← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Myanmar's civil war: the junta's fightback
00:29:21
Quentin Sommerville reports on the fighters who defected, after forced conscription.
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello. Today we hear from the African conscripts who fought for Russia against Ukraine. And what lured them to take up the fight in the first place? We're in Ahmedabad, one year on from the Air India crash, where we hear from one man fighting for answers. Citizens of Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique are relocating amid a rise in xenophobia. Our correspondent has been on a fact finding mission. And finally, we are in the Caribbean country of Belize, where we hear the story of the Garifuna people and attend a performance by a much celebrated band. But first, we're in Myanmar, where a civil war has claimed almost 100,000 lives. In 2021, the country's military seized power in a coup, but it subsequently lost ground to rebel and ethnic groups who joined together to form a united and formidable resistance. Now the military junta is making a renewed push, bolstered by Russian and Chinese support with a forced conscription program of tens of thousands of recruits and new drone technology. Quentin Somerville has spoken to some of those recruits who've now defected to the resistance.
- [01:17]
Quentin Somerville
The four young men sat on hammocks outdoors, smoking cigarettes. It was clear they were close friends. They were laughing together. And when I spoke to them, they'd finish each other's sentences if it wasn't for the context. We were in a jungle camp on a hillside in Rebel Hill territory in Myanmar's Karen State. They could have been mistaken for lads on holiday. In fact, they are deserters from Myanmar's military conscripts. The youngest is 19, the oldest 23. And they'd been press ganged from the streets of where they'd lived and forced into service. And at the first opportunity, five months later, the four of them did a runner. We were brought into this fight without our consent. Before we even understood what was happening, we were sent straight to the front lines. One of the men told me. I never wanted this, said another. My mother didn't even know I'd been taken. Myanmar's military, which seized power from the democratically elected government back in 2021, reactivated a conscription law two years ago. Anyone 18 to 35 years of age now has to serve between two to five years in the army, whether they like it or not. One of the deserters had been on his way home from a night out in Yangon. He'd been singing karaoke. It was 4:30 in the morning when he was picked up by the military. He was told that he would be released the next morning. Instead, he says, drugs were slipped into his shoe. I was framed, he told me, and he was signed up for military service. Another used to work as a chef in a hotel in Yangon. He missed his last bus home and was waiting for a taxi when he was nabbed. He had forgotten his ID and was accused of loitering suspiciously. Held overnight at a military guard post, he was then marched to the recruitment center in the morning. The civil war has caused Myanmar's military to lose thousands of its troops to death, injury and desertion. Building a replacement army with young, inexperienced and unwilling soldiers might seem short sighted, but it appears to be working. Two and a half years ago, Myanmar's fractured rebel and ethnic militias united and captured military bases, border posts and critical roads across the country. As much as two thirds of the territory was lost to the resistance. But the junta, its numbers swollen with new recruits, is in the midst of a nationwide counteroffensive which is retaking lost ground at pace in most of the country's states. In the face of the junta's unlimited manpower, it's the rebels who are now on the back foot. The exuberance of those early gains has given way to the grinding reality of guerrilla warfare. But they aren't done yet. It's estimated the ethnic and resistance groups still have control of more than half the country. Min A Lang, the military coup leader who has donned the mantle of president after widely discredited elections held six months ago, has given the rebels a deadline to enter peace talks. The main armed resistance groups have rejected his approach. In the sweltering heat of a jungle clinic run by the resistance, the wards, built of wood with dirt floors, are filled with injured fighters. Many have missing limbs lost to drone attacks or landmines. Myanmar is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Nam Da, a platoon commander in his early 30s, is recovering from a bullet to his leg. He's been injured 15 times and shows me his bullet wounds, battle scars across his body. As he sits in a wheelchair in the afternoon heat, he came across a column of 50 junta soldiers, many of them new recruits, who were marching onto his position. They mistook him for one of their own commanders. He shot four of them before they realized the truth and returned fire. Badly injured, he dragged himself back to rebel lines. For him and many others, there is no going back. I have chosen to take part in this revolution. No matter how good my life was before. I have never looked back and missed it. I have no regrets, he tells me his ankle is now held together by metal rods and plates. But when he has recovered, he says he will return to the fight. Myanmar has known nothing but military rule. For most of its history, and the armed resistance for the same amount of time. Some of its generals may have swapped their uniforms for civilian clothing. But as far as the rebels and most of the world are concerned, behind the facade, it's the same illegitimate regime. The junta may no longer be losing this war, but. But they're still a long way from winning it.
- [06:01]
Kate Adie
Quentin Somerville Next. We're in Ukraine's west, where fighters from across Africa are being held in a prisoner of war facility, having fought with the Russian army. According to the authorities, many of them say they've been misled or coerced into fighting by illegal recruitment agencies holding out the promise of a good job and a salary in Russia. Sami Awami spoke to some of the young men in the prison.
- [06:29]
Sami Awami
The smell of fresh cooking was familiar. As I walked towards the kitchen, almost homely. For a moment, I almost forgot where I was. Then, looking up at the tall surrounding wall with barbed wire on top and the men in dark blue uniforms, I was brought back to reality. This is a prison of war facility in western Ukraine. It's home to a group of men captured while fighting for Russia, among them, Africans from at least 15 countries, including Sierra Leone, Kenya, the Republic of the Congo and beyond. Many came to the war chasing opportunity. Some were running from hardship. As we toured the facility, we were shown a modern health center fitted with X rays and dental equipment that, as one Ukrainian officer noted, is still absent in many rural clinics across the country. Sometimes Ukrainian journalists come here and they get upset, he told me. They ask why prisoners from a country invading ours receive this level of care. In the clinic observation room, I met Lud Beverly. He's from the Republic of the Congo, where he served as a soldier before traveling to Russia for further training, a path that spiraled into financial difficulties and and a Russian prison sentence linked to drug offenses. Rather than serve the sentence, he says, he chose the front line. His hands tell another part of the story, one he articulates in fluent Russian. Thanks to the seven years he spent living there. Several of his fingers have been partially severed, others permanently damaged by the freezing conditions on the battlefield. After lunch, I watched as the men gathered in groups. Some were laughing and joking. Others. Others hung back, eyes down. A few had pulled caps and masks over their faces. They did not want to be interviewed. But one man walked straight up to us when he heard the BBC had arrived. He told me his name is Richard kanu. He is 43 years old and from Sierra Leone. He said he wanted to talk so his family back home would know that he is alive. Richard's story does not start with war. Trouble with senior commanders pushed him out of the army. Back home, he tried getting visa to work in Western Europe, but was refused. But when he applied to Russia, he was granted a visa almost immediately. I've seen where Richard used to live in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, a small house built from corrugated iron and scrap metal. During 17 years in the military, he told me he earned less than $100 a month. So when a work agent offered him $15,000, plus a monthly salary of more than $2,000, he told me it felt like the only way out. Richard is tall and broad shouldered. He speaks softly, almost gently, but when Russia comes up, his voice hardens with certainty. He insisted that he did not go to Russia to join the army. He told me he thought he was signing on for a security job, only to find himself in a Russian military training camp. The government in Moscow has repeatedly denied coercing or misleading African recruits, claiming they all volunteered. In another dome, a Kenyan prisoner initially refused to speak, saying he had been misrepresented by journalists before. But when greeted in Kiswahili, the language that I myself speak, something shifted. He broke into a wide smile, and we began talking about his time fighting for Russia. The battlefield is not a joke. People die left, right and center, and nobody really cares, he said, turning away and bowing his head. He told me about the drone strikes that leave bodies scattered across the ground and soldiers pushing forward, unable or unwilling to look back. Even months after leaving the frontline, it was clear the experience still weighs heavily on him. Not many African fighters recruited by Russia ever make it back home. For those now detained in Ukraine, the future remains uncertain. Most of them we spoke to were hoping to be exchanged in prisoner swabs and returned to Russia, hopefully not to fight again. But many still believe Russia offers greater opportunities than the poverty they left behind in Africa. Ukrainian officials say Russia has shown little interest in taking African prisoners. Back in Sierra Leone, I met prisoner Richard Kanu's eldest daughter, Elsie, who finished high school last year and has been trying to hold her life together in her father's absence. She told me that her father's return home would not solve the hardships that pushed him to leave in the first place. And Richard is not keen to return to Freetown. Instead, he says he would gladly return to Moscow. I have an identity. I'm a Russian. I signed a contract for Russia, he said firmly. And I want to go back.
- [11:47]
Kate Adie
Samia Mwami Next air India Flight 171 was bound for London Gatwick from Ahmedabad when it crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 260 people. More than 50 British passengers were among the dead. For some families, grief has been deepened by failures in the identification process and the discovery that some remains were wrongly identified. A year on, Our South Asia correspondent Azadeh Mushiri returns to the crash site.
- [12:21]
Azadeh Mushiri
When I meet Joginda, he walks me over to the same spot where he was standing a year ago, when instead of clear skies, he was surrounded by smoke, his cheeks scorched from the intense heat of jet fuel on fire. He remembers pulling out bodies from the rubble and debris and the seat belts in flames, trapping victims and their bodies. He lives near the crash site and was feeding stray dogs there when the plane crashed into the medical hostels, ripping through the buildings and breaking apart. He doesn't believe anyone he tried to save survived. It felt like their bodies were disintegrating in my hands, he tells me. For days the smell followed him. It was overpowering. I threw away all the clothes. I bathed and washed up. But even days later, it just felt like something very wrong had happened. He says the five buildings in front of us are still blackened from smoke. Broken windows revealing the kitchen students would sit in and the beds they would sleep on. The dean of the medical college told us it's taken a year to approve plans to rebuild the hostels after the crash. Forensic teams spent months combing the area, searching for the victim's belongings and remains. But the work of identifying the dead isn't over. To make matters worse, some remains were wrongly identified. Mitan Patel rushed to India from his home in London when he learned his parents, Ashok and Shobana, on board flight 171, had been killed. I didn't even know what the word repatriation meant, he tells us. He says he was forced to board an Air India flight for his return since no other flights were available. The day of the crash, he knew no one in India. But when he landed in Ahmedabad, he was grateful. His parents had taught him Gujarati, the local language there. It gave him and his brother the means to navigate the chaotic aftermath of the crash. At the hospital, staff drew two vials of his blood to help identify his parents. It took more than a week for their remains to be returned to the uk. Back in London, he received a phone call from police at 10 o' clock at night. They insisted they needed to meet him straight away, but wouldn't tell him why. Over the phone, a CT scan of his mother's casket by the UK coroner's Office had revealed it also contained the remains of someone else. Mitten was told there were additional skeletal parts. Further testing later on showed his mother's remains had been mixed with those of an unidentified man. The BBC has contacted the Indian Foreign Ministry, the hospital responsible for the identification process in Gujarat, and the UK Foreign Office, but has received no response. Last July, about a month after the crash, the Indian Foreign Ministry told the BBC they had been working closely with the UK from the moment these concerns were brought to their attention, and that all remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased. These words a little comfort for Mitten. At the end of the day, he tells us, my mother came back home with somebody else. An inquest in the UK has been opened into the death, with the coroner examining issues around multiple misidentified remains. Mittin has spent the past year working with another family who've received misidentified remains to push for more answers from Indian authorities. He and other families are also waiting on the final findings of an investigation into the cause of the crash. The fight, as Mitten calls it, has complicated his grief. He parks his emotions, then at night, he retreats to his room alone and watches hours of videos of his late parents. I never cry in front of anyone, he tells us. He believes the battle he is fighting for himself and for other families is the least he can do to honour them. He starts saying, I don't want to die and meet my parents up there. And he pauses. I want them to say to me, son, we are so proud of you. You did everything you could after we went. He's one of the many lives still haunted by the crash. Back in Ahmedabad, Joginda still returns to the crash site, but with biscuits for the dogs. Sometimes he'll see victim's relatives standing there. When they see him approach, they turn and let him know they lost someone there. Joginda looks at me. I still feel it deeply in my heart when I pass this place, he says. I feel something very wrong happened here.
- [17:07]
Kate Adie
Azadeh Mushiri Next, we're in South Africa, which has seen a wave of anti immigration protests and reports of a resurgence of xenophobic violence. The governments of Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique have all offered repatriation flights for their citizens that have seen hundreds relocate. In a further escalation, anti immigrant groups have set a deadline of 30 June for all foreigners in the country illegally to leave the country. Mahony Jones has been in Johannesburg, where she recalls her own nervousness upon arrival in the capital, as well as the challenges of reporting on a story where it's been hard to separate the rules rumor from the reality.
- [17:53]
Mahony Jones
I have to admit that before moving here from Lagos, where I was previously posted, I was worried about facing discrimination. Nigerian friends kept telling me that South Africans didn't like West Africans, especially Nigerians. I didn't turn like that message so much that when I eventually moved to Johannesburg, I worried that people would assume I was Nigerian. Although I'm Sierra Leonean, South Africa does have a history of violence towards African migrants. The racist apartheid system relied partly on labour imported from neighboring countries. When apartheid ended in 1994, many people from other parts of Africa moved here in search of work. But with the country facing an unemployment rate of more than 30%, anti migrant sentiments have risen over the years. Yet since moving here, I found that most South Africans don't care much about where I'm from. Some even point out that my first name, Myene, is a Zulu surname when I mention the incidents of xenophobic violence I've heard about. South African friends explained that the victims tend to live in townships where residents believe migrants are taking up scarce resources despite a government crackdown on illegal migration in recent years. In 2019, I'd reported on retaliatory attacks on South African businesses in Lagos after a wave of attacks against foreigners in South Africa. I stood outside a ransacked branch of Shoprite, a South African supermarket chain, explaining why the citizens of two of Africa's biggest economies were at loggerheads. Fast forward seven years and it's an even more confusing story. Over the past month, a group called March and March, which describes itself as a citizen led movement for immigration reform, has held demonstrations across South Africa calling on the government to do more to curb illegal migration. Its leader, former radio presenter Jacinta Ngobe Sezuma, has accused illegal immigrants of crimes including raping women and trafficking children. March and March have tried to ensure their protests remain peaceful, but other demonstrations inspired by theirs have descended into violence. Following protests in the town of Mosso Bay in the Western Cape in late May, the Mozambique government claimed hundreds of its citizens had been targeted and that a couple had died. We haven't been able to confirm how many people were affected by the violence, as some are said to have already left South Africa for Mozambique, and it's unclear if those deaths were linked to the protest, something the South African police say they're still investigating. Last month, 700 secondary school children from Kraaifontein in the Western Cape held a protest calling for foreign students to be kicked out of their school. Community leader Gavin Riddles told me that the demonstration caused serious disorder. People were injured. Cars and properties were damaged. Informal traders lost their stock. He explained he believed the protests were linked to the upcoming local elections and thought the children were being used as tools because they were unlikely to be arrested. But Mr. Riddles also blamed the authorities for failing to get a handle on the issue of illegal immigration in the area, even though migrants only make up an estimated 5% of the country's population. Although there are no official figures for the number of victims of violence resulting from these recent protests, other African governments have been quick to issue statements condemning the targeting of foreigners. A number of countries have offered to repatriate their citizens, such as Ghana and Nigeria. We went to Johannesburg's main airport on the day of the first Ghanaian and Nigerian repatriation flights, each carrying more than 200 people back. We saw dozens of men, women and children arriving with large amounts of luggage on buses chartered by their governments, but very few people would talk to us. One Nigerian man said he was leaving because he'd been robbed a few weeks earlier. He said his nationality played a part. Both Ghana and Nigeria have claimed some of their repatriated citizens were living here legally but had been scared by recent reports of violence against migrants. Yet the South African Department of Home affairs says all the passengers on the first Nigerian and Ghanaian flights were undocumented. There are many conflicting accounts around this story. Nigeria's Consul General, Ambassador Ninikanwa Okeuche, told me this week that her citizens had been victims of xenophobic attacks, but she couldn't say how many nor what percentage of the repatriation flight's passengers were here legally. It's possible that social media has played a part in exacerbating people's fears. Old videos of violence against foreigners have been reshared along with footage of the current protests, making it hard to distinguish what's really going on. What's happening now in South Africa is away so far from previous bursts of xenophobic violence, but there's a real worry that rhetoric and protests could spark more widespread attacks
- [22:30]
Kate Adie
now to Central America and the shores of Belize, which rock to a different beat. The mixture of cultures across the Caribbean has already given birth to many music styles which have gone global, from ska to reggae, from calypso to rumba. But there's another kind of music less well known to world audiences, which stems from a very special and specific the language and culture of the Garifuna people. Simon Broughton recently heard echoes of a proudly independent past.
- [23:03]
Simon Broughton
As you enter the town of Dangriga on the coast in southern Belize, there's a monument in the centre of a roundabout. It's called the Drums of Our Fathers and features a small drum, a larger one and a pair of maracas. This is where the Garifuna arrived in belize back in 1802. The people who brought the drums came originally from West Africa, of course. They were brought to the Americas on Spanish slave ships which which were shipwrecked on the island of St. Vincent. In 1637, the West Africans settled there and got together with the indigenous Arawak Amerindians to become the Garifuna people. In Dangriga's monument, the African drums and the local maracas represent that intermixing of cultures. When the British arrived in St. Vincent, the Garifuna tried to resist their takeover before being forcibly expelled from the island in 1797. They eventually settled in what's now Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. Importantly, the Garifuna were never enslaved, and that spirit of resistance is a power that can be found today in Belize's diverse music scene. The best known Garifuna band is the Garifuna Collective, and I'm here to see them perform not in Dangriga, but in San Ignacio, some way away from the Garifuna heartland. In a lively bar, I was introduced to Mohobob, generally known as Bob, who's been with the band for nearly 20 years. Its longest serving member. He's got a trim white beard and wears a Che Guevara beret. He had a small suitcase with him. What's inside? I asked. It was noisy in the bar and I thought he said my tuxedo. I was puzzled. They're really not that kind of band. No formal dressing up, no coordinated outfits. But then he opened the case and I saw it contained not a tuxedo, but turtle shells in a sort of vest. He plays four of them as a percussion instrument. Strung over his chest and struck with a pair of beaters. They create a light pattering sound over the much deeper pair of drums that provide the main percussion in the band. Were any turtles hurt in the creation of this instrument? I asked him for some reassurance. Yes, indeed, he shot back. For us Garifuna people, they're a great delicacy for food. The Garifuna Collective have had more than their fair share of problems to overcome. They launched into a song written by Aurelio Martinez, who sang with the band and died in an air crash just over a year ago. Sung in tribute to him, it's called Yalifu Pelican. You see dozens of these birds along the Belize coast. The song says, please lend me your wings so I can go and see my dad who's working in the United States. It's a personal song written about Aurelio's own dad, but of course, it has a larger meaning for the Garifuna. Many of them have emigrated to the US for work. The singers on stage make pelican flying movements, echoing the meaning of the song. They also performed Watina, probably their most famous song, written by Andy Palacio, who first brought the collective together, but died of a stroke, aged just 47. Watina means I called out, and it's a call for an awareness of Garifuna culture, saying, we're here, we exist. Most of the people in the bar weren't Garifuna, but they were all singing along to the songs in Garifuna, a completely different language to the Belizean Creole or English they'd speak at home. Although the Garifuna represent only about 5% of Belize's population, their larger cultural influence is widely celebrated. In Dangriga, where the Garifina first arrived, there are Garifuna drumming groups playing a couple of nights a week, and something of an industry. In workshops to learn the distinctive drumming styles, they use a pair of drums, one smaller, the primero, the other larger, the segunda. Denmark Flores, one of the collective's drummers, demonstrates the interplay between the two. For me, the primero is masculine and plays more complex rhythms, improvising and directing the dancers, while the segunda plays a steady rhythm. It's not as flashy, but I think it's more important than the primero. Denmark says the woman is the one who makes sure the house functions, raises the kids, and is the heartbeat of the family. Listening to this drumming by the ocean that brought them here, it's easy to hear the enduring pride in this music, that of a culture with a heartbeat that was never enslaved in the New World.
- [27:57]
Kate Adie
Simon Broughton. And that's all for today from our own correspondent was produced by Serena Tarling and Polly Hope. The editor was Richard Varden. I'm Kate Ady, and you can hear more stories from around the world on from our own correspondent on BBC Sounds, including a dispatch from DRC and the epicenter of the Ebola virus and the story of how a river was undammed on the border of Oregon and California. We'll be back with a new episode next Saturday.
- [28:30]
Azadeh Mushiri
I'm Kate Lamble and From understand from BBC Radio 4, this is rinsed.
- [28:36]
Quentin Somerville
Last time I was here, there was a tampon and there was a condom.
- [28:40]
Azadeh Mushiri
A sewage scandal damaging our rivers.
- [28:43]
Kate Adie
We had an enormous range of animals in the garden and that also started
- [28:47]
Azadeh Mushiri
to disappear, uncovered by ordinary folk taking on powerful people.
- [28:54]
Quentin Somerville
And they told me, there's nothing wrong with the River Windrush. Basically, go away and stop troubling.
- [29:02]
Azadeh Mushiri
This is the story of how a centuries old battle between public good and private profit created an almighty stink. And who pays to clean it up? Rinsed. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
- [29:16]
Quentin Somerville
And I thought, nah, you're the problem.