← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 07, 2012
00:27:54
Can international pressure on the military-backed government in Burma be relaxed now a...
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Transcript18 lines
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Hello, this is the.
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From our own correspondent office at Bush House in London.
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We do a daily edition you can
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hear on the BBC World Service.
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But this is the latest program broadcast
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on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, proud and grateful that a member of his family killed the Governor of Punjab, we talk to the gunman's brother and hear about the impact the assassinations had in Pakistan. The Burmese who are hoping the new program of reforms will lift them out of poverty. We find out how 10 months of instability in Egypt is devastating tourism along the River Nile. And gather some unusual gastronomic tips on a bleak quayside in Copenhagen. It's a year now since the assassination of the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. He was gunned down in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, in broad daylight by Mumtaz Qadri, one of his own bodyguards and a member of Punjab's elite police force. The man later appeared in court where he was sentenced to death. He's appealing against that sentence. Owen Bennett Jones has been to Pakistan where he found there's considerable support for the killer.
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As Salman Taser was sitting in an Islamabad restaurant having lunch with a friend on January 4 last year, Mumtaz Kadri was considering his angles. Already on three occasions that day, Qadri had tried to line up a clear shot on Taser and failed. But as Tassir moved from his lunch table through a leafy market towards his car, Kadri made his move. Shouting, God is great. The guard shot Tassir 27 times. It took just three or four seconds. Then put his hands in the air and said to his fellow guards, the Governor moved with over 20 armed men, don't shoot. Arrest me. They did. He has subsequently been sentenced to death. But going on the past performance of the judicial system in Pakistan and the particular circumstances of this case, few expect that sentence to be carried out. Salman Taseer was larger than life. A domineering self made millionaire. As a hard up accountancy trainee in London in the swinging 60s, he was a croupier in the Playboy Club and by all accounts knew some of the bunny girls pretty well. In fact, by some accounts, he knew all of them quite well. Back in Pakistan, under the country's harshest military dictator, General Zirul Haq, he took to politics and he was thrown into solitary confinement for campaigning for democracy. He was always cracking jokes. Hillary Clinton once visited him in Governor House in Lahore. It's a hangover from the colonial era. A huge white building replete with columned arcades. Tall, stiff backed attendees wearing red tunics and starched turbans. Inside there are huge ceremonial halls and wide corridors with parquet flooring and portraits of former governors on the walls. Mrs. Clinton, I should probably let you know that when I lived in London, I used to throw rocks at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Tassir said, don't worry, Mr. Governor, she replied, so did I. So why did his bodyguard kill him? Taser, who had a record of protecting minority communities in Pakistan, was campaigning on a blasphemy case, that of a Christian woman called Azia Bibi. Now, some Muslim women in her Punjab village had accused her of defiling their well by drinking out of it and they demanded she convert. She refused. They accused her of blasphemy. When he heard about the case, Tassir decided he tried to get her a presidential pardon. He called together a few journalists and visited her in prison. And there he criticized the blasphemy law. The blasphemy laws in Pakistan mean that anyone accused of denigrating the Quran or the Prophet is subject to immediate imprisonment. In fact, that is quite often a protection. Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs and Tassir believed the law was being misused by people who had petty disputes to get their enemies locked up. But when he said that, he himself was accused of blasphemy and that is why his bodyguard decided Taser should die. Now that may seem shocking enough, but here's the thing. After a week in Pakistan asking people about the Taser case, I left believing that more Pakistanis have sympathy for the murderer Mumtaz Qadri than his victim Salman Taseer. The issue is so sensitive in Pakistan that no senior lawyer would take on the state's case against Kadri. Eventually, a Lahore lawyer did agree to do it and I met him in his home where he now has two armed guards at the gate. And this is what he told me. No lawyer would do it. My name was suggested. When I told my friends, they said, don't do it, don't do it. If the religious people here are annoyed with somebody, they don't let them live. But Kadri's death sentence has to be maintained. If it's reduced to life, I tell you, he'll end up being released and then he'll become a member of parliament or even a minister. Because he's a hero not only to normal people, but also to very well read people, including ex judges and serving judges. Very, very highly placed people are Making him out to be a hero. And that is true. I went to see Mumtaz, Kadri's brother, at their sprawling home in Raalpindi, where no fewer than 72 close relatives live in pretty cramped conditions. Kadri's father was a bricklayer and his siblings have various low paying jobs. You can't imagine what my brother has done, Kadri's eldest brother said. People who before used to refuse to even shake our hands now come up to us and kiss our hands. We're just grateful that God chose a member of our family to protect the reputation of the prophet.
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And that's Owen Bennett Jones. It may be 80 years now since millions of Ukrainians died in a famine, but the tragedy remains deeply controversial. The reasons behind it the subject of heated debate. Details of what happened in Ukraine in 1932 and 33 remained buried for years in the archives of the Soviet Union. And they've proved hard to unearth, even in these post Soviet times. John Sweeney, who's been travelling in Ukraine, says the horrors of those days have not been forgotten.
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There is something utterly bleak about eastern Ukraine. It eats into the soul. Dirt roads lead to grey wooden shacks that stand out against a dishcloth sky. Our taxi rouses the animals at the end of rusty chains. DOGS growl, GEESE CLACK we're somewhere east of Kharkiv, in the very back of beyond. But around here live the last surviving witnesses to a great lie, one that's still being protected by the powers that be. To the east, in the Kremlin, Maria dry Bitko was 17 when, almost eight decades ago, the starving turned cannibal. Today, her face etched with 93 years, she's incredibly frail, bent double, the skin on her face reeved and folded. Her hands gnarled. Her steps tiny bird like. But her voice when she talks is firm and she refutes the great lie with a passionate intensity. To say there was no famine is wrong, she said. There was no bread. People were swollen. Many, many died. Maria told us the story of a woman who lived in the village with her two children. Suspicion aroused, a neighbor checked on her, asking what had happened to her kids. To her horror, she noticed there was a hand sticking out of the stove. Asked why she'd eaten her own, the cannibal replied, because they were going to die anyway. Down the dirt road from Maria lived an old man and his wife. He told the story how, as a young boy, he was revolted to discover that his beloved granny had killed the family cat. He vowed not to eat it. But his granny insisted and besides, the hunger was remorseless. So he ate kitty. Even today he seemed a little bit ashamed of this story. A third witness, an old lady whose father had died of hunger, she too used the same word, swollen, pointing up the counterintuitive fact that the bellies of the very hungry swell proof of gross malnutrition. We took the train back to Kharkiv and met an old policeman who was a very small boy, witnessed thousands cooing for bread and saw with his own eyes many, many corpses lying on the streets. Later, when he applied for a place at military college, he had to fill in a form about the death of his father. He wrote down the truth that his father had died in the famine. He was advised, don't mention that 79 years ago all of these witnesses would have been shot for talking to me about the holodomor, the death famine. Back in 1933, eastern Ukraine was the epicenter of of a terrible man made famine caused by Stalin's mad war against the peasantry of Russia and Ukraine. Millions died. Nobody knows exactly how many millions because Stalin's secret police kill the truth. Useful idiots like George Bernard Shaw visited the Soviet Union, licked Stalin's boots and went along with the big lie. But there was no famine. Journalists in Moscow were banned from the epicenter of the famine zone. But two reporters tried to get the truth out. One was Malcolm Muggeridge of the then Manchester Guardian, who managed to get to famine stricken areas before the ban. The second was Gareth Jones, a Welshman and brilliant Russian speaker who dodged the secret police by hopping on and off local trains. He walked through the famine zone, through empty villages like Maria's, and got back to the west and told the story. Enter Walter Durante of the New York Times. A Liverpudlian, clever, witty, Durante was a man with a crooked soul. Back in Paris before the First World War, he'd been associated with Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist known as the Great Beast. In Moscow. In 33 Duranty Pooh Pooh Jones's scoop, he reported there was malnutrition but no famine. A few months later, Duranti told a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow that perhaps as many as 10 million people had died. But he added, they're only Russians. Two years after Jones great scoop, he was murdered in China. Later it came out that the company arranging his travel was a front for the nkvd. Stalin's secret police. Today, the man with the key to the secret police archive is Vladimir Putin. The once, and some say future president of Russia under Putin. Some of the truth about the famine is still being withheld. Maria and the other witnesses won't live much longer, but I hope that they will live long enough for the archives to be unlocked, for the full story to be told. And that includes naming those who ordered the killing of a lone reporter who dared to defy Stalin's will all those years ago. They're Only Russians. That was an evil thing to say back in 33, and it still is today.
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And They're Only Russians is the title of John Sweeney's documentary from Ukraine, which you can hear this Friday morning here on Radio 4. William Haigh has arrived home after becoming the first foreign secretary in 50 years to visit British Burma. He met the country's new president, who last year unexpectedly released a number of political prisoners and embarked on a series of reforms. Mr. Haig said there was real momentum for change, but more needed to be done. Fergal Keen, who was there covering the visit, says many Burmese are hoping the reform process will mean real improvements in the quality of their lives.
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After leaving the broad, muddy sweep of the river behind, we drove for another five minutes past the stilt houses of the fishermen and a few decaying colonial mansions before turning off the main road and into a labyrinth of colour and noise. The deeper we drove into the market of Mi Quatze, the louder the shouts seemed of fruit stall owners and water sellers and children eager to attract the attention of the foreigners. The dust, driven up by the passing of so many feet, filled the little lanes speckling the piles of pineapples, oranges, apples and cherry tomatoes. Here in the Burmese noonday sun was a land that seemed bountiful. But a few minutes farther on, when the crowds thinned, we turned into a laneway and parked. Stepping out of the car, I was immediately aware of that universal indicator of poverty, the sharp, nauseating stench of raw sewage bubbling under the tropical heat. One third of Burma's population lives in poverty after years of misrule under military or military backed governments. For both the government and the opposition, the question of how to raise millions from the misery of poverty is a daunting challenge and one that has helped in promoting a spirit of compromise. As one senior opposition activist put it to me, violent revolutions start in the slums of big cities. We know that, and we've warned the government of that. No senior political figure here wants revolution. Nor does do hla HLA Shin. She was sitting on the step of her tiny shack. It measured roughly 12ft by 8, and she summoned me to come and talk. Five people live in this cramped space beside the pool of soup sewage. Her husband is without work, and so is her son. Another child is at school, and there's a baby of about a year, the same one that cried when he saw our camera. Daw Shin pointed to her oldest child, a teenage boy crouching in the shack's dark interior. He seemed not only enveloped by the shadows, but overtaken by them. There was a listlessness, a vacancy about him that prompted a question. Why was he at home? I asked. At this question, Daw Shin's expression changed. She bit her lip and fidgeted with her hands. Then tears began to trickle down her cheeks. I had hopes that he would go to university, she said. But we are poor. We struggle for food. Some days we find a little work, other days not. Doshin was an economic migrant. Her family had left their home in the countryside near the great Irrawaddy river to come to Rangoon in the hope that entices millions of the poor across the world, that a distant city will reveal itself as a place of salvation. And here, in these cramped quarters a few miles from Rangoon, her hope had washed up against the reality of modern Burma, a country that is reforming but whose legacy of isolation and corruption would daunt the most resilient of optimists. And yet, as I talked to Daw Shin and her neighbors, I was impressed by their realism. Ong Mia Chaw, who lives just next door, came down from the distant Arakan province on the Bay of Bengal with his wife and son. He didn't expect a full time job tomorrow, next week, or even next year. Yet he sensed something profound was happening in the country. His hope that change might spur the economy and raise his family from poverty was a sober emotion. The west is looking now at Burma and asking if it should invest, if the various sanctions and restrictions on doing business with the country should be lifted. When the foreign secretary William Hague visited, he spoke of wanting to see more reform, of a moment coming when the world could believe Burma would never return to the dark days of military repression. There are certainly important soldiers who fear reform, but the burgeoning partnership between President Tain Sein and opposition leader Aung San SUU Kyi is changing the landscape. My sense is that the moment of irreversible change may be approaching. Preparing to leave Burma in the past, I've felt a mix of melancholy and foreboding. But this time it really does feel different.
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Fergal keen now the Islamist parties in Egypt are confident they'll be taking the majority of seats in the Cairo Parliament after crushing victories in the first two rounds of voting. But the rise of the Islamists is causing concern in some quarters. Some wonder how it will affect tourism, one of Egypt's biggest earners. In seaside resorts like Sharm El Sheikh, there's speculation alcohol could be banned. Perhaps bikinis, too. Ten months of instability following the overthrow of President Mubarak has already severely damaged the tourist industry, as Libby Sparrier's been finding out.
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It's early in the morning in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, and the sun's already getting hot. Yalla Yallah, habibis. Hurry up, people, says Ahmed, our guide, as we climbed down from the minibus. As our group gets out into the sunshine, Ahmed spreads his arms out wide. Look, habibis. This I have never seen in my life before. We look at him expectantly. No coaches, no people. We look around and there seem to be quite a few other tourist parties here. No, no, habibis. Look. 10 coaches. Normally there will be a hundred and more. We set off towards the tombs, mobbed on all sides by men and boys trying to sell us souvenirs. Tablecloths, towels, scarves, plastic scarabs. We make our way into a tomb very near the burial chamber of Tutankhamun. It's cut claustrophobically deep inside the mountain and seems to go on forever. Every wall is covered with carvings and relief, still full of colour. It's stunning, but it's not crowded. Next, Ahmed takes us to the local alabaster factory and shop, where he is clearly a familiar visitor. The usual all singing, all dancing, hard sell routine begins from the shopkeeper. After I make my obligatory small purchase, I sit down on a box while the others continue their haggling. I ask the shop assistant who served me how the tourist trade is Bad. Very, very bad, he says. Down very much since Luxor 1997 is bad, since February, even more bad. No English. I ask him about the process in Tahrir Square, and he shrugs. We need armies, Dill, he says. I sympathise. And as I turn to leave, he gives me a small parcel. Inside is a tiny alabaster scarab. For you, he says, because you are interested. It will bring you luck. I'm touched. We push our way back to the bus through the hordes of salesmen trying to sell stuff so hard that they are physically putting shawls round our shoulders. Back on the boat, we sail up the Nile towards Aswan. It's beautiful, peaceful, sunny. The banks are lush and green with rushes and sugar Cane and palm trees and the mountains pale and barren behind them. On the banks, boys ride donkeys and men row little boats past us full of reeds. In the evening, once we are moored up, I put the BBC World News on and watch the crowds of protesters in Tahrir Square. I have a chat with a gentle young man on reception who's been the soul of courtesy and helpfulness since I arrived. I ask him how full our boat is. Half full. Crew more than passengers. That evening, Ahmed tells me he's heard on Egyptian news that 92% of the boats which sail the Nile aren't working. Ahmed himself has a new baby back in Cairo, where he lives, and he's worried the baby's having trouble feeding. But work is so scarce in the tourist trade that there was no question of Ahmed opting out of our trip to be with his family. After a week of glorious weather, excellent food, wonderful sights, it's time to leave. Every evening, while we're having dinner, the cleaners have made a model on the beds from blankets, towels, pillows and any bits of clothing they can find in the cabin. I've had a scarab, a scorpion, a man reading my travel guide to the Nile. That was a bit of a shock, and finally, a crocodile. Each one has my gym shoes on the feet and my big white sunglasses on the nose. They are fantastic. I search out the cleaner to give him a tip and thank him. He beams at me. If there are no further bookings, he will be going home without a job, along with about 80 others of the crew. As I leave, the elections are underway in Luxor and Omar, the beautiful young man who takes me to the airport, says the good news is that women and girlies, as he puts it, are actually turning out to vote. He has no work now for a few weeks and longs for a stable government so that the tourists will come back specially English, he says with a disarming smile.
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That was Libby Spurrier. The first week of the new year is a time for high minded resolutions. Sales of booze dip people pound pavements, there's overcrowding in the gym. Diets are also reassessed. Healthy eating is a traditional New Year preoccupation, many having overdone it fairly spectacularly during the festive season. The Christmas meal itself may be under scrutiny. Perhaps in December 2012, we should all try something a little lighter. Stephen Sacher's just been to Denmark and collected some fresh ideas for the festive table.
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For those of you who have completed that depressing January ritual known as Chucking out the Christmas tree. May I make a suggestion? Next year, don't dump it, burn it or shred it. Get creative. Eat it. Believe me, the needles from your average Christmas fur can be delicious. How do I know? Well, I'm just back from the most extraordinary gastronomic journey of my life. The citrusy tang of freeze dried Christmas tree was just one of the surprises. Along the way. My guide was Rene redzepi, a bearded 34 year old chef with intense brown eyes, whose Copenhagen restaurant Noma is currently regarded by food critics as the world's finest. Actually, to his worldwide legion of gastronomic disciples, labelling Redzepi as a cook is akin to defining Michelangelo as a jobbing painter and decorator. From humble beginnings, he Left school at 15. With no qualifications, Redzepi has developed a philosophy of food which embraces science, nature and yes, art. I met him in the teeth of a biting wind on a bleak quayside in the Danish capital. Rene's restaurant occupies the end of an old warehouse overlooking the water. But that wasn't our first destination. Instead, he took me to a sturdy houseboat tied up at the jetty. Welcome to the Nordic Food Lab, he said with a smile. If Willy Wonka had been Scandinavian, this is what his chocolate factory might have looked like. Pine floor, white walls, clean lines, and on every available surface, outlandish food experiments being conducted by white coated technicians. In one corner, an array of flasks bubbling with brown liquid. Nearby, a centrifuge whirring. It wouldn't have looked out of place in a nuclear lab. We're trying to break down peas to get at the natural pea fat. Maybe we can produce pea butter. Rene explained. I was invited to taste a murky liquid from a small glass pipette. It tasted a lot like soy sauce. Apparently it was. It was extracted from local seaweed. This is what Chef Redzepi calls the science of deliciousness. From freeze dried pine needles to fermented mackerel, 21st century chemistry is being harnessed to the age old quest for new flavours. And always the raw materials are local, either foraged from the sea, the shore or the forest, or grown by a select band of trusted organic producers. It's that commitment to authentic Nordic ingredients that defines Redzepi. No olive oil, no garlic, no reliance on air transport and the freezer to subvert the rhythm of the seasons. Which means that eating at this time of year is truly a taste of Nordic winter. Bitter leaves, mushrooms, nuts, berries and moss are in. Sun dried tomatoes are most definitely out. I confess I was nervous before taking my seat in the compact dining room. Foodies think nothing of flying halfway around the world for a table. Here, reservations have to be made months in advance, and there is something quite disconcerting about being one of 40 diners in a restaurant staffed by 70. Frankly, even if a dish tastes disgusting, the pressure's on to empty your plate. To my relief, the two dishes I'd been most worried about, the live wriggling prawn and the live local ants. Apparently, they release a delicious lemongrassy acid taste when they expire in your mouth. Both were off the menu. Many of the 16 courses were no bigger than a Chicken McNugget. Don't worry, I won't bore you with every detail. But the highlights included snail wrapped in nasturtium flowers, quail's egg served on a bed of smoking hay, mussels served in edible seaweed shells, fried moss dusted with porcini shavings, and for pudding, an ice cream served in luminous green dill sauce. Was it delicious? Well, as the curate said of his egg, it was in parts. But even when it wasn't, the experience was extraordinary. Rene's international team of chefs served many of the dishes themselves. They explained the provenance of the food, the intricate preparation and the quest for perfect presentation. They were neither fussy nor pretentious, and my heart warmed to a young Irish sous chef who whispered of his local cheese dish, you'll love the cracker because it tastes just like a Ritz. Given the cost, dinner starts at £150 a head, and the long waiting list for a reservation noma is an experience for the lucky few. But Rene Redzepi's obsession serving food that, in his words, gives you a sense of time and place to your very bones, is surely relevant to all of us. And come to think of it, I've got a fir tree in the garden, I've got a lawn full of moss and some very strange fungi growing in my borders. Lunch, anyone?
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And with that appetising offer from Stephen Sacher, we've reached the end of this edition. I'll be here again next Saturday morning with more from our own correspondence. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.