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From Our Own Correspondent
IRAN:Stories of a massacre
00:28:39
Iranians reveal what happened during the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests
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- [00:00]
BBC Announcer
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- [00:34]
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- [01:05]
BBC Correspondent
Hello Today, as Western leaders look to bolster their relationship with China, we ask what's in it for Beijing? In Myanmar, our correspondent tries his best to report on elections, but finds fear and surveillance at every turn. In South Africa, we hear how aid cuts are affecting the treatment of tuberculosis and the stigma surrounding the disease. And finally, we're in Lithuania on the trail of a forgotten family tree. But first to Tehran, where reports of thousands of people killed during the crackdown there have drawn international outcry. Protests over worsening economic conditions erupted in the capital at the end of December and evolved into one of the deadliest periods of anti government unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic. The BBC is rarely granted permission to report from within Iran, but BBC Persian's Param Jabadi has been in contact with people on the ground in spite of the Internet shutdown.
- [02:10]
Param Jabadi
Mohammad first texted me at 4am local time from Tehran. It was just after midnight here in London back in 2022 during the protests of Woman Life Freedom Movement. He was on death row, charged with enmity with God for an act of protest. His sentence was later commuted to a prison term to be served more than several hundred miles away from his home in Tehran. He had been given medical leave when this latest round of protests began. My cousin was killed in the protest. Param, his cousin had been killed on January 9th. The nights of the 8th and 9th were among the most intense of protests after Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last Shah, now living in exile in the US had called on people to take to the streets. Mohammed told me that he and his father searched for his cousin's body for three days, including at the notorious Kahrizak forensic center. Videos from Kahrizak when they emerged, shocked Iranians, even those who had witnessed some of the most brutal acts of the regiment. Hundreds of bodies lying on the ground in bags. Parents, siblings, children and spouses walking among them, trying to identify their loved ones. Some embracing the cold bodies of their children, grieving. The BBC is rarely allowed into Iran, where I grew up. So I spent the days piecing together what's happening on the ground, verifying messages and videos sent by my contacts. Last week, I received another video from Kahrizak. 12 relentless minutes. It shows one father searching for his son, Seper, among the dead, repeatedly calling out his name. Seper, where are you, my son? The video, published on social media, went viral. The father and those around him curse Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling this a massacre he committed. This is a criminal offense in Iran. Imagine searching through hundreds of bodies, some brutally killed, some with open wounds, disfigured faces, some still attached to hospital equipment. Imagine finding your loved one among them, especially your child. We have received testimonies that wounded protesters were arrested by security forces, taken from hospitals and later returned to their families and as corpses. Muhammad eventually found his cousin at Kahrizak. It was beyond imagination, he told me. Children as young as 10, men, women. I saw a woman whose face was half blown away. I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see those images. He was right about the children. The next morning, a video published by the Iranian social media activist known as Vahid online showed images of two infants among the dead, displayed on a screen where families were asked to identify their loved ones. There were many who were under 18. One of them was 15 year old Yalda Muhammad Khani, who had also joined the protests. She died in her mother's arms. Her uncle told me that on January 8, a sniper in Karaj, near Tehran, fired eight live rounds at Yalda. When I witnessed firsthand the throngs protesting for democracy during Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election. Yalda had just been born. Fifteen years later, I'm telling the story of a girl killed for standing up for democracy. A girl who entered the world as hundreds of thousands were on the streets demanding change. Her uncle sent me photos of her before her death, her eyes bright and a radiant smile. And after, her face is etched in my mind. Since this year's protest began. The US based Human Rights Activists news agency says it has confirmed the killing of at least 6,000 people and is investigating 17,000 more reported deaths. Iranian authorities said the death toll was closer to 3,100 and that the majority were security personnel or bystanders attacked by rioters. On Thursday, an informed source contacted me to say that Puriya Mohdari, an Iranian rapper known as alif, died on January 9 after being shot with three live rounds in Tehran. I was told the 33 year old had been beaten by security forces the day before. One of his ribs had been broken. He was supposed to stay at home and rest because he had been badly beaten, the source went on. But he left quietly and never came back. I checked Houria's Instagram. His final post was a freestyle rap published just five days before he was killed. In it, he raps enough of the bullets, enough of the slaps before the noose is tightened further. For a mother who raised a child only to watch him die under the feet of a torturer, those words now read like a farewell or his clarion call to the living.
- [07:21]
BBC Correspondent
Param Gobadi Next we're in Myanmar, where the final round of elections took place last weekend, five years after a coup returned the military junta to power. Many popular parties are banned from standing and voting has not been possible in large areas of the country because of the five year long civil war. The military junta took back control after ousting an elected civilian government led by Aung San SUU Kyi, who remains in detention. Jonathan Head has been in Shan state.
- [07:55]
BBC Announcer
Kin Mong U, the man from the Myanmar Election Commission, was indignant at the suggestion. This election is free and fair, he insisted as he inspected a polling station at a school in Shan State. You've been listening to false news. You can ask anyone here. And he waved his arms at the dwindling lines of voters. I did try asking a few people about the election. They all rushed away mumbling apologies. He couldn't blame them. As the only foreign media team in the area, we stood out in this small lakeside town. And we were never alone. A jolly police officer escorted our van wherever we went in Yongshui, never leaving us until we reached the town limits, at which point another car would invariably start tailing us. After eating lunch at a small noodle restaurant, we found out later the couple who ran it were visited by police officers demanding to know what we'd been doing. There were police coming out of our rooms when we got to our hotel. The owner was Visibly relieved when we checked out. There are new laws in Myanmar criminalising any criticism of the election, and hundreds have already been charged. A candidate from one of the few opposition parties permitted to run was given a year in prison for mentioning the word revolution while campaigning. One young woman got 42 years just for distributing leaflets featuring a balut box and a bullet. No wonder no one wanted to talk to the BBC. We'd made careful plans to avoid identifying anyone we spoke to, but how could we possibly assure them that there would be no repercussions? In an effort to shake off our escorts, we took a boat out onto Shan State's stunningly beautiful Inlay Lake. There are always fishermen out there to talk to. But we'd underestimated the determination of the military intelligence officer shadowing us. He jumped in his own boat and followed us closely, rendering our attempts at conversation with the fisherman futile. In frustration, I confronted him when we reached a temple. You don't follow foreign tourists, so why follow us? I asked him. He was startled by my question. It's for your protection, he said. You are special guests. The military regime seldom allows foreign journalists into Myanmar, and when it does, it's not because it expects sympathetic reporting. We were really there as props. Our presence meant to buttress their efforts to win international legitimacy through a transparently unfair election. They were happy enough for us to cover polling day, which was largely smooth and orderly in those places where it could actually take place about half the country. But reporting anything else that was different, because the result was a foregone conclusion. And with the civil war still raging, there was almost no campaigning. In fact, we saw just two election posters in four days of driving around Shan State. Technically, 57 parties were contesting, but 56 of them were either very small or very new, with no resources to challenge the juggernaut of the military backed usdp. But we did hear of a small rally being held by the PAO National Organization. Like other ethnic minority groups in Shan State, the P and O has its own armed militia. Unlike most of them, it cooperates with the military, helping it to dominate this part of the state. This was a rare opportunity to meet them, and they said we could come. Alas, we reckoned without Major Jawso Mynt, a small, crumpled looking army officer, manning a checkpoint on the pretty little road into the hills. We had got through two checkpoints already, where our vehicle and accreditation documents were scrutinised before being waved on. But an hour of pleading with the major could not persuade him that our various letters from the central government authorising us to cover the election in his area were sufficient. Next to him, young Pa' o soldiers carrying battered looking rifles hung around looking bored by this unexpected encounter with foreign media. The major politely but firmly turned us around and sent us back a whole day wasted. There are lots of ways in which this election was rigged. The most obvious was by banning the parties which had proved most popular in the last election before the coup, in particular Aung San SUU Kyi's National League for Democracy. She's remained in jail and out of sight since the coup. But perhaps the most effective was the suffocating cloak of fear that the generals have wrapped around the population. People who couldn't bring themselves to express even the mildest opinion of the election were never going to feel that their participation in it was either free or fair.
- [12:47]
BBC Correspondent
Jonathan head Next Zakir Starmer's trip to Beijing was the first by a UK prime minister since 2018. He was accompanied by an entourage of 60 British business and cultural leaders in what's being seen as a critical moment in the British government's attempt to to reboot its relationship with China. This follows recent trips by Canadian and French leaders keen to forge closer ties with Beijing amid frostier relations with the us. Laura Bicker was in Beijing.
- [13:19]
Laura Bicker
The formal, triumphant tones of the flagship Chinese state Media bulletin announced the visit of Sir Keir Starmer earlier this week. It was the top story as the newsreader described his meeting with President Xi Jinping as warm and welcoming. I thought perhaps that would be it. But no. The next story too discussed his tour of the Forbidden City, the former home of the Chinese emperor in the centre of the capital. And the next announced that British tourists would be allowed to visit China visa free for 30 days. And so it went on. A full 18 minutes of the 30 minute evening program was dedicated to the British Prime Minister. There is a reason it received so much attention. The UK is seen by many in China as a follower of the United States. The perception is Westminster simply does Washington's bidding when it comes to foreign policy. So to see a British prime minister at Beijing's door looking to reset the country's relationship is a moment of real prestige. For President Xi, Beijing is not the easiest place to visit in winter. Frigid air blows in from the cold, freezing the city lakes and rivers. And yet in the last two months, leaders from around the world have accepted invitations to the Chinese capital. For China, this is part of a charm offensive in the hope that some will now look at Beijing as a stable, predictable partner in contrast to the us it seemed to work with Mark Carney, the Canadian prime Minister who visited earlier this month. He has blazed a trail for other world leaders by traveling to Beijing and announcing a new strategic partnership with China. This was a dramatic turnaround for a relationship between two nations that had been in the deep freeze for a decade, and it will be music to President xi's ears. The U.S. president Donald Trump, however, has threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Canada if Mr. Carney agrees a deal with China, and he's now also warning the UK that doing business with Beijing is very dangerous. In their meeting in the Great hall of the People, the President Xi had an answer for the Prime Minister on why he should still bet on Beijing. He quoted the proverb range far your eye over long distances. He's urging Sir Keir to take a long term view of the relationship. President Xi is confident he will still be in power when Donald Trump is gone. Mr. Xi paired his rhetoric with some economic rewards. AstraZeneca has committed to a $15 billion investment in manufacturing and research and development in China, and while tariffs on British whisky will be halved from 10% to 5%. And there's that promise of visa free travel too. In a warm pub in the winding back alleys of an area called the Huttons near Tiananmen Square, this in particular was welcomed by a British tour guide. Until you come over and see China for yourself, you're never going to know it, he told me. I'm desperately trying to get more people to really experience the Beijing that me, my wife and my friends fell in love with. Critics accused the Chinese government of a vast array of human rights allegations, from the crackdowns in Hong Kong and Tibet to the persecutions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Sir Keir Starmer said he did raise some of these sensitive issues, including the imprisonment of the British citizen and pro democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong. China will have expected this and pushed back accordingly, telling the UK Prime Minister to stay out of Chinese affairs. Back in that pub in the Hutons, the bright, piercing sound of Celtic pipes burst from two speakers as Bo Wei Wang poured a pint of brown ale. He studied in Glasgow 15 years ago and fell in love with British beer. The beer is everything for me, he tells me as he takes a sip. It was one of the first ales he made in his overtone brewery in Glasgow, which is now shipped to China and served from his bar in Beijing, where scenes from Braveheart play on one large TV while a biopic of Queen Elizabeth I plays on another. But in the 15 years since Mr. Wang's first trip to Glasgow, the UK's relationship with China pivoted from what was once described as a golden age to an ice age. China continued, undeterred by Western criticism. It is now a manufacturing powerhouse, making around a third of all the world's goods. And it's using its dominance in trade to entice traditional US allies by highlighting that Beijing is offering deals while Donald Trump is threatening tariffs. Economically, this visit offers the Chinese government very little. The UK is not one of China's top trading partners, nor is it likely to be. Instead, President Xi will see this trip as part of a wider plan to welcome Western leaders at his door as their ties with Washington begin to free.
- [18:29]
BBC Correspondent
Laura Bicker.
- [18:32]
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- [20:06]
BBC Correspondent
Next to South Africa, which over the last decade has made steady progress on bringing down infection and mortality rates of tuberculosis through improved testing and screening. Yet despite this, the incidence has remained stubbornly High. Sandra Canthal was in Cape Town recently, where she went to one research centre leading the efforts to bring TB rates down, but which last year suffered another major setback from Washington.
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Sandra Canthal
Down a dirt road across from a secondary school in a township near Cape Town, there's an oasis. It's in the form of a strikingly beautiful garden, which is the center of the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation's Massey Pumale research site. The garden was designed by Professor Robin Wood. As an expert in the study of TB transmission, an airborne disease, he thinks a lot about the design of spaces. In developed nations, TB doesn't get much attention, but globally, it's still humanity's most deadly infectious disease. And South Africa has one of the greatest TB burdens in the world, in part because of its high rates of HIV infection. The two make for a deadly double act in the human immune system, but it's also because TB is a disease of poverty, and crowded townships have that in abundance too. Living in these communities was described to me as swimming in a sea of tb. Professor Wood runs an aerobiology research center here to study TB transmission, and he proudly showed me some of its extremely sophisticated and secure labs. Then, as we walked through his beautiful garden, he also pointed out a sports field, youth health clinic and gym facilities that can be used by the centre's neighbours in the township, an example of South African science reaching into the communities it's trying to serve. The centre's main building is the hub for its clinical trials, and this is one of the reasons I've come to this site. Many clinical trials that advance TB prevention and treatment around the world run through South Africa. Much of this research is underpinned by money from institutions in the United States in the form of aid or research grants. But 2025 proved to be a year like no other. Wood described it as traumatic. Some of his grant funding disappeared without warning, leaving him scrambling to draw in money from other sources so he can keep paying his staff. The Massa Pumalele site, Massey, for short, is something of a family affair. The CEO of the Desmond Tutu Health foundation is a renowned TB and HIV researcher, Professor Linda Gail Becker. She's also Wood's wife, though he affectionately referred to her as the Boss. She's passionate about highlighting the crucial role South African research plays in advancing the fight against diseases like TB and hiv. Along the corridor from where we spoke is a kitchen where two local women were making a very large batch of pancakes, which smelled absolutely delicious. These were for the visiting clinical trial participants, and that word is quite Deliberate volunteers on these studies aren't called patients, they are participants to avoid any stereotypes or stigma. And this is especially relevant for people with tb, which is why a conversation I had with a woman called Noma Pelo was so memorable. She's a community health care worker with a non profit organization called Living Hope that works with the Massey Center. At the beginning of the interview she was so quiet and reserved I wondered if my recorder would capture her voice. But once she opened up, her story stuck with me. Noma Pelu told me how she spent four months in hospital with tb. It was so scary in that hospital, she recalled, and it was so sad because there would be one or two people dying in front of you. But returning home didn't bring much relief. Her sister refused to let her eat with the family and only let her use one bowl because of the fear she would infect them all. Noma Pelu seemed seared by the shame, but reflected that at the end. I thank her because maybe if she didn't treat me that way, I was going to be comfortable and not take my medication. Nomapelu had drug resistant TB and her treatment lasted 18 months. Now she gives talks to others impacted by the diseased to show that there is hope and life after tb. Humanitarian aid and biomedical research funding are two distinct things, but in the clinics I visited around Cape Town, they seemed intertwined and a world away from the corridors of power in America. Every person I spoke to on my trip had a story of layers in the system lost last year. But the impact of these cuts was won't be confined to the patience of this one nation. As Professor Becker explained, we have big questions to answer not only for South Africa, but for the world.
- [25:05]
BBC Correspondent
Sandra Kamthal and finally we're in Lithuania, where the Jewish community today numbers just a few thousand. Prior to World War II there was a sizable population of around 200,000, the vast majority of whom were murdered in the Holocaust. Today, Lithuania is home to several memorial sites remembering those who died, and significant research has ensured Jewish narratives are included in the country's national history. Max Eastermann recently visited to trace the homes and the graves of his recently discovered ancestors.
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Max Eastermann
The sun was shining from a clear blue sky after days of rain. We travelled northwest from Vilnius almost to the Latvian border, and finally by rowboat across a wide lake to an island. The island was stunningly beautiful, most of it a graveyard of tilting and fallen gravestones. This was the Jewish cemetery at Mossadis, the shtetl, or little town from which my grandfather had emigrated to Scotland. Nearly 150 years ago. It was where I hoped to find the graves of his ancestors. I grew up knowing little about my family's origins. I never heard the word litvak. I was just told they were Jews from Russia. All I knew was an unsmiling portrait of two grandparents standing stiffly in front of the camera. My family never told me why they'd left, never told me why most of the family was called Esterman, except for my father and a few other Eastermans. Never explained why they sometimes talked in a language I couldn't understand. Just family stuff, they said. I was into my teens before I worked out. They were speaking Yiddish. But why? No answer. Time passed, and the only thing I did discover was that my family had actually come from Lithuania. An inadvertent revelation by an aunt at my Uncle Alf's funeral, but nothing more. My aunts. And then my father died, and the story died with them. I got on with life. Then, by chance, seven years ago, I read Shtetl Lovesong, a novel by Grigory Canovic, a litvak and one of Lithuania's most famous writers. It was a story of Jews living and working side by side with Lithuanians until the Soviets arrived in 1940 and a year later, the Nazis. Kanovich described how friends became collaborators, often with their fingers on German triggers. Betrayal by turncoats. This prompted me to further research. It was a shock to discover how thoroughly the Nazis exterminated the Litvaks. More Jews killed per head of population than in any other part of Europe, 95% of them gone by 1945. Synagogues, libraries, cemeteries, almost all wiped out by the Nazis and and then by Stalin after the war. Now I understood how this must have traumatized my family into silence. And then, another chance event. I received an email from a cousin I'd no idea existed. Victoria belonged to another branch of the Eastermans. She was putting together a family tree. Could I help? Not much, of course. Crucially for me, though, she'd identified the two shtetls my family came from, Mossades and Skordas. Here was some real progress. And finally, an unexpected message. Today's Lithuanian government is anxious to atone for what was done to the Litvaks, and they invited me to the celebrations put on in Vilnius for the Jewish History Research Institute called Yivo. At last, a real opportunity to track down my ancestors. At first, it seemed my visit might be in vain. I was told that my grandfather's shtetl, Mossadis, was destroyed by fire in 1907, and all its documentation with it only its cemetery had survived. One of the few undesecrated Jewish burial grounds left in Lithuania, almost certainly because it was on an island. But now it's so overgrown and the grave so decayed I couldn't identify a single Esterman plot. A huge disappointment. I know they must be there and I am determined one day to find them. The documents from the other shtetlskwardas did provide something exciting. Records that estermanns had lived 150 years ago at number 8 Vilnius street on the edge of what had been the Jewish marketplace. A low wooden house that's now transformed into a flower shop, but a tangible link to my past. No family graves there, though. Skwodass cemetery was bulldozed after the war to reach Mossadegh Cemetery, we were rowed over by Stasis Laimikis, an affable bearded man who told me he'd been to the island 30 times already this year. He's not Jewish, he explained. So why? I asked him. Ah, well, he said, I go there to pray for the souls of the Jewish dead. There's no one else to do that. That cemetery is now a national monument. My hope is that money will be found to restore it and that Stasis will still be around when I go back to Ferrimia Cross, finally to see my ancestors graves.
- [30:31]
BBC Correspondent
Max Eastermann. And that's all for today. We'll be back again next Saturday morning. Do join us.
- [30:39]
BBC Announcer
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- [31:22]
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- [31:53]
Param Jabadi
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