← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 19, 2012
00:27:54
The women are in charge - and the men don't seem to be doing much about it.
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Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, this is the. 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 programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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B
Today, the sleepy holiday island that's become a disaster zone. The new Libyan authorities try to buy off the gunmen who helped bring them to power. Tension turns to violence in China, as city dwellers outnumber those living in the countryside for the first time. And we're in the hills of northeast India, where the women are in charge and it's the men who are demanding sex equality. Until recently, it was only the more ardent travellers who knew about Giglio. That all changed last Friday evening when the Costa Concordia, with more than 4,000 people aboard, capsized just a stone's throw from the island's harbour entrance. At least 11 people lost their lives. Others are still missing. Suddenly, the island and the stricken liner were making headlines the world over. This morning, the Italian government feels there's a serious risk that rough seas could cause the ship to sink completely. The Environment Minister, Corrado Clini, has told Parliament that salvage teams have only a few days to siphon off the ship's fuel. Alan Johnston is there, watching events unfold.
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C
The road led us out of the rolling hills of Tuscany and suddenly we were on the shores of the Mediterranean. As we sped alongside a lagoon, a heron rose from water that sparkled in the sunshine. It felt like the sort of journey you make when you're going on holiday. It was hard to believe that we really were en route to a disaster zone. But at the little harbour of Porto Santo Stefano, I began to get a sense of what the sinking of the Costa Concordia was all about. Survivors were being brought in. They stood on the quayside, waiting to be told what to do, many of them wrapped in blankets and some still deep in shock. One girl in particular didn't seem to have quite abandoned ship yet. Not in her mind, anyway. She stood very still, staring intensely at a spot on the ground a few feet in front of her, oblivious to the police and the ambulances and the offers of cups of tea. But it was on the ferry over to the island of Gilio, which, when we first saw the wreck from way out in the Channel, that the full extent of the disaster finally struck home. It's hard to say exactly what makes the ship such a compelling sight. Why, it's almost hard to stop looking at it. Maybe it's the sheer scale of it all. Such a vast and powerful thing rendered so completely helpless. One minute the ship was surging up the channel, lights blazing, movies showing the pianist playing as diners enjoyed their evening meal. Then a sudden, sickening blow that would send that whole world of luxury and everyone in it spilling into the freezing sea. And all this happened on the doorstep of one of the most remote and sleepy places in Italy. Normally, the tiny port on Giglio slumbers through the winter. There's only one real street and narrow stone floored alleyways wind between the clutch of houses. The one I walk down every day leads past a little cove where the sea beats against the rocks. Stand there at night and you can watch the coast guard boats wallow in the swell as they train searchlights on the great white hulk of the Costa Concordia. She looks so weirdly unnatural in a place renowned for its natural beauty. I found Sergio Otelli mulling it all over in the Cafe Ferraro down on the quayside. He's the mayor of the island. He had what used to be one of the most obscure jobs in Italian public life. But the coming of the Costa Concordia has changed that. When I met him, he'd just come off the phone to the Prime Minister. An older man with short cropped grey hair, he looked at me over his silver rimmed glasses and began to talk about that night. He was in bed early, drifting off to sleep when the call came. Within minutes, he was on the quayside. He put his hands up to his face and opened his eyes wide as he remembered his first sight of the ship on the rocks. His harbour was filling with lifeboats and a tide of survivors was coming ashore in the darkness. At first, the Concordi was still standing upright, but Sergio watched as she gradually keeled over and died. And in all of it, what stays most vividly in his mind is a German man on the key, deep, distraught, desperately searching for his wife. As he sipped a drink from a thin glass at the cafe table, Sergio wondered what the shipwreck would mean for the future. Suddenly, all the world has heard about Giglio. But will it always now be thought of as the island of the Concordia disaster? Sergio hopes that instead people might remember that his community did everything it could for the survivors. Private homes were open to the people who staggered in from the se. And what about when all the cameras that clutter the quay outside the cafe have gone all through the tourist season, the picturesque port will be the center of a huge and unsightly salvage operation. Sergio worries that the locals will be left to cope alone with many of the consequences of the disaster's aftermath. Don't Forget us, he tells his higher ups in Rome. Don't forget us.
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B
Alan Johnston on the island of Gilio, the new Libyan authorities say they are offering cash to some 200,000 former revolutionary fighters to help them return to civilian life. A government body known as the Warriors Affairs Committee is overseeing the operation and has been allocated an initial sum of 5 million pounds. It will be used to help the former fighters find jobs, start up small businesses and pay for computer and language training abroad. Many of those funded by the committee are expected eventually to be employed by the new government. Mark Loewen says disarming the various militias involved in last year's battles is one of the biggest tasks facing the country's new rulers.
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Tripoli's residents do their shopping these days in the unlikeliest of places Colonel Gaddafi's compound every Friday morning, the vast grounds of Babal Aziziyah, pummeled by NATO rockets during last year's uprising, and are crammed with everything from live chickens to DVDs, socks to spare electrical parts. It has turned from a place of fear and secrecy to the most public and popular of open air markets. Crowds pick their way over shards of mangled concrete that once formed the colonel's luxurious private rooms to spend their new crisp Libyan dinar. Notes it is the ultimate rebuke to their former leader and just one of the signs of just how quickly life has changed here, for much of Libya already feels eerily normal. I found myself stunned by how quickly calm has returned. The chic shops and sophisticated cafes in central Tripoli are busy. Airlines are returning to the country. Ordinary people talk excitedly about a future with tourists enjoying the rich coastline and magnificent Roman remains. There is a sense of the barricades coming down, of a country starting afresh. But a realization of the vast challenges and problems the country faces is slowly eating away at the veneer of stability. For as the joy of liberation last year fades, Libyans, like Egyptians, have become impatient at the pace of change. The number of protests against the new authorities is growing fast. In the eastern city of Benghazi, they're angry at the concentration of power in Tripoli. Women have held marches in the capital complaining of unequal treatment. There have been demonstrations against the militias formed of ex rebels who continue to roam the country in trucks armed with anti aircraft rockets. Fighting turf wars with rivals, they still wield the power, and the government is struggling to rein them in. We just want them to leave, fouad, an engineer looking for a bargain told me as we chatted back at Gaddafi's former compound. Nobody feels safe surrounded by their heavy weapons. And when the world looks at Libya and sees these armed groups, no one will want to come and invest here. The transition from more than four decades of the colonel's authoritarian rule through eight months of civil war and now the birth of democracy is proving bumpy indeed. And the road ahead is fraught with danger, not least if the issue of reconciliation remains buried. For Muammar Gaddafi did command real support in some areas, and his loyalists now complain of reprisals. I met dozens of them at Khandah Prison, just outside Tripoli. They've been cooped up there for months, waiting to hear when, or if they'll be put on trial. Each cell, 5 meters by 3, has at least 14 inmates with toilets that don't work and lights that go unfixed. But most worryingly, torture is commonplace. The electric wire seems the prison guard's weapon of choice, although hammers and iron rods have also been used. The abuse appears to have eased recently in the formal prisons, but in ad hoc detention facilities, which the militias control, human rights groups say it is still widespread. Both sides here have grudges to the revolutionaries for the tyranny they suffered under Gaddafi and the loyalists for a new order that targets them. As I wandered through the corridors, an elderly gentleman beckoned me in to one of the dark cells. Educated with a kindly face, he told me in perfect English how he'd been a general in the army, but feared he might see out his final few years locked up because he followed the orders of the old regime. It's like his name, Gaddafi, is forever etched on my forehead, he mused, condemning me to this fate. Could I record an interview with him? I asked. He simply shook his head. They'd beat me if they knew. I have seen in the Balkans, where I was based for the past two and a half years, just how slow reconciliation can be. The hatred and division from the 90s wars there have in some parts of the region, barely healed. Perhaps it simply takes time. But already there is the fear that time is one luxury that Libya doesn't have. There were two waiters I got to know in the hotel cafe during my stay, Mohammed and Aziza. And as they poured me a coffee one morning, they told me of a party in central Tripoli. It's in Green Square, Aziz said, using the old Gaddafi era name. Martyrs Square, Mohammed corrected him, spooning out the frothy milk. Ah, for me it will always be green, smiled Aziz. As Mohammed showed me to my table, I asked how he felt about his still loyalist colleague. I don't mind, he said. I love the Revolution. But he doesn't. That's fine. We're still Libyan. A rare sign of the unity Libya could still embrace if the scars of division can be allowed to heal.
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And that's Mark Loewen. The government of Ecuador is asking the rest of the world to dig deep into its pockets to protect an important national park. Three huge oil fields have been discovered under the Yasuni Park. It's thought they could take care of half of all Ecuador's oil needs for at least a decade. Already, some £75 million has been pledged by the international community. But if the authorities in Quito fail to get the billion pounds they say they need, drilling could start. And as Nick Haslam's been hearing, that could be a disaster for plants, animals and people too.
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In the early light of dawn, the Napo river, running swiftly from its headwaters in the high Andes, swells powerfully past the bow of our motorised canoe. Suddenly, a dense cloud of green parrots swoops down from the canopy of the jungle and in a cackling din, starts to scoop tiny beakfuls from the exposed muddy bank. The heavy mineral rich clay, the birds know, is an antidote to the toxins present in the seeds of the forest, which are a major part of their daily diets. As if on Cue, at 7:30, as the first rays of the sun touch the water, they take flight and are gone. One of the most wonderful spectacles of Amazonian Ecuador is over. We were drifting along the fringes of the Yasuni national park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. There are more plant species in its 3,800 square miles of swamps, jungle and marshes than in the whole of North America. The pygmy marmoset, the world's smallest monkey sloths and giant otters are amongst many other threatened species to find home in the park. That's in addition to some 300 people who are amongst the last nomadic hunter gatherers on Earth, choosing to live in total isolation, as they have for thousands of years. It was a strange thought that people who have no concept of modern life could be watching us from the impenetrable jungle close by in Quito, Ecuador's capital. I had talked to Yvonne Baki, the government special envoy who now heads the Yasuni fundraising mission to save the forest from oil drilling, wasn't it? I asked. Strange to expect the global community to pay Ecuadorians not to despoil one of their most valuable natural assets. Yasuni and the Amazon are the lungs of the world, she told me. The Yasuni Fund will be used to finance reforestation, develop new sources of alternative energy, and other strategic sustainable development programs. Now we've opened it to everyone in the world, from private individuals to corporations as well as national governments. We are not a rich country yet. In one day here, we raised $3 million, nearly £2 million, most of it from ordinary people. This is a unique project. What other country even thinks of leaving its oil wealth in the ground? The clock, though, is still ticking for Yasuni. The government initially demanded that $100 million, that's £75 million, had to be donated by the end of last year. If not, oil drilling would get the green light. The deadline has been put back, but Roki Sevilla, a former politician and conservationist who was the first director of the Yasuni ITT project, thinks that the world is not yet ready for such an innovative concept. It is perfectly achievable, he said, if we give enough time to the industrialized countries to understand the huge advance in international environmental policy that the ITT project represents. We in Ecuador, too, have to understand that with the rich alternative sources of energy we have, from hydroelectricity to solar power, we can use far less oil. Small yellow boxes for donors to give cash contributions are now in place in Ecuadorian post offices and government offices. Marco Toscana, a friend who drove me to Quito's airport to catch the plane to the jungle region, told me he would stop by on the way home to put a hundred dollars into the fund. Many people in Ecuador had no idea about the importance of Yasuni, he said. Now many of us are determined to help in any way we can. In the bustling oil town of Coca on the banks of the Napo River, I meet Eduardo Pichilingwe, who's carried out research on the uncontacted tribes of Yasuni. For him, it's simply a matter of payback time. There are areas of Ecuador in Amazonia which have already been ruined by oil exploitation, he says as I board my canoe. The Yasuni ITT Fund will save biodiversity, isolated tribal communities, and prevent millions of tons of carbon going into the atmosphere. I think the world really owes us this. Two hours downstream from Koka, I land on the edge of the Yasuni park, where the Kuri Muyu cooperative, run by Kichwa Indian women, demonstrates to visitors how tribal people can live in total harmony with the jungle. Antonia Aguinde, a small, vibrant woman, shows me a fine earthenware bowl, which he made and fired in the simple kiln. At the center of the cool, thatched living space. The oil business is bad for us, she says. Some people get jobs and money, some don't. It divides us against each other. And how long will oil last? Maybe 10 years. If we save Yasuni, then we will all have work and can continue to share this beautiful place with people from far away.
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Nick Haslam in Ecuador, China's announced that for the first time in history, it has more people living in its towns and cities than in the countryside. But the steady migration from rural areas has brought trouble in its wake, particularly in southern China. Tension between residents and incomers has led to strikes and riots. Mukul Devachand has been investigating in the city of Guangzhou.
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When I was first told about China's so called village in the city districts, to my Londoner's ear, it sounded like estate agent terminology. Villages in the city, independent shops, villagey streets. And in the city too. How charming. But online there are images of China's villages in the city that would make estate agents cringe. There's been lots of violent web video footage from one such district in Guangzhou, China's third largest city. Cars flipped over, buildings set on fire, government offices ransacked by the thousands of migrant factory workers from the countryside who lived there. Villages in the city are just that, old villages around which factories have sprung up, cheap places to live, popular with poor migrants, violence never far from the surface. The locals in these villages are no less angry. As the city encroaches around them, their land becomes valuable and they can turn on the local officials who try and acquire it. In reality, China's villages in the city district represent a darker underbelly of China's coastal cities. It was in Guangzhou, the great city once known as Canton, that I first wandered into. One my young guides here were local residents Wei, Wang and Zhang, all originally from China's deep interior but now working in a handbag factory, their nerves were obvious. They were watching out for the so called village protection squads, hired muscle whose job it is to watch over the migrants on behalf of the village locals themselves. Zhang, age 30 and here from Sichuan province, led me up several stories of brittle white concrete to the small room he rents metal bunk bed, toilet and sink. But these are not dormitories. They're flimsy, multi story extensions to the old villagers houses. Here's how it works. Local people build these rooms and rent each one out for 17 pounds a month, a profitable business. But in the process they get surrounded by poor rowdy workers who don't speak their own Cantonese dialect Vastly outnumbered and with crime rates so high and rising, the locals begin to feel understandably insecure. So they hire in thuggish security staff. These village protection squads knock often at the migrants doors, demanding small change for community purposes. Fifty pence, say, for waste collection. But it doubles up as protection money, and you snub them at your peril. Wei, a lanky 30 year old from Guangxi Province, watched recently as these squads in uniform surrounded a migrant and his wife and beat them up with sticks. Wong, aged 24, tells me he has seen worse. A friend of his had a few beers one night in the village square and raided a prized banana tree for a midnight snack. The next day, the thugs paid a visit. They broke his leg. Then they expelled him from the village. In the city, the migrants can be violent back, of course, But I feel scared when I see the squads, says Wei. They're for the locals, not me. The recent riots, the ones all over YouTube, began when a pregnant migrant hawker from Sichuan was moved on by the village protection squads. They allegedly pushed her to the ground. Anger spread. The violence there lasted three days. Zhang tells me forlornly that his wife and two young daughters are back home now in Sichuan because migrant kids can't go to school here, which is free for locals. And unless they pay a sponsorship fee to the village, each child would cost Zhang more than he earns in a year. Even worse, they say there's no longer good money to be earned here. Zhang and Wei both went on strike last month over pay. They work 12 hours, six days a week, and earn £160amonth. Basic food prices are shooting up. Tension is rising. As we chat, I reflect on why the number of strikes and riots are increasing. These workers are quite unlike the rural poor that I've met elsewhere. They seem much more part of my cultural universe and much more obviously assertive about the indignity of their lives. At 24, Wang lives with his girlfriend, spends weekends at the Internet cafe and follows the Italian football league. Wei has a large tattoo on his wrist. It's the character run, which means to tolerate or endure. I ask him why he got it. He says he always used to be angry at having to live here in order to work. He has a pregnant wife and a poor family back in Guangxi to support. And no residency papers, not even the temporary ones the others have got. So he gets hassled most of all. I just can't leave this place, he says. I should have got the word endure tattooed on my heart.
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And that's mukul Devachand. There aren't many parts of the world where a matrilineal system's in operation. Usually it's the man's name that's passed down from generation to generation, his property and goods often going the same way. But Meghalaya, a small hilly state in India's northeast, is an exception. This is home to some 200,000 members of the Qazi tribe. And here it's the women who have the influence. And as Timothy Allen's been finding out in the state capital, Shillong, some of the Kazi men aren't entirely happy with this state of affairs.
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A
When early European settlers first arrived here, they nicknamed it the Scotland of the east on account of its evocative rolling hills. Coincidentally, today the bustling market is awash with tartan in the form of the traditional hand loom shawls, worn ubiquitously since the autumn chill has arrived. Megalai's climate is somewhat of a phenomenon. Close by, the village of Cherrapunji once measured an astonishing 26.5 metres of rain in one year, a fact still acknowledged by the Guinness Book as a world record. But the rainy season is over for the time being, and it's Meghalaya's other claim to fame that I'm here to investigate. It appears that some age old traditions have been ruffling a few feathers of late, causing the views of a small band of male suffragettes to gain in popular reviving some rather outspoken opinions originally started by a small group of Khasi intellectuals in the 1960s. I'm sat across the table from Keith Parriot. Keith is the president of Sengkong Rumpai Tamai, Meghalaya's very own men's rights movement. He's quick to assure me that he and his colleagues don't want to bring women down. As he puts it, we just want to bring the men up to where the women are. Parriot, who ignored age old customs by taking his father's surname, is adamant that Matriline is breeding generations of cussie men who fall short of their inherent potential, citing alcoholism and drug abuse amongst its negative side effects. If you want to know how much the cussies favour women, he says, just take a trip to the labour ward at the hospital. If it's a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it's a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that whatever God gives us is quite alright. Pariad cites numerous examples of how his fellow brethren are being demoralized. These include a fascinating theory involving the way that gender in cussy language reflects these basic cultural assumptions. A tree is masculine, he begins, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine. And the same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female. Matriline, he insists, breeds a culture of men who feel useless. I talk to Patricia Mucumb, the well respected editor of Shillong's daily newspaper. She assures me that her heritage is only one of the reasons why she has risen to the level she has, and points out that the tradition of excluding women from the political decision making process is still very strong in their culture. As a mother of children by three different Kasi fathers, however, she is the first to admit that their societal anomaly has afforded her ample opportunities to be both a mother and a successful career woman. Making reference to the routine problems facing women just over the border In West Bengal, Ms. Mukham is resolute. Our culture offers a very safe sanctuary for women, she declares. I decide to see for myself. In a remote village in the East Kasi hills. After two hours walking through thick jungle, I meet 42 year old Mary. She is a kadu, the youngest daughter in her family and consequently the one destined to live with her parents until she inherits the family house. Her husband, 36 year old Alfred, lives with them. When I talk to Mary inside her home, she tells me that women don't trust men to look after their money, so they take control of it themselves. I glance at Alfred for a response, but he musters only a candid smile. Mary goes on, most men in our village leave school early to help their fathers in the fields. This, she concedes, is a great detriment to their education. I turn to Alfred once more. He responds with another shy smile. Mary admits she has never heard of the men's rights movement, but thinks the system will never change. Alfred maintains his Mona Lisa smile. As we are talking, a praying mantis careers into our hut and slams into the side of my head. After the laughter dies down, I take the opportunity to break the ice with Alfred by pointing out that female mantises eat their mates after sex. I make a gesture with my arms, mimicking the insect's claws, an action the kassi called takor, and one which turns out to be the gesticular equivalent of sticking two fingers up at someone. There is more laughter at my expense. Forty minutes later, however, I have yet to get a comment from Mary's husband, and all too soon it's time to leave. I feel that the last word should come from Alfred. So I ask my translator to target a simple question directly at him. What does he think of the matrilineal system? There is a long and considered pause. After what seems like an eternity, the silence is finally broken. He, like, pipes up, mary, and it's time to go.
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B
And why wouldn't he be happy? That's it. There'll be more from our own correspondence around the world in our programme on Saturday morning. I do hope you'll join us.