← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Oct 27, 2011
00:27:55
A dystopian vision of Venice - Rachel Harvey's words as she watches the flood waters...
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Hello, this is from our own correspondent,
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a download from the BBC.
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For a sneak preview of our program, you can join our feed on Twitter and there's a daily airing of from our own correspondent on the BBC World Service.
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But now the latest edition as broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today it was a vote which they all won. After 40 years of waiting, the Tunisians pull off a remarkable election. They there's growing alarm in Bangkok as floodwaters advance on the city centre. Controversy in Malaysia over a proposal to extend Islamic law relief in Mafeking as a concert audience dances in the aisles and orchards laden with apricots on a boat trip down Ukraine's Dniester river. The victors in the Arab Spring's first free election in Tunisia say they've started coalition talks and aim to form a new government within a month. The moderate Islamic party Enakhta says it will model itself on the ruling AK Party in Turkey, another country with a Muslim majority but like Tunisia, currently a secular state. Alan Little, who was there for the historic poll, says that while some Tunisians have been disappointed that an Islamic party emerged the winner, there's hope that a genuine multi party secular democracy will emerge.
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It was the courtyard of a secondary school in central Tunis and the sun was pounding down by 10am the queue snaked one way, then doubled back and then twisted again, filling the space with patient, cheerful people. I've been standing here in the sun for three hours, one man said. We are suffering here, but you know, it's a beautiful kind of suffering. How long have you been waiting to vote? I asked. The answer was irresistible. Forty years, someone said. Who do you think will win the election? I asked another voter. Sir, he said, we will all win. We are voting freely for the first time. It means we've already won. There was a generosity to the day, too. People who'd waited hours happily stepped aside to allow the elderly to jump the queue, even though this slowed everyone else down. But when a prominent party leader tried to do the same thing, Tunisians flexed their newly acquired democratic muscle. Rashid Ranushi, the leader of the moderate Islamist party En Nakhda, turned up at his polling station, surrounded by television crews, and made straight for the door. Hey. Someone shouted. Where do you think you're going? Can't you see there's a queue? Soon the rest of those waiting joined in, chastened. The modest Mr. Ranousi took his place in line and waited like everyone else. There aren't many days in a life spent chasing news that are as unremittingly positive as this, that remind you that the right to vote is held most precious by those who have long been denied it and who are exercising it for the first time. There was something pleasingly fresh about the campaign, too. There were no spin doctors, no rebuttal units, no focus groups, no electoral machines to harvest votes. The glib and oily arts of the more mature democracies have yet to take root here. It was politics on the pavement. Tunisians rejoicing in the right to disagree in public, to press a leaflet into the hands of a neighbour in a shopping centre, to post a flyer on a billboard. Ten months ago, Tunisians would have been jailed for doing any one of these things. And yet more than a hundred registered parties emerged to contest the election. Crucially for the Arab world, none of them is backed by an armed militia. The campaign really has been about argument, about competing visions of the country's future. And the conservative vision prevailed. Mr. Anushi, who was sent to the back of the queue by his neighbors, emerges as the most powerful man in the country. Why have Tunisians chosen the Islamists? I sat in a cafe in a working class neighborhood where unemployment is high and disillusion and disgust with the old dictatorship is deepest. Ask people here why they voted En Nakhda and they don't talk about religion. They talk about honesty in public life, about the need for a government that won't steal from the people. This is the reputation that En Nakhta brought to the electoral table. They won not because people want an Islamic state, but because people think they represent the best chance of a clean break with the corruption and venality of the old regime. In the smarter, wealthier, less socially conservative neighborhoods where almost no one wears the Islamic headscarf, young people hang out in pavement cafes, in streets that could easily pass for suburbs of Nice or Marseille. Here there is unease, but not widespread alarm. No one expects that women will suddenly be required to cover themselves up or forced from the workplace. In fact, gender equality in the workplace, including equal pay for equal work, is one of the policies of the Islamist party. Are you afraid of an Islamic dictatorship emerging here? I asked the leader of one secular, extremely liberal party. No, he said. Don't think of Tunisia as a battle between Islam and democracy. Think of it as a battle within a democracy, between two competing visions for our future. One conservative rooted in religious observance, the other progressive, modern and forward looking. Tunisia has a strong, educated, self confident middle class that, it's now clear, has a very developed understanding of the dynamics of democratic life. This country is in the cockpit of something new in the world. A real indigenously rooted Arab democracy. Tunisians toppled their dictatorship. Tunisians pulled off this remarkable election. Tunisians own their own revolution. They have embarked on a future of their own choosing. Yes, these are early days. Yes, a lot can still go wrong. But right here, right now, this feels like a moment of real consequence and great promise.
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And that's Alan Little. The Thai Prime Minister, Yingluk Shinawat has warned that all parts of the capital Bangkok are now threatened by flooding. In a televised address, she said that the inner city could no longer be guaranteed protection from the rising waters. The government has declared a five day holiday so residents can move their belongings to higher ground. More than 360 people have been killed and more than 100,000 have been forced to leave their homes. These are Thailand's worst floods in decades. Rachel Harvey's monitoring developments in Bangkok.
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Most natural disasters seem to happen in an instant. Earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones strike with terrifying speed. But Thailand's floods have been a slow motion tragedy. This year's monsoon rains have been heavier than usual, exacerbated by a series of powerful storms. The north of the country was first to suffer back in September. A few weeks later, the central provinces felt the full force of the floods. Huge tracts of land disappeared underwater. Farms and factories, businesses and Buddhist temples, homes and highways, all submerged under the muddy deluge. Slowly but steadily, the number of lives lost has risen. Slowly but steadily, the volume of water has grown. Seasonal flooding has gradually developed into a national crisis. Wira Villamart didn't believe his house would be hit, not at first anyway. Weera, a softly spoken man with kind, gentle eyes, lives in the district of Rangsit, just outside Bangkok's city limits. He'd heard the news reports, of course. He knew that areas to the north had been badly affected. But surely he thought the water wouldn't come this far. But the floods kept getting closer until Weera and his family realised, as he put it, ok, this is really going to happen. They spent a night trying to hold the water back, pumping and bailing. But it was a losing battle. They had to get out. When I met Wera, he was in the back of an army truck trying to make his way back through the flood waters to the family home. We had to leave our five dogs behind, he told me. So I tried to go back every two days to feed them and check on our belongings. We moved everything to the second floor, but the water inside is already up to my shoulders. The truck could only take him so far. I watched him wade off, an inflatable inner tube under his arm down what used to be a major road. Now it was a dirty torrent with a strong undertow. Parts of Thailand now resemble a dystopian vision of Venice. Boats and canoes ferry people and pets along inundated residential streets. Children float on sheets of polystyrene. Infants are towed behind their parents in buckets. Jet skis are no longer simply toys for use in Thailand's myriad southern beach resorts. They're valued forms of rapid transit around flood hit areas. I've even seen a couple of surfboards and a bright yellow excavator making its way along a swamped highway with about six adults crammed into the forked front digger. The vast volume of water is bearing down on more districts of Bangkok every day. At first the government said the nation's capital would be protected. The flood water would be diverted to the east and west. Then it acknowledged the plan wasn't working quickly enough. The order was given to open the sluice gates and allow the water to flow along Bangkok's network of canals and out to sea. But it's proving difficult to control the volume. Northern suburbs are already swamped. Each day brings new warnings and new rumours. There have been apparent tensions between the central government and the Bangkok city governor. Ministers have contradicted each other on more than one occasion. Sudarat Padung Wichitai isn't taking any chances anymore. She lives in Don Muang, the same northern suburb which is home to Bangkok's second airport. The airport is being used as the flood relief operations centre. It's not far from Sudarat's home. But she no longer believes, as she once did, that proximity to a strategically important facility will guarantee her protection. With good reason. Water has appeared at the end of her street, a glistening pool creeping ever closer. I've lived here for more than 40 years, she told me, but I've never seen anything like this before. It's really scary. Suddenrat was having a concrete wall built around her corner shop home. She was clearly, demonstrably nervous, jumping in and out of the house over the drying cement of her new flood barrier and accosting passing neighbors who might have fresh news. The water will definitely come here now, she told me, her brow furrowed under her peaked cap. Do you trust the information you're getting from the authorities? I asked her. No, no, not any more, she said, shaking her head so hard I thought her hat might fly off. Then she smiled wryly. Our village head kept telling us everything would be fine. We were in no danger at all, she said. Now he has a boat in his yard. Clearly that was a message Sudarat understood all too well.
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Rachel Harvey in Thailand A debate's underway in Malaysia on whether the current system of law should be altered so that more cases are dealt with under an Islamic legal code. One state in particular, traditionally conservative Kelantan, has set up a committee to examine the practicalities involved in changing over. It's being argued that this is what citizens want in a state where the majority of the population is Muslim. Those behind the proposed rule change say it won't affect people of other faiths, But Jennifer Pack in Kuala Lumpur has been finding out that non Muslims are
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not convinced There are two Malaysias, one for the Muslim majority, the other for Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and non Muslims. For example, Malays do not have the freedom to choose their religion. It's written in the Constitution that all ethnic Malays must by definition be Muslim. At the same time, other ethnic groups are allowed to worship freely. Political leaders would have you believe that these two Malaysias barely interact and and therefore do not conflict. It's true in some cases, but not in others. Take my gay friend for example. On a few occasions I have invited him to my place to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon cooking and watching some bad reality TV shows. What I didn't realize was that my innocent invitations could get him arrested. You see, he is a Malay and as a Muslim he is subject to Islamic law, which does not allow couples who are not married to each other to be in a secluded area together. That way nothing immoral can happen and the offense of so called close proximity is avoided. My friend is constantly worried that the security guards at my apartment block would call the Islamic police on him. The fact that he is gay would not absolve him since homosexuality is also a crime in Islam. I, on the other hand, would not be arrested because I'm a Christian and Islamic law doesn't apply to non Muslims. We are only subject to Malaysian civil law. So whenever the topic of Islamic law comes up, religious officials working for local and national government are always quick to point out that non Muslims would not be affected by it. In any case, this is the argument that the opposition Pan Malaysian Islamic Party, or pas, has used to call for the expansion of Islamic law in recent weeks. At the moment, if you're a Muslim, all issues regarding family and faith are dealt with in Islamic courts, but PAZ officials say they want Islamic law to cover criminal offenses as well. The punishments they want would include, among other things, cutting off the hands of thieves and stoning adulterers to death. The party insists the move would not affect non Muslims. That promise, however, is no longer reassuring for Malaysia's religious minorities. Some feel Islamic law is already encroaching on their rights. It's a problem that Tan Shuhong, a Buddhist, never thought he would run up against. He and his wife had married according to civil law. They later separated and he took care of their daughter. This arrangement carried on for a few years until his estranged wife showed up last November at their child's school with Islamic officials and police in Tower. His wife had become a Muslim and obtained an Islamic court order to take their daughter back. The next day. She had the child declared a Muslim as well and was granted full guardianship of their daughter under Islamic law. Mr. Tan says all of this was done behind his back. He has accused his wife of converting to Islam so that she would gain custody of their child. Some say they suspect the Islamic court would automatically favor any Muslim parent. Mr. Tan is now fighting the decision through the civil law system. His wife has refused to comment, but her lawyers say that as a Muslim, she had every right to go to the Islamic court. Mr. Tan's story is not unique. There are dozens of similar cases where disgruntled spouses are believed to be exploiting the country's dual court systems in the face of rising Islamization. Legal scholars say politicians and judges here are unwilling to resolve the issue for fear they will be seen as anti Islam. And the issue of justice might become even more complex if the proposed Islamic criminal code were introduced. Zaina Anwar, a prominent Muslim rights activist, poses this scenario in a recent newspaper column. Suppose a Malay and Chinese were both caught stealing. The Malay Muslim might get his hands chopped off, while his Chinese accomplice might only be locked up for a few months in jail for the same crime. Only one person will be permanently disabled because of their religion. It may seem idle to debate Islamic criminal law in Malaysia. There are still many legal hurdles to overcome before it can be enforced. Yet this time around, non Muslims are alarmed. This may be a country that prides itself on its multi religious and multi ethnic harmony. But what happens in Muslim Malaysia isn't always confined to the followers of Islam, and non Muslims are feeling exposed.
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Jennifer Pack in Kuala Lumpur. Now, we British like to remember our military victories. And the relief of Mafeking back in the earliest days of the 20th century was certainly a decisive one. It was the most famous British action in the second Boer War, and it made Robert Baden Powell a national hero. He was in charge as British forces, bolstered by local men and boys, held out in the town for 217 days against a vastly superior force of Boers. Three Victoria Crosses were awarded as a result of acts of heroism during the siege. Today, an obelisk celebrating the action still stands in the town. Gareth Armstrong's just been there and says it's a peaceful place now, more interested in the arts than its position in British history.
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Oh, the relief of Mafeking. After a month in Johannesburg, which no one would claim to be a relaxed city, I'm in the capital of South Africa's North West Province. It's warm but not humid. It's calm without being dull. And its multiracial population, to my visitors eyes at least, seems to live together in some harmony. Before I arrived here early this month, I knew so little about it that I thought Mafeking was in the neighbouring country of Botswana. My confusion is partly excusable because for a while Mafeking was indeed the administrative capital of Botswana when under British rule it was known as the Protectorate of Bechuanaland. All I really knew was that the name was associated with one of the world's most famous sieges during the Boer War, and that Robert Baden Powell, who was in charge of British troops during that siege, formed a boy cadet corps which of course spawned the Scout movement. The city's more modern history was unknown to me and I have my hosts in Mafeking to thank for filling in the gaps. Alf and Salome Lewin have lived here for more than a decade. Salome was born in Cape Town, Alf in the Isle of Man. They met during the era of apartheid and because Salome is mixed race, a so called Cape Coloured and Alf is white, they had to leave her hometown and in order to get married and had to travel to the nearby independent kingdom of Lesotho. We certainly didn't want to go and live in the Isle of Man after our marriage, Alf told me, and we couldn't live in South Africa, so we came here. He could see the confusion on my face. Oh, Mafeking wasn't in South Africa then. This was Bopota Tswana. Part of the apartheid policy of separate development in the early 1970s was was to deprive black people of their citizenship by establishing homelands within South Africa where they and their families were officially domiciled but had to travel to the urban industrial centres to work. The government appointed leader of Boputatswana, President Mangope, struck a deal with South Africa so that the white population of the territory was allowed to stay and still keep their South African citizenship, the multiracial nature of Mafeking was retained whilst the rest of the country stayed forcibly segregated. Mangope also took advantage of the vast subsidies the South African government gave to prop up the homelands. He was an enthusiastic lover of the arts and unlike some of the other homelands who built casinos, he spent much of his budget on art centres and establishing training courses for musicians and performers. That meant I could not just live here with Alf legally, but I could even pursue my work as a music teacher, Salome Lewin told me. And though Mafeking is now part of the post apartheid Republic of South Africa and the subsidies are not so generous, she belongs to a thriving music scene here in the city. A few evenings ago we went to a school recital in one of the area's impressive concert halls. My expectations weren't very high, but the event turned out to be a joyous mix of modern and traditional songs and and some wonderfully irreverent arrangements of classics. I never thought Pachelbel's Canon, complete with raunchy percussion, could get a whole audience dancing in the aisles. On the start of the four hour drive here from Johannesburg, my head had been filled with the troubles and contradictions of that vast city. I'd spent weeks living behind barbed wire in a wealthy white suburb and listening to its inhabitants express their fears for the future. Government corruption, a climate of violence, the emergence of a militant and racist wing of the ruling ANC party. Adding to their woes, I'd also seen the shanty towns and the alarming inequalities and lack of opportunity for black people. As Alf, who had offered to take me to Mafeking, drove out of Johannesburg, I remembered to check that my car door was locked when we pulled up at traffic lights. Alf is the least citified person imaginable, and much of his working life as a geological engineer is spent in wildernesses. We both visibly relaxed as we left the urban sprawl behind and entered the Bushveld. At this time of the year, one of the most beautiful sights in South Africa is the jacaranda trees in full purple flower. I asked Alf to pull over so that I could take a photo of some particularly beautiful trees. Funny thing is, said Alfred, there's a move to get rid of jacaranda trees. You see, they're not indigenous to South Africa. So much else of what I was to see and admire in Mafeking was not indigenous either. And how much poorer would this country be without its jacaranda trees or Without Alf and Salome Lewin, Gareth Armstrong.
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Now, water doesn't only cause the sort of problems the people of Thailand are having to cope with. The scarcity of it in particular causes strife among nations all around the world. World many are in Africa, but there are problems elsewhere too. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers cause friction between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territory squabble over water from the Jordan river and the Aral Sea in Central Asia causes ill will among a whole string of states whose names all end in Stan. Alex Kirby, who's been training regional journalists in Ukraine, says that when something as finite and as crucial as water has to be shared, there are always losers.
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Probably the catering on the outward journey to Kiev should have warned me that this might be an unusual trip. Ukraine airlines provided a lunch which they claimed was a sandwich. The blurb on the envelope which enclosed it said, thanks to the perfect recipe, our sandwiches will have no negative effects on your body. That's a proud boast, I thought as I took a bite. The texture was like deep fried cardboard, but the taste was literally indescribable because there wasn't any, not the merest trace of a discernible flavour of anything at all. So the advertising was probably right and we did escape unscathed. The training week involved our group travelling down the River Dniester on inflatables and camping out at night to see at first hand the problems which can be encountered when different countries with different needs have to share a river. The Dniester rises in western Ukraine and flows down close to the Carpathians and the Romanian border to empty into the Black Sea. This part of Ukraine is a bucolic contrast to the heavy industry and coal mining of the East. Instead of slag heaps, there is the open grassy plain, broken up by immense fields of sunflowers stretching almost to the horizon, with small, neat villages and orchards laden with apples and apricots. On its way south, the Dniester traverses Moldova, so deciding its fate involves both Kiev and Chisinau. But politics apart, the river itself is captivating. Long sylvan reaches between forests and meadows where horse drawn carts bring in the hay, harvest grandmothers on the banks, and keeping a close eye on flocks of ducks and geese and a profusion of wild birds, including white storks quartering the ground in search of food and several sorts of heron. We even glimpsed a rare solitary black stork patrolling the shoreline. If the wildlife is memorable, that goes for many of the people as well. Two amiable Ukrainians appeared one day on an elderly motorbike and sidecar that free wheeled silently downhill to our camp. One sat down and rapidly downed several very large vodkas. Then came the question I'd been dreading. Would you like a ride in my sidecar? Half an hour later we returned, me bleeding liberally from a flesh wound sustained when we plunged off the road and through a bramble thicket. One evening, I was talking to members of the team who looked after the boats, cooked the meals and did everything else that was beyond the ability of the journalists. One said he'd spent six months in London studying veterinary science. What did you manage to pick up in that time? I asked. His companion replied gravely. He learnt castration. We ended the river trip at a hydroelectric plant, which Ukraine is busily expanding close to the Moldovan border. Ukraine badly needs the extra power the station will produce. Most of its thermal plants are already at the end of their useful lives, and nuclear power is designed to last another 20 years at the most. But if Ukraine dams more of the water in the Dniester's upper reaches, there will be less for downstream Moldova, which depends largely on agriculture and wants every drop it can get. In 2007, its obsolete irrigation system collapsed and it lost at least 60% of its harvest. 90%, some say. As one Ukrainian put it. To the Moldovans, the Dniester compels cooperation. It's crucial. To us, it's just another big river. And at the point where the Dniester trickles through the delta into the Black Sea, there is an important wildlife area. It's a staging post for migrating birds flying between Siberia and Africa, like the glossy ibis and the spoonbill. One naturalist told me how before the building of the hydroplant dam, he used to see 1500 pairs of ibis at a time. This year, he saw none. If you have to keep the lights on and the hospitals running, then nature will lose every time. And if you're a Ukrainian policy maker, then Moldova's needs are likely always to come a poor second. Yet hydropower sound so wonderfully green and clean, the perfect answer to a carbon guilty world. I think it probably proves Kirby's first law of the environment. Each time you find a solution, you've created another problem. Go and see the stalks while you can.
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And with that tip from Alex Kirby, boating on the Dniester in Ukraine, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again on Saturday morning with more from correspondents far and wide. Until then, goodbye.