← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
July 30th 2011
00:27:31
Today: Peter Svaar finds out that the man behind the killings in Norway was his class...
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Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
Kate Adie
This is from our own correspondent.
- [00:03]
Justin Rowlatt
We make an edition for the BBC World Service as well.
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Kate Adie
But this is a download of the
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Justin Rowlatt
latest Radio 4 programme and here to introduce it as ever, Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Presenter
Today finding out that the man behind the killings in Norway was your classmate and friend. Does Iceland, which refused to pay off its debts, offer a solution to Europe's economic woes? We hear why Russian officials, not known for their smiles, are now beaming at babies. And we get a peek into the secretive world of bobbins, skeins and metier with the lace makers of France. Throughout this week, the authorities in Norway have been releasing a few at a time, the names of the victims of the bomb attack in central Oslo and the shootings on the island of Ute. The Norwegian government has set up a commission to investigate how this all happened and to look into the police response. The man who's admitted to the killings, 32 year old Anders Behring Breivik, apparently wanted to save Norway and Europe from a Muslim takeover by starting a revolution. Peter Sva was one of the first reporters sent to the scene of the bomb blast in Oslo. But he soon discovered that he was much more closely associated with the events than he thought.
- [01:18]
Peter Svar
It was my last day at work before the summer holiday and I had been planning to leave the office early. Instead, I ended up reporting for hours at the bomb scene. Plumes of black smoke rose from the Trade Ministry and in the street there were several dead and injured. As we stood there, we heard news of shooting at the Labour Party summer camp at Uthaya. I first dismissed it as a rumor, but it wasn't. At 10 that night I finally headed home on foot, as all of central Oslo had by now been sealed off by the police. Just a block away from my apartment there were shattered shop windows and an airy, ghostly silence. Back home I got a message from a friend. This is him, he said. This is the guy. The guy they just arrested at the summer camp. There was a link to a Facebook page. Three, four pictures, clearly professionally taken, shot in a studio almost like a press kit. And it was pictures of a guy I knew. Pictures of a guy whose name many people won't even pronounce anymore as they don't want to contribute to his fame. Onnes Bering Breivik was a friend of mine. He was my classmate for four years. We went to secondary school and the first part of the gymnasium together and grew up on the same side of Oslo. I saw him most days during those years. We went on school excursions together and occasionally we would see each other at weekends. At first I couldn't really believe it was true. Was he really the blond haired attacker at Uthaya? The guy who just killed so many people? Youngsters. The man who had toyed with them, telling them they were safe, urging them to come closer before he shot them dead. Poor Point Blank with a machine gun. Was that my friend? My schoolmate? It was. And he did that. A man not all that different from me. We were the same age, we went to the same schools. None of us have lacked anything materially or been victim of any major social injustice in this country's wide ranging welfare state. Of course, I've never spent years in front of my computer researching bomb recipes or far right wing websites. And more importantly, I've never felt the kind of rage or hate he must have had inside him. I still can't understand the source of all that hate. Most people think of him now as a monster. I still remember his smile and his jokes. I remember how Anders would sometimes come up to you from behind, kiddingly yell cra. In your ear just for a good hearted scare. It was his signature greeting in the schoolyard back then. I also remember his increasing fixation with weightlifting and hip hop and how he always kept himself very well presented. Towards the end of our school days together I knew he was taking steroids to grow more muscle, but he wasn't a complete loner or a person you couldn't hang out with. Basically, he wasn't that much out of the ordinary. Our paths crossed not just once, but twice last week. First in downtown Oslo, where I assume he left some minutes or perhaps an hour before I arrived. Him setting off the bomb and me arriving a while later to report on it. Our paths also crossed on Uthaya. I was also there, only this time before him. On Thursday morning, the day before the attack, I waited patiently for the ferry to take us over with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Jonas Gar Sture, who was going there to give a speech known simply as Jonas on the Island. He arrived in his black Mercedes, alone, with no security detail, no assistance, no press secretary, nothing. It was just him and his driver who stayed with the car. Jonas had dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt and made small talk on the short ferry ride over. As we arrived on the island, I sat down on the grass in front of a small red wooden hut and with several hundred other campers, listened to Mr. Garstura making a short speech about the crisis in East Africa and the prospect for Palestinian statehood. Afterwards he changed into a football kit and joined in a friendly match which his team subsequently lost. Many of the other players in that football match are now dead and several dozen of those who were cheering on the sidelines are dead too. Shot not just once, but twice to be sure. Kids, I remember their faces. I don't know what drove on this, but unfortunately I don't think he is crazy. It would have created a comfortable distance between us if he was. Nothing I know about him from our school days or what I've read in his so called manifesto suggests that rather he is cold, intelligent and calculating. The honors I knew was not a monster and as the saying goes, he was not an island. He was product of of our society. He was one of us.
- [06:36]
Narrator/Presenter
Peter Svar Just over two years ago, Sri Lanka's decades long civil war finally came to a bloody end on a beach in the north of the island. In the weeks leading up to that, much of the Jaffna Peninsula, the stronghold of the ltte, or Tamil Tigers, was deserted. As the Tigers retreated before the government's military advance and took tens of thousands of civilians with them. The Tigers were accused of using them as human shields. The survivors of the bloodshed are at last returning home and army restrictions on travel to the area are being lifted. Charles Haviland has just been to see if normality is returning.
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Charles Haviland
The palmyra tree, a kind of palm with its branches clustered together at the top, is a symbol of northern Sri Lanka, and palmyras punctuate the road north of the military checkpoint through which every traveler must pass. There are many neat, manicured military bases, but mostly the landscape is an arid one. Flattened buildings remind you that everyone fled this region, but blackened fields show that people are back, slashing and burning, trying to make the soil fertile. Some of the buildings still standing were once Tamil Tiger offices. Now they're transformed into things like petrol stations. In Kilinochee, the former LTTE headquarters, life seems normal. A year ago, no building here had a roof. It's very different now. Shops line the main road. I drop into some of them and am reminded with a jolt of the abnormality lurking just below the surface. The first shop we visit is a jeweller's. The man on duty and his companions greet us warmly with the same smiles you might expect in any gem shop in the southern tourist resorts. But the jeweller tells us that he lost everything in the war. Somehow, he says, life must go on. Like most others in Kilinochi, he was caught in the final battle ground. We ask how things were. To answer, he merely turns, lifts his shirt and shows us the shrapnel wounds. In the next shop, a strikingly beautiful young woman is dispensing medical drugs. She says little, but smiles shyly. We ask the bland, how is life now? I was hit in a shell attack, she says. I am now disabled. I lost a leg. Not everyone here in the northern mainland was wounded, but almost everyone is severely traumatized. In another place, we find a roadside Hindu shrine. Behind it, a temple is being lovingly built. Intricate figures of deities, sacred beasts and flowers carved into it. The Tamil men who guard the site say it's always been a sacred place where travelers stop for a blessing. The area changed hands between the LTTE and the military, but neither side ever harmed the shrine. The war drove these men from their homes. Lakshman tells us his brother was killed. Kuvendra lost his 24 year old son. I must have seen 10,000 bodies in the war zone, he said. If you weren't in the bunker, you would die. You couldn't walk anywhere. Tears filled the men's eyes. They gripped our hands firmly. They seemed thirsty to speak to visitors, to have contact with us. And we heard of the traumas of combatants. In Jaffna, Sri Lanka's most northerly city, we met a young army corporal on patrol. He told us of the time the Tamil Tigers broke the ceasefire. Not far along the road southwards, many of my comrades were sleeping. Others were playing cricket. He said the LTTE caught us unprepared. They stole our uniforms. There were so many dead bodies on both sides. I feel so sad because of the friends I lost. Even the LTTE looked like innocent young people. One looked like my sister's son. They could have been nice people. Maybe they could have been my friends. In the same city, we met a young man who had fought with the Tigers themselves. He was with them right up to the very final days of the war. We felt fear, he admitted, especially when we saw others die. He still believes in their cause in a separate Tamil homeland, although he no longer believes anyone will fight for it. So soon after the war, it is difficult to foresee the future. You do go down country lanes where you encounter only the occasional soldier on a bicycle. But much of northern Sri Lanka feels like a huge military garrison. Welcome to Six Six Division, says the signboard when you cross from the Jaffna Peninsula to the mainland on the way back south. And that's typical. It's not only camps. There are military run shops, barber salons and cafes. One on the highway has big signboards advertising fried rice, milk or cardamom. Tea and brewed coffee. The soldiers, few of whom speak Tamil themselves, show South Indian Tamil films every day. For the local children, it's a good hearts and minds campaign. But many Northerners feel the military presence is intrusive. A man visiting the pharmacy back in Kilinochee said that to do anything, even occupy one's own land, you need army permission. The ordinary soldiers are very helpful, he said. The problem is the rules higher up. It is striking that many Northerners are not looking for punishment of whoever might have been responsible for hurting them, killing their close family or destroying their homes. One person we met did say those responsible should be punished. She didn't know exactly who. The others felt there were more pressing securing the release of detained former Tigers, getting rid of the military presence or simply getting on with their lives. One said, if you try to punish people, that will only lead to another war and the Tamil people will be attacked again.
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Narrator/Presenter
Charles Havilland in Sri Lanka. Despite the latest bailout for Greece, the Eurozone crisis is far from over. One major worry is that Greece and others may simply default on the loans they've been given. But remember Iceland. Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland suffered the largest banking collapse in economic history three years ago. A number of local authorities and charities here had tens of millions of pounds invested in Icelandic banks, and they're still waiting to be repaid. Iceland's unorthodox approach to its banking meltdown has been suggested as an alternative way for Europe to go. Justin Rowlett has been there to find out if it actually worked.
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Justin Rowlatt
Iceland doesn't seem like a country in the grip of a crisis. On my first day, the sun was shining brightly and out in Reykjavik's main shopping area. The shops and boutiques, the cafes and restaurants were busy. Yet Iceland was hit hardest by the credit crunch in 2008. Its current recovery is why Iceland is being held up as the model for an alternative way to deal with the debt that plagues so many economies. When Iceland's banks went spectacularly bustling, instead of pouring in billions of taxpayers money to shore them up, Iceland just closed them down. Their debts were so huge that, in truth, the country had little choice. But nevertheless, it was a radical strategy. Iceland effectively said, stuff you to the bank's creditors. Foreign debts were written off, including $8 billion worth of deposits from savers in the UK and Holland. Bankrupting your way to recovery, it's been called. Iceland's elderly president is certainly convinced the strategy is working. Olafur Ragnar Grimsen reels off a series of impressive economic statistics When I meet him in his stark Scandinavian mansion on a forbidding spit of land jutting out into the bay outside Reykjavik, he tells me how the economy is now growing faster than than most other European countries. And with a lower public sector deficit. Unemployment is falling and Iceland has just raised a billion dollars at favorable rates on the international market. But Iceland's approach is about much more than just getting its banking sector in order, the President tells me. It is also about affirming the will of the people over the financial institutions in Europe. There is a conflict between the democratic will of the people and the interests of the financial markets, he tells me earnestly, leaning forward over his antique desk. He believes that if Europe is not about democracy, then the European project means nothing. The implication is clear. Other countries should follow the Icelandic example. But Iceland had a key weapon in its armoury that isn't open to the indebted eurozone nations. Iceland had its own currency, the krona, and when the banks collapsed, the krona did too. That's a key reason why Reykjavik is now so busy. Prices have effectively halved for most tourists from being one of the most expensive cities on earth. Reykjavik has become just, well, a bit pricey. But as Gunnar, the taxi driver who drove me back from the presidential mansion, explained to me, the collapse in the krona has cost many Icelanders dear. Virtually everything here is imported, and when the currency devalued, prices for everything from cars to building materials to food soared and at the same time wages fell. It's been a very painful squeeze, Gunnar says. Made considerably worse by the fact that during the boom years many Icelanders were encouraged to take loans in foreign currencies. And now they've doubled, sometimes even tripled in value too. I'll never pay my loans back, Gunnar tells me. Better just to walk away from it. Let them have my house. Gunnar seems resigned to the loss. But he is just one of thousands of Icelanders in a similar situation. In a modest office on the outskirts of Reykjavik, I meet one of them, Gudmundur Andri Skulason. He's much less sanguine than Gunnar. He set up an association of debtors to fight for debtors rights. Mr. Skulason quotes Central bank figures showing that 25,000 households are in arrears on their debts. That's nearly a quarter of all households in Iceland. Last March, the Minister of Finance put the figure at more like 40% of households. He tells me mortgages and other loans are a huge part of the assets of the new banks that Iceland formed out of the wreckage of the old. Mr. Skullison believes that when the Icelandic people realize they can never pay their debts off, they will, like Gunnar, just walk away from them. Then the real reckoning will come. Don't believe that Iceland has escaped its problems, he says. This country and its banks are still bankrupt. Back in town, I wander up a windswept hill in the centre of Reykjavik to look at the magnificent statue of Ingolfur Arneson, Iceland's first settler. He stands tall in full Viking regalia, up against the prow of his longship, a huge sword by his side. Once he would have had a clear view away over the fierce waters of the North Atlantic, out towards the coast of Greenland. Not anymore. The mighty Viking now stares down upon a square black fortress of an office block. This ugly building houses the Icelandic Central Bank. It seems that despite Iceland's best efforts, there is no easy way to escape the debt trap. Inglefur's Viking vigil over the central bank is, I reflect, perhaps more appropriate than it first seems.
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Narrator/Presenter
Justin Rowlatt that dress has now gone on show in Buckingham Palace. Kate Middleton's bridal gown, with its intricate lace applique bodice and its dramatic lines, wowed the fashion experts. The newspapers have reported that the queen is not pleased with the manner in which the dress is displayed, but that's done little to dim the enthusiasm of those from all around the world queuing up to see it. The designer Sarah Burton was keen to stress the Britishness of her creation, but Christine Finn has been meeting a group of people in France who are also congratulating themselves on success.
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Christine Finn
The net curtains are twitching in the French town of Coudry. The modest town south west of Lille has been known for centuries in certain circles for its exquisite lace making. Now it's that exquisite lace making. Kate Middleton's gown had coudery stamped all over it, at least if you have the eyes of an expert lace maker. I knew as soon as I saw it, christophe Mathieu told me at his family company, Solstice. The bodice had the distinctive pattern of Sophie Hallett, the town's other international lace maker. The lace was worked into the gown by skilled hands at London's Royal College of Needlework. But the French link needs a bit of detective work. Some 2,000 lace motifs from both of Koudri's lace makers were used to make the dress even more uncopyable. Couture lace making, I learned, is a hush hush world of closely guarded patterns and generations of worker loyalty. Grace Kelly's wedding dress featured lace from Coudery. And it's rumoured Kate was keen for her designer, Sarah Burton, to take that as inspiration. Today, the world's leading designers come to coudery for intricate embellishments. Lanvin, Balmain, Gucci, all worked on in utmost discretion. As I sat awaiting Christophe, someone shut the sample cupboard doors. To my surprise, given the secrecy, I was ushered past reception along with my entourage of two officers from the tourist board and two staff from Kudri's Lace Museum, through a portal and into an industrial scene from the early 19th century. Kalash. Kalash. Bash. Bash. A vast room sounding out with original levers, lace making machines. This technology was brought over from Nottingham. In England, a mechanic, John Heathcote, invented a machine to do the labour intensive work of female lacemakers. Meanwhile, in France, Joseph Marie Jacquard was inspired by a street organ to design the weaving metier, a machine based on punch cards and a forerunner of computer code. 200 years on, this noisy part of the process is still a male domain. Workers manning the machines fixed gimlet eyes on bobbins, thick, thin as knife blades, between which is wound even thinner thread. Delicate trails of pale skeins coursed in and out, as if someone had harnessed the webs of a colony of spiders. Christophe described the very machinery he worked on growing up. He gestured to the white lace inching out of the metiers, his hands black with the graphite which keeps everything running smoothly. A door away, we left the clacking, thumping production room for a different world. Another fairy tale image, women this time sitting in the quiet, surrounded by mounds of patterned and coloured lace, scrutinizing stretches of it for tiny imperfections and then invisibly mending. Such was the concentration that I held my breath lest I disturb a worker whose electric scissors zizzed deftly on a panel of perfect lace as she cut a scalloped edge. Posters on the walls confirmed the wedding scoop to staff. I later spoke to a beaming Rene Perillard, 45 years at solstice. When I saw the lace on the television and in the magazines, I said, it's Koudri. I'm very proud for our town because people everywhere will know of our skills. After my intensive lace immersion, I was practically dreaming it, seeing lace all around town in the swags of telegraph pole wires, the festoons of street light and the cut ironwork framing the windows, where I'll bet those curtains are still twitching.
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Narrator/Presenter
Christine Finn with the lacemakers of Cautery. There are more dire predictions of population growth, especially in the world's poorest countries. But in Europe, the population problem is more usually associated with a decline in numbers of young people. We're living longer, which is putting pressure on our pensions, social services and health care. In Russia, matters are especially acute. The death rate is significantly outstripping the birth rate, and that's had some unexpected consequences, as Oliver Bulow found during his last visit there.
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Kate Adie
Russia can hardly be blamed for being extra cautious about airport security. It was just in January when a bombing at Moscow's main international hub killed 37 people. All the same, the queue to get into St. Petersburg's airport was depressingly long. Blank faced armed guards in light blue shirts scanned the shuffling lines of tourists. My infant son ceased howling and fell asleep after about 20 minutes, which was a relief. But when we finally reached the front, we had to lift him out to be checked. As my wife passed him to me through the metal detecting arch and turned to place his buggy on the X ray machine, he opened his eyes, thrust out his bottom lip, and yowled in displeasure. He was fast asleep, I explained to the policewoman when she turned her stern gaze on me. And that was when everything changed. Wait there, she said, and picked up one of the plastic trays from the X ray machine. She plonked it down to block any further passage through the metal detector, gestured to a tourist stepping forward that he should stay where he was, then told my wife and me to follow her. She charged into the dense crowd, which parted before her like a shoal of fish before a shark, swatted aside a second official who dared to demand our passports, marched to the front of the check in queue and left us blinking at the desk. For London. Have a nice flight, she said, peering down at our son, who grinned his four teeth at her. I hope you have no more trouble. My wife and I looked at each other, genuinely lost for words. Russian officials are famously hard to please. Some years ago, border guards were given strict orders to smile at new arrivals to improve the country's image, but if the order was obeyed, I never noticed it. My attempts to joke with officials always backfire, and I now adopt a slightly supplicant expression and expect the worst. My son did not seem to have any of that trouble. In fact, the airport incident was just the latest example of his skill in befriending even the least friendly official. In the Hermitage, the world famous art gallery where loud noise is frowned on and misbehavior sternly corrected, he spent a happy hour crawling up and down the main staircase, shouting with pleasure with what looked like Every curator in the whole place standing around and congratulating him. At Peterhof, the palace of the Tsars, two security guards made him pose with a gilded statue of a fat cherub. He was, they said, definitely the more handsome of the two. Having sailed through passport control at the airport, my wife and I sat in the departure lounge. We chuckled at the indulgence he had met with. But gradually my smile faded. I started to wonder if this was not so much innate kindness, but rather a symptom of something very dark indeed. Russia is living through a demographic crisis, and its population has shrunk in the last two decades by more than 6 million. Despite the government's attempts to encourage new births, babies remain rare. A decade ago, deaths outnumbered births by more than 950,000 a year. Although the situation has improved, and last year the net loss was just 240,000, things are still very grim. Perhaps, then, it was our son's rarity that allowed him to get away with so much more in Russia than at home. On landing at Heathrow, we had to queue up like everyone else, and my wife was told sternly to step away from the immigration desk when she tried to wait for us. Unlike Russia, Britain is enjoying a baby boom. Does that mean babies are now such a common sight here that they receive no special treatment? If this interpretation is correct, then the kind reception our son received from officials in St Petersburg was a hidden sign of misery at the heart of the Russian nation. My gratitude for their kindness was clouded by this sad explanation. It sounds daft to say I would like to see officials grumpy once more. But if, on my next trip to Russia, we were to be scowled at and told to wait our turn, and that proved to herald a baby boom, I would be delighted, even with a shouting infant to deal with.
- [27:21]
Narrator/Presenter
Oliver Bolo, hoping that smiles will fade on the faces of Russian officials. And that's it for this week. There'll be more from our own correspondence next Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.