← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
June 11, 2011
00:27:58
The bloody events in Syria are making the government in neighbouring Turkey uneasy, as...
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [00:00]
Presenter
Hi there.
- [00:00]
You're about to hear from our own
- [00:02]
Correspondent
correspondent, a download from the BBC.
- [00:04]
Presenter
We make editions of the programme for
- [00:06]
both the BBC World Service and Radio 4.
- [00:09]
And this is the latest Radio 4 broadcast. As ever, it's introduced by Kate Ady today.
- [00:15]
Reporter
How the violence in Syria is causing a general election headache for the government in neighbouring Turkey, a warming in relations between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. It's good news for a man who breeds giant fish. We are in the Philippines where divorce is banned, but if you are richer rather than poorer, you don't have to be unhappy ever after. And why a senior Radio 4 presenter has been spotted in the mountains of Sicily wearing his wife's clothes. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has condemned the suppression of protests by the Syrian authorities as inhumane. In an interview on Turkish television, Mr. Erdogan said the crushing of dissent in Syria was barbaric and unpalatable. Yesterday, at least 30 people were reported to have been killed when Syrian security forces opened fire on anti government demonstrations. Hundreds of refugees are continuing to cross over into neighbouring Turkey. Mr. Erdogan's comments came as Turks prepare to vote in a general election tomorrow. His AK party seems certain to win a third consecutive term in power. But Hugh Sykes says his government is growing increasingly uneasy about the bloody events over the border in Syria.
- [01:30]
Presenter
Sitting at an open air kebab cafe, which is like a big tree house with tables on platforms straddling a waterfall and some of the tables actually in the water. The sun shining through wide leaves on fig trees, families eating their lunch and little girl throwing pieces of bread to some geese. Syria seems far away, but it isn't. At the souvenir stalls by the waterfall, alongside a corny portrait of Che Guevara in classic pose with bereavement, there's a corny portrait of President Bashar Al Assad. The Syrian border is half an hour away. There is a no visa agreement between Damascus and Ankara. Syrian businessmen and tourists often visit the mountain gorge where this cafe is. Many of the road signs in southern Turkey point to Halep Turkish for Aleppo, the must visit ancient city in northern Syria. But the inscrutable and rather baby face of Syrian terror is hardly an association that Turkey wants to project to the world in election week or during EU accession talks. The Prime Minister went on television this week to reassure frightened Syrians heading across the border that it would not be closed to them. Turkey is trying to and has mostly succeeded in moving away from its dark past of army coups after the most recent military takeover not so long ago, in 1980, hundreds of thousands of Turks were rounded up and jailed without trial and 50 were hanged. The army here has always regarded itself as the fierce custodian of Turkish secularism, as promoted by the founding father of the modern Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Now the politicians here say, no, we're in charge. The last elections in 2007 were in effect a referendum on the power of the army. The generals threatened to take over if the very Muslim Abdullah Gul became president. The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip erdogan, held the 2007 election three months early, calling the armies bluff. He won. They lost. Abdullah Ghul became president. There was no coup and the crackdown in Syria is an alarming disappointment to the Turkish government. Turkey's foreign policy has been described as zero problems, maximum trade with neighbours. Through the Levant Forum, Ankara has been promoting a free trade area with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. And Turkey has a huge trade surplus with Iraq, selling fridges, air conditioners, electric fans, food, cosmetics, chemicals, construction materials, electronics, vehicles, tyres. Turkey is still officially trying to get into the European Union, but enthusiasm for membership is waning. Many people I've met here over the past 10 days have told me they don't want to join. Too many problems, said Ahmed, a market trader in the bazaar in the southern city of Antalya. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, we don't want any part of that. Antalya is a large, modern city with a jewel at its heart, its walled old quarter and a Roman harbor, and helping the already healthy Turkish economy. The Antalya region has just published an astonishing statistic. Three million visitors in the first five months of this year. Modern Turkey Ataturk once said, I have no religion and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. There are still suspicions in some quarters here that Prime Minister Erdogan is a closet Islamist with unrevealed intentions to ban alcohol and make women cover their heads. He says it's rubbish. There's a great variety of dress here. Men in traditional Islamic skull caps or in T shirts and jeans, women with headscarves or in miniskirts and high heeled shoes, often the two walking side by side and holding hands. But there are people here who really don't want to import what they regard as Western decadence, especially public drunkenness. They would like some restrictions and there already are some alcohol. The aniseed drink, raki in particular is taxed so highly it's unaffordable to many people. And there are new rules banning alcohol from sports advertising and from events for young people. The alcohol regulatory boards say this is not ideology, it's to protect people. And Turkey's legal drinking age at 18 is lower than in the USA, where it's 21. There's a deep instinct for courteous behavior here and there's immense kindness. I've been greeted with nothing but friendly smiles everywhere I've been town and country children seem confident, happy and well treated in old neighbourhoods. They play in the street and they're friendly to strangers, which suggests to me that they feel safe. That's priceless. The ACT Party, who will almost certainly be re elected, say they simply want to protect some of the country's cherished qualities from some of the extremes of Westernisation.
- [06:18]
Reporter
Hugh Sykes in southeast Turkey, corruption's a hot topic in India. Scarcely a week goes by without it hitting the headlines in some form or other. This week, police in Delhi used batons and tear gas to disperse thousands of people who'd gathered in support of an anti corruption hunger strike being staged by a leading guru, Baba Ramdev. The police action, according to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, was unfortunate. Corruption, of course, is not confined to the big cities. Craig Jeffrey has been finding out that while it's a part of everyday village life too, it still can be a joking matter.
- [06:55]
Correspondent
Mukesh Singh is a farm labourer living in a village in Uttar Pradesh. He belongs to a caste they used to call untouchable. I met him on a cold winter morning. Tall and wiry, Mukesh was hunched over a bonfire, warming his hands. When I mentioned corruption, he told me a joke. One day, a man from his village went to visit the new anti corruption officer in the local city of Meerdat. The clerk sitting outside the office stopped the man. I'm sorry sir, the anti corruption officer is out. The man replied, but I can see his lights on. The clerk repeated, I'm sorry sir. The clerk then said, well, actually I will let you in, but only if you give me 50 rupees. The man eventually paid the money. Once inside, he told the officer, sir, you are charged with stopping corruption. But there, right outside your room is your own clerk demanding bribes. The anti corruption officer looked up. Well, he sighed, what can I do? Even I had to pay 50 rupees to get into my office this morning. Few such jokes are original, many are urban myths. But they speak to the weary cynicism of many villagers. Corruption in India is everywhere and it's usually the officers low down in the system, the clerks, police constables, the land officials who are the most corrupt. Mukesh gave me a tour of his village pointing out the symbols of corruption. The new road half built because the village council pocketed the money. The derelict because the doctor doesn't come. And Mukesh's own house which lacks a roof. His family can't afford the bribe for a government grant. Mukesh and his friends have developed a wide range of terms to describe different forms of corruption. There's monetary corruption where there's a fixed charge for different services. And discriminatory corruption where the price depends on who you are. There's straight corruption, you pay a bribe and you get what you want. And fraudulent corruption when you pay a bribe and still nothing happens. Some have decided that if you can't beat the system, you might as well get involved in corruption. Take Harpal Singh, Mukesh's cousin. While Mukesh seems worn down by work, Harpal exudes a restless energy, his legs moving from side to side as he speaks. Sucking at a sweet smelling country cigarette. Harpal told of the money he makes fixing deals with government officials. People go to Harpal to get help with things like securing a loan or birth certificate. He has charisma and he's built up good links with government officials. Harpal's philosophy is simple. Corruption happens. There's no point moralizing about it. In fact, Harpal is proud of his ability as a former untouchable to get work done. He said that the most important thing people need in India is, is jugaad. Jugaar is a Hindi word meaning improvisation. More specifically it means improvising shrewdly and in an enterprising way with whatever resources might be at hand. So if you're in a government office and someone isn't helping you, you get creative, you try to bribe, you try to use your influence, you try to blackmail the official. Perhaps this is jugaad. In fact jugaad is, is used very widely, not only in relation to corruption, to indicate Indian spirit of make do and mend. The Americans call it Jimmy Riggin. It's something like the northern English word nous. I told Harpal about Mukesh's joke and he defended the anti corruption officer's clerk. Look, that clerk also has a family to feed. He's just doing jugaad. Harpal then told me his own joke. Bill Clinton, he said, came to India. Clinton arrived at his five star hotel in Delhi. He asked the cleaner, opposite my hotel there's a slum. They don't seem to be hooked up to electricity. And yet there are so many lights on inside the homes. How do those people get power? The cleaner grinned and said, jugard. The following day, Clinton was visiting a government office. The clerk at the office had a car. Clinton asked him, how did you earn enough to buy a car? The clerk answered, jugaad. The next day, Clinton was traveling to Chandigarh. He asked driver, there are bicycles, bullock carts, buses, trucks and cars all over the road, yet you managed to speed along smoothly. How do you do it? The driver replied, jugad. The next day, the Indian Prime Minister came to say goodbye to Bill Clinton at the airport. The PM asked, sir, we want to expand our trade with America. Is there a valuable commodity that you would like to import from India? Clinton replied, yes, we need some of your jugaad.
- [11:48]
Reporter
Craig Jeffrey back now from Uttar Pradesh, Chinese tourists have been told that soon it will be much easier for them to visit the island of Taiwan. The announcement that some restrictions are to be lifted was made in Beijing this week amid a marked improvement in relations between the two. China claims the small island as its own, and for years it was feared that World War three would start in the Straits of Taiwan. But recently, since the election of a new president from the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, both sides have been trying to build closer links. Chris Hogg has been to Taiwan to see who's benefiting from this outbreak of goodwill.
- [12:27]
Presenter
It's always uncomfortable to be stared at, even more so while you're conducting an interview, and when that stair seems cold and unblinking. This time the stair came from the kind of giant fish tank you see only in the lairs of James Bond villains. Encased in concrete covering one wall of the living room. Behind the glass were two monsters, carnivorous fish, each more than a meter long. I was here to meet Tai Kun Tsai. No villain, in fact, although he did confess to a former life and as a smuggler of giant groupers, the fish who were giving me such a hard time. From inside the tank, the grouper's flesh is prized by the gourmet diners of China and Hong Kong. They like to select the fish themselves from a restaurant's tanks so that it can be dispatched with a swift blow from a cleaver and steamed at the peak of its freshness. Most of the waters off the coast of mainland China are too cold to raise the giant grouper here in Taiwan, though Mr. Tai can rear them on his fish farm using a secret breeding technique he's developed. Now he exports thousands of them to the mainland every year. I'd come to talk to him about a trade agreement signed between China and Taiwan, which came into force six months ago. It's known by its initials, ECFA. As part of the agreement, China abandoned its 13% tariff on imports of live fish. I wanted to know if this had improved Mr. Tai's ability to make money. He fixed me with an unwavering stare, similar to that I was getting from his fish. Then he smiled. I used to have to smuggle my fish into the mainland, he said. But under ecfa, everything became more legitimate. He told me China could produce just one in ten of the giant grouper it now needs for its growing market. As China gets richer, this is a delicacy more and more mainlanders want to enjoy. ECFA is sometimes described as a ploy by the mainland to win friends in Taiwan, a place it's always claimed is a renegade province of the People's Republic of China, a historical anomaly that should be corrected by reunifying the island with the motherland, by force if necessary. But Mr. Tai dismissed such talk. These are not concessions they're giving us, he insisted. Chinese consumers are the winners. They're getting my fish quicker, legally and more cheaply. Taiwan's at the start of its election cycle, voters will go to the polls to select a new president next January. The current president, Ma Ying Chou's, a frequent visitor to Mr. Tai's fish farm. It's a useful campaign stop in the south of the island, an area better known for supporting the opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party, who are sceptical of the current government's efforts to build bridges with the mainland. President Ma's Nationalist government has spent the last three years thrashing out agreements that bind this island closer to the mainland. He's hoping they'll prove enough to convince voters to give him a second term. He'll play on fears that if voters hand power to the opposition, the economic benefits his policies have created will be put at risk. But the opposition believe that domestic concerns should be given more importance. How well has the president run Taiwan? Their answer, of course, not very well at all. Our interview over, Mr. Tite took me outside to the giant pools where his fish are raised. We walked along a narrow ledge between two of them. One of his staff was tossing smaller fish into the water. Swiftly from the depths, the monsters rose, some of them huge. It was a frenzy, much thrashing around as they fought amongst themselves for a bite. If you fell in now, he warned me, they'd each take a bite out of you. They wouldn't eat you, but they'd have a taste. It's easy to portray Taiwan as small fry, an island of 23 million people at risk of being gobbled up by the 1.3 billion strong mainland China. But as a businessman, Mr. Tai doesn't agree with that analogy. They need us. They need our products, he says. He's proud of the way he and other Taiwanese businessmen have spotted opportunities to make money from mainland China and become wealthy as a result. For him, the lesson is clear. Tiny Taiwan is stronger than Beijing or others might think.
- [17:18]
Reporter
Chris Hogg the recent decision by the people of Malta to change the law to allow divorce has left the Philippines and the tiny city state of the Vatican the only places in the world where it's still banned. Like Malta, the Philippines is a devout Roman Catholic country, and the bishops there are fiercely opposed to any change in the law. But real life is not quite as clear cut as the church would like, as Kate McGowan has been discovering in Manila.
- [17:46]
Correspondent
For a country which doesn't allow divorce, there seem to be an awful lot of people in the Philippines who have ex wives or ex husbands. It's not something that's often talked about openly, but in any gathering of professional Filipinos, you can be fairly sure that at least one of them is onto their second or maybe even third marriage. That's because, as in many aspects of life here, people have found a way of getting around the rules. The main way, if you've got the money to do it, is to get your marriage annulled. It's as if someone can wave a magic wand, and both a wedding and the unhappy ever after simply didn't happen. All you need is a psychiatrist to say there's something wrong with either you or your partner, leaving you unable to fulfil the essential obligations of marriage. Exactly what those obligations are remains somewhat vague, a loophole that hasn't gone unnoticed by warring couples and their lawyers. Joey's story is typical. He's a friend of a friend who works in PR in Manila's business district. He's bright, articulate and confident. Yet in order for his first marriage to be annulled, he had to declare that he was psychologically incapacitated. Now, I'm no expert, but Joey doesn't look psychologically incapacitated to me. He's got a broad smile and a ready wit, and he even managed to find our meeting place despite my appalling directions. But a psychiatrist said he was, and the judge agreed. Six months later and about 800 pounds poorer, a significant sum in a country like the Philippines Joey was free to marry again. It's a legal fudge that seems to work quite well. Many celebrities have gone down the same route, sometimes more than once. But success isn't guaranteed. I've heard of cases that have been mired in the courts for years. Others which have cost thousands of pounds, and some which were refused outright. And it's hardly an option available to everyone. This is a country where a third of the population live on less than a dollar a day. An annulment is simply too expensive for the vast majority of the population. The result is a two tier system where rich people can marry again and poor people can't. I visited many of Manila's slums in the course of my job here. Almost everyone is Catholic and almost everyone attends Sunday worship. Large families filing out of the rabbit warren of precarious structures they call home and piling into the churches. But even here, it's not hard to find people who've circumvented the rules. Many of those whose marriages have fallen apart have simply moved on to live with someone else. And I've met some people who say there's little incentive to get married in the first place. One woman I found sitting in a doorway cleaning vegetables, a 22 year old who was pregnant with her fourth child, looked at me with bewilderment when I asked her if she was married to the man standing with his arm around her. That wasn't really on the agenda for now, she said. They got too many other things to worry about. There are undoubtedly people who feel trapped by the lack of a divorce law. Those whose first partners are long gone and who would dearly love to marry someone else. And the children born out of wedlock and into stigma because their parents can't get married. Supporters for legal divorce also point out the high number of battered wives who feel trapped, unable to leave their husbands. A small percentage of Filipinos are already allowed to divorce the 5% of the population who are Muslim, and also some Filipinos married to foreigners. So given all this, why doesn't the government just accept that some marriages fail like they do everywhere else, and that divorce is sometimes the only option? Because that would be to ignore the strong feelings people have here towards their faith. The majority of people here aren't just lip service Catholics, but fasting, praying, regularly, attending members of the church. And when the bishops say that divorce is anti Filipino and to legalize it would be to cheapen the institution of marriage, people take that message seriously. What's really surprised me is that out of all the people I've spoken to who are separated or have had their marriage annulled. Few have said the Philippines is actually ready for a divorce law. Annulment should be made accessible to everyone. They say laws should be passed to make it quicker and simpler, broadening the criteria for when it can be granted and dispensing with the need for a psychiatrist. So basically, divorce by another name, a uniquely Philippine solution.
- [22:24]
Reporter
Kate McGowan. Now, you won't hear a foreign correspondent complain that he or she doesn't get to see the world. They go to war zones, accompany royals on foreign trips, jet off to cover international summits and see if elections in far off lands are truly free and fair. So travel they certainly do, although the upgrades don't come nearly as often as they would like. Robin Lustig, in his BBC career as presenter, reporter and programme maker, has travelled more than most. It's given him a fine store of anecdotes as well as one of the most heavily stamped passports in the business. But he's been telling us a long run of travellers good luck recently came to an end.
- [23:03]
Robin Lustig
I don't usually wear my wife's clothes when I go out in the evening, but I've just come back from a short holiday during which I did indeed go out in some of her clothes. The explanation is actually quite straightforward, but first I need to give you some of the context. It goes like I've been a journalist now for more than 40 years and for much of that time I've specialised in the coverage of foreign affairs. That means I've done a lot of travelling. The last time I counted, I'd been to more than 75 countries. Listed alphabetically. They stretch all the way from Afghanistan, Albania and Algeria to Uganda, Ukraine and Zimbabwe. Yet over all those decades, not once has my luggage been lost. I tend not to mention it, not because I'm superstitious, but. Well, yes, because I am superstitious. When I flew into Kabul and the pilot had to make what's known technically as a corkscrew landing in order to avoid the risk of being hit by ground fire, there was my luggage on the carousel, exactly as it should have been. When I flew to Paro in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on the Bhutanese airline, because no other airline is allowed to land on the handkerchief sized mountain plateau on which the Runway has been built, there was my luggage. And in Africa, when I've landed where there are no airports at all, just rough dirt, airstrips and a windsock full of holes, again, my luggage has always been there too. You may be wondering what any of this has to do with me wearing my wife's clothes. Or you may already have made the connection, because when I said I've never lost any luggage, that wasn't strictly true. It was true until last week. But inevitably, my luck did eventually run out. We'd flown to Sicily for a few days hiking in the mountains. My wife's luggage appeared on the carousel at Palermo Airport in the usual way. Mine, on the other hand, did not. I was left, literally with just the clothes I was standing in. The people at Lost and Found were efficient and helpful. Their computerized baggage handling system told them instantly where my bag was. It had been sent to another Sicilian airport, Catania, by mistake, apparently. So they took details of where we were staying and promised that I would be promptly reunited with my admittedly not extensive holiday wardrobe the following day. But of course, my bag didn't turn up the next day or the day after that. It was reported variously to be in Rome, Brussels, more than once to have been sent all the way back to London. Hence the need for some hastily improvised cross dressing with the help of my wife's wardrobe. The whole saga had all the makings of a classic shaggy dog story. And oddly, a shaggy dog did put in an appearance. It was day three, I think, when a huge St. Bernard joined us on a remote mountain track, having materialised as far as we could see from nowhere then to accompany us for the rest of the day, loping along beside us for hour after hour, we worried that after several hours, our companion was now a very long way from home. So when we came to a fence with a gate in it, we carefully made sure that he stayed on the other side, hoping that as we strode on, he'd turn back whence he had come. But this was not one of those holidays when things go according to plan. Fifteen minutes later, panting slightly in the heat, he reappeared beside us, seemingly not in the slightest put out that we'd repaid his companionship with an act of such rank betrayal. You've probably noticed that there are just a couple of small details that I've left out of this story until now, and I'm well aware that I need to reveal them. First, what exactly did I wear when we went out for dinner before my battered and beloved luggage finally turned up? Well, fortunately for me, my wife's hiking holiday wardrobe doesn't differ substantially from my own. If we'd been planning a week at a five star hotel in Saint Tropez, I might have been in real trouble. So a pair of khaki trousers, taupe, I think, is the fashion writer's term, and a similar coloured shirt enabled me to venture forth of an evening without undue embarrassment. I rather hope that if you'd happened to come across me in a mountain trattoria, you would not have been shocked at my dress sense. Second, which airline was it that managed to take four days to reunite me with my own trousers and my own shirts? It was Alitalia. I shall say no more about it, except that the mountain scenery of central Sicily really is stunning.
- [27:45]
Reporter
And with that from Robin Lustig, now happily reunited with his manly wardrobe, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again with more from our own correspondence on Thursday and Saturday of next week. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.