← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 14, 2012
00:27:53
The Afghan women still suffering in silence - ten years after the fall of the Taliban.
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Hello, this is the.
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From our own correspondent office at Bush House in London. We do a daily edition you can hear on the BBC World Service, but this is the latest program broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, we're mixing with presidents, prime ministers and royals in the Caribbean, in Budapest and in Copenhagen. Why does the controversial Hungarian leader say he can't get no satisfaction? How does King Gorm the Old fit into the long history of European monarchy? And why were 30 truckloads of priceless manuscripts strewn around a garden in Cairo? All that a little later. First, though, we're finding out why Afghan women may have good reason to fear the day when Western soldiers stop patrolling their streets. This new focus on the plight of women in Afghanistan comes after the international media highlighted two cases which led to intervention by President Hamid Karzai. In one, a young woman called Gulnaz was raped and sent to prison for the crime they call adultery by force. She was subsequently pardoned by the president. Then a child bride called Saha was rescued by police after being tortured by her in laws. Her case followed a UN report which suggested that more than half of all Afghan women are still subject to forced or underage marriages, while many have also suffered violence. In the home. Caroline Wyatt is just back from the Afghan capital, Kabul.
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Outside, it was a gloriously sunny winter's day. The mountains loom above the city, silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky. But inside, the house was dark and the curtains drawn so the neighbours couldn't see in. This was a safe house in Kabul where Gullnaz and her child had found refuge. The women there asked not to be identified in case their house was burnt down. Just 21, Gulnaz had been released that week from prison, where she had given birth to her daughter, Mosca. Gulnaz seemed younger than her years, but she held my gaze almost defiantly as she told her story. She had been imprisoned in Kabul Women's Jail after her cousin's husband raped her. The crime came to light when the unmarried Gulnaz became pregnant. The police came and arrested both Gulnaz and her attacker. Under Afghan law, she too was found guilty of a crime known as adultery by force. With her sentence increased on appeal to 12 years. When the case aroused condemnation abroad, President Karzai intervened and Gulnaz was pardoned. Looking bewildered at her sudden freedom, she told me that all she wanted was to go home to her family. And in order to do that, she was prepared to marry the man who raped her. Otherwise their families would be Enemies. The problem for Gulnaz is that if her attacker won't marry her or can't come up with a substantial dowry, the stain on her family's honour will remain, perhaps with lethal consequences for Gulnaz and her child. And that may mean she can never go home. And for a single mother, unskilled and unqualified, there are few ways for a woman to survive in Afghanistan without family support. An American lawyer in Kabul, Kim Mottley, has taken up Gulnaz's case and she's trying to raise money for her to fund a new life. Somehow, somewhere, if Gulnaz can't go home, I was still wondering what would happen to her when we went to meet 15 year old Saha Gul as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from her injuries. Too traumatized to talk, married off to a man of 30 for a dowry of around £3,000, Sa' har had been kept locked in a cellar for several months, starved and tortured by her husband and his family. It's still not really clear why. Sa' har may not have been able to speak, but her injuries did. Burns to her arm and her fragile body, her swollen black eye, clumps of hair torn out, and one small hand was scarred where her fingernail had been pulled out. The abuse aroused public indignation in Afghanistan as well as horror abroad. But Sahar was perhaps in a strange way, lucky. She didn't run away from a violent marriage, as some Afghan brides have, but was instead rescued from it by police. So she can't be found guilty of what might otherwise be deemed a moral crime, as other young Afghan women have been. Both Sahar and Gulnas stories are extreme, but they make me wonder how many other women in Afghanistan still suffer in silence 10 years after the fall of the Taliban. There are laws banning violence against women, but enforcing them is hard. Tradition and family or community honour is often seen as more important than an individual's misery or misfortune. Poverty and lack of education also mean that underage marriage remains common. When Sahart did try to escape her torturers, it was apparently the neighbours who brought her back to them before the police intervened. In a quiet, book lined office in Kabul, a world away from the controlled chaos of the hospital or the dimly lit safe house, I asked the head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission what she thought. A no nonsense woman with steely grey hair, Seema Sama has long risked her own life to speak out for the principles she believes in on equality and justice. Her answer was clear. She and her colleagues in Afghanistan will carry on fighting, improve the lives of women like Gulnaz and Sahar. But Seema Sama, like many others, fears that the international community is no longer quite so interested in keeping up the pressure on women's rights as the west seeks to wind down its military campaign. And when Western soldiers no longer patrol the streets of Afghanistan, it will be easier to ignore what goes on behind locked doors and closed curtains in a faraway place.
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And that was Caroline Wyatt. 21 years ago, Viktor Orban stood up in Budapest and publicly demanded that Soviet troops be withdrawn and free elections held. Today, he's the prime Minister of Hungary, and protesters in the capital, infuriated by his constitutional and economic reforms, have called him a dictator. His country is in the midst of an economic crisis, its currency has slumped in value, and Mr. Orban's government wants a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Nick Thorpe's been to meet the man at the centre of the storm.
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The Hungarian Prime Minister receives us the cream, or perhaps for some observers, the dregs of the foreign press corps. In a first floor salon of Parliament, the paintings of seven Hungarian kings line the walls above walnut panelling, and through the stained glass windows above the River Danube, a soft January sun spills yellows and blues on Bela I's feet. A lot of water has passed down the river since Viktor Orban first sat down to tea in my front room on the far side of the river 24 years ago and told me his plans to set up a rival movement to the Young Communist League. I doubt they'll let you do it, but I'm happy to report your effort, I told him at the time as we sipped from chipped BBC mugs. This time we drink from delicate Herrand porcelain decorated with butterflies and flowers. A former liberal himself, Viktor Orban has become the man liberals in Europe love to hate. For an hour and a half, we speak off the record. There's a lot to go through. His government stands accused of autocratic, even authoritarian moves to take over state institutions, most seriously the national bank, of trampling human rights underfoot and of destroying democratic checks and balances. When the tape recorders go on for the last few minutes of our meeting, he quotes the Rolling Stones, I Can't get no Satisfaction. The song came out in 1965, when he was just 2 years old. Its lyrics sum up his own frustration, he says, and that of millions of Hungarians, that the change of system begun in 1989 was never completed. That was the reason for Hungary's brand new constitution, which came into force on the 1st of January, he explains a constitution which he and his party believe finally launches Hungary on the right road. At his first press conference after winning the elections in 2010, I asked him what guarantees he could offer that his government would govern responsibly. He had just won an unprecedented 2/3 majority in Parliament. Opposition parties, with the exception of the far right, were decimated. Nothing to worry about, was his reply. The parliamentary opposition, the media, all the institutions of state would no doubt do their job. In a separate speech, he promised a decisive, but also humble and modest rule. But the warning bells began ringing almost immediately. The independent minded President of Hungary, Laszlo Schohom, whose name means Kestrel, would have been the perfect person to make sure the government did not get drunk on its own power to lock the bottle in the cupboard, as it were. As a former head of the Constitutional Court and as the main architect of the new democratic system In Hungary after 1990, this bird knew the lie of the land like no other. But he had a habit of using his constitutional power to send laws back to Parliament. This is not a time for checks and balances, a close associate of the Prime Minister told me in confidence in the autumn of 2010, as we sipped the golden wines of Tokai and watched the golden leaves fall in the gathering dusk. Shoem is a symbol of the last 20 years. We see him as an obstacle to reform. And Hungary needed reforms. Everyone agreed. So he was replaced by a tamer bird, President Paul Schmidt, who has yet to veto a single law. Viktor Orban's next move proved equally costly. He shot the messenger who might have taken his message to his own people and to the wider world. The Fides government passed some of the most restrictive media legislation in Europe and presented your average, let's say, German journalist with the perfect story. The plucky reporter staggers into his own editorial office, blood streaming from a shoulder wound, screaming, my God, I've been hit. Someone give me a keyboard. It was the perfect story to be martyred and paid for it. The Media Law has not been effective in addressing the genuine failures of the media in Hungary today. The protection of individuals from hate campaigns, the the turgid tabloid torrent. But Mr. Orban lost many friends when he tried to make order in the media. Worst of all, he merged Public service, radio, TV and the state news agency into a single centre. The peculiar genius of each to tell the story in its own way, was lost. Back in the sunlit salon, our hundred and ten minutes with Europe's chief bogeyman were coming to an end? Might he retract specific laws, even parts of his precious constitution, to get the badly needed IMF loan? We asked. No pressure, just arguments, viktor Orban repeated. If convincing arguments are put forward, we will be open and flexible on all points.
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Nick Thorpe in Budapest this week was the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The tremor lasted little more than 30 seconds, but it left 300,000 people dead, one and a half billion homeless, and shattered the capital, Port au Prince. Ceremonies have been taking place across the country. Many women wore white dresses while men dressed in black as they attended church services during the national day of mourning. The country's new president, a singer turned politician called Michel Matilly, admits that the process of rebuilding his country has not been fast enough. But he says change is on the way. Reconstruction efforts are being stepped up. Children are finally getting back to school. Our Laura Trevelyan's been to meet Mr. Martelly, a man known to some as Sweet Mickey.
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Michel Martelly's face is omnipresent in Haiti. His beaming image dominates billboards, posters, murals and dashboards. The overall impression is one of a benevolent father figure promising to look after Haitians following years of political instability and natural disasters. Tete Carle is Mr. Martelly's nickname. In Creole, it means the bald headed one, which, by the way, he is Haiti's president, is also a singer of compa music, which is wildly popular with Haitians of a certain age. Michel Martelly made his name singing to Haitian emigres in Miami, Paris and New York. He's known for dropping his trousers on national tv, said our fixer, Rudi, apologetically. Along the way, he got very rich, though. As the son of an oil company executive, he started life as a privileged member of Haiti's elite. Somewhere along the line, Mr. Martelly turned his considerable performing skills to politics, and now he's president of Haiti. In the hills above Haiti's capital, Port au Prince, live diplomats and wealthy Haitians. It's cool up in Peguville, where Michel Martelly has his elegant home far from the slums below. This is where I was summoned to interview Mr. Martelly about the second anniversary of the earthquake. Half of the rubble from that quake has been cleared, but 500,000 people are still languishing in tent cities. As I prepared for the interview, one experienced observer of the Haitian scene claimed that Mr. Martelly had the whiff of the authoritarian populist about him. Thus advised, I scrutinised Haiti's leader carefully as we settled down by the poolside for our interview. He was suave, good looking and a confident performer with convincing lines about Haiti's plight. Change has been slow to come, but it's on the way. We are moving people out of the camps and it's a great step, he said. Any criticisms were met with an avuncular dismissal. His delivery was melodious, with a hint of steel. This was one version of the singer turned president. And in front of his devoted followers, I saw another. The Champ de Mar camp, opposite the ruined presidential palace in Port au Prince, is home to 23 people living in cramped and crime ridden conditions. It's one of the most visible symbols of the earthquake, and now President Martelly has announced that it will close with the help of Canadian money. He made the announcement right by Champ de Mars itself. A crowd of several hundred men from the camp gathered to cheer him on. The president himself directed the production of the announcement, which seemed to give the Canadian delegation some cause for concern. Mr. Martelly gestured to his security guards to remove the barriers so the adoring crowd could get closer to him. The tense looking guards waved their guns alarmingly as the Martelly supporters thronged. 10 years, 10 years. Chanted the crowd, a reference to the two terms he can serve as president. Michel Martelly, wearing an open neck shirt and a gold chain, sang along to his campaign song, give Haiti a Chance. He swung his hips and the crowd cheered all the more. Tet Carle is going to close the camps. He's going to help the mothers who sleep out in the rain. He shouted. Tete Kale keeps his promises. More thunderous cheering. There was much murmuring in the expat community when Michel Martelly announced that he'd achieved his goal of closing a particular well known camp for earthquake survivors. My email lit up instantly. That camp was closed by forced eviction. The people had nowhere to go. They were driven out under cover of darkness. These are claims Mr. Martelly hasn't managed to entirely dismiss. I found myself both wary of Haiti's president and fascinated by him. There's no doubt he wants to get Haiti moving, to create jobs, close the camps and open the country up to foreign investment. Could he be another strong man in a country which has seen too many, like Papa Doc Duvalier and his infamous son, Baby Doc? Or is he the transformational figure people have been longing for? Haiti's Churchill, as one controversialist put it. We shall see. For now, sweet Mickey is riding high in a country which yearns for leadership.
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Laura Trevelyan the Islamist parties in Egypt seem set to dominate the lower house of parliament. Election results in so far give them 65% of the votes. The Americans, recognising a new political reality in the country, this week sent the number two at the State Department, William Burns, for talks in Cairo with the main party, the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also been meeting government officials, business leaders and various activists. But while the advocates for democratic change in Egypt can claim a considerable measure of success, their struggle with the authorities has undoubtedly left its mark on the capital. Sara Hashash has been hearing about the damage done at a research institute during fighting late last year.
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The plain clothes security guard in the dingy ground floor office at Egypt's National Archives eyes my camera suspiciously. On the desk in front of him lies a heavy black revolver. After a brief dispute with my guide and phone calls to his seniors, he reluctantly lets me in. I'm led into an adjoining room where, knee deep in stacks of newspapers, men and women wearing face masks, rubber gloves and white lab coats are hard at work. It looks like a cross between a hospital operating theater and a newspaper printing plant. The smell of singed paper hangs in the air from this small room. A vast rescue operation is being mounted to save the ancient books and manuscripts damaged after the Institut Egypt, the country's oldest research institute, was firebombed during clashes between demonstrators in the army last December. Founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 during the French expedition to Egypt, the institute is one of the oldest academies of arts and sciences outside Europe. Indeed, it was he who led the efforts to compile the institute's most prominent work, Le Description des Gyptes, a 23 volume tome dating back to 1809, describing Egyptian civilization, nature and contemporary life. Compiled by more than 150 French scholars, a first edition of the work has been partly damaged in the fire. The institute held more than 200,000 rare reference books and bound manuscripts dating back to the 1500s in five languages Arabic, French, English, German and Russian. Many are from the 19th century, the era of the great Victorian explorers of Africa. Among its collections were handwritten letters, travelogues and tens of thousands of maps, including a 1752 atlas of Upper and Lower Egypt and a German atlas of Egypt and Ethiopia dating back to 1842. Irina Bokova, UNESCO's director general, called the fire an irreversible loss to Egypt and to the world. The conservation workers at the National Archives wrap copies of books drenched after the fire was hosed down in reams of newspaper to soak the moisture from their pages. The Packages, like square shaped bundles of fish and chips are then sealed in a vacuum pack. The nearby corridor is lined with heaps of of these plastic parcels. Each needs to be opened, checked and repackaged every three days, a painstaking process that will take several weeks. So workers are staying late into the night to finish the job. Mountains of blackened books and charred paper fill the room. Everywhere, fragments of paper litter the floor. Tiny bits of history beyond salvation. I tiptoe across the room gingerly, all too aware that I'm treading on scraps of paper hundreds of years old. It's a sad feeling, like walking over somebody's grave. In the corner, a worker is layering pages of a large manuscript with sheets of plain paper. The edges of the pages crumble as he lifts them. The fragments settle on the floor, where they will gradually disintegrate into dust. It feels like the unmaking of history. The head of book restoration at the National Archives, a woman in a blue green headscarf with twinkling eyes, takes a break from her work to show me around. It's a catastrophe, she says. It's the first time I've worked on anything of this scale. 30 truckloads of books arrived in the first few days. We had nowhere to put them. So at the beginning, to stop them going mouldy, we were forced to resort to natural drying techniques. We spread pages across the grounds, in the garden and and on the rooftops of the building to dry. Some of the books were still smouldering when we opened them, she says. We had to pour water on them to put out the flames. Many of the workers helping are not specialists, but ordinary Egyptians who have volunteered. 24 year old Bushra, a pharmacist with a strikingly pretty face, wearing a pale pink headscarf and full length pastel blue dress, looks up from the papers she is rapping and smiles at me. This is our heritage, our culture. It's really important. I had to come and help. Just down the road several weeks on, books still lie beneath the rubble of the Institute. It is right by Tahrir Square, where demonstrators opposed to the military council that has ruled Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak's fall are still camped out, making their voices heard. The continuing protests have hampered rescue efforts and the building itself is said to be in danger of collapsing. The top floor has already caved in. Many of its books have been lost forever.
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And that's Sara Hashash in Cairo. Denmark is celebrating a jubilee this weekend. Queen Margrethe II has been on the throne for 40 years and has never been more popular. Hopelessly old fashioned and very Danish. That was how one tabloid there described her the other day. But I'm told it was meant affectionately. It seems the whole country is turning out to pay tribute this weekend. There are religious ceremonies, a gala banquet, a coach procession through the streets of Copenhagen. And when Chris Morris received an unexpected summons to the Danish capital, it was one he felt he couldn't turn down.
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I was tucking into my dinner last Monday night prawn curry, seeing as you ask, when my producer rang with a question. How would you fancy interviewing the Queen of Denmark? To Morrow, she said, well, I thought it would certainly make a change from the Eurozone crisis, all credit default swaps and over the counter derivatives. So curry fully digested, I brushed up rather rapidly on Danish royalty. The oldest continuous monarchy in Europe. Oliver Cromwell ruined England's chances. It was founded in the 10th century by the wonderfully named King Gorm the Old. And over the next 1,000 years, King followed king, but very few women rose to prominence. There was Margrethe I in the 14th century, but technically she wasn't really queen of all the Danes. Forty years ago, though, everything changed. King Frederick IX fell ill shortly after delivering his New Year's address. He died two weeks later and his tearful daughter was proclaimed Queen. And four decades on, unlike some reigning monarchs, she is prepared to talk directly to the media. So what do we know about the Queen of Denmark? Well, for one thing, she remembers listening to BBC Radio when she was just a little girl. My mother used to listen all the time, she revealed. And her connections with the United Kingdom don't end there. She studied prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge and political science at the London School of Economics. She's now an accomplished artist. Her paintings hang in numerous galleries and under a pseudonym she she provided the illustrations for the Danish edition of the Lord of the Rings. She is also a famously heavy smoker, which seems to endear her all the more to many Danes of a certain age. But following a discreet royal announcement a few years ago, she has agreed that she will never be seen puffing in public. Who said a monarchy can't move with the times? And Jubilee Week has revealed the Queen as an endearing mix of modern but mostly traditional. Our interview was scheduled just after her first ever live TV press conference. How do you make friends? She was asked in Danish. And is it true that you don't use mobile phones or the Internet? It is, she replied, and I'm perfectly happy that way, thank you. Eventually, the media scrum disappeared. Rows of chairs were cleared away. We had a few minutes to set up our equipment. Normally, a press officer or an assistant wanders in at this stage to make sure all is well. Before an interview. In the great hall of the Emilienborg palace and Copenhagen, it was the lady in waiting and the Lord Chamberlain. But overall, there was very little pomp and not too much circumstance. A handshake, a smile from the Queen, and off we went. The only time she seemed to bristle was when I mentioned that some political leaders have been calling the current crisis in Europe our biggest challenge since the Second World War. That, she insisted, was a very, very different type of threat. A small helping of common sense, perhaps, from a queen born In Copenhagen in April 1940, just a week after Denmark was invaded and occupied by the Nazis. But the Queen steered clear, as she must, of overt political comment. And she reserved some of her fondest words for Queen Elizabeth, who celebrates her own Diamond Jubilee later this year. I remember when she became Queen and I was not yet 12, she told me her sense of dedication to her country has always been something of an inspiration. So Queen Margrethe is already looking forward to visiting London this year to take part in the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. And she's keeping a keen eye on the Olympics. I remember the 1948 Olympics in London. As a little girl, she said, the Danish swimmers did ever so well. We talked a little about economic problems. We must all stick together, she said, and about the threat of extremism in troubled times. She rather gave the impression that Denmark was far too sensible for anything like that. And that sense of trust appears to be reciprocated. Opinion polls suggest more than 80% of Danes support the monarchy and are happy to see her stay on the throne until, as she once put it, she falls off. You're handed your job when the old king or Queen dies, she said. It's not a life sentence, but a life of service. Were there any awkward moments in our brief encounter? Well, a potential crisis was averted when a palace official ensured that our cameraman didn't inadvertently knock what was probably a priceless ornament off a pedestal with the back of his camera. Do they still have dungeons here? I wondered, as the Queen looked momentarily alarmed. But it's not really that kind of monarchy. And so she smiled again and was on her way.
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Chris Morris hobnobbing with Queen Margretta in Copenhagen. And a rare mention for King Gorm, the Old as well. That's it. Next week we're back with two programmes, so join us. Why don't you on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Until then, goodbye.