← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Marauding Baboons
00:28:12
'No wonder everyone is looting now. The elites here have been doing it for years,' our...
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This is a download from the BBC.
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It's the latest edition of From Our
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Own Correspondent, broadcast on Radio 4, and
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it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, long lunches and revenge killings as more French peacekeepers head for the Central African Republic. Two worlds collide as an Islamist and an atheist exchange views on a humid evening in Mombasa. Awkward questions for two correspondents, one from Japan, the other from China, as they report on their country's fractious relationship. And there's only one winner as the women take on marauding baboons in Djibouti's otherwise tranquil Rift Valley. President Francois Hollande has announced that France will send another 400 troops to the Central African Republic. There are already 1600 French soldiers in a country beset by violence between Christians and Muslims since a coup in March last year. A spokesman for the Elyse palace called on the UN Security Council to create a UN peacekeeping force which could be deployed in this former French colony. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Muslims in the Central African Republic have been trying to flee revenge attacks by Christian militiamen. Andrew Harding in the capital Bangui tells us not all of them have made it.
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It's late afternoon on the edge of Bangui. The knives are coming out and the drugs are kicking in. Tahir Ali is fondling his machete and wondering in a rambling sort of way if he'll make it out of here alive. This is a Muslim neighborhood, one of the very last ones left in an angry, shattered city. To reach it, we've had to walk past a group of increasingly tense French peacekeepers bracing themselves for another night of trouble. And through a no man's land of burned out buildings. Tahir and his young family are waiting for a truck, any truck, to take them far north across the border to Chad. It's a Muslim country. We'll be safe there, he says. In the meantime, they're trapped here, besieged by Christian militia groups who want them dead. Their children are hungry. The men are busy getting edgy and high. Two of Taya's neighbors, both women, managed to get out a couple of days ago. But their truck broke down about half a day's Drive north, and 21 men on board were taken out and killed on the spot. It's still worth the risk, says Taya's friend Aboukar. His wife is a Christian. It. It didn't used to matter before, but she'll come with me and the boys now. If we stay here, we all die. Back across no man's land and a crowd gathers to Ask us indignantly why we've been talking to those Muslims. If you were feeling particularly optimistic, you could see the crowd as a sign of progress. The last time I was here, the only people on the streets were armed gangs trying to kill each other. Much of Bangui is calmer now. The streets have come back to life in a hesitant fashion. My favorite site here is the wood traders pushing their giant, precarious stacks of firewood into the city. Each trolley is an ingenious sculptured balancing act. About six metres from bow to stern, they look like giant smiles wobbling down the road. But there is still a lot of looting here. With most of the Muslim traders gone now or in hiding, their homes are fair game. There may not be much food in the markets, but second hand televisions, roof sheets and timber are suspiciously plentiful. And then there are the lynch mobs, not so frequent in town now. But this is a vast country with lots of scores to settle and the outside world has sent a miserly few thousand troops to try to fill the power vacuum. As a result, the Christian militias known as Anti Balakas, or Invincibles, are still a potent, swaggering threat, determined to exert their influence after the withdrawal of the largely Muslim Seleka fighters who terrorized much of this country for months. I meet a group of the Invincibles at their base near the airport. Their spokesman, Sebastian Wenizui, says, we're patriots, the only people defending civilians here. There are nods all round from the young men with long knives and eccentric haircuts and wigs. But some of these kids are hungry, Sebastian concedes, so they go off and they're obliged to commit abuses. One day for lunch, I head to Freddie's place. This being a former French colony, certain standards still apply and Freddie continues to serve a very fine coq au vin. There's a group of French diplomats in jackets and ties tucking in at the bar. The manager of a local mobile phone company is ordering a Valentine's Day cake. He's from West Africa, a young, energetic man. The looters have cleaned us out, he says. They've taken the generators, the masts, the cables. But he shrugs, that can be fixed. The real problem here is corruption. The same government officials are still behind their desks. Freddie, a Frenchman who's lived here for more than 30 years, wanders past with a tray of digestifs for the diplomats. The rich in this country, he says, are a rich beyond imagination. The mobile phone man nods. No wonder everyone's looting now. The elites have been doing it for years, he says. Get rich quick. It's cultural. He flicks his forehead contemptuously with his finger. It's a mentality. A few blocks away, someone has noticed a familiar stench at the city fire station. We're taken in and invited to peer down through a small hole into a dark, humid concrete cellar. I can't tell if there are six bodies there or a dozen. I pull back sharply. It's impossible to breathe.
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Andrew Harding in the Central African Republic the police in Rio de Janeiro and other cities across Brazil are poised for further demonstrations this weekend against a proposed 10% increase in bus fares. Several streets in Rio were blocked by protesters earlier in the week. They were demanding the planned rises be scrapped. They're also angry at the billions being spent preparing for this summer's World cup there. They say the money would be better spent on education and health care. Last week a Brazilian cameraman died after being caught up in clashes between protesters and police. Our correspondent Wira Davis was close by at the time.
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A few days ago, I went to the funeral of a man I didn't know. But everything I've heard and read about Santiago Andrade makes me wish I had known him and had been able to spend more time with him. As it was, the brief few minutes our paths crossed in the Rio de Janeiro plaza last week were chaotic, messy and ultimately futile. For perhaps another hour and a half, I remained with the 49 year old father of four at a city centre hospital as doctors fought to save him. Santiago Andrade never left the hospital alive. He was a photojournalist for the Brazilian Banderanchis television network, out covering the latest in this series of protests. Suddenly, a flare or firework type device exploded just behind his head. Less than four seconds later, my BBC colleague Keith, Chuck Tayman and I were at his side. The explosion had left a sizable wound in his head from which blood was already starting to pour. Like many BBC colleagues, I'm given regular hostile environment training. The most invaluable part of it is without doubt a comprehensive first aid element. In the absence of a medical kit or suitable bandages, Chuck instinctively tore off his T shirt and pressed it hard against Santiago's head wound to stem the flow of blood. Santiago was unconscious but breathing. Amid the chaos, we did our best to stabilize him. His injuries were so serious we knew we had to get him to hospital. But some of the police were being obstructive, perhaps not realizing the gravity of the situation, and many protesters were berating and screaming at the security forces, blaming them for the attack. It has since been shown that almost without doubt, the flare was thrown by one of two protesters later identified in television footage. Carefully, we carried the 13 stone limp body into the back of a police car and sped off to a nearby hospital. It seemed like an age at the time, but in fact there were only six minutes between that moment when I saw Santiago drop his camera and fall to the floor and that screeching journey to hospital against the flow of traffic down Rio's main avenue. His daughter Vanessa came to the hospital. She knew it was probably the last time she would see her father alive. Later, I read what she'd written about him on her Facebook page with the clear head of someone determined to remember precious moments. The 29 year old who also works in the media, wrote these he taught me many things, that people from a humble background must work twice as hard to make it in life. Tonight I said goodbye, she continued. Just me and him with my head on his shoulder. I ask for forgiveness for my shortcomings. I know he'll be OK and I am the continuation of his life in an often brutal and polarized society. Many of Santiago's colleagues described him as a big but gentle man who hated violence and did all he could to avoid confrontation. At his well attended wake and funeral this week in a Rio suburb, his colleagues and dozens of other Brazilian journalists remembered a man who had worked to minimize the threats posed to media professionals. Here in Latin America, where journalists are often in danger of becoming targets rather than being allowed to operate unhindered as independent observers, the concept of legal rights for media professionals isn't always observed. According to recently released figures, more media workers are killed in Brazil than anywhere else in the region. Here, journalists work under a widespread threat of violence and major police crackdowns, said the 2014 World Press Freedom Index, which was released a few days ago. It's a learning curve for journalists, too. Remaining dispassionate observers of complicated and traumatic events is the best way to make sure the whole picture is seen. Sadly, even in the days since Santiago died, some parts of the Brazilian media are in danger of being unwittingly used and manipulated by political forces to demonize the whole protest movement, not just the few mindless individuals who are bent on violence and confrontation. These are dangerous but also fascinating days to be a journalist in Brazil, things I would dearly love to have talked about with a man committed to his job and his family.
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And that's Wirra Davis. Seventy men in the Kenyan city of Mombasa were this week charged with being members of the Al Qaeda linked Al Shabaab movement. They were among scores of men detained in a police raid on the city's Musa mosque. Their arrests sparked riots in Mombasa in which three people were stabbed. Gabriel Gatehouse was in the port city recently trying to gauge support there for the Al Shabaab rebels who operate mainly over the border in Somalia.
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Abu Bakr Sharif Ahmed isn't a hard man to find. Ask around in the Majengo area of Mombasa and people will know where he lives. But ask around too conspicuously and you're likely to arouse suspicions. Mr. Ahmed is perhaps better known by his nickname, Makaburi. It means graveyard in Swahili. His name features on US and UN sanctions lists of people suspected of involvement in terrorism. He himself believes the Kenyan police will one day try to kill him, so he's careful about his security. We'd made an appointment to see him one recent sweltering afternoon as the shadows lengthened on Majengo's dusty back streets. We parked outside a pink coloured apartment block next to a car mechanic's workshop. I wandered into a courtyard. It seemed empty. Suddenly. The clatter of flip flops on concrete and the cries of boys kicking a football. I asked one of them if he knew where Makaburi was. Not around. He shrugged. I went back outside to wait. Two slightly older teenagers with serious looking beards were by now sitting against the wall next to a defunct fridge with a Coca Cola logo peeling off the side. Where's Makaburi? I asked. No response. So we sat there without talking, listening to the sounds of the neighbourhood drift on the evening air still and heavy with humidity. Finally he showed. Makaburi is one of those large men who carries his weight well. He moves slowly but he's quick to smile and he exudes that easy going manner that comes with self confidence. We recorded an interview in his fourth floor flat. The two bearded youths came with us, watching proceedings with ill concealed suspicion and hostility. Makaburi's manner may be charming, but his beliefs are uncompromising. The time is near, he told me. An army of Allah will rise up out of the desert. It'll come bearing a black flag and establish a global Islamic caliphate. He denies recruiting for Al Shabaab or calling on his followers to travel to Somalia to fight. I don't have any followers, he says at one point. I nod towards the bearded teenagers. Who are they? I ask. Oh, they've come to ask my advice, he says. His advice is that if Islam is under attack, which he says it is. It's every Muslim's duty to wage jihad. After the interview, we sat together on the roof, where the breeze had picked up and the air was beginning to cool. Let me invite you to Islam, he said, breaking once more into that charming smile. I smiled back. Regretfully, I said, I'm an atheist. He screwed up his face and waved towards the two bearded students loitering now next to a nearby pigeon coop. Look at them, he said, each from a different Kenyan tribe, and me from yet another. But thanks to Islam, we're brothers. Religion brings us together. I countered with a story I'd once heard on this very program. A BBC reporter in Bosnia during the war in the 1990s, had asked an elderly gentleman whether he was a Croat or a Muslim. The man's reproachful response had struck home. I am a musician, he'd said. Music could unite where religion divided. Makaburi was unimpressed. Everywhere there is music, he said. There is ungodliness. To find ungodliness, I challenged him. I was beginning to enjoy our discussion. He told me a story about a sailor he'd known who'd spent a long time at sea aboard a cargo ship. According to custom, after going to the toilet, he would wash instead of wipe. But he was the only Muslim on board, and eventually the other sailors confronted him about the splashes of water around the loo. Could he stop it, please? They found it unhygienic. They were sitting at breakfast and there was a can of condensed milk open on the table. Makaburi's sailor friend took the hand of one of his colleagues and dabbed it with some of the sweet, sticky substance. Now wipe it off with a tissue, he told him. Then lick your hand. Tell me, does it still taste of condensed milk? The sailor did so and admitted that he yes, his hand still tasted sweet. The dabbing was repeated and the sailor was now invited to wash his hand with water. Did his hand still taste of milk? It didn't. The point was made. But surely this isn't what it all boils down to? I protested. Of course not. Makaburi beamed. But let me give you a copy of the Koran, he pleaded. You read it.
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You'll see.
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I promised I would. But on one condition. Would Makaburi in return listen to my favourite jazz album and tell me honestly what he thought? He looked disgusted. No, he said. No way. I haven't listened to music for more than a decade. And so we parted our cultural exchange between atheist and Islamist unconsummated Gabriel Gatehouse
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in the Kenyan port Mombasa. Relations between the Japanese and the Chinese have often been, to put it mildly, somewhat strained. The two nations may be separated by only a narrow stretch of ocean, but over the years they've found plenty to argue about. These days, most of the disagreements are over ownership of various islands in the South China Sea. But the Second World War earlier conflicts, too, continue to cast a long shadow. The BBC World Service has just made a pair of documentaries, one set in each country, examining this fractious relationship. Relationship. The first of them is airing this weekend. A journalist from each country was involved in making the programmes and, as one of them, Mariko Oi tells us now, they didn't always see eye to eye.
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Do you feel guilty about what Japan did to China during the war? It was a question that I had to translate a number of times. During our trip to Japan, I was working with Haining Liu, a Chinese woman and former reporter for that country's state broadcaster. We were making a radio program comparing how history is taught in our two countries. It was Xi who posed that question to Japanese interviewees. I feel sorry for what happened, said one. There were many regrettable incidents, said another. In 1931, Japan invaded China's Manchuria. Over the next 14 years, the Japanese forces bombed and occupied Chinese cities. Millions of civilians were killed. But maybe my regret isn't enough, one of our Japanese interviewees added. Haining responded, no, it's not enough. I felt uncomfortable every time I had to translate the word guilt into Japanese, and none of our Japanese interviewees would use it. Japan committed war atrocities in China and much of Asia. The evidence is overwhelming, but what responsibility should today's generation bear for what our grandparents or great grandparents did? I put that question to Hain in on our second day together, asking if she thought I should also feel guilty. She didn't reply yes or no. I will keep asking about guilt while I'm here in Japan, she said, because that's how many Chinese people feel. I became interested in our war history as a teenager. On holidays across Asia, I would visit war museums and learn more about the suffering caused by Japanese troops. I increasingly felt that I had not been told the whole story at school, so I wrote about this for BBC Online. I knew the risks, that it would make many people in my home country, including some of my own family, uncomfortable. After all, I wasn't a foreigner working for a foreign news organization criticizing Japan. I was a Japanese reporter openly criticizing Japan in front of a global audience. Not surprisingly, I was called a traitor And a foreign spy. Don't you love your own country? Asked one tweet. Of course I do. But especially after watching violent anti Japanese protests in China in 2012, I wanted to know why these young people hate Japan so much, and was there anything we could do to improve our relationship? Haining and I spent two weeks together on the road. We have a lot in common. We're the same age. We've both been educated partly in the west, but perhaps inevitably, we also had many disagreements. It was an emotional trip for both of us. Haining burst into tears after one interview in Japan. Some of her questions made me feel uncomfortable, even angry. I'm sure Haining felt the same way about me. When we got to China, we examined suggestions that Japan was glossing over its war history and whether China's patriotic education, often dubbed anti Japanese education, was also contributing to the problem. Our hope was to try to understand each other's countries better, to try to improve relationship. But on our last day together, when our producer Neil Rizzel asked if we felt more optimistic about our future ties, we both said no. What do you want us to do? I asked her a number of times during the trip. Because while our neighbors may question the sincerity of its apology, the Japanese government has officially said it's sorry several times. It has also made significant contributions to China's economy over many decades, which some there fail to acknowledge. So I'm left wondering what more Japan can do to improve our relationship. One obvious way is if our senior politicians stop going to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors war dead, including convicted war criminals. But would that be the end of it? Because millions of Chinese did suffer and their memories remain vivid, I met those who witnessed and survived Japan's atrocities. But to my surprise, they told us they didn't blame today's generation. Contrast that with the word one young man used in Shanghai when we asked what came to mind when he heard the word Japan. It was, he said, hate.
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And that's Mariko. Oy. The former French colony of Djibouti is not one of the world's better known places, and yet this Horn of Africa country is fast assuming global significance as a garrison for international forces in the region. Sandwiched between the two troubled states of Yemen and Somalia, it's become the nerve center for Washington's operations in the area. It's also home to thousands of French, German, and even Japanese servicemen and women. Frank Gardner's just been there to get a glimpse of America's strategic foothold in Africa.
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A flag. A great big stars and stripes fluttering in the African breeze. That's the first thing I noticed as we landed at Djibouti Airport on the shores of the Gulf of Aden. America's only permanent military base in Africa is right next to the civilian terminal. Gunmetal grey transport planes take their turn queuing on the Runway with the incoming Air France Airbus from Paris. Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion base, is so close to the terminal you can actually hear the bugle calls as the US Flag goes up and down at the start and end of each day. When I first came here 20 years ago, Djibouti still felt very much like a French protectorate. Sunburned legionnaires in khaki shorts and capies stood watch over arriving passengers. The country, not long independent from France, had just defeated an insurgency on its border with Eritrea, and there were mine craters in the road out of town. The capital, imaginatively called Djibouti, was dimly lit and dodgy after dark. Things have improved here since then. The town has more lighting, the mine craters have been filled in, and the rural signposts with rusting bullet holes removed. The tiny capital, with its broad, leafy boulevards and cafes, also feels more cosmopolitan. Frank Gardner, a voice hailed me as I rolled down the street in my wheelchair. I listened to you on the BBC, he said. Abdi had spent eight years living in Manchester. Now he was teaching at the National University. Coming back to Djibouti after all that time was hard, he said, and he missed the rain. But I was pleased that he felt his future was here. I was hailed, too, by the town's small colony of beggars on crutches and in wheelchairs. They seemed enormously cheered to see a foreigner visiting in a wheelchair, and gave me great slaps on the back and thumbs up as I rode past. Europeans do feel curiously at home here. For a country sitting uncomfortably close to two of the world's most tense and dangerous hotspots, Yemen and Somalia, Djibouti is extraordinarily relaxed. You see French families strolling around town in shorts and skirts, babies cradled on their shoulders, and teenage girls in skimpy T shirts skipping across the road, smiling at the Djibouti and gendarmes. There are bars, too, not that we had time to visit them, and I've heard Djibouti described as the Sodom and Gomorrah of East Africa, luring working girls over from neighboring Ethiopia to mingle with French sailors coming ashore on port calls. Yet for five months, the Americans here were confined to their base after security was stepped up following the Al Shabaab attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall. Unlike the French, who often give the impression of being either on holiday or still in charge here, the Americans are very much on their guard for a terrorist attack. Strapping myself into a Pavehawk helicopter, I took off one day with the U.S. air Force Combat rescue pilots for what turned out to be the most breathtaking low level flying over the Rift Valley as a routine training flight. The DAW machine gun was mercifully unmanned and I had an uninterrupted view of the crinkled ravines and dry thorn bushes flashing past. Just 100ft below, we circled Lake Assal, the lowest lake in Africa at 515ft below sea level, devoid of life, yet stunningly beautiful. Its saline surface glittered in the sun, Hemmed in by fields of black volcanic lava. It looked like a landscape from the dawn of time. And frankly, a dinosaur would not have looked out of place here. I longed to be down on the ground myself. So on our final day, our broadcasting all done, I flagged down a battered green taxi, agreed on an hourly price and got him to take me up country to the Rift Valley hilltop town of Arta. The suburbs of Djibouti are not an appealing sight. As the road heads west towards the Ethiopian border, you pass through an endless succession of oil stained workshops, broken engine parts, truck parks and desperately poor shanty towns. A scene relieved only by the vibrant colours worn by women. But Arta was quite literally a breath of fresh air. High up in the hills, the breeze was warm and clean with the faint scent of jasmine from the walled villas and gardens. I sat on the edge of a precipice, shared a packet of biscuits with Eunice the driver and gazed down at the distant shores of the Gulf of Aden. Suddenly there was a commotion, shouts and screams from the tiny stone walled village in the valley below. A troop of fierce looking Hamadryas baboons was marauding through the village, led by a large red rumped male. Women in dazzling scarlet dresses charged at the baboons, waving rags and baring their teeth. The animals regrouped, then slunk away, probably to plan a nighttime return. But for now, peace had returned to Djibouti's tranquil Rift Valley.
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Marauding baboons. Just another of the perils of everyday life. Frank Gardiner there, bringing today's edition to a close. I'll be back with more on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Can't promise any more baboons though. Goodbye.