← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Into the Line of Fire
00:28:05
Around the world in 28-minutes. Residents of eastern Ukraine fear the war raging them...
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Transcript15 lines
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme,
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one for the BBC World Service and
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this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the US Secretary of State has arrived in Kyiv amid fears that America's about to step up its involvement in the war in Eastern Ukraine. Peter Gresta might be out, but Egypt's justice system still stands accused of being unfair, unjust and heavy handed. You won't even see a dead leaf on the streets, let alone rubbish. We're in Jamshedpur checking on claims that it's India's cleanest city. And as scholars from around the world ponder what to do with the ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu, some people, it seems, would rather watch football. The stakes are rising in Eastern Ukraine. There are fears the war there could be set to worsen, perhaps drawing in the United States as well as Russia. With the Moscow backed rebels announcing plans to recruit 100,000 new fighters. The US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Kiev this morning for talks with President Poroshenko. The Americans are considering supplying weapons to the Ukrainian government. Meanwhile, intense fighting continues along a near 200 mile long front in the east of the country. Some communities have been virtually destroyed. There are said to be residents hiding in basements without food, electricity or water supplies. Others, as Sarah Rain Gainsford's been finding out, are fleeing for the safety of Western Ukraine.
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Alexander Petrov and his team wear military fatigues, but they're not soldiers and their minibus is definitely not bulletproof. Before Ukraine was plunged into war, Alexander was a voluntary worker with a children's charity. Now he volunteers to drive into the line of fire to rescue civilians caught up in the latest ferocious outbreak of fighting. It's scary afterwards when you get back, Alexander explains as he returns from his latest mercy mission. That's when you realise that every trip could be your last. This time, his team went to Vodynaya, very close to the pro Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk. As they arrived, the shelling intensified. There was massive artillery fire. The ground was shaking under our feet, so we ran for cover, he says. When the men finally dared emerge, their van had been hit by shrapnel. The team had visited Vodynoye a month before, taking food and medicine to residents. There'd been a relative lull in the fighting then, and people had begun to hope that political talks between Kiev and the separatist rebels might bring peace. Instead, mid January brought a push for new ground by the rebels and fresh troop mobilization by Kiev. The result is the heaviest fighting yet in this conflict. The rebels are firing at our troops, but it's not accurate. They're hitting houses. Alexander describes the situation now in Vodinlaya. Ukrainian troops have set up positions there and the village, he says, is almost totally destroyed. It's frightening to see, Alexander adds, out of range of the frontline areas now under government control again stand in near ruins. Besides one group of shattered buildings, I spot a sign from one hopeful local offering cement for sale. Now the violence is escalating yet again. I found people struggling to grasp what's happening. It's true that many in the east have Russian as their first language, not Ukrainian. And there was certainly support for pro Russian insurgents in these areas in the early days of the crisis, where the rebels are still in control. Months of heavy shelling by Ukrainian troops has only hardened such views. But few people I spoke to ever imagined the crisis would become full scale war. For Alexander and its team, it means the rescue work and the risks are increasing. He evacuated five people from Vodino on his last trip, including Marina Sudash and her 92 year old father in law, Ivan. Their bus came under fire again on the road out. They're now being cared for at a former kindergarten turned refugee centre run by a local church. I'm not sure how we got through it, Marina tells me, describing intense fighting over the past couple of weeks. We tried humour at first and distracting ourselves, but then a rocket hit the house next door and you just think, where next? As we talk, Ivan frets beside her. The elderly man is blind and deeply confused. At one point he demands his passport. I could die here, he worries. Where have you taken me? Out in the corridor, other families mill around, mothers scooping up young children along with bags stuffed full of clothes. There's a bus due to take people to the train station, then on to Lviv in western Ukraine. Katya is one of the group getting out. She fled her own town near the frontline a few months back with her newborn baby. She tells me she'd just got a new flat before the war and spent a small fortune doing it up. Now there are Ukrainian troops based inside her building and she can't imagine there'll be much left to go back to with her own baby perched on her hip. Her friend Lena says she was evacuated by Alexander a day ago. Listening to the women talk, you start to realise a little of what they've lived through. We know what weapons they're using, we know when we have to hit the ground or how long we have to take cover. We know the sounds by heart now, like the Alphabet, lena says. When they fire, we listen, count to five, and if there's nothing more, we carry on, she adds. And the women worry Ukraine's frontline could be moving, that even the town they're in now that's currently safe could fall again to the rebels. So they traipse across the ice to climb into an already over packed van for their journey west. Alexander attempts to squeeze their baby buggers in behind them. We did think before that there could be peace, cuttier tells me before they head off. Now I think this war is only just starting. I think what we've seen up to now is nothing compared to what's coming.
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Sarah Rainsford Back now at her base in Moscow, the husband of a Pakistani woman sentenced to death for blasphemy has appealed for the international community to intervene. He says because of the conviction, he and his family live in constant fear of their lives and have had to go into hiding. Some local politicians who've spoken out about the case or campaigned for a redrafting of the blasphemy law have been attacked and killed. Shaima Khalil's been to Pakistan's Punjab province to investigate.
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The small village of Itanwali is a mix of orchards, dusty streets and small houses. Five years ago, Assiya lived in one of these houses with her children and husband, Ashik. But then she was accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad by a group of Muslim women after they had a row in the field about sharing water. They said the water was unclean because a Christian woman had touched it. She denies insulting the Prophet, but was chased and beaten by a mob in front of her children before the police took her away. She's been denied an appeal several times, and now she has one last chance, as her case is considered by Pakistan's Supreme Court. Etanwale is sleepy and quiet but for the odd motorcycle or rickshaw braving the muddy streets. We arrived there intending to ask people about Assiya's case. Did they remember her? What do they think should happen to her? Was all of this necessary? Was it fair? I wanted to ask. A crowd gathered around us as we started recording outside Assia's house. The house now has a new owner. He took it over after Assia's family fled. To start with, the crowd was friendly and curious, but the minute we mentioned the woman's name, their faces changed. Two young men started shouting. It was clear we had to leave. We got in the car, but before we could drive off, it was surrounded by the now angry mob. Why are you here? They shouted. This is Western media, someone said. Helping blasphemers. Five years after the incident, and the mere mention of Asia Bibi still conjures up so much anger. It looked as if this crowd was going to turn violent. We remained locked in our car, surrounded by this baying mob, for at least half an hour. Eventually, a village elder arrived and we were able to negotiate our getaway. The police escorted us out of the village. I was pretty shaken, but I knew it could have been a lot worse. And I realized that what I'd seen was just a glimpse of what Asia Bibi, her family, and the hundreds of others who are accused of blasphemy have to go through. It's not a normal life, ashik Masih, Asya's husband, told me. To be on the run all the time, living in constant fear. It's not a normal life. Especially for the children. He looked anxious and exhausted, a man living in constant danger. It took time for us to find him and speak to him, and when we did, he insisted on choosing the location. It had to be somewhere far away from where he was currently living. The blasphemy law, he said, had destroyed their lives. The children and I are always hiding, always on the move, and my wife has been in prison for a long time. The international community has to do something, he said. And the Pakistani government needs to help us, too. We're not safe and ass not safe either, he said, inside or outside prison. Asia's case is by no means the only one in Pakistan, but it is the best known because she was the first woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy, and that's a capital offense here. More than 50 other people accused of blasphemy have been killed before their trial was completed. And in court, most of these accusations are difficult to prove because often they're based on hearsay. They're also hard to defend because that in itself can be seen as blasphemous. Judges and lawyers have been attacked and targeted for handling these cases. Some of those who have spoken out about it have been killed. Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was shot dead by his own bodyguard when he called for Asiya's release. The country's then minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhati, was also assassinated for criticizing the blasphemy law. Soon after Asiya was convicted, crowds took to the streets vowing to kill her if she was ever released, her local imam said. If they Let her out. People would take the law into their own hands. This is a complicated and often dangerous issue. Calls for a review of the legislation are often ignored by politicians. The law is deeply rooted in the country's conservative Muslim society and the politics that exist alongside it. But for Asia Bibi's family, this is about losing a loved one for reasons they can hardly understand. Before I leave him, I ask Ashik when he last saw his wife. In December, he said she asked about the kids and started crying. She wanted to know every detail about school and their lives. She said, take good care of the children. I don't know how long I have to live.
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Shaima Khalil now it's perhaps not widely known that Britain's biggest industrial employer is the Indian conglomerate Tata, which began life as a family business. Over the past 10 years, Tata has taken over a series of well known British brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and what's left of British Steel. Today it has interests throughout Europe and beyond. In this country it employs some 60,000 people. Zahra Masani has been to the heart of its empire in India to find out what makes Tata tickets.
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India's biggest industrial plant is hidden away in what were once the jungles of Bihar. Jamshedpur, named after its founder Jamsajit Tata, is a four hour train journey away from Calcutta. Its remote location is the result of pioneering prospecting. Way back in the early 1900s. The founder's son and a small band of American engineers and geologists discovered rich deposits here of coal and iron ore. They spent months traveling on horseback and camping in tents in forests still populated by tigers. My own trip was rather less arduous. The Gitanjali Express from Calcutta, named after a famous Tagore heroine, was as crowded and chaotic as any other Indian train. A middle aged gentleman seated opposite was fascinated that we were making documentaries about the house of Tata, India's biggest business for a century and a half and now Britain's largest manufacturer too. Jamshedpur, he assured us, is still the cleanest city in India. And that's because it's run by Tata and not some corrupt elected municipality. You won't even see a dead leaf on the streets, he said, let alone rubbish. I soon discovered that the picture isn't quite so simple. The Tata administered town was built as one of the world's first model industrial towns. Laid out according to its founder's instructions. With broad tree lined avenues, plenty of green open spaces and purpose built workers housing with electricity and modern sanitation. Tata Steel was Asia's first steel plant. And its working conditions compared with the best in the world, with an eight hour day paid annual leave, pension and sickness benefits introduced much before they were required by law. Tata then and now are considered India's most philanthropic business with free health care and education offered to their employees, many of whom have been promoted up the company hierarchy for generations. Tata charity, or what today is pompously called corporate social responsibility, has spread out from Jamshedpur into surrounding areas populated by tribal communities who have suffered the pollution caused by Tata mining. In one such tribal village, I was shown a class of about a hundred tribal women being taught about basic health and nutrition. It's a women's self help project run for Tata by a remarkably feisty lady herself of tribal origin. She marched me across a field to an artificial pond which the village women have dug to promote baby better irrigation and more rotation of crops. Tata, she assured me, also has a policy of greening over all its exhausted mines with newly planted trees. Back in Jamshedpur, the enormous factories belching out clouds of smoke are still surrounded by stately parks and boulevards. With the whitewashed mansions of managers encircled by a periphery of workers housing and a picturesque river. It's easy to forget you're at the heart of one of the world's biggest industrial complexes producing 7 million tonnes of steel a year. And yet Tata has its critics. Once you cross the river from the Tata administered town, you're back in streets covered with rubbish and in sanitary slums so characteristic of Indian cities. I was taken to a shanty town of Dalits of the former untouchable caste who complained that Tata had laid them off work. I was shown allegedly toxic effluent flowing from Tata factories into the river. And an elderly retired local businessman told me about the legal battle he's been waging for the past decade, right up to India's Supreme Court to force Tata to hand over control of the town to elected local councillors. When I put these demands to the present and former managing directors of Tata Steel, their answers were similar. Tata could hardly be blamed for pollution caused by other industries which have sprung up around their own complex. Local referendums had shown that people were overwhelmingly in favour of continued Tatar administration. What was undeniable was that even the disaffected Dalits in their slum dwellings were unanimous in demanding that Tata, not any elected municipality, should come to their aid. It's testimony that Tata ethics, though far from perfect, still command far greater trust than the politicians who run the world's biggest democracy.
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Zuri Mahsani and you can Hear his documentary called Tata India's global giant, tomorrow morning at 11 o' clock here on Radio 4. The release from prison in Cairo of the former BBC correspondent Peter Gresta has been widely welcomed. He's now been reunited with his family in the Australian city of Brisbane. It was, he said, at the airport, something he dreamed about many times during captivity. He called again on the Egyptian authorities to free his two Al Jazeera colleagues who remain in prison. They all denied charges that they'd collaborated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood and said their trial was a sham. Egyptian justice has been much criticised, and not just because of the Gresta case. Over the last 18 months, thousands of people have have been arrested by the authorities, many for taking part in protests. Claire Reid has spent the last seven months following the sometimes chaotic trial of one young activist.
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They call him Yousef the terrorist, says Umm Yousef, her face veil folded back over her head to speak in the privacy of the lawyer's office. She's Talking about her 15 year old son Yousef. He was arrested last September on his way to school. Since then he's been held in a police station cell in his hometown of Fayum or Yousef didn't know where her son was for four days after his arrest. While he was under investigation, he says he was beaten and electrocuted. Yousef is accused of causing an explosion in a food stand in the city. He admitted the charges after those four days with the police. The Egyptian government denies the beating. An electrocution took place and if that was ever to happen, they say police officers would be held accountable. Yousef's lawyer, Yasmin Hassam, was finally able to see him on the fifth day after his arrest and a photo she took shows his narrow face in a hollow stare, looking up into the camera, covered in scratches. She says there's no evidence against him. Yousef's father was killed when an anti government sit in in Cairo was violently dispersed in 2013. His mother believes that's why her son was arrested because the police are afraid he'll take revenge for his father's death. Om Yousef is defiant. She wears all black along a Bayer that covers her body, a headscarf and a face veil. She says her family are not members of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. But when I ask her if she marches at their weekly protests, she pauses. She looks down at her youngest son, less than 2 years old, playing at her feet, then fixes me with a cold gaze. Actually, she says, I do. I'm not going to lie because I have A fire inside. I wish I could protest every day. Her youngest child, Omar, starts calling out to his mother. He reaches out with his small arms, grabs her leg and winds until Om Yousef turns to him. She lifts him up to her breast and raises the top part of her obeyer to feed him. Then she continues saying she feels people like her family have no right to life and protesting is the only way the authorities will take notice. She doesn't know what else to do to help her eldest son. Caught up with the police and the courts, Egypt's justice system is notoriously slow and bureaucratic. Almost nothing is computerized and many decisions seem to be up to the whims of the judge. In the past year, thousands of people have been swept up in mass arrests and put on trial. Many have scant evidence against them. It's not just Muslim Brotherhood supporters who are the target, but other activists too. They're usually charged with being violent in protests, taking part in unsanctioned demonstrations and disturbing the peace. The university professor and outspoken government critic Leila Soueif has two children in jail on charges like these. Like Umm Youssef, she protests to try and get her children out of jail. But unlike Umm Yousef, she and her family are against the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the military and government. Layla and her elder daughter Mona held a two day sit in at the Supreme Court to draw attention to the plight of their family and others caught up in the judicial system. A lawyer helped me get inside the court building via a back door to meet Layla. I found them sitting on pieces of cardboard inside the high ceilinged marble entrance hall. They'd spent the night there. They were holding posters bearing the faces of all the defendants in the two cases involving their family. A group of human rights lawyers was milling around supporting the sit in and some members of an opposition party had just visited. Layla and I go and sit on a bench to talk. Her breath is pungent. She's been on hunger strike for more than 50 days. She says people know the police are oppressive, but now the oppression is coming from the judges. Layla's daughter Sanet was eventually sentenced to two years in jail, plus two years probation for protesting illegally. Leila stopped her hunger strike before the verdict, but her son is now refusing food while his trial continues. And just like Om Yousef, the mother of the 15 year old Laila remains defiant. She and her family are ready to fight the battles which lie ahead.
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Claride in Cairo, the Malian capital Bamako's been holding its first international conference since the country descended into chaos after a military coup there three years ago. The delegates were pondering the past, present and future of Mali's illustrated manuscripts, the ones which gained worldwide attention when Al Qaeda occupied the city of Timbuktu in 2012, threatening the documents and much else besides with destruction. Today, as Alex Duval Smith's been hearing, the future of these historic papers is still in doubt for a number of reasons.
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Next to the guards booth at the conference centre, two dozen people are standing round a small television set watching the African cup of Nations. You can tell it's the football because of the green flicker coming from the screen. Inside the conference centre, there's another, larger screen. This one lists the main threats facing the manuscripts. War, trafficking and humidity. Lazara Lundu of the United nations heritage body UNESCO says fewer than 5% of Mali's manuscripts have been read by modern scholars. His organisation needs funds to photograph, box and index 350,000 manuscripts that were brought to Bamako in 2012. They were spirited to the capital from libraries in Timbuktu and by civilians who risked their lives fleeing Al Qaeda's destructive spree. Modern fundamentalists don't approve of the ancient illustrated Qurans, astrology handbooks and other esoteric writings. Among the manuscripts. They believe Timbuktu Sufi Muslims are heretics for allowing magic and icons to cohabit with religion. Some government ministers came to the opening of the conference and but there was no sign of the president or Prime Minister. Curious. Our politicians are not interested in the manuscripts, says a Malian colleague. There's no money to be made from them. I feel that a fourth word should be added to that list of dangers war, trafficking, humidity and indifference. Yet last year in Timbuktu, I experienced the passion the manuscripts inspire. Abdul Wadid Abdurahman Haidara showed me to a darkened mud walled room at the back of his house. The family treasure. About 3,000 manuscripts dating from the 9th to the 19th century are kept there in five metal chests and a few cheap plastic suitcases. The yellow leaves sit between crumbling leather covers. Some manuscripts are short three, four pages. Some run to the thickness of a modern paperback. This one, you can tell, isn't very old, says Hydra. It's 16th century. Earlier manuscripts are written with different ink and wooden nibs. This one's about astrology. He reads a passage explaining what stars to look out for in the sky before planting your rice seed. Timbuktu's status as an ancient centre of learning is a direct result of the fortunes that were made there from gold, slaves and SW in the 14th century, the city had several universities. In the absence of printing presses, students copied erudite writings for their own use. They became skilled calligraphers and would work as copyists to pay for their digs. Haidara used to run a private library, which tourists visited. When Al Qaeda came to town, he hid the manuscripts in his house. Given the continuing critical security situation in northern Mali, there's little prospect of them being put back on public display. We don't know what's going to happen next, he tells me. The manuscripts need to be digitalised. There are probably 300,000 manuscripts in Timbuktu homes, says Haidara. Every head of household, even if he's illiterate, has one. It's a keepsake that protects the family. The children aren't allowed to touch the manuscripts in case they're tempted to sell them. What then is to become of Mali's ancient manuscripts? The majority of Malians feel no particular attachment to them or even know they exist. They're not mentioned in Malian school history books. It wouldn't make much difference if they were. 67% of the population is illiterate. Enter another foreigner, Sophie Saarin, a Swedish born hotel owner in Mali. Six years ago, she secured funding from the British Library for the digitalisation of thousands of manuscripts in the city of Jenne. The scheme brought computers to town, creating jobs. Now she's created a calligraphy studio and dreams of turning out bespoke hand inked Qur' ans bound in leather by local cobblers. Marlians need to take ownership of the manuscript, she says. This can't all be left to foreigners. At the guards booth outside the conference, the mood is glum. Mali didn't score enough goals to make it through the group stage of the African cup of Nations. In the end, Les Aigle, as they're known, were eliminated by equally lacklustre guinea when lots were drawn. Similarly, Mali's in danger of leaving the survival of its manuscripts heritage to chance.
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And with that, from Alex Duval Smith in the Malian capital Bamako, we've reached the end of this edition. There'll be more from correspondents around the world on Saturday morning at half past eleven. Do join us. Goodbye.