← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Neither Love Nor Money
00:28:16
Frontline biscuits, burning cash, a shocking demonstration, no love nor money, and sexism
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Transcript15 lines
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Thank you for downloading this edition of
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From Our Own Correspondent, which was broadcast
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on Radio 4 on Saturday 19th November 2016. And we've got a pretty good geographical
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spread today with stories from Africa, Europe,
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the Middle East, South Asia and the Far east, all introduced by Kate Ady. Hello. Today, a pile of rupees, a mountain of notes. So let's spend it. But rather oddly, many Indians are finding they're a bit short of cash. A story of secrets and lies. Our correspondent in Sierra Leone confronts the problem of primitive behaviour wrapped up in tradition. More money problems, this time for the Italians, where the collapse of banks also prevents you from being with the one you love. And just how advanced and thrustingly modern are the South Koreans? Technologically, yes. But our correspondent asks, what's this old fashioned sexism all about? To Syria first, where this week the Assad regime bombers resumed their attacks on Aleppo. The Damascus government and its Russian allies had halted airstrikes, supposedly to allow civilians and rebels to leave the besieged city. It's a city divided between rebel forces in the east and government forces in the west, ruined in many districts, with hospitals barely able to function in the rebel held areas. Dan Isaacs has been to see the destruction for himself.
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Abu Alnor, middle aged, round and bespectacled, stands behind the counter of his shop in the ancient old city of Aleppo. He sells cigarettes, eggs, falafel and small cakes, but his only customers are the soldiers patrolling his neighbourhood. In front of his stall, nothing stirs except a family of cats picking their way cautiously through the rubble. His is the very last shop still trading at amid the ruins of this old marketplace of cobbled streets, colonnades and winding alleyways, right on the front line of this brutal conflict. The only thing breaking the silence in this once bustling commercial centre is us crunching broken glass and concrete underfoot. Aleppo is a divided city. Rebels control the east, government forces the West. It is impossible for anyone, certainly not foreign journalists like us, to travel between the two. We're on a government supported visit to the West, a tour which takes us to the old city escorted by the Syrian military. When I ask Mr. Elnor to step out of his shop for a photograph, just a little bit out of the shadows of the colonnades and into the sunshine. He looks at me almost apologetically. Rebel snipers have direct line of sight down the open street. Stepping out into the sunshine would not be a wise idea. Mr. Alnor is very polite about it, but the rebel positions are less than 200 yards away. He might be Selling cakes in a war zone. But he's not crazy. The silk Route from Asia to the Mediterranean passes through Aleppo and has brought its merchants great prosperity. In better times, empires have fought over Aleppo. Alexander the Great conquered it. Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, Greeks and Romans were here too. They've all come and gone, but the ancient city has carried on. And above all, the traders have stayed. That is, until now. The UN estimates that there are around a quarter of a million civilians trapped on the eastern side of the city, with perhaps a few thousand rebels still holding out. Routes in and out are cut off. Our only view of the east, when we'd approached Aleppo by road the previous day, was one of total destruction, smoke rising from the incessant bombardment. But the population of western Aleppo does not escape this war either. Busy streets filled with people and traffic suggest things are normal. They aren't. Rockets land on districts of the city on both sides, day and night, and there's no telling which way the lethal weaponry is heading. Look up and you see palls of smoke rising across the city. The air is grey. Everywhere there's a smell of dust and ruin. But the sky above remains a defiant brilliant blue. When we arrive at the Al Razi hospital in the early afternoon, the full impact of this conflict is laid bare in all its horror. There have just been a series of attacks on the western side. Casualties are being brought in by ambulance every few minutes. There have been at least two rocket attacks and three suicide car bombs all during this one morning. Doctors and nursing staff rush towards each ambulance as it tears up the hospital drive in a drill clearly well practiced over the years of conflict. The injured are loaded onto trolleys and rushed in for treatment in a side street just around the corner. Outside the entrance to the hospital mortuary, we weeping relatives gather. A distraught woman is screaming inconsolably. She's just lost her son. Another 10 year old boy has lost both parents in two separate rocket attacks. He doesn't know where to turn and rejects every comfort offered to him. This is a city of individuals trying to survive until somehow the world rights itself. People like Abu Al Noor, the shopkeeper, still selling cigarettes in the ruins of the old city. He and his friends have property and land in the rebel held east, he says, and it seems he has dreams of one day getting them back. A battle is being fought over Aleppo to the death. We will crush them, a government politician tells us during our visit, referring to the rebels still holding out in the east. They're certainly trying to do that with the support of their Russian allies. But at what cost and to what end? And how will this once great city that has survived conquest by so many empires over the centuries ever, ever be rebuilt?
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Dan Isaacs the policy is supposed to prevent corruption and the spread of counterfeit money the surprise announcement by the Indian prime minister last week that the country's two most valuable notes, five hundred and one thousand rupees worth around five and ten pounds, were to be taken out of circulation almost immediately, and it was also justified on the grounds that these notes fuelled the drugs, trade and terror. The immediate result, though, has been huge queues at banks as people try to convert their old notes into new money. Cash dispensing machines have also struggled to meet demand, as Shautique Biswas experienced firsthand.
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There was already a queue for the cash machine down below when I stepped out of my apartment on a smoggy night last week, minutes before Prime Minister Narendra Modi had finished an unprecedented nighttime TV address. As soon as he had stopped speaking, many of us rushed out to begin stocking up on low denomination notes as all high value currency in our wallets would quickly become useless. We stood in the line, my neighbors and I, at the cash machine in a gated community in an upscale suburb outside Delhi. We speculated whether Mr. Modi's surgical strike, as an excited media was calling the move, would help curb corruption. The cash machine droned on, spitting out notes. When my time came, the machine rejected my card. Bad luck, I told myself, and made way for others in the queue. A kind neighbor saw my crestfallen face and used his card to take 400 rupees out of the groaning machine and give it to me. You keep it, you will need it, he said before vanishing into the night. Over the next week, hordes of panicky people throng banks and cash machines to deposit expired money and withdraw lower denominations. After several unsuccessful visits to overcrowded banks and empty cash machines, many people are living on a wing and a prayer. Wherever I go, my workplace, the community park, the local market people are fretting over ways to get some of their own hard earned money. Clashes have broken out in long queues. There are unconfirmed reports of people suffering from heart attacks and dying in these queues. There are tales of desperate people burning sacks of illegal cash and of others unable to pay for cremations and hospital admissions. One hospital patient settled his 40,000 rupee hospital bill in coins. Outside the chaos inflicted upon honest tax paying and low income Indians, a burlesque of sorts is playing out Many people are trying to game the system and convert the illegal cash into gold and goods which they can then hoard or sell. There's no dearth of innovative solutions. A salesman selling mobile phones told me that a man walked up to his shop with 3 million rupees in cash and offered to buy up his entire stock of iPhones. He said the owner balked and shut up shop. A politician in Bihar walked into a jewelry shop and bought gold ornaments worth 20 million rupees. There is also what is being called a thriving discount scam. People are offering to buy stocks of scrap notes at a discount before laundering the expired money. A builder in the capital has apparently paid his daily wage workers two years of advance salary with the expired cash, leaving his workers to exchange the money. And then there's my favorite story of a doctor who had some cash at home which he planned to turn over to the bank and then discovered to his dismay that his wife had squirrelled away six times as much in a cupboard. At the root of this chaos is the fact that India is an overwhelmingly paper currency country. Some 90% of the transactions are in cash. More than half of Indians still don't have a bank account and some 300 million have no government identification. The two scrap denominations account for more than 85% of the value of cash in circulation. Some of the cash is stashed and used in what is called a booming black economy to evade taxes. Politicians, property developers, dealers, traders, doctors and lawyers are some of the biggest hoarders. However, millions of low income working class people like roadside small businesses and traders hoard cash because they need the liquidity to run their lives and also because there are no banks where they live. Mr. Modi has asked Indians to bear the pain for 50 days to help him deliver the India of their dreams. They keep telling us that this is good and maybe they're right, an Indian woman whose family had almost no usable money left told a journalist. But I don't see anything good happening. Nobody quite knows whether Mr. Modi's risky gamble will help clean up India's black economy or not.
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Shautik Biswas this summer, the first ever recorded figures for female genital mutilation in England showed that there had been almost 6,000 new cases over the previous year. Most of those cases were women born and mutilated in Africa, though a small number of them had undergone FGM here. The practice is illegal in the UK and should be prosecuted and it has been banned in a number of African countries, though it's still widespread. A couple of months ago in Egypt, where FGM has been illegal since 2008, an MP caused outrage, saying it was still needed to reduce women's sexual appetite because he argued half of Egyptian men were impotent. Tulip Mazumdah recently confronted a so called cutter in Sierra Leone. A disturbing and grisly business.
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I have initiated hundreds of girls, meminatu Terai proclaims proudly, but I can't tell you exactly how I undertake this ancient tradition unless you join our secret society. A big grin spreads across Meminatu's face as she no doubt sees the pure horror unfold on mine. Come with me, she says. I can cut you, and only then can I tell you what you want to know. Meminatou is clearly enjoying this exchange, eventually bursting into fits of laughter. I politely decline her offer. We're sitting in her home in a slum area of western Freetown. A photo of her daughter in her college robes hangs in pride of place on a bright yellow wall. She's been cut. And look, she's fine. She's getting an education, memonatu says, her large round face lighting up. This 56 year old is simultaneously warm and fierce. She boasts that she is one of the most trusted and prolific cutters, or soways, as they're called in Sierra Leone, in all of Freetown. It's a great and ancient tradition, she insists. We don't hurt girls, but I would never hurt them. And it's not just about circumcising them, she says. We teach them how to be wives, how to cook and clean. We have big parties for the initiations, she explains, where we dance and sing and feel good. My mind goes back to a few weeks earlier, when I was in Kenya investigating efforts to end FGM there. The practice was outlawed in the country in 2011. My experience in a village is something that has stayed with me. One former cutter agreed to demonstrate what she used to do to young girls. Her friend grabbed hold of my wrists, crossed them tight against my chest, and pulled me down to the floor outside her hut. I sat between her strong legs as she tightened them around my hips, making it impossible for me to move. She was an older lady and I couldn't figure out where all that strength had come from. Then the former cutter opened my legs and showed me, using an oval shape she made with her thumb and index finger, how she'd scoop out the inside of the girl's vaginal lips with a blade and cut out the clitoris, discarding it all on the ground. I felt sick to my stomach after that strange and terrifying experience, hearing girls stories of how they were cut became even more distressing. Three words repeatedly came up when they described their fear, agony, and betrayal. It was their own mothers, their grandmothers, their aunts, the women in their families who had led them into their painful and degrading initiations. And here I was in Sierra Leone, a country where the majority of women have been cut, sharing pleasantries with a professional and proud cutter. It wasn't long before we got onto the finances of Memo Natu's profession. She tells me she receives around 1 million Lyons. That's around 140 pounds for every girl she cuts. She's also given palm oil, goats, and bags of rice. In a country where two thirds of people live in poverty, being a cutter is quite the money maker. But what about the pain and trauma caused by cutting and the deaths? Memo isn't having any of it. It's all lies, she tells me. It's good for the woman. One man is not enough for a woman who has not been circumcised, she continues, but when she is initiated, she becomes sexually contented and sticks to just one man. I have to admit I felt anger. You and I are both women, I protest. I have not been circumcised and I am not promiscuous. Having a clitoris doesn't mean you feel compelled to have sex with lots of men. She laughs and grabs my arm, pressing it hard against hers. You are different to us, she tells me. Look, you are yellow in color. I am black. We are both women, but we are not the same. You will never understand. I ask Mamanatu what she would do if the government banned the practice. We would storm the offices of the president, she bellows. They know this is an important tradition. After ranting about the injustice of it all, she takes a deep breath. If they want us to stop, she says, they will have to find something else for us to do. If you want to wean your baby off breast milk, you provide alternatives, don't you? I put to her that if this is her logic, that initiations for her are more about cold hard cash than ancient traditions. It's about both, she says.
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Tulip Mazumda A year ago, four Italian banks had to be saved from collapse. The rescue operation led to tens of thousands of small investors losing their life savings. And for those who did not lose out directly, it was another reason for Italians to feel fearful about the future. Italy's economy has performed particularly badly since the financial collapse eight years ago. Industrial output has shrunk significantly, unemployment has risen and job prospects are poor. And the impact on people's lives and relationships has been enormous, as Ruth Sunderland has been finding out.
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With his designer stubble, his faded jeans and his grey T shirt, Antonio Alia looks like any typical 34 year old. When I chat to the young Italian in the small Tuscan town of Ponte Sieve, his conversation is peppered with one precario precarious. Like millions of young Italians, Antonio, who comes from Bologna in the north of the country, feels his future has been stolen. He has a degree, he has a job, and he should be able to look forward to the future. He's at an age when he might expect to have a wife, a home and a couple of children. But for Antonio, the prospect of a family life seems remote. Instead, he feels marooned in a state of perpetual adolescence because of the crisis that has flattened the Italian economy and wrecked its banking system. The financial damage is documented in some stark facts and figures. The economy has shrunk by 10% since 2008 and and around 3 million Italians are jobless. The rate of unemployment among the under 25s is running at more than 37%. But there's also hidden emotional damage that doesn't show up in the statistics. I don't have a girlfriend or a fiance, antonio tells me. I can't afford to set up home and have a family. I live in a shared house with other people, and they are in an equally precarious position. Fatherhood is simply not a choice. He feels he can afford to make kids, kids that wouldn't be something to celebrate or be happy about. It would be a burden, he says. But Antonio is more fortunate in his private life than some people he knows. Friends of his are trapped in relationships because they can't afford to move on. They need to stay with the other person to pay the rent and and share the bills. If they separate, they won't be able to make ends meet. You're not free to love who you want, he laments. You might want to split up, but you can't afford to. Antonio's joined a protest taking place in Ponte Sieve, near Florence, because it's Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's hometown. Demonstrators are furious with him because tens of thousands of people lost their savings when four small Italian banks fell failed in a single day last year. Plenty of Italians own bank shares and bonds, which are not protected, so they lost heavily. Most of the crowd are in their 50s or beyond here to vent their rage at seeing their life savings quite literally vanish overnight. Antonio didn't lose money in the banking crisis because he doesn't earn enough to save any. But he's worried his parents might lose theirs. And he's frightened because he feels Italians young, old and middle age have lost hope in their future. He sees this loss of hope at the very sharp end. His job is helping drug addicts trying to go straight. He doesn't have any hard statistics, but he says he's certain that the financial crisis has led to an increase in substance abuse. And he reckons the economic situation has made it harder for people to conquer their addiction. They feel less incentive to fight their cravings because they can't see a good future at the end of the tunnel. They see themselves as completely lost, he says as he shakes his head in a gesture of despair. Another of the protesters is Giovanna Mazzoni, who at 68, is more than three decades older than Antonio. But the banking crisis has also wreaked havoc on the plans she had so carefully laid for her future. A retired civil servant, Giovanna is a regular at protest demos. It's not surprising she's furious. She lost €53,000. She says virtually everyone in her apartment block in her neighbourhood. The people she meets at the shops and in the market has lost large amounts of money too. Her neighbours are reluctant to take to the streets to protest. They stay at home pleading they have arthritis or a headache. Despite her tiny frame, Giovanna is made of sterner stuff. She regularly braves jostling crowds and carabinieri in riot gear to grab the megaphone and address the rallies. Giovanna lives in Ferrara, but her adult children have moved away for work she'd been saving, so she could afford to pay for a carer to look after her when she's older. What will she do now if she needs care? I ask her. She says she'll have to fend for herself.
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Ruth Sunderland South Korea is one of the world's most advanced industrialized nations, with its ultra fast information superhighways and giant technology corporations. But older social attitudes persist, particularly if you're female. Traditional Confucian ideas still enshrine the father of the house as its boss, the breadwinner and the decision maker. South Korean laws do give women equal rights to property and employment on paper, but the country still has one of the largest gender pay gaps in the OECD and the lowest proportion of women in paid jobs. As Stephen Evans observes, despite laws against much of what happens, sexism is rife. In Seoul.
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The other day I just typed into the search box, the word for a very obscure term in music. I'm learning the guitar and I wanted to know what acciacatura meant. What it doesn't mean is what popped up. Namely, a very hardcore Korean pornography site, which is odd in a country where pornography is illegal. It illustrates to my mind some hypocrisy about sex. Pornography is illegal but available, if you know the secret ways of this dark web. Prostitution too, is illegal, but married men go to bars where sex is on offer and talk about it as though that's just what you do. Indeed, there's an industry in pornography provided for the web by hidden cameras in ladies toilets. Incredible though that may seem, and as unattractive as that may sound, the authorities do try to combat it. There's a squad which searches toilets for hidden cameras. Manufacturers cooperate by installing an audible shutter click on phone cameras to deter the taking of pictures surreptitiously. Upskirts so serious is this problem that the government printed posters of a woman on an escalator with a man behind her taking a low photo. The caption said, please cover your skirt. This generated a row. Women said the poster placed the blame on them. It implied that if only they didn't wear short skirts, the sexual aggression which such an unwanted photograph is wouldn't happen. The Ministry of Administration conceded the point, saying it had only intended to make people aware that it's illegal to take upskirt pictures. But the accompanying text was unwisely chosen. Accordingly, the wording was changed so the caption read bluntly, no pictures allowed. There was, incidentally, a mini storm when men told newspapers about the humiliation of having women in front of them on the escalator cover their legs. They complained that they were being treated like perverts when they were in fact, innocent. Women have set up groups to campaign against sexual harassment in public. The Ministry of Gender Equality, as its name implies, promotes equality, though last year the Ministry of Labour suggested that job seekers, presumably female ones, might consider plastic surgery to improve their chances. The Ministry then backtracked furiously, saying an intern had written the advice. The Ministry had also advised women to keep quiet about boyfriends or thoughts of children if they wanted to get a job. Things are changing, particularly as more women, from the president down, have careers. Recent figures indicated that the proportion of women in their 20s who work is now slightly higher than the proportion of working men in their 20s. But as women increasingly expect equality, old male attitudes linger and Korean marketers do think sex sells. Some members of Korean girl bands, for example, are only in their early teens, but they exude sexuality in their clothes and gestures on stage. People who complain are accused of prudery. Men are told that they must be perverted to have noticed. I went to a tech show here the other day, full of gizmos and geeks and, I think, pervs. I watched a seedy looking man who, frankly, needed a good wash, going around with his camera, taking pictures of the leggy women in tight skirts and blouses whom companies here feel they need just in order to sell a gadget. This particular seedy man was so intrusive, getting one powerless woman to turn her profile for his camera, that I felt I ought to intervene to protect this helpless employee. In the end, I did nothing. Not a word. Shame on me. Prosperity is changing expectations. But some men still expect women to be adornments. They resent their aspiration. When I first flew on Korean Air, I was amazed to hear a pre flight announcement warning that sexual harassment of cabin attendants was contrary to aviation law. It was an attempt to protect the glamorous female staff from the octopus hands of businessmen. If they have to be told, there is, I think, some way to go.
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Stephen Evans now extra careful about what he types into his computer. It's time to bring a full stop to this edition. We'll be back with more from our own correspondence next Saturday. Do join us. Goodbye.