← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
History, Aliens and Chicken Wings
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Kate Adie introduces correspondents' stories. This week Mark Lowen is reminded of his...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World
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Service by visiting our site at BBConline.
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But here's the latest edition broadcast on
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BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today we hear of the determination to carry on in Syria when so much is lost. How a belief in aliens and in pleasure is helping some of Africa's poorest women. In Serbia, it could be a good night from the straight man, funny man, double act and why chickens really should keep clear of a certain housewife from Nebraska. So tomorrow, the people of Crimea will be voting in a referendum to decide the future of their province. Even if the vote isn't internationally recognised, there may be significant support from Russian speaking residents for the peninsula to break away from Ukraine and become part of Russia. But there are also plenty of people who worry about what that could lead to. Ethnic Tatars, for example, who are a Muslim minority but indigenous to Crimea, fear that history could repeat itself. Many Tatars died after Stalin ordered their deportation to Central asia in the 1940s. And Mark Loewen, who's just been to Crimea, says history is everything there, not least for the Russian speaking majority.
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The wedding photographer had chosen the hallway, the the white granite and neo Renaissance columns forming a perfect backdrop as he snapped away the bride and groom posing proudly. But the study next door in Yalta's Livadia palace was where the tour group had flocked. An oak panelled room where in 1945 Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat to redraw the borders of post war Europe. It put this small Crimean town, the favoured resort of Tolstoy and Chekhov, into in the annals of 20th century geopolitics. Down the hill from the palace, tour guide Marina Zabrodskaya was taking part in one of the countless pro Russia demonstrations, waving her Russian flag beneath a statue of Lenin. I love Yalta, she told me. It's so historical. Everybody's heard of the 1945 conference. The history of Yalta and Russia is rich. Not like Ukraine, a country built on sand. In Crimea, history is not confined to the past. Left to textbooks and archives, it lives on, still debated, argued over, used by different ethnic groups here as a weapon in Ukraine's current crisis. For the Russian community, history explains their attachment to Crimea, where Russia proudly fought the Ottomans, Britain and France in the Crimean war of the 1850s. And history is the reason why they feel they should secede now. They talk constantly of 1954, when Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine without asking any of its residents, and of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the province remained within Ukraine's borders against the will of many here. Almost every ethnic Russian I met at the roadblocks or the pro Russia protests or the Ukrainian military bases occupied by Russian troops, told me they had to fight the fascists of western Ukraine. When I asked what was fascist about a new order in Kiev which wants more democracy and less corruption, they again fell back on history because some in western Ukraine fought with the Nazis against the Soviet army. In the west, they all support. Stepan Bandera, a Russian teacher in Sevastopol, told me, referring to a World War II Ukrainian nationalist at one point allied with the Nazis, and they want to come here and kill us. History weighs heavy on this small, rugged peninsula, so tied up in national identity and ethnic division that it constantly reminded me of my previous posting in the Balkans, as the Serbs refused to be part of an independent Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s, they rebelled, supported by Belgrade, as Crimea's Russians do now, backed by Moscow. To me, the wars that ravaged Yugoslavia, which augur badly for Crimea Serbs are taught almost from the cradle about 1389, when they bravely fought the Ottomans on the battlefields of Kosovo. They still cherish their former province, now an independent country. For many Russians, Crimea is their Kosovo, an integral part of their nation. And so when I visited the Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, blockaded by Russian groups, it was little surprise that again the conversation turned to the past. What right do Russian troops have to launch a military takeover of Ukrainian territory? I asked a pro Russian activist, Vladimir Tunin. What right did NATO have to bomb Serbian territory in Kosovo? He replied. I told him the West's argument in 1999 was that there was an imminent genocide of Kosovo's Albanian population by the then Serbian government. We believe there would be a genocide of Russians here by Kiev, he said. Genocide, the intentional extermination of an ethnic group. That he genuinely felt that was a possibility was extraordinary to hear. It's that fear of the other that pervades Ukraine, as it did, and in part still does the former Yugoslavia. I felt it in western Ukraine, Lviv, where people talked of the more Russian cities as almost another country, places they dared not visit because they were against the uprising that toppled Viktor Yanukovych. And I heard it in Donetsk in the east, where Russians told me nobody from Ukraine's revolutionary movement had come to talk to them. But it's most keenly felt in Crimea, a province that for decades managed to straddle Ukraine's ethnic divisions without conflict, but now risks tearing itself apart, Balkan style. Crimea is, in reality already lost to Ukraine. It's in the hands of Russian soldiers, militias and paramilitaries who roam around with AK47s and balaclavas. After this weekend's referendum, Crimea could well go back to Russia, albeit unrecognized by the west and that old obsession. Here, history would be reversed, or in the eyes of the Russians, the wrongs of the past would be put right.
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Mark Lohan on the pull of history in Crimea. Three years ago, peaceful demonstrations started in Syria. Now there's widespread violence and the nation's life is disrupted. Millions of Syrians have fled their homes. Many are refugees abroad. Abroad, the huge death toll is still climbing. While there's little sign of things improving. Lina Sinjab, who's based in Damascus, wondered what had happened to the people behind those original demonstrations.
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The table is covered with an Agabani tablecloth, white cotton embroidered with golden lines. A spread of little dishes of Syrian mezze on top. The bottle of Arak Spirit is at the corner, and next to it is a ball filled with ice. Music is playing Yem el Shem, a song filled with longing for Damascus. The guests start arriving, the usual mark of a joyful Syrian evening. Friends from across the spectrum of society. A Christian, a Druze, an Alawite and a few more Sunnis. All of this wouldn't have been worth noting a few years back, but now it's an important reminder of how diverse life is. Everyone has a story to tell. There is laughter and song. Glasses toast each topic. A TV screen tuned to an Arabic satellite channel is showing the war in Syria. Three years ago, this very group participated in the first protest that took to the streets of Damascus, just by the Umayyad Mosque, calling for freedom. The war overshadows their conversation, but the guests try to keep their spirits up and cheer again. Bil Nasser. To victory. A victory which three years ago seemed so close. These people thought their peaceful cause for change would bring democracy. They never thought that three years later some of their friends would be dead, their country destroyed, or that they themselves would be exiled. I reported on the activities of this group. They were part of the Local Coordination Committees, which organized peaceful protests in the early stages of the Syrian uprising. I followed their movement and watched closely their enthusiasm and hopes for a better Syria. Now I'm getting to see them again, in this small apartment in Beirut where they have settled because they feared for their lives back home. Each of them still feels a duty towards their country. One has volunteered to teach refugees, the other established an NGO to help Syrians in Lebanon. One is producing a play about the war and the other is working for the media, still covering the story of Syria, but now only from the border zone. Everyone is determined to survive, despite the deep sense of loss and despair. Back home in the capital, Damascus, the scene is no better. Faces are grim and desperate, though life seems normal in what has been described as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. There is an oppressive sense of the war here. Everyone I know has grown old, their hair now streaked with silver, and they are suffering from depression, anxiety and trauma. The lucky ones still have a place to live and are earning some money, but hundreds of thousands of Syrians don't. Any sense of normality in Damascus is deceptive. There is a war just a few miles from the city center. There are people starving to death. There is destruction. There are dreams that have vanished. Houses have been bombed and the memories of their residents have disappeared. Many couldn't even keep a photo album of the past, a notebook or their diaries. They left with only the clothes they were wearing. The eastern suburb of Damascus, Al Ghouta, is largely destroyed. This was the green belt around the city that used to feed the country with delicious seasonal fruits and vegetables. Where every family went for picnic, it has been attacked with chemical weapons. Now the soil is poisoned and the air is polluted. The picture is so complex, though. Life in the center isn't easy, but it's definitely not as hard as elsewhere in the country. People here fear detention, pro government militias and rockets coming from the opposition side. They feel almost ashamed to be alive whilst surrounded by death. But they are in survival mode as well. They also lost loved ones or are displaced or are broken. The war hasn't left a single Syrian family untouched. Syrians feel the world has let them down and is just watching the bloodshed. Who cares about us? They ask. Still, there is a strange sense of defiance that comes out of despair. There is a strong sense of belonging that ties people to the soil, the blossom of trees in the spring, to the taste of fresh fruits. Maybe something here makes people want to keep going, makes the ones who left want to return home. But a dream of a home free of fear, war and dictatorship.
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Lina Sinjab Female genital mutilation, or FGM, has been a criminal offence in the UK since 1985, though no one in Britain has been prosecuted. Official figures estimate that there are 66,000 victims in this country within African, Asian, and Middle Eastern communities. Anti FGM campaigners think the figure is much higher and they are urging the government to do more to tackle the issue. Some women who suffer mutilation may have corrective surgery. Sue Lloyd Roberts travelled to Africa to see a brand new hospital offering hope to victims.
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I admit that as I set off for Africa, I had misgivings. I had done reports on female genital mutilation before when I learned that the first hospital in the world devoted to restoring women who'd been genitally mutilated was to be built in one of the world's poorest countries, Burkino Faso. A bizarre religious sect is behind it. The raelians believe in UFOs that we are governed by aliens from another planet, and that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. The earthly Raelians, mainly in California and Canada, had launched a charity called Clitor Aid, inviting people to sponsor a clitoris, and had collected enough money to build what they call the Pleasure Hospital. Maybe all that should have warned me to back off. But I told myself, for the more than 100 million women in Africa who have been mutilated, this is an incredible opportunity. Five American doctors had volunteered to come to Burkina Faso to launch the hospital and to train local doctors to carry on with the operations. It was all inspiring stuff, and I thought the story could be told. Avoiding religion in general and the Raelians in particular, it was not to be. I went to the village of Muthadougou to meet women who were to be beneficiaries of the project. With no electricity or running water, life is as hard as it can get here, and they can scarcely believe their luck. The women here tell me they were all mutilated. As young girls, our mothers had to send us to the cutters. One explains. Otherwise, we were considered unclean and would never get married. Apart from denying women pleasure, the mutilation can cause excruciating pain during sexual intercourse and childbirth. The men in the village told me they too are keen for their women to be repaired. 26 women in the village sign up for the operation and they all pile onto a bath to take them to the Pleasure hospital, four hours drive away in the town of Bobo. We arrive after dark and the huge new hospital looks impressive, but very closed. A room in the grounds is found for the women who, exhausted after their journey in the dust and heat, bed down for the night. The next morning, the local Raelian representative arrives with devastating news. The Ministry of Health says the hospital can't be opened. She believes it's because they object to the Raelian religion. They just don't want us to have pleasure, she explains to 26 very disappointed women who are waiting at the hospital door. But the medical team from America persuade a local doctor to give them a clinic in the town where they can perform the operations. The ladies from the village are mightily relieved and are taken there to await their turn. The procedure for restoring the clitoris is a surprisingly simple one that can be done under local anaesthetic and takes about 45 minutes. Although the visible part is cut off during mutilation, the majority of the gland remains below the surface and can be pulled up and restored. By now, word has got round and the queue at the clinic is growing. Women start arriving from the capital, Ouagadougou, and even from Senegal, Sierra Leone and Kenya. In three days, the American doctors perform 29 operations and the local doctors are learning the technique. Although it's absurd that a hospital costing nearly half a million dollars is lying empty and unused in a dusty field half a mile away, the spirit of the venture is going ahead. Then comes the blow. The doctors from America are told that their permissions to work are cancelled and the operations must stop. The Raelians blame powerful Catholic doctors in the country for putting pressure on the government, although the Catholic Church denies this. However, the health minister told a journalist that medical organizations should be focused on saving lives and and not advertising their religion to convert vulnerable people. For myself, I saw no one try to convert the patients. Whatever the truth, the unused hospital in Burkino, Faso is a sad metaphor for the campaign against FGM in Africa and worldwide, constantly thwarted by tradition, prejudice, religion and distrust. And as for the women of the village of Musodougou, of the 26, only 15 have been operated on, and the rest go back home disappointed and with no immediate hope of return, let alone of being restored.
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Sue Lloyd Roberts, and you can see her film on Newsnight on Monday. It's not just the people of Crimea who are going to the polls this weekend. In Serbia, too, they are voting this time for a new government. It's the second election in less than two years. Since 2012, a coalition has been in charge of the country, headed by a double act, the funny man and the serious one. But Guy Delaunay says that show could well be coming to an end.
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This is a tale of Superman and the singing prime minister, with a cameo appearance by Serbia's answer to George Clooney. And by the time the curtain falls, two of them are likely to have been shunted into the wings, or perhaps even the orchestra pit. Let's start with Ivica Datchic, a natural showman who loves to entertain. He may be the Prime Minister of Serbia, as well as the country's Interior Minister and leader of the Socialist Party, but his real passion is music. No visit to his official residence is complete without a session of song. Guests aren't exempt. Mr. Dati is the only serving premier with whom your correspondent has ever performed a duet. And he's used his personality to good effect, disarming diplomats and making an agreement to normalize relations with the Republic of Kosovo. Sometimes this jocular image has backfired. A local broadcaster, Pink tv, found a new way to make the Prime Minister feel awkward when it interviewed him last year. A former Playboy model was asking the questions, and it quickly became clear that she was following the Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct approach, sporting no underwear and frequently uncrossing her legs. But sometimes the music has to stop. When it does, Mr. Dacic could be out of the Prime Minister's chair. His party is the junior partner in the outgoing governing coalition. And if opinion polls are to be believed, its role in the next administration is likely to be, at best, considerably diminished. That's all because of Serbia's very own man of steel. First Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vucic is the straight man to the funny guy that Iwet Zadacic plays. He's tall, bespectacled and unsmiling, while his nominal boss is all rotund jocularity. But Mr. Vucic has become the main attraction. He leads the Progressive Party, and they head the opinion polls by so great a margin, they may not need a coalition this time round. Indeed, the election has been called so the progressives can consolidate their position and and make the biggest open secret in Serbian politics. Official. Mr. Vucic is the person who actually runs the country. So why is he so popular? Because he's promised to end the dithering and cronyism that's blighted Serbian politics since the overthrow of the autocratic former president, Slobodan Milosevic. He's the face of an anti corruption campaign that's seen more than 100 arrests, mostly over dodgy privatisation deals. Some of those charged were previously considered untouchable. Like Serbia's richest man, Miroslav Miscovic. Mr. Vucic also finally set Serbia on the road towards membership of the European Union after years of delay. Accession negotiations officially started in January. The feeling that something, anything, is happening goes a long way with a jaded electorate. But naturally, Mr. Vucic isn't perfect. The number of ultra nationalists in Serbia may be dwindling, but in the 90s, Mr. Vucic was one of them. And the opposition loves to remind him and everyone else of that fact. And when they're not accusing him of crypto fascism, they're questioning the credentials of everyone else in the progressives. Opposition parties have started calling Mr. Vucic Superman. It's not a compliment. They say the party is a one man show starring a single uncaped crusader trying to do everything by himself, from attracting Arab investors to rescuing children trapped in snowdrifts. But the main opposition, the Democratic Party, has major problems of its own. For starters, it's difficult to shake off accusations that they squandered the opportunities presented by more than a decade in power. They may have had EU membership and dealing with Kosovo on their to do list, but those policies never got anywhere near the outre until Vucic and Dacic pushed them through. And much needed reforms seem to take a back seat to sell offs of state industries in sweetheart deals. Beyond that, the opposition is splintering. The handsome grey haired former president Boris Tadich has often been compared to George Clooney, but he's quit the Democratic Party to start his own movement, which is likely to split the opposition vote. Other opposition figures have found themselves targets of the anti corruption campaign amid slightly unconvincing cries of political bias. So for the first time in Serbia's short democratic era, it's likely that one party, the Progressives, will win an overall majority and one person, Aleksandr Vucic, will be in complete control. But if Serbians are putting their faith in Superman, they've also learned harsh lessons from the recent past. And they'll be keeping a keen eye
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out for kryptonite, Guy Delaunay and Serbia's power politics. Now we move on to sport American style. The Americans love their super bowl, when two teams crunch together, hoping to out muscle each other and raise the winning cup. Last month, the Seattle Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos to become champions. One American city, though, has had so little sporting success that it decided to set up its own championship. Tara Isabella Burton joined a hungry crowd at Philadelphia's Wing bowl.
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It's five in the morning and everybody's already drunk. The Wells Fargo Stadium has only just opened its doors, but most people here have been standing vigil in the parking lot, passing beer cans back and forth out of the trunks of cars. It's the wing bowl, my host Nick tells me. It's the Mardi Gras of Philadelphia. Two teenagers pass out tablets of the stimulant Adderall to help you stay awake. Once inside the stadium, the lights are so bright it's easy to believe its day. Everything here is branded from the Lexus Club and Cadillac Grill, accessible only to those with special passes to the Cure Insurance Club. For the rest of us, Nick buys us slices of pizza so enormous it takes two full plates to contain them. Whatever is on top tastes nothing like cheese. The contestants are paraded out one by one, each with a gladiatorial pseudonym, man of PI, oink oink. Wingatron the bear. Their 8 meter high images are beamed onto enormous Jumbotron screens. Each entrance is styled to perfection, the contestants carefully costumed, each flanked by an entourage of strippers. Yet I soon realized that the strippers are not the only women in the stadium expected to bear all for the crowd's amusement. You see, at the Wing bowl, the eating of wings is hardly the main event as the Competition rumbles on. 30 minutes of Wing scoffing, separated by a few commercial breaks. Our eyes are on the can cam, a camera which picks out the chests of individual audience members and broadcasts them on the gargantuan screenshots. The more wings consumed, the more aggressive it gets. The first few women broadcast are expecting it. They cheer and pull up their shirts the moment they see themselves on screen. A few have even worn specially colored bras in anticipation. But the camera and the crowd turn unforgiving. The women chosen by the cancam are no longer just the designated strippers or those actively courting the lens, but ordinary punters, women in sweatshirts and woolly hats, making every effort to be left alone. One woman notices herself on the screen and titters awkwardly trying to wave the camera away. The audience starts heckling her. The camera doesn't move. The boos grow louder, and at last she realizes it will not pan away until she lifts her shirt. She does. Half a second later, the camera grows bored, moving on to the next victim. Only in the final rounds of the competition does the audience's attention shift towards the wing eating itself. One of the contestants, Tiger Wings and Things, has reached the verge of vomiting. Barbecue sauce smears across his face. Some is dribbled down his beard. He retches, but manages not to open his lips. The camera is on him now. It will not look away. Everyone screams together. Ya Heave. You leave. The Jumbotron starts up in slow motion, replaying regurgitations past. One from 2011 is the crowd's clear favorite. Pink Spew, no less revolting at 26,000 frames per second. Tiger Wings and Things tries not to look, but it's too late. His vomit, when it spirals from between his fingers, is almost dainty. Nevertheless, it's enough. The crowd is ecstatic. Soon a leader emerges. Molly Schuyler, a slender, square jawed woman sporting multiple ear piercings on a red and black bandana, breaks the world record when she eats her 348th wing. She is the only woman playing, the only contestant without a costume or campy pseudonym. Her fingers jerk from the bowl to her mouth with mechanical speed. The other contestants are bestial, managing to seem hungry even after several hundred wings. But Molly is a machine. Our Neighbor Frank, an 18 year veteran attendee, provides her backstory. You know that girl ate a 72 ounce steak in 2 minutes and 44 seconds. Can you believe that? He beams at us and goes on cheering. We've forgotten the cancam. We've forgotten the strippers. Molly Schuyler's is the only face on the screen. A housewife from Nebraska. That's how they announce it when she wins. Nobody asks her to expose herself. We're all too busy screaming her name. She wins $22,000, a medal and a championship ring. In total, she has eaten 363 wings. The moment the applause is over, we all force our way out. Totally debauched, right? Nick doesn't even try to hide his glee. It's like hell on earth. A crowd elbows past us. I ask Nick if people are now rushing off to work. Of course not. The strip clubs all do. Free breakfast today, he says. Everyone knows that.
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Tara Isabella Burton trying her best to put us off our roast dinners. That's it for this week. Join me again next Thursday and Saturday for more stories from our own correspondence. Goodbye.