← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Mar 03, 2011
00:28:22
A restaurant date with Colonel Gaddafi: Jeremy Bowen talks revolution and politics the...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on
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the top of our website.
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To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well.
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But now, with the edition Broadcast on
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Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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My people love me. The thoughts of Colonel Gaddafi as the struggle continues for control of Libya. A protest in Shanghai, but many there, it seems, would rather go shopping. Germany's Defence Minister is forced to resign. But what does the fate of the man they're calling Dr. Googleberg tell us about today's German society? And we've a wardrobe malfunction to confess. 63 floors up in a tower block in Singapore. Anyone who thought the disturbances in Libya would lead to the swift demise of Colonel Gaddafi is now being forced to think again. This morning, Libyan air force planes have launched fresh attacks on the rebel held town of Brega in the east of the country, home to a major oil terminal. They're reported to have bombed the airport, as well as rebel forces in nearby Ajdabiya. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, has contacted Colonel Gaddafi to suggest that an international peacekeeping mission could be sent to mediate in the crisis. True to form, Colonel Gaddafi was defiant on Libyan television, talking of fighting to the last man and woman, warning that thousands would die if Western forces intervened in the conflict. Jeremy Byrne was among a small group of correspondents taken to meet him on Tuesday evening.
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Even on the best hinges Libyan oil money can buy and German automotive engineering can create. The doors of the armored BMWs they'd sent to take us to see Colonel Gaddafi were still very heavy. They shut with a satisfying clunk. I thought of the bone shaking, boiling hot or freezing cold bulletproof Land Rovers we used in the war in Bosnia nearly 20 years ago, and settled back into a seat covered in thick, supple tan leather. I reached up to touch the roof, which was lined with chocolate brown suede. It's a James Bond car, the man in the front passenger seat said proudly. I don't know if it had an ejector seat, but there was a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle in the boot. The BMWs pulled away, soundless, smooth and going, I assumed, to some kind of tent in the desert. The streets of Tripoli, a city which even the government spokesman here describes as boring, were surprisingly busy. That's significant. Over the years, I've been in many unstable, violent Places when regime changes in the air, the streets are always empty. During the last few weeks of President Mubarak's reign in Egypt, the Cairo's traffic problem was solved. Not many people wanted to risk going outside. I wouldn't say the rush hour was on in late afternoon in central Tripoli, but plenty of people were out and about. About 10 minutes later, the cars slowed down outside the main Libyan broadcast center. Was it going to be a meeting in a TV studio? The man in the front seat who'd arranged the interview turned round. No, he said over his shoulder. It's a restaurant. Colonel Gaddafi arrived punctually. Dressed in a robe of russet brown and wearing a pair of Ray Ban aviator sunglasses. He was alert, cheerful and focused. In the interview, he was defiant. The UN resolution against Libya was illegitimate, he said. Why didn't they send a fact finding mission before they passed it? Al Qaeda was responsible for the trouble in the streets. The west wanted to recolonize Libya. He had no money abroad to freeze. I have only a tent, he said. A couple of years ago, I was in New York City when Colonel Gaddafi made a speech at the United Nations. He delivered it at more or less the high point of his rapprochement with the Western world. He'd even been to the G8 summit in Italy that summer. A lot of the press coverage of his visit focused on his staff's efforts to find a place to pitch his tent. It was even at an estate owned by the flamboyant property tycoon Donald Trump for a while. But everywhere they went, the neighbors complained. The kindest thing you could say about that UN speech was that it was rambling. But he wasn't like that. In the trendy looking restaurant, all plate glass and stainless steel overlooking Tripoli's port, he answered the questions that were asked of him. And I'm sure that for the Colonel and his supporters, the reply seemed entirely logical. To try to understand anyone, you have to think about how the world looks from their angle. Colonel Gaddafi's is unique. He's been in power since he led a coup in 1969, when he was in his late 20s. Look at the photos of his early meetings with allies. President Titu of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, major world figures of the 50s and 60s. The colonel has been in power for almost all his adult life. All national leaders live in a bubble. It's safe to say that Colonel Gaddafi's is more hermetically sealed than most. I suspect that after all these years, there are plenty of yes men around Him. He told me that the people of Libya loved him and would die to protect him. It sounded like one of the assumptions on which his unusual life rests. He admitted that people had been killed in the disturbances, but only because they attacked the security forces who acted in self defense. The Libyans say they have bombed ammunition dumps, but deny they've used the air force against their own people. For a man under pressure, Colonel Gaddafi seemed very relaxed. Perhaps he feels more comfortable back in his old role as the West's bogeyman in the Middle east than he did embracing Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi and the other leaders who for a brief moment saw Libya as a new, benign, even pro Western presence in the Arab world. When the Colonel left the restaurant, I thought I saw a spring in his step.
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Jeremy Byrne in Tripoli so how much further will this revolutionary spirit spread? Where next might the angry masses rattle the palace gates? Anonymous appeals have been issued over the Internet for Chinese people to take part in what was being called a Jasmine Revolution. Now, this is a country where the authorities deal with tens of thousands of protests each year. Usually they are broken up quickly and we don't get to hear them. This time, though, it was rather different. The foreign journalists were out in force to see what would happen. Our Chris Hogg was in Shanghai as demonstrators started to gather.
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The phone call came just as I was leaving the office to head to the site where the protest was due to be held. This is the police, the voice at the other end said. Er, we just want to know what you think of our service. I mumbled something non committal and the caller got straight to the real reason for his call. I want to remind you to follow the laws of China when you go about your reporting, he told me, or you'll face the sanctions applicable under the law. The timing of the call was deliberate. I was heading for a corner of People's Square to the Peace Cinema, the rallying point for activists demanding political change. An attempt to warn me off, perhaps, but I went anyway. The city block singled out as a protest spot was not large. If those sitting sipping their lattes in the coffee shop next to the cinema thought they had front row seats for the latest act in Chinese political theatre, they were to be disappointed. Instead, they were treated to an elaborate dance. Foreign journalists and bystanders in a slow tempo waltz around the pavement, partnered by more than 100 uniformed police and undercover officers. The forces of law and order were were all equipped with whistles. These they blew constantly. I scanned the crowd, trying to tell who was A protester, and who was a rubbernecker, stopping to see what was going on. The organisers had called for a subtle, silent, strolling protest. They wanted people to show their support by gathering there, but not risk arrest by shouting slogans. The result was you couldn't tell if there was a protest there or not. At times, it felt a little surreal. The police officers were attempting to stop an invisible rally with methods so obviously disruptive that more and more people were gathering to see why. The authorities were even using street cleaners to help prevent crowds forming. Two small vehicles equipped with spinning brushes and hoses ploughed slowly through the people. Soon we had the cleanest pavement in Shanghai. One old man stepped in front of a vehicle to block its path. You've cleaned enough here. He yelled. What are you playing at? Quickly, a crowd gathered around him. There was a lot of quiet grumbling about the government. If you listen to what the Communist Party says is happening, it's totally different to what your neighbors will tell you, one man said. This government is corrupt as hell, a woman complained. Most in People's Square, it has to be admitted, had no idea what was going on. The government censors had been working hard to block any discussion of the calls for protest on Chinese Internet sites and microblogs. There must be a film star coming, I heard one woman say. I wonder who it'll be. Sometimes the police would get more aggressive. But there wasn't the violence seen at a similar protest site in Beijing, where reporters, including a BBC crew, were manhandled and detained and at least one journalist was assaulted. It did feel tense, though. If people stopped to chat or you tried to interview them, the police would be on top of you in seconds, blowing their whistles and pushing people out of the way. At least five people were detained. We don't know what happened to them. Soon it became clear the officers were getting bored. They tried a different tactic. A larger street cleaning machine with a huge tank of water swept along the roadside with its jets at full pelt, splashing the edge of the pavement and wetting everyone sitting on the railings watching. All the while, the vehicle's operator was playing the tune Happy Birthday on a loop from a loudspeaker in the cab. It was like a manic ice cream van equipped with a toy water cannon. Eventually, people started to drift off to return to their shopping or find something for dinner. This didn't look like the start of the kind of revolt or popular uprising we've seen in North Africa or the Middle East. Shopping appeared to be more of a preoccupation than protest for most of the people in that part of Shanghai last weekend. But the government here has locked up activists, harassed journalists and stepped up efforts to monitor the Internet for any signs of dissent. And in doing so, it runs the risk of heightening the frustration about the way this country is run. The government's determined to maintain stability here, but more thought and a lot more money goes into that, it appears, than into looking at the causes of instability and trying to address them.
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And that's Chris Hogg. A man many Germans thought would go on to become their Chancellor has had to resign in shame. The Defence minister, Karl Theodor zu Gutenberg stepped down after being accused of cheating to gain an academic qualification. He was one of Germany's most rapidly rising political stars and a key part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. He'd already been forced to give up the title of doctor when it emerged that large parts of his PhD thesis were copied word for word from other works. Steve Evans in Berlin suggests that Germany is a country obsessed by titles and this, he feels may have contributed to the minister's downfall.
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You'd think that Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus, Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr Von und zu Gutenberg had enough titles in Germany. The von and zu denote aristocracy and he has both. And the word Freiherr means baron. But if you want real clout in politics, being a doctor is desirable and that was his downfall. The title in front of even such a grand name is desirable, but not if it's the product of the work of others. Germans do set great store by the ornaments of status. A German friend of mine offers this theory. There were two catastrophes for the country in the last century. The First World War, at the end of which the German royal family abdicated leaving a republic. And the Second World War, when German society was smashed. The old social structures were buried under the rubble. So they like a good sign of social position. And so I also think they like a good royal wedding, as I realized as I passed a second hand clothes shop near where I live in Prince Lauerburg, a well worn area of the old East Berlin with a mix now of incomers with money and old inhabitants without it. In the window were two mannequins with the faces of the Queen and Princess Diana. Needless to say, I popped into the shop and discovered Beate Riemann Schneider, the Anglophile owner who calls herself Queen Bee, the name that adorns the shop. She told me that for Germans in general and East Germans, in particular, the British royal family held a fascination. She's 50, so the first 30 years of her life were under communism, and she grew up to learn that the British royal family was the mark of capitalist oppression. But now she rather liked it. She realized that it wasn't quite like that in reality, and it offered a touch of glamour missing in German life. She'd put the masks on her mannequins to catch the eye. But also as a show of affection, there is in Germany intense interest in the royal wedding. Kate Middleton, the bride is rarely off the pages of bildt, the ultra popular tabloid, though actually it's only a tabloid in style, not in size. It's bigger than most broadsheets. There she is on its pages, Kate Middleton, alert to the cameras, talking to a man in a baseball cap. Here she is holding flowers. The last time I looked, there'd been 253 stories about Kate Middleton in Built. At the moment, there's pretty well a picture a day and a headline. Psycho Trainer Foodie Neue Princess in Kate Middleton, A psychology trainer for the new Princess. Kate Middleton. England fired Kate. Sean Alskunigan England already celebrates Kate as queen. This is show business coverage. The mentions are alongside Catherine Zeta Jones and Victoria Beckham, but that doesn't mean that the German fascination with aristocracy and titles isn't real. No German businessman, invariably businessman or politician, not invariably male, is complete without a doctorate. Dr. Merkel's is in chemistry and involves serious research into, and I quote and translate, an investigation into the mechanism of decomposition reactions with simple bond breaking and the calculation of their rate constants based on quantum chemical methods. And the title is used when the Chancellor went to the headquarters of Mercedes Benz the other day. She was Dr. Merkel and she met Dr. Dieter Zetsch, the chairman of the Board. All these doctorates were no doubt what the former Defence Minister was thinking about as he wrote, or rather assembled his doctoral thesis, though it then became a stick to beat him with. Dr. Cut and Paste. The papers called him Dr. Googleberg. Maybe Germany has too many doctors, though one less now with plain Baron Zug, or more likely, Mr. Zugutenberg. It is said that a search for a doctor on a Lufthansa flight when someone was taken ill revealed a string of doctors of philosophy, a doctor of music, a doctor of law and a doctor of theology. All very useful in their way, no doubt, but not if you're a sick passenger or a former Defence Minister looking for a new job.
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Steve Evans in Berlin, Ethiopia is set to become the largest recipient of British aid. The news came earlier this week in a government review of international spending, which also revealed that 16 countries would no longer receive funding from Britain. The cash will no doubt be welcomed by many in Ethiopia. This nation in the Horn of Africa is very poor. Its farmers struggle in difficult conditions. Relations are fraught with many of its neighbors. But Michael Kaye, on a recent trip, was perhaps more interested in history than in geopolitics, and he found that not everyone had a good word for the visiting British journalist.
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As I climbed the path to the complex containing the Menelik II mausoleum in Addis Ababa, I remembered the warning against taking photographs. I'd spotted a picturesque cylindrical haystack. A soldier nursing a firearm sat in front of it. I waited until I was sure the soldier couldn't see me, then took a picture of the hay. A shout. An old woman pointed at me. The soldier hurried towards me. I fumbled with the camera to show the picture of hay. Only when the picture had been deleted was I allowed to proceed in the grounds of the mausoleum. Bewilderingly, I was encouraged to take pictures. I wondered just what had been secreted beneath the hay. At the doors of the mausoleum church, I slipped off my shoes. The custom of leaving the dust of the world outside holy places may predate Islam and Christianity. Ethiopians trace the history of their former imperial family to Solomon. The Much married king of Israel ten centuries before the modern era. Queen Makeda travelled from Ethiopia to Jerusalem and entered into a close relationship with Solomon. The result was King Menelik I. Queen Makeda is more familiar to the world as the Queen of Sheba. At Bahia Da, the first stop on the so called historical circuit, I crossed Ethiopia's largest lake. Lake Tana is bordered by monasteries and even more importantly is the source of the Blue Nile. It seems that there's a long standing dispute with Egypt about Ethiopian usage of the Blue Nile waters. A hike to the Tissisat falls the next day showed why a hydroelectric project has reduced the flow of the once awe inspiring falls to a fraction of its earlier volume. Ethiopia is big, bigger than Kenya and Somalia combined. Internal flights are almost a necessity. It was clear that officials were not simply going through the motions of security checks at the airports. Ethiopia has enemies. My principal destination was in the mainly Christian north. Gonda, the 17th century capital of Ethiopia, contains fairy tale castles decorating a vast royal enclosure. Gonda is the place to see the Timcat celebrations. Timcat, or Epiphany, commemorates the baptism of Christ in the river Jordan. Everybody in Gonda was wearing white including me. We took up our vigil in a square in the heart of Gonda known as Piazza, a memory of the four year occupation of the country by Mussolini's Italy in the 1930s. Suddenly, a small group of young men ran into Piazza, waving long staves and chanting. More groups appeared. Then a carriage drawn by white horses from below, a brightly painted construction appeared in the midst of a jubilant horde of men and women. Was this what we'd been waiting for? According to local tradition, when Menelik I returned to Ethiopia, he brought a coffer containing the ten commandments given by God to Moses. The coffer was known as the Ark of the Covenant. The original ark is said to be in a church in Axum, north of Gonda. But every Orthodox church in Ethiopia has a replica of the original ark, known as a tabot. I'd been told to look for a cluster of brightly coloured umbrellas in the heart of the procession. Yes, there were the umbrellas. Beneath them, priests, their faces partly concealed by curtains, carried the sacred tabots on their heads. By now, the noise of chants, sistrums and brass horns was deafening. Before I could take evasive action, I was being swept down the hill by the joyful crowd. Back at the hotel, I got into conversation with some locals. I wasn't surprised to be asked my views on Ethiopia. I was surprised when an attack was launched on British journalists for exaggerating the extent of the 1984 famine. Famine occurs somewhere in Ethiopia all the time, but not everywhere at the same time. Thanks to foreign reporters, people now think of Ethiopia as the place that has permanent famine. The speaker paused. I would rather be dead than thought of as a beggar. On my last day in Ethiopia, I visited the Red Terror Museum in Addis. Here, members of the Derg, the communist military group which ran the country from 1974 until 1987, are shown committing atrocity after atrocity. One of the men in Gonda had told me how he remembered hearing gunshots in the streets at night as neighbours were assassinated. Depressed, I left the museum and crossed Mescal Square, the stage for the Derg's triumphal parades. Beside the railings on the pavement lay the inert body of a man. Was he dead, injured or just drugged? Where to get help? I looked around me. There was the tourist office. I hurried inside. I explained. The receptionist gave me a faint smile. Don't worry, he's just having sleep. That is very common here. He will soon get up and walk back home.
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Michael Kaye, back now from Ethiopia. BBC correspondents will go to great lengths to make the most of their new environment. Learning the language is always a good idea. Building up a contact list essential. Boning up on local customs and traditions highly advisable. Yet sometimes it can be a difficult path to tread. While blending in with the local community might have its rewards, the BBC correspondents still expected to stand back to be the impartial and objective observer. The clothes a journalist wears can be of importance. What may be perfectly alright here in the United Kingdom may may turn out to be unacceptable elsewhere. Jane Beresford was not expecting problems on an evening out in Southeast Asia.
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It's 6pm in downtown Singapore. The air feels hot and humid. The sweet, nutty smell of noodles cooking rises from the woks of the food carts lining the street. It's Saturday evening, but not as I usually know it. I'm dressed up for a night on the town and looking forward to sharing one of the city's signature cocktails, the Singapore Sling. With a friend who now lives in the city, she suggested we try a new place. Located on the 63rd floor of a tower block, it claims to be the highest outdoor bar in the world. Epic views are guaranteed. As I approach the lift that will transport me to cocktail heaven, a black suited, clipboard clutching young woman jumps forward. Oh, I'm so sorry. You can't go up wearing those, she says, pointing at my feet. No flip flops. I glance down. Surely she can't be talking about my expensive sequined backless sandals. We have a policy, she continues. No flip flops and no slippers. For a moment a vision flashes into my head. I'm schlepping through Singapore's streets in 80 degree heat wearing the sheepskin boots that are my slippers back in England. In fact, she's referring to the bar's zero tolerance for men wearing slip on shoes. Playing for time. I glance at her footwear. She's sporting barely there flat thong sandals, albeit encrusted in diamante. But surely, I say, you're wearing flip flops. Oh no, she replies, flashing her ankle towards me. Mine have a strap around the back that makes them not flip flops. Clearly the issue is a complex one. In my time working for the BBC, this is not, I must confess, my first wardrobe malfunction. There was the extremely traditional dining club in Brussels, all wood panelled walls and white linen napkins. I arrived with a male colleague to meet somebody who'd been involved in drawing up one of the founding documents of the European Union. My colleague wasn't wearing a tie. The Maitre D took him to one side and discreetly mentioned that he would need one to enter. From under the reception desk, the Maitre G pulled out a box. As he lifted the lid, I saw it was full of some of the most lurid ties I had ever seen, bright green and vivid purple and daffodil yellow. And that was just one tie. Even today, I ponder whether the box was there to provide amusement for the club staff. Quick, Jacques, I could imagine them saying as an open collared male guest approached the building. Prepare the box. I think we've got a punter. Then there was the salwakameez that I had made when I was in Delhi. This long shirt and pyjama bottom combination is popular traditional clothing in south and Central Asia. Some Indian women, in a small act of rebellion against the uniformity of the outfit, alter their salwakamezes to flatter their figures. Some days earlier I'd picked out the material, a sharp lime green top with a tiny white leaf motif matched with slightly lighter coloured trousers for my first fitting. A colleague who lived in Delhi joined me as I emerged from the changing room. She gasped, oh no, that's no good. That's no good at all. She scowled at the dressmaker. The top needs to be much tighter. But those trousers, she said, they are much too revealing, even though all they displayed was a bit of ankle. In Egypt, I wanted to record in a mosque during prayers. It was in a working class district of Cairo and tradition dictated that men and women worship in separate rooms. I could go into the ladies prayer room. The rather stern male translator who was accompanying me wouldn't let me enter until he'd supervised me covering every hair on my head with not one but but two scarves. In my experience, these ladies prayer rooms are very welcoming. The women are usually delighted that somebody from another country has come to join them. This mosque proved no different. Within minutes I was surrounded. Hands pulled me down to a cushion on the floor and we sat in a circle, cross legged. We nodded and smiled at each other. Then, rather shyly, the woman sitting next to me pushed back my headscarf a little. She obviously wanted to see the colour of my hair. I kept quiet about that one with the scary translator. So did I get to have my Singapore Sling in the highest outdoor bar in the world? Of course I did. The manager was called. I told him that I was visiting from the UK and my friend was waiting for me. At the end of the day, I knew Asian hospitality would trump the no flip flop rule.
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The female BBC producer facing up to male views on clothes. Jane Beresford, 63 floors up in Singapore, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be back on Saturday morning with a new set of dispatchers from around the world. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.