all too recent, all too memorable suffering. After the war of the 1990s, Princip's Bridge was given its old name back. It is the Latin Bridge again. This divide is more than an academic dispute about events long ago. History is a powerful living thing in Bosnia. The country has no shared narrative about its past. It is a land of parallel truths that run alongside one another but never converge. Each side tells itself the tale it needs to hear for a historical narrative has the power to acknowledge historical injustice, mitigate wrongdoing, grant redemption. Many of those who attended the unveiling of the Princip statue have in the past publicly denied the massacre at Srebrenica in in 1995, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces. For in their narrative account, it is the Serbs who have fought injustice and have heroically prevailed. And that is why Princip is also on the other side of the divide, quietly airbrushed out of the popular memory.
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And that was Alan Little. Egyptians can be in no doubt that their new leader, the former general Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, is not a man who welcomes opposition. In the weeks since he was sworn in as the country's president, thousands of people accused of being enemies of the state have been locked up. Death sentences handed to others convicted of taking part in anti government protests have been confirmed. And this week, of course, there were those jail sentences for the Al Jazeera journalists accused of spreading false news. So are the Egyptians alarmed by these signs of a return to authoritarianism? After all, it's only three years since they took to the streets to depose the dictator Hosni Mubarak. Another military man, Louisa Lovelock, has been
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finding out When Egyptians danced and cried in the streets on the night dictator Hosni Mubarak stepped aside, few could have known that their struggle had only just begun. Three and a half years later, they've moved from military rule to Islamist rule. And now they're back again. But Egypt's new president, former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, takes the helm of a changed country. The Egypt of 2014 is more jaded and divided than at any point in recent memory. Walking past a butcher's shop in a Cairo back street this week, I heard a hiss. Gezira. Peering through the dirty window, I saw the owner of the voice that had just accused me of working for Al Jazeera, a news organization that now commands pariah status among many Egyptians. He stood behind the counter clutching a meat cleaver. Beaming out from his cluttered wall was a poster of Mr. Sisi's smiling face. Are you from Ghazira? He asked again. They are trying to bring our country to its knees. Two days earlier, I had watched a mustachioed judge condemn three Al Jazeera journalists to between seven and ten years in prison. The prosecution said they had doctored their news broadcasts to suit the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group now blacklisted as a terrorist organization and widely blamed for attacks that have killed over 200 policemen in the space of a year. The butcher, whose name was Mahmoud, told me the journalists had got what they deserved. The terrorists have to learn no one will ruin us on our path to recovery. There is little evidence to suggest the journalists are being punished for anything other than doing their jobs in a difficult political climate. But Egyptians mistrust of Al Jazeera reflects real fears that they have spent the past three years being buffeted by political winds beyond their control. Fear of so called foreign hands is rife, often stoked by newspaper allegations about nefarious multi billion pound plots between America, Israel and Qatari owned Al Jazeera. Three and a half years after the 2011 revolution, Egypt's social fabric is badly torn. Since President Sisi led a military coup against his predecessor Mohamed Morsi, tens of thousands have been arrested. State media now exhort people to inform on their Muslim Brotherhood neighbors. For many, including The Butcher Mahmoud Mr. Sisi is the only man who can drag Egypt's revolution back on track. He has already presided over a far reaching crackdown against so called enemies of the state and told Egyptians to embrace austerity as the route to economic recovery. Sisi is the man to make tough decisions and I will stand by him, said Mahmoud. As he spoke, he eyed his television warily. On the screen I saw footage of bloodied, blindfolded young men. These are the boys Egyptians are being taught to fear, but it's not always clear they're guilty of crimes against the state. In the Interior Ministry's war against terrorism, good photo opportunities can sometimes seem as important as genuine intelligence successes. For the most part, the victims of this crackdown are not heavily armed militants. Many are simply supporters of the former president or secular dissidents who have taken to the streets in the months since Egypt criminalized unsanctioned demonstrations. Others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. These days, the government's critics watch what they say. There are eyes everywhere, said Omar, an elderly shopkeeper working opposite the butchers. After the revolution, I thought the time had come to speak my mind. It all feels so naive now, the thought we could win our freedoms just like that. Looking up with perfect timing, he met the eyes of a neighbor across the road. Then his tone shifted abruptly. I don't want to talk about politics, he said, and shooed me on my way. Egypt may be a country divided, but it's increasingly difficult to trace where those fault lines lie. President Sisi's overwhelming victory in the recent election was as much a product of voter fatigue as of enthusiastic support. For every person who sees the former field marshal as a savior, there is another who will say they back him as the only option left to them. On a recent journey through Cairo's traffic clogged streets, my companion fiddled with a novelty CC air freshener, making sure it stood tall on the dashboard. It's important to stay proud, he mused as he bashed the president's foam feet into an air vent. We Egyptians don't have much left these days. The world laughs at us, but what can we do? He sighed. We are not lucky with our leaders, but we push on.
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Louisa Loveluck in Cairo Prince Harry is in Chile on the latest leg of his mini South American tour. Before leaving Brazil, he recorded a message thanking people there for the warm welcome he received. Royal watchers noted he was breaking with tradition. No formal goodbye letter here. This was filmed on an iPhone, the video posted on YouTube. In Brazil, he attended a couple of World cup games. There was a hospital visit and a brief trip to the rainforest. He was also shown around a government project that's trying to address Brazil's crack cocaine problem. Katie Watson says the country now has the biggest number of crack cocaine users of any country in the world.
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Right in the heart of Sao Paulo is an area called Luz. It means light in Portuguese, but this neighbourhood is one of the city's darkest places. When I visited, I saw what looked like a market on the street corner. But this wasn't an ordinary market. You don't need Brazilian money to buy food here. Crack cocaine is the common currency. It's because of this that the area has a second name, Cracolandia, or Crackland. It's estimated that more than a million people in Brazil use crack cocaine. Marcelo Ribeiro, who runs a state run drug clinic on the district's doorstep, told me that it was when people moved to cities during Brazil's economic boom in the early 2000s that drug addiction got far worse. Now every city has at least one Cracolandia, with Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador on Brazil's borders. Trade is easy, he says, and it's cheap. A drag can cost just a few pennies a rock, little over £2. It's a drug that's easily accessible to everyone. And as one psychiatrist told me, it's no longer a drug for the poor. It's a problem for the whole of society now. In Crocolandia I met Pallaso. His nickname means clown because he used to work in a circus. That's what brought him to Brazil from Chile 30 years ago. But then he found crack. He remembers the date well. 26-11-1995. After that, he told me he never stopped using it. He spent the past 20 years juggling balls in front of cars at traffic lights to fund his habit that at times has cost him as much as £40 a day. When I smoke, I feel relaxed, I feel good, he says. But crack is like aids, he told me. It has no cure. It's not stopped successive governments trying to tackle the problem, though. Previous methods included driving addicts out by force. But now there's a softer approach called the brasos albertos, or with open arms. The scheme's workers provide healthcare, paid work and shelter for addicts, getting them off the streets and into hostels. Controversially, they don't make addicts give up the drug. In fact, Payaso says the money he receives from the program pays for his habit. So he doesn't have to stand in front of traffic to earn money. But he has a place to rest, get breakfast, and he's smoking less. When I met him, he'd gone three days without crack. He was trying to last another three before he bought another rock. So that's the good news. The crack dealing in the street has dropped in recent months in Central so Paulo and. But the bad news is the issue's not gone away. Experts say the problem has just moved elsewhere. Crakolandia is an unnerving place. Addicts can stay awake for days if they're on crack. So there are dozens of people sleeping off. The effects on the streets and the drug suppresses your appetite. So many look malnourished and dehydrated. But the uneasy feeling I got there wasn't just because the streets were full of people so visibly high and so visibly ill. When I walked into the government health centre, a man who I was told was from the pcc, Brazil's biggest criminal organization, clocked our presence. I was asked what exactly we were doing there, and so I told him quite openly. The man seemed content with my explanation and we were left alone. But it surprised me. This is an area with a large population of crack addicts and a heavy police presence. The third competing interest, the PCC is, is one of the biggest suppliers of crack cocaine in the country. I asked a government outreach worker why it was in the interests of organized crime to support crack reduction programmes. Surely it would cut off a valuable source of profit if the problem was resolved. He said with a reluctant smile that perhaps the PCC knows that deep down. The problem won't go away, no matter what efforts are made to wean addicts off their habit. Back at the clinic, I met Telmo in his late 30s. He's been smoking crack since the age of 11 and living rough on so Paulo's streets for several years. His long brown beard and missing teeth are testament to his hard life. He tried to get clean before but said this time it's different. Crack makes you value the drug more than your family, he told me. I want to get help because I'm a truck driver. I want to get my license back. He's not in touch with his family. He knows they love him, but they can't cope with him stealing to pay for his drugs. He wants to get clean and then surprise them. He has hope, but I couldn't help wondering whether he'd succeed. Even he admits it's an addiction almost impossible to beat.
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Katie Watson In Sao Paulo, the Ethiopian city of Harar is known as a pious place. It's Sometimes described as Islam's fourth holiest city on account of its 82 mosques, some of which date back a thousand years. Pilgrims will also tell you about its 102 shrines, its abundance of holy tombs. This ancient walled city is also reputed to be not only the birthplace of the khat narcotic plant, but also where coffee made its very first journey from bean to cup. So for centuries this place has been a major trading hub, a crossroads on the Horn of Africa. But Aidan o' Donnell says it boasts more modern customs, too, like brewing beer.
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As holy cities go, Harar is a colorful one. Inside the walls of the old town, I find buildings in greens, purples and yellows. Its women seem to take this as a challenge, dressing in veils and robes of shocking pink and brightest orange. Hadar lies far in the east of Ethiopia, with a road that rises out of the town in the direction of Somaliland. The mighty Muslim leader Ahmed the Left Handed led some fierce campaigns from here in the 16th century. On its narrow streets I meet goats, old men collapsed from chewing the narcotic cat, and a young boy who stops to knock a football back and forth with me For a few minutes off the main square, tailors sit in front of fabric shops, ready to run up alterations. Binyam slotted behind his sewing machine, does a small tailoring job for me, recounting his Greek ancestry and the provenance of his sewing machine. A gift, he says proudly, which would cost you thousands in the local currency. He warns me of sellers of bad bananas and nearby thieves. I've Come to find the city's brewery, which is what it's known for beyond its holy credentials. For three decades now, it's turned out Harar Beer, its bottles carrying a label that depicts the old city's famous gates. Outside these gates, a taxi driver knows where to find the beer Fabrica, the beer factory. And we set off away from the old city putt putting slowly up a hill. The brewery entrance is flanked on one side by a sign prohibiting firearms and on the other by an enormous beer bottle, perhaps meant to remind you why you can't bring in your gun. Here be alcohol. The giant bottle is four times the height of a man. I know this because there's a man in front of it, a security guard who's delighted to have a visitor. He's not quite standing to attention, but the huge beer bottle does loom behind him, a little like the guard house of one of London's Queen's guards. Inside the grounds, green beer crates frame the horizon, with a green mosque, antiphonal in the distance. Underfoot there are disused rail tracks. The net on a tennis court seems to be in working order. And in a rusty looking playground, a man is watching his young boy on a swing. The sleepy air around the grounds is deceptive. Though this brewery was sold off to the Dutch Heineken Group by the government three years ago, the company says it plans to invest in the plant. It wants to improve the manufacturing processes, bring in its know how and start sourcing more material locally, either inside Ethiopia or in the region. It's taken over another brewery farther west and it's building a third one close to the capital. Many foreign companies point to cheap labor and helpful export tariffs and as reasons for investing. And the country's just been given a grade by the credit rating agencies. For the first time, industrial parks have popped into view whenever I've travelled out on the arteries away from the capital. Addis Ababa, Unilever, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, H&M, Tesco, Walmart, Samsung. They're all either in Ethiopia or thinking about it. The Chinese are here too, turning out thousands of shoes daily just south of the capital for major international brands. For Heineken, one of the motivations is a national market beyond the grounds of the brewery, which could get a lot bigger. Beer consumption in Ethiopia, it says, is only a third of what it is in neighbouring Kenya. In the interests of research, I stop in the brewery's clubhouse and order a beer. The women in the kitchen are amused at my intrusion. It's a public holiday and quiet, although people are moving tables and chairs and I suspect things might get going later on. There's a healthy looking trophy cabinet beside my table, filled perhaps with trophies won by the brewery's football team. It competes in Ethiopia's Premier League, although it's sitting near the bottom of the table when I visit. With relegation threatening Back at the walls of the holy city, people in the market are oblivious to the brewery and to big business. For them, the only drug worth trading is cat. Outside my window, two formidable looking women have spread out their bags of cat leaves. A beggar, badly crippled, hauls himself over to them. Moments ago, they were screaming venom at a young man. A drug deal of sorts had gone bad, it seems. Now, however, they slip some leaves discreetly to the beggar, their way of giving alms on the edge of the sacred town.
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And that was Adan o' Donnell in Harrah, Ethiopia. The new rulers of India seem to think too much English is being spoken in their country. Once upon a time, of course, it was the language of government and the elite in Delhi and beyond. But the new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, wants Hindi to be more prominent. He gave his maiden speech to Parliament in that language and insists on using it in diplomatic meetings with visiting world leaders. Civil servants have been ordered to use Hindi on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Yet going by what he's been hearing on repeated trips to India, Craig Jeffrey reckons the new prime minister might just be swimming against the linguistic tide.
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Picture the scene. I'm chatting to a young man named Yuvraj Singh. He's a college student in the Indian city of Dehradun. We're talking in Hindi, but every so often there's an English word. It's Hindi, Hindi, Hindi. And then suddenly an English word or phrase is dropped in Job, Love Story or Adjust. What should we make of this? It's not that Hindi lacks equivalent words. He could have said the Hindi kaam instead of Job. Why mention the English words? And what's Yuvraj speaking? Is it Hindi, English? An amalgam, Hinglish, or something else? In 1886, Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell published Hobson Jobson, a guide to words from Indian languages that had passed into English. You can search through it for references to the origins of words like shampoo and bungalow. But now many Indian citizens are using English words in the course of talking Hindi or Tamil or Bengali, etc. There are some good reasons for the explosion of English words. They're sometimes badges of honour in a society intent on Becoming modern. Even if you don't speak English fluently, you might be able to use the odd word to impress your neighbour. I was travelling on a train out of Delhi once and a young girl dropped her ice cream on the carriage floor. Her mother turned round and told her strictly, say shit. Say shit. You won't hear that on the 9:15 to London Paddington. Some of the words now used in Hindi have fallen out of use in the uk. I was on a bus that broke down in a remote part of India recently and everyone started screaming about the stepney. I had no idea at the time what they meant, but they said angrily, of course you know it's an English word. I later found out that stepney means spare tyre, from a Welsh firm that made tyres in the 1910s. Some college students refer to their second girlfriend as their stepney. And now that makes sense too. There's also a genre of military words now used a lot in India. People buy rations and a short stay in a hotel is a nighthold. Bollywood is also behind this Englishization. A whole range of terms and words used in urban India can be traced back to fashionable films. Recent releases include Shadi Ka Side Effects, Marriage's Side Effects and Ferrari Ki Savadi, A Ride in a Ferrari. The rapid growth in mobile phone ownership is another cause. Missed calls are routinely used to let people know that you're thinking of them. And so Ms. Call has become a popular verb, as in I will miscall my friend. People are highly inventive. Take the word tension. This is used as a noun. Don't give me tension, verb, don't tension me and adjective. That was a very tension exam. There are also many neologisms emerging in India. Time pass means passing time. It's variously used as a name for salty snacks, explanation for hanging out and means for Indian youth to express their boredom. What are you doing? I've asked college going friends in India. Kuchni buzz. Time pass. Nothing, just time pass, comes the flat reply. There are rhyming phrases. I've been told not to approach the Indian police with a complaint unless I have back and jack. Back means backing. You need a social connection with a local politician if you're going to deal with the Indian police. Jack means leverage, as in car jack, because you also need some point of influence, a bribe or muscle power. Everyday appropriations of English words are always highly expressive. Hinglish is the wrong term. People aren't just mixing words, they are creatively, actively, energetically reinventing them. In 2006, a leading underwear manufacturer in India launched a new brand of underpants, and its entire marketing campaign was based around the humble English word adjust. The television ad for the pants began with a man sitting on a milepost waiting for a bus. Another man walks up and asks the first man to adjust slightly so that he can share the seat. We also see people squeezing into a tiny space on a train, a man barging his way to the front of a queue for cinema tickets, and people clambering onto the roof of a bus. A voiceover cuts in. How often in life do we have to adjust? It asks in Hindi, but using the English word adjust. But with our underwear, it's different. The fit is so great, there's no need to adjust fit. Itna must no adjust. From hanging out on street corners to to hands free underpants, English is resurgent in India.
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Craig Jeffrey on a great English comeback in India and bringing us to the end of another programme. There'll be two next week on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Do join us. Goodbye.