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From Our Own Correspondent
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00:27:53
Stories from around the world. Today: Will Grant in Mexico on the night horror on a on...
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- [00:00]
Will Grant
Hello from the.
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Will Ross
From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Presenter
Today, the night horror descended upon a quiet weekend by the sea in Mexico. 21,000 knives are handed out to women living in Mumbai. A new swagger of self confidence in Kenya. Easier now perhaps to buy a Toyota than a tomato. And it may not be a high speed service, but it's certainly not dull on the 31 hour train journey to Kano in northern Nigeria. Well, Elvis had fun in Acapulco, Sinatra sang about it and the Kennedys honeymooned there. But the reputation of this Mexican resort as a glamorous, glittering holiday destination is long gone. It took a further savage knock this week when six Spanish women in a rented beach house by the Pacific went raped by masked gunmen. Others in their group, including a Mexican woman who was spared the sexual assault, were tied up at gunpoint. Will Grant says the incident is being linked to drug gangs who operate in the area. It's caused deep shock throughout Mexico, not least amongst its Spanish community.
- [01:16]
Will Grant
Even in a country where brutality has become the norm. This story hit many people hard. I think it was the inherent familiarity of the sort of trip the group of tourists were on. In fact, they weren't exactly tourists, rather young expats who lived and were trying to make a future for themselves in Mexico City, like so many people do in this country. The group of 13 friends decided to make the most of the bank holiday weekend, or puente, as it's called in Latin America, by heading down to the beach. They had hired a house near Acapulco in a place called Playa Bonfil, probably the nearest decent coastal zone to Mexico City, where the chaos of the capital can be escaped for a few days later, pictures of the house they had stayed in appeared in the press. Somehow the rooms seemed very familiar. The 1970s decor and cheap artwork on the walls reminded me of a hundred different rooms I've stayed in, sometimes in beach resorts in Mexico and Central America. But these photos showed the signs of a struggle. Pillows tossed to one side, mattresses stripped of their bedclothes, cigarette butts on the floor where the armed men had discarded them as they carried out their acts of violence. Mexico City is huge, but the Spanish community here is relatively small. There are only about 90,000 Spaniards in the whole country. Last year I met one of the young Spanish lads who was there in the beach house at Acapulco that night, helpless, his hands tied by A mobile phone cord, watching the horror unfold in front of his eyes. And a friend of mine was supposed to go on the same beach trip. The fact that at the last minute she had to work that weekend may have saved her from an experience from which she might never have recovered. So these friends were simply relaxing at the house late on Sunday night, when hell was unleashed on their quiet weekend break. The feel of cold steel against the neck, the gruff instructions, the masked men. I know details about this story I wish I didn't. I know things that are keeping me and the others who know them awake at night and preying on our minds. One can only imagine what it's doing to those who lived through them. Acapulco is of course famous as the getaway of the Hollywood stars of the 1940s and 50s. A hotel owned by Tarzan the Ape Man, Johnny Weissmuller, was regularly frequented by John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Carrie Grant and Tyrone Power. More recently, as the drugs war in Mexico has intensified, this resort and its surrounding beaches were generally seen as safe. I stayed in a house near the famous Acapulco cliff divers in 2005, just as the violence in the region was beginning to rear its head and wondered what all the fuss was about. I had no such doubts last year when friends of mine came to visit and we drove down to the Pacific coast by mistake. We came off the road too early before Acapulco and found ourselves in the mountains of Guerrero state. Rather than turn round, it seemed quicker and easier to keep driving. The road would eventually reach the coast again and we'd be on our way as night fell. Suddenly that didn't seem such a great idea after all. And I was all too aware of the drug gangs operating in Guerrero, where much of the marijuana and methamphetamine trades are controlled. And the idea of being foreigners caught with a broken down car on the pot holed village roads didn't appeal at all. Wow man, did you see that massive mansion by the side of the road? My friend from London said incredulously. What's it doing in the middle of all these shacks? A narco mansion paid for by drug money, with a timely reminder to get off that road as soon as we could. We were lucky. By 9pm we were back on the coast, safe in a hotel a stone's throw from the beach. But and here's the rub, we were just a few hours south of Playa Bonfil. No doubt the 12 Spanish tourists and one Mexican girl had felt safe in their rented beach house too no doubt they had told their friends and family back home, like I have time and again, that generally things in Mexico aren't too bad, that the risks sound worse than they are. The Spanish community in Mexico City is in shock right now. I had a beer with my friend Jacobo, the correspondent from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, two days after the attack. He'd barely slept and was on his way to Acapulco the following morning to cover the story. I've been here almost 11 years, he said, but today I'm seeing Mexico through new eyes.
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Narrator/Presenter
Will Grant in Mexico and the trial of five men accused of the rape of a woman on a bus has been dominating the headlines in India all week. Passersby apparently refused to stop to help the naked and bleeding woman when she was dumped from the bus onto a street in New Delhi. The attack has led to protests across India about the treatment of women. A new package of laws designed to give them greater protection is being rushed through Parliament. And politicians, as Alex Preston's been finding out, have been assuring all who listen that the safety and rights of women are now their top priority.
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Alex Preston
In the middle class district of Lalbaug in central Mumbai, a group of far right politicians is handing out knives, 21,000 sharp, short blades distributed by enthusiastic party activists. Several thousand women wait to receive their bounty in the humid, early evening air. Many of them have dressed up for the rally, their salwakameezes a riot of colour, their foreheads decorated with bright bindis. They're here to celebrate the birthday of the late Balasaheb Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena. Little known outside of Mumbai, Shiv Sena wields extraordinary power in India's economic capital. Set up in 1966 by Thackeray, a political cartoonist at the time, the party initially pushed for the rights of the native Maharashtrian community in the face of a wave of immigration from south India. With a militant wing, a fondness for bands, mass strikes and violence, and with until his death in November last year, the charismatic figure of Thackeray leading them, Shiv Sena has been a major political force in the city, winning control of the state of Maharashtra in 1995. In the wake of the horrifying Delhi rape case in December, Shiv Sena has turned its focus to the issue that is dominating the country's newspapers and television channels, that of women's rights. I speak to the girl next to me on the bus the morning I arrive in Mumbai. She's a student from Chennai. She disapproves of Shiv Sena's politics, she says, but claims that the party's white coated moral police force has made life better for women in Mumbai. She'd taken a train at midnight the night before, something she'd never be able to do in her home city. The culture of eve teasing, an ugly euphemism for sexual harassment, is far less pronounced in Mumbai than in any of India's other major cities, and Shiv Sena can take much of the credit for this. While the party has its bigots and bruisers, its record on putting forward female candidates, on speaking out against practices such as forced marriage, is impressive. I arranged to meet Bal Thackeray's biographer, the political journalist Vaibhav Purandare, in the Gaylord, a glitzy restaurant in south Mumbai. I walked to our rendezvous through Churchgate, past the hockey stadium, which still carries traces of recent Shiv Sena protests that forced the Pakistani team to flee the country. We sit outside, looking onto a road lined with vine clad baobab trees in which hooded crows cackle and croak. I ask Purundare about the party's role as defender of the city's women. Shivzena is facing a crisis of identity, he tells me. Since they lost power in the state in 1999, they've been struggling. They are desperately looking for issues. Suddenly, since the rape on the Delhi bus, people are concerned about the safety of women. There are spontaneous protests, the feeling that the government is not doing enough. Shiv Sena thinks it can cash in on this. I ask him about reports of the party's moral police force attacking women for wearing short skirts, harassing couples for walking arm in arm in public. There's some truth to those stories, Purandare tells me, but they aren't just brutal thugs, and this from a man whose face bears the scars of a recent run in with Shiv Sena militia while reporting on a city wide strike he escaped with two broken cheekbones. The Maharati community, he continues, has strong, independent minded women in a Maharati family. It's the women who call the shots, and Shiv Sena needs to work with this to appeal to them. The next morning I walk along Marine Drive to a meeting with one of the rising political stars of Shiv Sena, Shweta Parulkar. She's a serious, self contained woman dressed in saffron and red, and frowns at my description of Shiv Sena as a party of violence. What can you do if you try all of the normal legal methods? She asks. Holding up her hands. Ultimately, what does the common man do? He goes out onto the streets. Parolkar calls the handing out of knives by the party a publicity stunt to make a point. From the brief time we've spent together, I can't think the puns intended. On the television that evening, a local Shiv Sena leader energetically defends the arming of the city's female population. Balfakkara used to say that women should prefer a rampuri, but a knife in their purse to a lipstick. He says, this government has failed to provide security to women, so we are distributing these knives to empower them. I try to buy one from a plump grandmother at the rally as a souvenir, but she's unwilling to part with it. She shows it to me, though. At the bottom, hanging like a pendulum, is a picture of Bal Fakhry, a serene, orange robed guru, grinning.
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Narrator/Presenter
And that's Alex Preston. So European leaders agreed, after marathon talks in Brussels, to cut the EU's long term budget for the first time since the Union was created. However, the four largest groupings in the European Parliament say the new budget is not in the interests of its citizens and will weaken the European economy. The agreement, which still needs to be approved by the Parliament, follows renewed debate here about the benefits of being part of the eu. Chris Morris has been hearing that in the east of Europe there's much less discussion about the pros and cons of membership.
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Chris Morris
To misquote Charles Dickens, this is a tale of two buildings, even though this is neither the best nor the worst of times. In one of the European Union's newer outposts stands one of its more extraordinary and controversial structures. In the 1980s, when the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ordered work to begin on a vast people's palace, no irony intended, he seemed to be at the height of his megalomaniac powers. A huge swathe of Bucharest's old city centre was torn down to make way for what would become, after the Pentagon, the second largest building in the world by surface area. Before the decade was out, Ceausescu was deposed and executed and the people took over. The People's Palace. Well, sort of. It now houses the Romanian Parliament, among other institutions, although many of its 1100 rooms remain empty or off limits. But a brief visit this week confirmed that it is, well, enormous. A million cubic meters of Transylvanian marble, the largest carpet In Europe, nearly 500 chandeliers, curtains weighing half a ton. The statistical list goes on. There are bad memories, said the woman who showed me around. Too many bad memories. But while many people still don't like the palace much, it has become a place of robust and often unruly debate. Politicians arguing, Romanian TV crews filming anything that moves, as well as cleaners everywhere, two to each room. Life for many Romanians is still pretty hard. Corruption is a big concern. The economy has stumbled. But, and this is something I've found in other former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, there is a sense of energy, a feeling among many, but not all that, that things really can get better. And as we strolled down a vast, monumental gallery long enough to re run the Olympic 100 meters final with room to spare, what struck me most was this. Look how far Europe has come. Ceausescu died in 1989, not that long ago. And amid all the arguments about Romanian migrants coming to the uk, about referenda, or about how much of the EU budget is spent on agriculture, it is worth dwelling on the fact that for many Europeans, life has changed dramatically in living memory. Which doesn't, of course, make it perfect. There's always room for further improvement. And that brings me to my second building. I'm sitting in it now. Not quite as big as the People's palace, but big enough. The headquarters of the European Council in Brussels, where all night EU summits take place and prime ministers keep themselves awake with a combination of strong espresso and gummy bear sweets. Its formal name is the Justus Lipsius Building, in honour of a 16th century Flemish humanist who was heavily influenced by Stoicism. How appropriate. And its architecture can best be described as functional appropriate. Again, over the last couple of days, the building has witnessed the marathon haggling of an EU budget negotiation. It's not the most edifying of spectacles, but arguments about money rarely are. Much of the attention is taken up with what the big guys think. What constitutes victory for David Cameron or Francois Hollande? Who's up and who's down? But there is a bigger picture. And whether you're talking about industry or innovation or the Internet, the future of the EU probably falls or rises in the east, platitudes about equal status for every country aside, in the weird world of an EU summit, the new member states are not yet in the first division. But if the EU wants to create jobs, restore growth and strengthen its single market over the long term, the east is its best bet. It's starting from a lower base. Labour is cheaper. High quality, education can make more of a difference. Over time, the centre of gravity will shift. It's already happening. And while the UK launches into a long overdue debate, a serious debate about the rights and wrongs of EU membership in Romania and its former communist neighbours. The benefits appear to be more clear cut. Sometimes we grit our teeth, said a businessman in Bucharest, but we want to be taken seriously as a European country. The complexity of the EU will never inspire enormous affection, but for most Eastern Europeans who were stuck in limbo for years, it still seems to be an opportunity too good to turn down. That may not always be the case, but love it or hate it, the vision that built the Justus Lipsius will have a lasting impact far more profound than the vainglorious grandeur that built the People's Palace.
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Narrator/Presenter
Chris Morris in Brussels President Obama went onto YouTube this week to urge citizens in his father's homeland of Kenya to reject intimidation and violence in the forthcoming elections. He spoke a few words of Swahili and described Kenya as a great and proud nation. The poll for a new president and parliament takes place early next month. It's the first general election there since the one in 2007, which led to nationwide violence and more than a thousand deaths. Richard Hamilton's just returned to Kenya after a long absence and says that most people there, like the American president, are hoping this vote will pass off peacefully.
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Kate Adie
Twenty years ago I travelled to Kenya as a young and slightly naive tourist. I took a battered old bus from the airport into Nairobi and watched in fascination as Africa unfolded before my eyes. I read later in my guidebook that it's safer to take a taxi, but if I'd done that I would have missed the colorful clothes of my fellow passengers, their incessant chatter, unusual smells and even more unusual possessions ranging from radios to chickens. Looking out of the window I could see children playing with tires and impromptu vegetable market stalls lining the dusty main road towards the city. This time the BBC had arranged for a cab to pick me up from the airport and take me to a hotel where I would train some of the new local journalists. But on the journey in I could see no signs of the children or vegetable stalls. Instead there were gleaming office blocks, banks and car showrooms. It looks as if it would be easier to buy a Toyota than a tomato. Two decades on and East Africa is on the rise. Wealth has poured into the country and is clearly visible in the new three lane motorway and Chinese built flyovers. Oil has been struck and Kenya seems to have a certain swagger and self confidence that that I hadn't noticed before. Over the next few days I saw more evidence of this as I watched middle class Kenyans checking their iPhones and sipping cappuccinos before wandering the corridors of American style shopping malls to gaze longingly at flat screen TVs and golf gear. Twenty years ago, I left my hotel on my first night and wandered around downtown Nairobi. We are refugees from South Africa, declared two men who seemed to jump out in front of me from nowhere. In our country, we cannot talk to white people. They wanted money. I offered them a few coins, but it was not enough. Their solution was to take me to a cash point machine, but instead I ran off, preferring to take my chances with the oncoming traffic. When I read my guidebook again back in my hotel room, it said, be wary of people claiming to be refugees from South Africa. I almost kicked myself at that time. December 1992. Kenya was preparing for an historic vote. Under international pressure, President Moi had agreed to hold multi party elections. As a young traveler, I did not take much interest in multi party democracy. More importantly, Kenya's leader did not either. He secured his victory by rigging the poll. Twenty years on, and South Africa has of course, long since rid itself of apartheid and East Africa seems more affluent and inclusive. In the lush green gardens of our Nairobi hotel, taking tea on the veranda beneath swaying palms and jacaranda trees, there were as many Kenyan businessmen as there were visitors from abroad. But the ghosts of that older Kenya are still there. That is where President Moy's enemies were tortured, said our taxi driver nonchalantly as we drove around town one afternoon, pointing to a shiny office block. Nyayo House is now the home of the Immigration Service, but its basement used to be a torture chamber where the screams of political opponents fell on the deaf ears of the secret police. The elections next month are likely to be close. They would not be that significant if it were not for 2007, when something terrible happened. A disputed presidential poll opened up simmering ethnic fault lines as wide as the Rift Valley. The country imploded. More than a thousand people died and tens of thousands were displaced. Two of the journalists I trained on my recent trip told me they'd had to flee from angry mobs in the slums of Kibera five years ago. Now clashes have already broken out in some parts of the country, reviving fears of another bloodbath. On my last evening in Nairobi, I left one of those American style shopping malls and and headed back to my hotel. But I took a wrong turn and quickly got lost. My heartbeat started to race. I had visions of bogus South African refugees jumping out at me from nowhere. In the dark, I could make out men tearing down campaign posters and replacing them with those of rival candidates. But replacing one president with a new one will not be so easy. Not for the first time. Kenya is at a crossroads between hope and despair. From the taxis to the buses, the shopping malls to the slums, Kenyans are holding their breath, praying for peace.
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Narrator/Presenter
That's Richard Hamilton here. There's much controversy over plans to build new high speed railway lines between London and Birmingham in Nigeria, though the reopening of an old line between the commercial capital, Lagos in the south and the city of Kano in the north has been causing much excitement. The country's fairly extensive rail network was set up more than 100 years ago by the British colonial authorities, partly to make exporting goods easier. Political turmoil and a lack of investment saw the railways go into a steep decline. But the new service is proving popular. It's cheaper than going by road and far safer, too. Our man Will Ross bought himself a ticket at the Ido terminal in Lagos and set off on the noon train to Kano.
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Will Ross
Built by the British, ruined by the Nigerians. Now the railway is being rescued. Nigerians are doing it with some Chinese help. At Lagos station, I felt as I'd walked into a museum. Many signs are relics of the colonial era. And outside the ticket office was the long list of bylaws dating back to 1955. Bylaw number 30 has no chance Nowadays. A person shall not, without reasonable excuse, proclaim, protrude any portion of his person from an open door or window of a railway vehicle which is in motion. Five pounds. A flight from Lagos to Kano city in the north takes about an hour and a half. The weekly train journey lasts a minimum of 29 hours. I went for the first class sleeper. When I told people about the journey I was about to make, they looked at me as though I'd lost the plot and was about to attempt a lunar landing in a homemade rocket. I had a flashback as I was handed the ticket, a small rectangular piece of thick red cardboard, exactly like the ones I remember buying for trips from my home in Kent to London in the 1970s. We began slicing our way across Lagos with the driver constantly blasting the horn to clear the route. The trains are so infrequent. The tracks are busy footpaths, and as we clickety clicked our way right through a market, we only just missed the colorful array of tomatoes, chilies, yams and chickens. Men with red flags struggled to stop cars and motorbikes making a dash for it. Where roads crossed the tracks. It took well over an hour to get clear of Lagos, and soon we were heading through dense bush. My carriage door wouldn't shut, so I frequently broke bylaw 30, holding on tight to a handrail and leaning out as Nigeria passed at a steady 30 miles an hour, I came perilously close to losing my nose to a cluster of bamboo plants in the next door carriage. All the seats faced backwards, but no one was admiring the view anyway. They were glued to a TV showing Nigerian Nollywood films. I'm off to see my family in the north, one passenger told me, happy to be avoiding the deadly potholed roads where armed robbers roam. I'll come back on Monday, he said. So that's at least 54 hours on the train to see his family for just over a day. In the restaurant car, women stirred enormous pots of spicy chicken soup on gas stoves, and in the small bar a sound system was blaring out the latest hits. At each stop, the platform morphed into a loud, lively market. Just for the three minutes that the train was there, grandmothers and six year olds rushed up and down balancing plastic buckets and bowls on their heads, selling food and drinks through the windows. There were several armed policemen on board. We were heading into a part of the country where Islamist militants have been extremely active. I'm a God fearing man and I'm praying for a peaceful journey, a policeman called Joseph told me, holding his AK47 assault rifle. We're more vulnerable at the stations, so that's why we take up positions along the platform, he said. Each hour we headed north, the landscape became drier and harsher. In some parts of northern Nigeria. Three quarters of the children do not go to school. Poverty is deep and it's providing fertile ground for the violent Islamist militant group Boko Haram. On board, I met 21 year old Israel, a Christian from the south. He was off to join the police academy. He didn't seem to be afraid of Boko Haram. I really hope I can fight them because I've noticed what they've done to so many families, he told me. The train's friendly driver, Zachary, let me ride up front, where I witnessed some near misses as a petrol tanker crossed the tracks at the very last second. He muttered a sideways foolish man, and kept going. Zachary pointed out the home of the Nigerian polo captain. That's where he trains the young players, he said as we passed an isolated patch of green near Kaduna City. A few seconds later he added, and on the left, that's Nigeria's biggest ostrich farm. On reaching Kano, I received some strange looks when I said I'd come by train. One Nigerian who spends time in London was flabbergasted when I told him it had taken 31 hours with 16 stops. Then again, I suppose it's a bit like a train in London. He told me. When I go from Beckton to Notting Hill, that's 25 stops. Yes, it's just like Beckton here. I replied.
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Narrator/Presenter
Will Ross on the train to Carnot. And good to hear there are still tomatoes to be had in Nigeria. That's it. More from reporters around the world on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.