← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
It Could Have Been Much Worse
00:28:24
How the direction of the wind saved Tokyo from possible radioactive contamination --...
Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest
- [00:06]
Nick Thorpe
edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
- [00:09]
Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:12]
Presenter/Host
It could have been much worse. Japan's former Prime Minister admits they were close to evacuating Tokyo in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Also today, some small reasons to be cheerful. In the Ukrainian city where police are accused of drug dealing and syringes litter the playgrounds. We find out why no one's buying strawberries in the open air markets of Sofia and Ljubljana. And how a man who robbed the bank of millions is now stealing hearts right across France. The Japanese government soon has to decide whether to reopen the country's nuclear power plants. They were shut down two years ago after the meltdown at Fukushima. It was revealed earlier this morning that in the latest of a series of problems there, more than 100 tons of radioactive water are believed to have leaked from a faulty cooling tank. Tank. The closures have proved costly to the Japanese economy. Influential voices insist the plants are now safe and it's time to reopen them. But Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Tokyo says there are other compelling arguments too.
- [01:17]
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
If the Fukushima disaster proves anything, it's that nuclear power is safe. It was the worst disaster imaginable. Three reactor cores in uncontrolled meltdown. But the design worked. The melted cores were contained and not a single person was killed. Last month, the World Health Organization released a report that said the impact of radiation on the people who live near the plant will be minimal. The increase in cancer rates so small it may not even be measurable. People are understandably angry, but nuclear power produces no carbon emissions. And the alternative? Burning more coal will kill tens of thousands through lung disease and cancers. This is a compelling argument, and one the Japanese government is now making itself as it campaigns to switch Japan's other nuclear reactors back on. But it misses out on some vital details about Fukushima. Recently, I went to meet Japan's former Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, the man who was in charge when the disaster struck. He is now an ardent opponent of nuclear power, in large part because of what he experienced in those terrifying days of early March 2011. It is a tale of confusion, incompetence, but most of all, of luck. It could have been much, much worse, he told me. We came very close to losing half the country. We really thought we might have to evacuate Tokyo. Tokyo, a city of 30 million people. The thing that saved Japan was the weather, or rather the wind. In early March, the Wind blows mainly from the northwest, so most of the radiation was blown out to sea. Had the disaster happened in the summer, the radioactive plume would probably have blown right across northern Japan, a radioactive swathe cutting the country in two. I went to the Fukushima plant last month on a press tour, and it was as I stood looking down on the destroyed reactor buildings from the hill above that I had a sudden and to me, shocking realization. Where the Fukushima reactors now stand, there used to be a cliff rising 30 to 40 meters above sea level. But when they built the plant 40 years ago, they first dug away a large chunk of the cliff and the hillside and lowering the ground close to sea level. Now, I understand the plant needs seawater to cool the reactors, but the nagging question wouldn't go away. Why would you deliberately lower the ground on a coast that has repeatedly been hit by earthquakes and tsunamis? It speaks of an industry blinded by arrogance and complacency. And there are plenty of other reasons to think so. This week, the company that owns Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, finally admitted the disaster could and should have been avoided. A Japanese parliamentary commission came to that conclusion nearly a year ago. But for months, Tokyo Electric continued to insist it was not to blame, that the disaster was caused by an unprecedented natural event that couldn't have been predicted. The final detail that is often missed in the story of Fukushima is that it is not over, not by a long way. Inside the contamination zone, thousands of white clad workers are trying to clean up the radiation. The scale of the task is breathtaking. I saw teams removing topsoil from rice fields and putting it into huge black plastic bags. Tens of thousands of buildings are being washed by hand. The waste water must then also be collected and stored. Bamboo forests are being cut down. Leaves, grass and rice straw collected and bagged. And then there are the roads. I was shown the latest invention for sand blasting and vacuuming the road surfaces. All the dust must, of course, be collected. Then somewhere has to be found to store the millions of tons of radioactive waste. But that is not the biggest problem. The real problem is that despite the huge effort and cost, a lot of people now don't want to come back. In one town recently declared safe by the government, only 10% of people have returned. The Fukushima disaster has even spawned a new Japanese word, nuclear divorce. The long term psychological impact of living with the fear of radiation is only now starting to be measured. But it is already thought to have caused a number of suicides. It is, it turns out, much too early to say that Nobody has died because of Fukushima.
- [06:18]
Presenter/Host
Rupert Wingfield Hayes the latest on Nelson Mandela comes from his wife, Grasse Michel, who says he is continuing to get better after being hospitalised with pneumonia more than a week ago. It's the former South African president's third hospital visit this year. This latest health scare brought expressions of concern and goodwill from around the world. Andrew Harding says it's also caused South Africans to examine the state of their country 20 years after Mr. Mandela helped bring the apartheid era to an end.
- [06:50]
Kate Adie
All hell will break loose, said the voice on the radio. It was a call in show on a topic that's on many minds here these days. The fate of a 94 year old man lying in a hospital bed in Pretoria and the fate of South Africa once he's gone. For years, people here have been understandably reluctant to discuss the death of Nelson Mandela, out of a profound respect for the man who, more than any other, steered this country from racial apartheid to democracy. But the passage of time and the health scares of recent months have nudged the issue away from the shadows. The man on the radio was a black South African from a poor township, and he was articulating a belief that has gained a small level of currency here, that Mandela's passing will unleash not just grief and nostalgia, but a violent rage against the poverty and inequality that still exists here two decades after the end of white minority rule. There is certainly anger in the country. You may remember the recent headlines, the violent industrial action, the massacre at the Marikana mine, the death of a man dragged behind a police van. You enduringly high crime statistics. The theory goes that even from his hospital bed, Mandela exerts some sort of restraint on a turbulent nation almost a decade after he retired from public life. It's a theory that most South Africans find, quite rightly, both offensive and absurd. The next two callers on the radio show said as much. Imagine Britain in the mid-1960s, still anxious about the broader implications of Winston Churchill's failing. No, in almost every way, South Africa is already well into the post Mandela era. Other presidents have come and gone. And yet the jitters here speak to a broader theme of a grand, miraculous nation, aware that it's poised to close a big defining chapter in its history. There aren't many heroes left these days, and so people cling to Mandela like a precious relic. And they cling too, to the sense of drama, of high stakes that characterized those years in the late 80s and early 90s when South Africa really did stand on the precipice. The Dangers of a racial civil war of total collapse were raw and real. Today's headlines can still leave you speechless. The corruption allegations that cling to President Zuma. The extraordinary levels of sexual violence. There's a new crisis here every week. The South African writer Rian Milan put it well a few years ago when he tried to explain to a foreign audience why he couldn't imagine living anywhere else. You don't understand, he wrote. It's boring where you are. And yet when you peer behind some of the headlines, things can seem less dramatic. Take Oscar Pistorius. Yes, he shot his girlfriend dead. Perhaps he was afraid of burglars. You could see it all as another sign that a violent country is going to the dogs. Or you could marvel at the huge new estate the athlete lived in, surrounded by other huge new middle class suburbs where race is no longer such a big deal. And younger South Africans worry more about their mobile phones than about what life will be like after Mandela. The drive from Pistorias is home. Back here to Johannesburg is an eye opener. In the space of a few years, the two cities have essentially merged for the whole 40 minute drive. New business parks and suburbs line the motorway. It was perhaps fitting that a senior government minister chose this week, with Mr. Mandela still in hospital, to declare a decisive break with the past. We must stop looking over our shoulder. We are responsible ourselves, said the planning minister, Trevor Manuel. He urged a gathering of civil servants to stop blaming apartheid for everything that was still going wrong in South Africa. It was time to deliver. The scars of apartheid are still real here. They will not be easily shrugged off. Inequality endures and the economy is not growing anywhere near as fast as it needs to, unlike so many other corners of this continent. But as South Africa waits to hear news, good or bad, about Nelson Mandela, it is slowly coming to terms with the fact that its heroic years are over. This may still be a dramatic, exciting, scary place, but it's becoming ordinary too.
- [11:31]
Presenter/Host
That is Andrew Harding. The United nations has been talking about getting to zero in the war against HIV aids. The number of AIDS related deaths has fallen sharply in many parts of the world. But the UN's hope of achieving achieving zero new infections seems an impossible dream in parts of the old Soviet empire. In Ukraine, the number of people dying from HIV AIDS is actually increasing. Antiretroviral drugs are not widely available and the state is criticised for its inactivity. But there is some hope. Foreign funded charities are now working among drug addicts and prostitutes. And for the first time in years, they say fewer people with HIV are registering for advice and treatment. Lucy Ashe has been to visit a busy needle exchange in the capital, Kiev.
- [12:20]
Lucy Ash
Take a seat. Vladimira smiles, patting the filthy mattress on the floor. I comply and a black cat instantly springs into my lap. In the dim light, I fancy it has a malign stare and I feel its sharp claws through my trousers. Ah, that's geruena xanka for short. Hanka is the slang for the liquid opiate made from native poppies, which has since been supplanted by cheaper synthetic drugs. And this one, she announces, is Fedrina. The white cat, she tells me, is named after ephedrine, the stimulant extracted from diet pills and cough syrup. It's used to make a highly addictive concoction called baltushka, which gradually destroys the nervous system. That's the drug of choice amongst street children, who often divide and share the dose using a single syringe, a practice still spreading HIV across dozens of cities in Ukraine. The cats seem at home in this dystopian world. On the top floor of an apartment block in a run down district of Kiev, they creep daintily around the people sprawled on the floor over the brimming ashtrays, the smoke stained religious icons and special buckets for dirty syringes. Near the entrance to the flat, there's an old yellow van that looks like a school bus. Inside, two nurses take blood samples and deliver results in 10 minutes. It's a free service and much in demand because it's the only mobile testing unit in the capital of a country with the highest prevalence of HIV in Europe. I've been brought here by the alliance, the largest non governmental organization tackling AIDS in Ukraine. Vladimira is one of its new recruits in the battle against the epidemic. An ex prostitute and drug addict, she's been HIV positive for 10 years. Now she invites people into her apartment for new syringes, condoms and a bit of friendly advice. Pavel, a soft spoken man in his 30s, says the flat is very convenient because he often has only money for drugs, but not clean equipment. People used to chuck their syringes everywhere, he adds, even in children's playgrounds, without the caps on and the needles sticking out, sometimes with blood on them. Now, thanks to these exchanges, there's a lot less rubbish lying around. The woman sitting next to him admits that she and her husband used to collect discarded syringes from their stairwells. They thought washing them in urine protected them against hiv. Now addicts, especially those who shoot up in the groin, use an antiseptic wipe before and afterwards she says, so the culture of consumption has changed and people are really taking care of their health. Vladimira nods enthusiastically. She's on a mission to save lives and turn people towards God. But as she's telling me about her church, I notice horrific burn marks on her arms and neck. To my astonishment, she says she set fire to herself when confronted by police. When they came to search the flat, she poured petrol over her body and brandished a cigarette lighter. I only meant to scare them, but there was a sudden gust of wind. She says Vladimir spent weeks in Hospital with 45% burns, but since then the cops have kept their distance. She's convinced they wanted bribes. Tania, a woman in a woolly hat, interrupts to say that her dealer is a local policeman. That may sound far fetched, but just days into our visit, almost the entire drug squad in the central city of Poltava was charged with trafficking opium and other drugs. TV news showed pictures of a police run cannabis factory. Officers are known to sometimes provide what they call krisha, or protection for drug dealers. That might explain why law enforces is so hostile to substitution therapy programs designed to cut risky behaviour among injecting drug users. Patients are routinely harassed and not long ago a doctor prescribing methadone to addicts was himself locked up for drug trafficking. Stroking her white cap, Vladimira tells me her salvation didn't come from artificial opiates, but from God. Before, I was dying here in this flat and I would crawl to the toilet on all fours. Now people in church say how nice I look. And they're surprised. They say, we buried you five years ago. As she sees her guests out clutching their clean syringes, she adds, we will all come to the faith and then everything will change in our country. We will no longer have corruption, prostitution or drug addicts. It will be heaven on earth.
- [17:24]
Presenter/Host
Lucy Asch in Ukraine. And you can hear the documentary she's making there in Crossing Continents. That's here on Radio 4 next Thursday morning. It's been a disastrous week for the French President Francois Hollande, with the opinion polls now saying he's the most unpopular head of state in three decades. His government was further weakened by his former budget minister admitting that he held illegal offshore funds, that he'd hidden money from the very tax authorities he was over seeing. Highly damaging, of course, for a socialist president who's on record as saying his enemy is international finance. On the day the former minister made his admission, a film was released about a criminal who became a folk hero. He'd stolen millions of euros without resorting to violence. And David Chazan says many in France seem to regard him as a lesser evil than the politicians and bankers.
- [18:19]
David Chazan
As folk heroes go, Tony Mousula makes an unlikely candidate. A security van driver said to be close mouthed and a bit tight with money. Middle aged, neither handsome nor charismatic, someone who felt trapped in a dead end job, ground down by petty bosses and believed he deserved better. Despite his low pay, he managed to buy himself a second hand Ferrari, which he tried to keep secret from his workmates while he continued to cycle in every morning. He appeared to be a model employee, always punctual, hardly ever off sick. But one day four years ago, he stepped out of character. He waited until his two co workers had got out of the van and suddenly drove off with 11.6 million euros from the bank of France. Newspapers dubbed it the heist of the century. And far from being condemned, he became a legend. Not just a lovable rogue in the way that some view the train robber Ronald Biggs, but a symbol of the small man struck back at big business. And unlike the train robbers, he had not resorted to violence. At a time of public rage over ruinous bankers, rising unemployment and political corruption, Tuni Mousula was celebrated in a pop song and seen as a Robin Hood figure. A sympathetic film about his exploits came out in France this week on the same day that the government was plunged into crisis by a former minister's bombshell confession that he had squirrelled half a million pounds in illegal offshore bank accounts. When I went to see the film the day after, Jerome Causac, the very man who President Hollande had put in charge of a campaign against tax fraud, admitted that he'd cheated on his own taxes. The audience broke into applause when Mousselin grabbed the booty. Everyone seemed to be on his side, against the banks, against the multinationals and against politicians who had been quick to censure the likes of Gerard Depardieu, the actor who says he left France to escape high taxes. The film ended with a rap song praising Mouselin for taking the cash without harming anyone. As the lights came up, I saw smiling faces all around me. I asked a few people what they thought of him. What he did had to be done, one woman told me the man next to her gave Mouselao the thumbs up, but said he wouldn't comment because he himself worked for a bank. Even in a country inured to sleazy politics, the revelation that the fiscal gamekeeper had been a poacher all along has taken outrage to new heights. People feel doubly cheated because President Hollande came to power less than a year ago, promising to clean things up. Now he risks becoming a lame duck. And more damage has been inflicted by news that the man in charge of his own campaign finances last year has investments in the Cayman Islands, known as a tax haven. As for Tony Musoulin, he spent the last four years in a prison cell, whereas no senior politician found to have broken the law has ever been jailed. When the former president Jacques Chirac was convicted two years ago of misusing public funds, he got a prison sentence, but it was suspended. French people now want to turn the page on a culture of impunity. The young, especially, tend to compare French politicians unfavorably with their counterparts in Britain, Germany or the United States. Many believe politicians are guilty of worse wrongdoing than Tony Mousoulin, who's nearly served his time. His lawyers hope he'll be released by the end of the year. But his story is not over yet. Two and a half million euros of the money he stole has never been recovered. Covered. Police found the rest in a garage, and they suspect he left it there deliberately and hid the rest elsewhere. Mouselin insists that he left it all in the garage and claims to have no idea what happened to the missing cache. But investigators believed he planned everything from the beginning. That's why he walked into a police station and calmly gave himself up after less than two weeks on the run. Knowing he could only be jailed for a few years for robbery without violence, a public prosecutor has vowed to keep chasing him after he's freed. If he manages to catch him with the loot, there's likely to be a lot of rather disappointed people in France.
- [22:58]
Presenter/Host
That's David Chazan. The economic crisis in Europe, in some countries at least, shows few signs of abating. The poorest Bulgaria, is heading for an early election in May, after demonstrations against low living standards help topple the government. And there's speculation that Slovenia, the richest of the EU's former communist nations, may soon be forced to seek a bailout. Nick Thorpe has been to see what the two countries have in common.
- [23:26]
Nick Thorpe
Strawberries are on special offer this spring in the open air markets of Ljubljana and Sofia. But no one is buying them. They're selling their gold instead in the side streets nearby. In this fifth year of the crisis in Europe, the middle classes are in trouble. And in times like these, the premium is on heavy yellow metal, not soft scarlet fruit from the faraway greenhouses of Spain and Greece and Italy. Slovenia and Bulgaria have at first Glance little in common. In 1991, Slovenia escaped, barely bruised, from the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Its new leaders were so self confident, they printed their new currency, the tolar, a year in advance. In 2007, Slovenia was the first ex communist country to join the euro. People felt they were climbing the ladder to consumer heaven. From the dinar to the tollar to the euro. In just 12 years, growth leapt from 4% a year to 7. We got greedy, says the Slovene economist Jose Mensinger. By 2008, the state debt had leapt from zero to 10 billion euros. Money was cheap to borrow, and no one seemed to ask for it back. Slovene supermarkets expanded across the Balkans and Slovene banks swallowed baby banks like small fish. Bulgaria, on the other hand, stumbled through the 1990s, experienced hyperinflation and changed governments like nappies. There was a property boom there too in the mid-2000s, as Irish investors discovered the delights of the Black Sea coast and the dark blackcurrant flavoured wines. Then the bottle broke. This winter, street protests erupted in Bulgaria and Slovenia alike, against the whole political elite and its friends in business. The street won surprisingly easily, and both countries now have governments less than a month old. As everywhere in the world, the youth are at the forefront of street activism and have been inspired in part by the Occupy movements in the Western world. There are two main groups of people at the protests in Slovenia, says Barbara Riegel of the University of Ljubljana. One that opposes the capitalist system as such, and the other which just doesn't agree with the Slovene version of it. Young people are on the street, she adds, not because of their lost present, but because of their lost future. One problem peculiar to Slovenia is that businesses favor students over young graduates, as they can pay them much less. The young man shovelling snow on the shores of the Lubyanska river for customers to reach the cafe where he works behind the bar is a law student. He's the only person I interview in the Slovene capital who feels Slovenia cannot dig itself out of the economic crisis on its own, but will need an IMF snowplow. As there are so few jobs for graduates, the temptation in Slovenia for the young is to find a temporary job and never quite finished their studies. In Bulgaria, the first martyr of the revolution was not a vegetable seller, but a mountain climber. When 36 year old plamen Goranov set himself on fire in Varna in February to protest against the links between the city council and the Mafia, his last recorded words were, I should have been on holiday in Turkey. Now he even had a plane ticket. His martyrdom brought down the mayor of Varna, just as the crowds in Slovenia toppled the mayor of Maribor. The success of the protests in toppling local and central governments is seen by some observers as proof of the strength of democracy, by others as a sign of its weakness. The failure of the political elite to deliver the goods or do more than feather its own nest has set minds to work rethinking the democratic model in each country. This is most pronounced in Bulgaria. The protests have spawned councils of citizens to monitor the working of parliament, the ministries, the banks, and even the prosecutor's office. Well established politicians are tearing out their hair. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, pleads Sergei Stanishev, leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, presumably a reference to his youthful self. But Mr. Stanishev himself shocked political observers by saying he would not stand for prime minister if his party wins the May elections, either proof that he is not as power hungry as other politicians, or a sign that the elite has lost its taste for power completely. In the main market in Ljubljana, the crisis is not bad news for everyone. While the strawberries lie untouched, there's a steady queue in front of stalls selling pickled cabbage quarried from wooden barrels. The smell is overpowering, like miners socks, but the taste is heavenly. And in the baroque church nearby, people queue for confession for a better pew, perhaps in the next life.
- [28:16]
Presenter/Host
Nick Thorpe amid the sights and the smells of Slovenia and bringing this edition to a close. Do join us all again for more next Saturday. Until then, goodbye.