← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
March 10, 2012
00:28:16
The fisherman who decided to sail TOWARDS the tsunami - Julian May hears his story as...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello from Bush House in London, home to from our own Correspondent.
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Programme Presenter
You can hear the World Service edition of our programme by going to the
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Kate Adie
from our Own Correspondent website.
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Programme Presenter
But this is a download of the latest broadcast on Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Reporter
Today, the private dilemmas and agonising decisions many Syrians thought they'd never have to face. There's another anti Putin demonstration in Moscow, but 700 miles to the south, they're still promoting the cult of an early leader, the Empress Catherine the Great. We hear about the Japanese fisherman who decided to sail his boats directly towards the incoming tsunami. And as the BBC prepares to move out of Bush House in London, we hear one correspondent tell us why. For him, the building has special memories. Two new diplomatic initiatives are getting underway this weekend aimed at stopping the violence in Syria. The former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, is trying to broker talks between the Al Assad government and the rebels who want its downfall. And a Chinese envoy begins a tour of the region tomorrow. Activists in Syria reported more deaths yesterday as opponents of the regime clashed with security forces after Friday prayers. And more senior military figures have been defecting to the opposition. But away from the hard news, the revolution is making families across Syria address all sorts of difficult decisions. Owen Bennett Jones has been listening to some of their stories.
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Programme Presenter
She was drinking Guinness in a bar in Dubai. A Syrian revolutionary on a weekend break taking time out in the five star hotels. Small and smiley, she fizzed with energy as she spoke of the running battles on the streets. She stood out amidst the languorous, slightly drunk expats, mostly men downing their scotch and beers, half an eye on a rugby mat showing on a screen the size of a house. I go to protests every day, but my husband is more cautious, she said. He holds back. We just got married. I thought I knew him, but now I hope I live with him for 40 years and we have children. Maybe. Maybe. But I'm not sure anymore. I don't know what to do. A revolutionary dilemma. Here's another again. A young Syrian on a trip to Dubai. For months now, I've been in Syria, constantly active on the streets, taking pictures and putting them online. She told me. When I came here a few days ago, I met up with some Syrian friends who live here. I'd been on the plane, so I didn't know what was happening. I asked them, they said they didn't know. But what's on the news? They said they hadn't seen it today. They only watch it from time to time. They'd been shopping. It was a shock. I'm risking my life there. I could just stay here. She read a text on her phone and sighed. Another friend has been arrested, she said. She shrugged her shoulders as if it was nothing, but she looked sad and worried. So did the man who could not go back to Syria for his mother's funeral. Wearing a T shirt and navy baggy shorts, he might have been a tourist. In fact, he was an artist now living in exile. His images are considered anti system and his name was on a list that meant he'd be arrested at the airport. As he talked about his mother, he wept, shook his head and then broke off the narrative, walking away in despair and grief. A lot of Syrians are crying at the moment. Then there was the Syrian who's still active in Damascus but has sent his family abroad. A slim grey haired man, his lined face an outward sign of the time he spent as a political prisoner. Now an opposition politician, his life is clearly at risk. He got his family out, but it wasn't easy. His 13 year old daughter wanted to stay. He told me how he tried to persuade her she'd have to go. I said to her, we need to get some passports. She asked why. I said, maybe we'll go on a summer holiday. But her recurrent question was, why are the other school kids not getting passports, getting visas and so on. Every time I made up some reason or another. Once I told her maybe because the others can't afford to get passports and go on holiday, I lied to her. I took up the option of being a lying father rather than being one who risks his daughter's life. When the time came and she had to face up to the fact that she would be leaving her father behind, she said, what will happen to you will happen to me. We're sticking together. And I just paused and I thought, am I doing the right thing? Is this beneficial for my country or not? Am I under the illusion that I can help my country? It's a difficult equation. Am I preferring my fellow countrymen to my own family? Finally, a cartoonist I first met Bashar Al Assad, he told me, in 1996, before he was president. He came to one of my exhibitions. He actually laughed at some of the cartoons, specifically at those targeting security personnel. And he had a bunch of them with him. And he turned to them and said, hey, he's making fun of you. What do you think? He took my phone number and we met often twice a week. At times he admired my courage. He wasn't used to listening to Opposing views. He wanted to listen to me. He'd come to my place, I'd go to his. But then a few months ago, Ali Fazat drew a cartoon with which suggested Bashar Al Assad was like Colonel Gaddafi. The response was immediate. They had black sticks. One of them was telling the other, keep beating him on his hands so he can't draw anymore. Was it a direct order from the President? I asked. I don't know. Would you meet him again? No. I was born to be a cartoonist, to oppose, to have differences with regimes that do these bad things. This is what I do. And the doctor says I can be drawing again in 10 to 15 days.
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Narrator/Reporter
That's Owen Bennett Jones. Tens of thousands of protesters have been gathering in Moscow this morning for another demonstration against Vladimir Putin. It's the first one since last weekend's election in which he secured a third term as Russian president. The result has clearly done little to diminish the determination of Those angry at Mr. Putin's long era of political domination. Russia, of course, has a tradition of autocratic leadership. Tim Whewell has been to the city of Krasnodar to see if there are any lessons to be learned from what's known as the golden age of the Russian Empire back in the 18th century.
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Kate Adie
Catherine the Great is the Russian empress about whom foreigners tend to know mainly smutty things. But her exploits in bedroom or stable are less important to Russians the than her achievements in pushing out the frontiers of their state. Wider still and wider were its bounds set in the late 18th century, as her Cossack warriors routed the Turks and tamed the step that stretches to the sky, white in winter, black in spring, gold in summer, behind the palm trees and sand of the Black Sea Riviera. Imagine a Russian Oklahoma bordering a Russian Florida, breadbasket and playground combined, and you've got some idea of the territory Catherine christened new Russia. At its heart, she planted a new town, named naturally after herself, Yekaterina Dar, Catherine's gift. And at the heart of that city today, her bronze likeness stands triumphant and imperious, supported by the adoring, mustachioed figures of the Cossacks to whom she gave free reign. I gazed up at Catherine on my way to meet the new master of the territory, the regional governor, Alexander Takachoff. Tall, rangy, vigorous, a modern Cossack. He's surely the kind of man who would have taken her fancy. And no one's done more than governor to Kirchhoff to promote the cult of Catherine. He put up the statue to replace the one pulled down after the 1917 revolution. And he wants the old name of the city back to replace the politically correct Krasnodar from the word for red or beautiful that it became under Communism. Catherine's gift. What more fitting name for a region that's thrusting forward again as it thrust under that mighty empress. Governor to Kachow's fiefdom was listed by Forbes magazine as the best place in Russia to do business. It has, it said, the highest number of shopping malls per head of the population of anywhere in the country. And as for the grain yields, proudly reeled off to me by the governor, well, they stand higher not just than an elephant's eye, but than the loftiest ruby star of the Kremlin. And yet, oddly, the name change plan is running into opposition. A few inconvenient dissidents don't like what Catherine the Great stands for, and they're not keen on Governor to Kachoff either. Drive out past the shopping malls across those white horizons and you'll come to his home district, Vuysilki. It's where he once served as the local secretary of the Young Communist League, where he opposed the private ownership of land, and where now that land, as far as the eye can see, is owned by a vast agricultural concern, one of the largest in Russia, and built up and still partly owned by his family. To rule and to own, Catherine took some measures that slightly eased the harshness of serfdom, the ownership of living souls, as Chekhov put it. But she also gave away many state owned peasants to her noble favorites, to do with much as they liked. Of course, in today's new Russia, the firm the governor's family built up owns land, not souls. But as the villagers of Voysoki ask me outside their icicle festooned cottages, who else can you work for? Who else can you rent your land to? And who else will employ you if you get on the wrong side of the firm and the firm and the authorities in most minds here are one as, of course, the state was both employer and ruler for 70 years under communism. Power is power, an old man with sparse teeth tells me, and power doesn't let anyone else get through in any circumstances. He was talking specifically about the presidential election, which ended, unsurprisingly in the overwhelming victory of Vladimir Putin, a man who has already run Russia one way or another for 12 years, who announced months ago that he would swap places with the current president, displaying a sense of entitlement that Catherine would have understood so well. Governor to Kachowsk a great fan of Putin as well as of Catherine, and dismissive of those who say that Putin stole victory in a rigged election. Of those protesters who chanted bravely but hopelessly the rallying cry of the anti corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny. We are the power, the governor told me. The opposition should now be dealt with firmly. And then he embarked on a pleasant conversation about the governance of the BBC and its independence from the state. As for his icon Catherine, who suppressed the Great Serf Rebellion, the Pugachev uprising in 1774, she enjoyed corresponding with those champions of the Enlightenment, Voltaire and Diderot. Discussing the rights of man was amusing, but ultimately it was only power that could satisfy her.
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Narrator/Reporter
Tim Whewell Opportunities to travel deep inside Somalia don't come every day of the week. 21 years of war have battered and bruised the country and left it one of the most dangerous in the world. The fact that the Islamist extremist group Al Shabaab has been in charge of much of Somalia has meant vast swathes of the country have been off limits. But Will Ross has been telling us he received an invitation from an unlikely source to visit a former Al Shabaab stronghold.
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Will Ross
Just get to Addis Ababa and we'll do the rest, was the message from an official at the Ethiopian Embassy in Nairobi. Our military will fly you into Somalia, and I was glad to hear, and they'll bring you back out when you're ready. The Ethiopian army taking journalists into Somalia? Surely not. With a history of animosity between the two countries stretching back generations, Ethiopia has in the past, shall we say, stayed a little mum about military incursions into Somalia. Even when dozens of eyewitnesses have counted the armored vehicles rolling through Somali villages, we are not there has been the predictable mantra from the government, but that game of hide and seek is hard to keep up as the weeks go by, and even downplaying the scale of the operation becomes quite impossible when you've just captured Somalia's third largest city. At that point it makes more sense to thump the chest and show off a military success. Hence the invite. Once in the Ethiopian capital, another instruction make your way to Gode and we'll fly you in from there. The commercial flight took us via the wonderfully named towns of Diridawa and Jijiga. As we came into land, the sight of wandering camels gave a good clue as to what Godeh in Ethiopia's Ogaden region was going to be like stiflingly hot and a long way from anywhere. The next morning we were back at the airstrip and onto a plane that made us all a little nervous. A beaten up looking Twin otter from the 1980s. We were off to the Somali city of Baidoa, which until just a few days earlier had been in the hands of the Al Qaeda linked Al Shabaab. The group's extremist interpretation of Islam has led to stonings and beheadings as punishments whilst it's banned music, football and even food relief. During the recent famine, it's also threatened reprisals against the West. Sensing a growing danger, several countries in the region have sent in troops to join an African Union force also trying to fight Al Shabaab. The dark red Ethiopian berets were on display at Baidoa's airstrip. With tanks and heavy artillery in position, we were taken to what had been the headquarters of the Al Shabaab fighters, a former governor's palace, which like all the other buildings in the area, showed the deep scars of 20 years of conflict in Somalia. Nearby were several four wheel drive vehicles with machine guns mounted on the back. The militants must have left in a hurry to abandon these machines of war. We were introduced to elders of the city wearing intricately embroidered Muslim caps and scratching their bright orange henna dyed beards. Al Shabaab colonized us for three years and 12 days. So many of us were killed and they forcefully recruited our children, said one of them, Mwalimu Ali, thanking the Ethiopian soldiers and urging them to stay. Rewind the clock three years and it was a different story. The Ethiopian army had moved in then as well to oust another Islamist group that had swept to power. But that group had wide support among Somalis. And when civilians were killed by Ethiopian shells, the whole operation became a despised invasion. People cheered on the streets when the Ethiopians went home. We drove past women selling watermelons and bread from wheelbarrows on what was a carefully controlled visit. We weren't allowed to ask what they made of the latest change of guard. I did get a chance to meet an MP who was mightily relieved that the city had changed hands. Al Shabaab was like an earthquake, but people have become free in the last 10 days, said Mohammad Ibrahim Habsadeh. He wants to set up a regional government and says he's willing to include former Al Shabaab fighters. This trip happened to coincide with the anniversary of Ethiopia's most famous military victory, the defeat of Italian invaders at the Battle of Adwa way back in 1896. Returning to the Ethiopian town of Gode in A popular restaurant. The TV was showing dramatic reenactments of the battle, featuring wiry men who looked old enough to have witnessed that bloody day. Our group of journalists shared a huge plate of delicious stews and fermented bread, I ought to add. We were also served a mound of pasta. Those Italians couldn't make Ethiopia theirs, but somehow the spaghetti sneaked in.
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Narrator/Reporter
That was Will Ross. Thousands of Japanese families are still unable to return to their homes. A year after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, an exclusion zone is still in place. And while the Japanese authorities have been praised for the efficiency with which they've set about reconstructing the area, there's still little prospect of these families being allowed to go home soon. The power station is in an area which was featured in the work of the 17th century Japanese poet Matsui Basho. Julian May's been following in his footsteps and also meeting some of the people whose lives were altered forever by the events of March 11, 2011.
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Julian May
As we speed through the ruined streets of the fishing port of Ishinomaki, I hurriedly adjust my view of Zen Buddhists as quiet, enigmatic contemplatives. I'm struggling to keep the rear lights of the Reverend Shoku Kawamura's 4x4 in view as he hurtles past houses shattered by the tsunami a year ago and empty plots where they were washed away. Kawamura, a stocky monk in his 60s, spends much of his life meditating. But he's a man of action. He's just recorded his radio show. He gives practical information, keeps people's spirits up and indulges his passion for progressive rock. Radio, he insisted, was the best way of keeping people informed after the disaster. Now he's off to meet a group of reconstruction volunteers, but on the way, will, if we can keep up, lead us to where Toruku Kobuyashi lives. She's a poet who's been writing about the aftermath of the earthquake and the tsunami. And we should meet her. Three hundred years ago, Japan's best loved poet, Matsuo Basho, visited Ishiel Makhi. He was pleased to see hundreds of ships in the harbour and countless streaks of smoke rising from the houses that thronged the shore. He included this in his account of a peregrination he made in 1689. Visiting famous spots, staying with poets, priests, farmers and fishermen. This travelogue, the narrow road to the Deep north, is a classic of Japanese literature known by everyone in the country. Ishiomaki is one of several places Basho visited whose Names have become familiar because of the disaster. Fukushima, Sendai, Shiogama. A year after the disaster, there are boats at Ishinomaki again. But the fleet was decimated and those houses that throng the shore have gone. I'm on a journey with the poet Stephen Henry Gill, who lives in Kyoto, following in Basho's footsteps. Like him, we're meeting local people, poets, priests and fishermen, workers and waitresses. Listening to their stories, there are strange resonances. Our first stop is at the so called murder stone of Nasu. Here, lethal gas seeps from a volcanic vent beneath a boulder. Basho describes a pile of dead bees and butterflies Nearby, a guard keeps us from getting too close and tells us that every year half a dozen visitors are overcome. This invisible poison seeping across the winter landscape is a striking parallel with the radiation from the nuclear power station at Fukushima, not far away. Trying to reach the power station, we're turned back by the police at the edge of a 20 kilometer exclusion zone. Even outside this, we go through radiation hot spots. Once, beeping madly, our Geiger counter goes off the scale. Shoko Kawamura, Zen Buddhist monk, broadcaster, prog rock fan and lunatic driver, screeches to a halt and introduces us to the poet Teruku Koboyashi. Compassion, he says, is a monk's identity, and that means rescuing, reconstructing. And he roars off. Teruko Koboyashi, who writes tanka 31 syllable poems, is more serene. As well as needing to repair physical things taken away by the tsunami, she says the human heart needs attention. Writing and publishing tanker poems, I feel a sense of healing, of my emotional pain. Shigenari Sasaki has reached a similar point. After a few beers, this fisherman, one of those whom Basho pitied for their precarious life on the sea, tells us his story. I was driving when the earthquake struck. I knew there would be a tsunami. I had four fishing boats in the harbour. They were bound to be smashed. So I tied three on a tow, put to sea and faced the tsunami. This was, I suggest, a remarkable feat of courage and seamanship. Going up the wave is dangerous, but coming down the other side, unless the line is exactly right, a boat will yaw, swing uncontrollably to one side and capsize. Mr. Sasaki, a small man with big hands whose eyes when he smiles, disappear in the creases of his weather beaten face, plays it all down. I'm a fisherman, so I knew I could do it. There were seven waves, two huge, the others just big. But I rode them when I came back, the harbour had gone and most of the village. His wife survived, but his mother drowned. He's speaking in a room quickly built onto his ruined house by volunteers. The generosity of volunteers who just arrived and got on with the job has renewed Mr. Sasaki's faith in humanity. In spite of everything. Because of these people, he says, I'm a happy man.
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Narrator/Reporter
Julian May now some of you will know that from Our own correspondent is based at Bush House in London, where there's been much excitement these last few days. The BBC World Service, which also lives here, has been celebrating its 80th birthday. But for many, the celebrations have had a bittersweet quality, for the BBC is about to move out of Bush House. Over the next few months, the World Service, along with this program, is relocating to refurbished premises elsewhere in the capital. The advantages of this arrangement to listeners as well as broadcasters are said to be considerable. But overseas, some correspondents are watching the demise of Bush House with sorrow. Among them, Alan Johnston.
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Alan Johnston
Getting a job at Bush House a long time ago now felt like a huge opportunity. After years on local newspapers, here was a chance to start writing about the world far beyond the English countryside. But I had a kind of false start in the Bush House newsroom. My first day just happened to coincide with the first day of the first Gulf War. Of course, everyone was far too busy to show a completely new chap around, and after a few hours I was told to just go home and try starting again the next day. But I'd already seen enough to know that I would like to Bush House. The whole world seemed to flood into the building. You were there with some of the best journalists from the Middle East, Africa, India and many other places. And eventually I saw close up, the impact that they were having in some of the most remote parts of the world. Like when I first went to Afghanistan. At the border at the top of the Khyber Pass, a big blue gate swung open to reveal the depressing picture. Very poor Afghans pushed and shoved as they streamed out of the country. And Taliban fighters in their white robes and black turbans thrashed about with whips as they tried to impose what they regarded as some sort of order. The Passport Office was freezing and so gloomy, I hardly noticed a figure under a blanket in the corner. But this was an official. He took my papers as he lay there, and when he saw that I was from the BBC, he came to life. He emerged from his blanket to take a look at me. Then he named the last four BBC correspondents to be based in Afghanistan and Asked if I knew them. Like many Afghans, the passport man would have been tuning into the Pashtu language programs from Bush. They would have helped him make sense of the turmoil in his country. In a place where there were so many problems and so little reliable information, Bush House's broadcasting made a difference. And as a correspondent, I wasn't only contributing to what the World Service had to say. I was always a listener too. And for me, what emerged from Bush House was never more important than when I got into trouble in Gaza. I was kidnapped by a jihadi group and held hostage. At first, I was locked in a room with nothing in it except a bed and a plastic chair. And hour after hour, I paced backwards and forwards in silence, alone with my fears. But after 18 days, something remarkable happened. A guard gave me a radio. I switched it on, and the voices of our Arabic service and the spirit of Bush House filled the room. Suddenly, in that desperate place, I had a link to the outside world, even a connection with the people in that building that I knew so well in faraway London. One night a while later, I tuned in to hear that Bush was broadcasting a report that I had been executed. It's hard to put into words quite how shocking a thing that was to hear in the measured tones of my own radio station. But in the days afterwards, as I lay on the floor of my cell, I listened to reports that I was believed to be alive. And indeed I was. And as the weeks turned into months, the World Service brought me the story of my own kidnapping, the demands of my captors, news of efforts to free me and messages of support. The BBC mobilised an extraordinary campaign on my behalf. Bush House and everybody in it were at the centre of this. And of course, I will remember that all of my life. I'm based in Rome now, and after this spell abroad, I won't be going back to Bush. The World Service is moving out. Its work will carry on, but it'll be broadcasting from another building in central London. And I guess over time, I'll get used to the new place. But I'll miss Bush House. To me, it always felt like very much more than just an office.
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Narrator/Reporter
It's never easy moving house. Alan Johnston there with home thoughts from abroad and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again on Thursday and Saturday next week with more from correspondence around the world. Do join us.
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Programme Presenter
Goodbye.