← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Oct 28 2010
00:28:22
Extra police have been drafted in to the Swedish city of Malmo -- Tim Mansel, who's a...
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You are listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the
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program broadcast on the BBC World Service and presented by Alan Johnston by going to the from our own correspondent website or indeed to that of the BBC World Service. But here's the edition which goes out on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady Today, fear
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in a Swedish city where police are hunting a sniper who may have immigrants in his sights. Resignation and sadness among Chinese farmers who are losing their homes beneath rising river waters. It's election time in Ivory Coast. Big crowds in every town, but we discover always the same faces and why so many of France's upcoming rock groups reckon it sounds a whole lot better in English. Police in the southern Swedish port city of Malmo are investigating a string of shootings which may they think be racially motivated. There have been at least a dozen incidents in the last few months, although so far only one person has been killed. A police spokesman has denounced as a hoax a widely circulated text message purportedly sent by the police, which talked of a murderer loose on the streets and advised people to stay inside for their own protection. But Tim Mansell, who is in Malmo, says people are scared and the shootings have revived some uncomfortable memories.
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I was mildly nervous as I approached. The little corner shop that serves as both a tailor's and a barber's TV cruise had been in and out for the last two days. It had been splashed over all the papers and I was worried that the man who ran it might just have had enough of inquisitive journalists. How wrong I was. Nasser Yazdanpana couldn't have been more pleased to see me. Short and thick, set a tape measure round his neck and a smile on his face. Within two minutes, he told me his life story. 38 years in Sweden. After leaving Iran as a young man, he'd converted from Islam to the Baha' I religion and it wasn't safe to stay there. He hadn't seen his brothers since, he told me with a tear in his eye, he didn't even know if they were still alive. Nasser Yazdanpana has become something of a local hero in Malmo. The bouquets of flowers in the shop from his many well wishers bear witness to this. A hero because NASA fought back. Last Saturday evening, he was ironing a pair of trousers at the back of the shop when he heard a sharp crack outside the window. Thinking someone had thrown a stone, he ran out to find out what was going on and almost bumped into a man Outside, he showed me how he grabbed him by the shoulders and and demanded to know what was going on. The man responded with a headbutt that broke one of NASA's front teeth and he disappeared into the night. Later, the police removed a bullet from the windowsill. Crucial evidence. Perhaps NASA was able to give them more a physical description of the man he confronted. Orange top, dark trousers, a cap and three days of stubble. And possibly even some of his DNA. The police decided to go public a week ago after what they say was an escalation in the number of shooting incidents in malmo. They're investigating 19 at the moment, one of which happened nearly a year ago. So far, there's been only one death, but eight people have been wounded. We all try to get home before it's dark. One man outside a mosque tells me the police have called him back up from Stockholm, including an expert on psychological profiling. He brings with him echoes of the past. In the early 1990s, a man armed with a rifle stalked the streets of the Swedish capital in search of people who looked like immigrants. The rifle was equipped with a laser sight and several of his victims reported seeing a red spot of light on their clothing just before they were hit. I remember talking to one of them at the time, a man born in Chile. Shot at point blank range through his cheek and neck. His survival seemed nothing short of miraculous. The laser man, as he came to be known, was caught and is now serving a life sentence. In a series of interviews from his prison cell, he later claimed to have been inspired by a newly formed populist right wing party that was briefly elected to Parliament on a platform that demonised Sweden's relatively generous immigration policies. Fast forward to 2010, and only a month ago, another party of the right with similar views on immigration and apocalyptic visions of a Muslim takeover of Europe found itself similarly elected to the Swedish Parliament. It did especially well in Malmo. Walk the streets here for a few minutes and you won't be surprised to learn that almost half the people who live in the city have an immigrant background. I'm told 140 languages are spoken here. And the city's most famous son currently is probably the Swedish international footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, whose parents are from the Balkans. So the question now on everyone's lips is whether the man or men currently terrorizing Malmo also feels inspired by some fantasy that he has political approval for what he's doing. I should perhaps point out that the newly elected party is offering a reward for information leading to an arrest. And clearly the question can't be answered until there is an arrest. But the idea is in people's heads and everyone's afraid. Well, not everyone. Not Nasser yazdanpanna, who works 13 hours a day altering trousers and cutting hair and only taking two days off a year, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. If we all say we're afraid, then they win, he says. We've got to carry on fighting. And though I've known him for less than half an hour, he gives me a big hug as I leave.
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Tim Mansell in Sweden. They've been celebrating at China's Three Gorges Dam this week. The water in its huge reservoir has finally reached its target height, and the world's largest hydroelectric project can now operate on full power. The government in Beijing says the development is the most effective way of ending centuries of flooding along the Yangtze River. But the years of construction work have had a major environmental impact and caused the displacement of 2 million people. Now the Chinese authorities are building further dams they hope will provide the energy the country seeks to power its economic boom again. It will mean people being forced to leave their homes. Peter Day's been to meet some of them.
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I was sitting under a sweet tomato tree in a tiny hamlet in the province of Hubei in the middle of China, 500 miles due west of Shanghai. I was eating the squishy bright orange sweet tomato flesh on a comfortable low back leaning chair dragged out for my benefit by the welcoming farmer's wife, let's call her Mrs. Peng. In some ways it was idyllic. It reminded me of the self sufficient little farms along the River Dordogne in France, which 50 or 60 years ago, when they lived on what they grew before they discovered tourism and the money economy. Down below the bottom of a tiny valley was a fish pond with ducks. Little terraces with harvested rice ran into it. There were one or two goats, a bit of maize, a pig in a lean to sty, lots of chickens. Dogs barked erratically when we raised our voices. Chinese country people are always friendly. But Mrs. Peng and her neighbors were also alarmed, so they raised their voices. This had been a family farm for at least 80 years, she told me, but not for much longer. A few hundred yards away loomed a huge dam which would create a vast new reservoir right where we were sitting. The water level would eventually top the sweet tomato tree. The farm, the house, the pond, the little terraces all would be drowned by the latest of the huge engineering projects that have been changing the face of China over the past decades. It's only a few years since they finished the mighty Three Gorges Dam that now blocks the river Yangtze not so far from here, forming a new lake 400 miles long behind it, which has displaced 2 million people from their farms and villages so that millions of townees can benefit from the electricity generated by the massive project. Now the Chinese authorities have embarked on another great plan to re engineer the country. And again it's the Yangtze and the rivers that flow into it that are being worked on. It's now almost 60 years since chairman Mao Zedong, on a visit to the parched lands along the Yellow river, first put forward the audacious idea of transferring some of the Yangtze's abundant water nearly a thousand miles north. The project finally started in 2002, just when they were beginning to fill up the new lake behind that Three Gorges Dam. The new south to north water diversion project is still in its early stages. It may take another 40 or 50 years to complete. Much of China is dry, dry country. And this is another version of the story of China modernizing, an attempt to assuage the thirst of the ever growing cities of the north, swelled by the ceaseless migration of country people to the cities in search of work. This is not a perpetual motion machine, this growth engine. But for the past 30 years it has seemed like it. And that is what the Chinese planners are still attempting to continue. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of farmers and families in the valleys close to what will be a big holding reservoir for southern water before it's taken north. They're being moved into new settlements. The Pengs do not want to move, not out of sentimentality, but because they say the compensation is too low to rebuild what they have and the new land they'll be offered is less productive than the little farm that will be drowned. I had a generous lunch with another family in the newly constructed village of Shuiyuan, very close to the big reservoir. The Dongs, another made up name, say their new home cost them the equivalent of £10,000 to build. In compensation for their old home nearby, they were given £1,000. The Dongs can still see their old orange trees, all that remains of the now demolished property pushed aside by the reservoir bank. These people are not really angry, but they feel badly treated. We're one family. China is a bigger family, they say, philosophically talking about the benefits the water will bring to the north of the country. But they fear that much of the compensation money they should be getting has been misdirected to benefit local officials and party members. Some of the villagers went all the way to Beijing to protest to the south north diversion project officials, and they were told they were troublemakers. Back home, the families in their new village get used to their new lives in new, larger but more costly homes. And under the sweet tomato tree, the Pengs wait for an order to move out and abandon the little valley farm that's been the family home for at least a generation.
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Peter Day in China Presidential elections in Ivory coast are due to take place this weekend. Five years late, and after six postponements, they're being hailed as the first open elections held in this West African state. Previous polls were marked by the exclusion of major candidates, boycotts and violence. They are also being seen as crucial in ending the crisis that split the nation in two after a failed coup d' etat in 2002. Ahead of the vote, our correspondent in Ivory Coast, John James, packed his bag and set off to gauge moods around the country.
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Few things better illustrate the fate of former African presidents than the road that leads to Dauchro, hometown of former Ivarian president Henri Conan Bedier. Just over a decade ago, this sealed road ferried vast convoys of 4x4s to the bush town that had suddenly hit the jackpot. Nothing quite brings development to an African town as quickly as having a son of the soil become president. But now the jungle is quickly reclaiming the ground it so briefly surrendered. Thick creepers cover half the carriageway, while deep potholes reduce speeds on the rest of the road to a minimum. In Ivory coast, when you're president, you're president for life. Sometimes, as in the case of the country's founding father, Felix Hufoudbane, you stay in office until the grave, 33 years after independence. In the case of others, you at least keep the title. And so you're constantly meeting presidents, prime ministers, and ministers who at one time or other in the distant past held office and require that you continue to address them appropriately. In the case of President Bedier, though, the injustice he felt at losing the presidential throne in the 1999 coup d' etat seems to remain raw more than 10 years on, his entourage call him president. He believes he should be president, and at 76, he's the oldest candidate in this weekend's presidential race. Bedier is one of the main contenders in this Halloween day election. Aptly enough, for the country has been haunted by three political giants since the death of Vuvudwanye in 1993. Ivory coast is preparing for a battle royal with Bedier against the man on the street populism of current President Laurent Gbagbo and the number crunching ex International Monetary Fund economist Alassan Ouattara. It's early morning in Daukro, but almost everyone I speak to has already been at the palm wine. The party atmosphere is prompted by the official start of election campaigning. Posters cover the town, while loud music invites listeners to political rallies where supporters dance and presidential candidates promise their promises of an El Dorado of peace and prosperity. Not so different from anywhere else, you might say, but here the feeling is that paradise has come and gone. The rapid prosperity of Ivory Coast's first two decades created expectations that have melted into frustration as the West African economic miracle started looking more like a mirage. In the town of Kurogo, in the far north, we get caught in a heavy downpour and take shelter in the courtyard of the Bamba family. Grandfather says prayers over a reluctant sheep held fast by an uncle before its sacrifice. Women rescue the washing from the line and move the charcoal braziers to the shelter of a couple of mango trees. Basenji, the wife of the uncle, stirs a groundnut sauce. It's source rdr, she says, laughing. Everyone in the courtyard says they'll be voting for the candidate of the RDR party, Alison Ouattara, the first Muslim and northerner to be allowed to stand in Ivory Coast's presidential elections. The distinction between the regions, particularly the north and south, is clear. During our four day trip, the cocoa, coffee and palm trees of the southern forest zone give way to cotton and cashew nuts. In the north, with its villages of cylindrical red mud huts capped by thatch hats, the presidential elections inspire more fear than hope here. For the last eight years, the north has been a rebel zone. The new forces rebels stated aims are now largely met. Citizenship papers confirming the Ivarian nationality of those in the north have been handed out, and Alison Watara's candidacy has been allowed. He'd been excluded from the previous two elections. This is still a much poorer country than it used to be, yet the leading candidates dart about the country in private planes and helicopters. The television runs advertisements telling citizens not to sell their votes. But all the leading parties hand out cash envelopes. Elections are a brief respite from the country's high unemployment. Tens of thousands of young people have found jobs working for the campaign teams, the electoral commission, or simply turning up at political rallies. The joke is that when some candidates travel their rent, a crowd travels with them. Big crowds in every town, but always the same faces. We finish our trip in the south west and the hometown of current president Gbagbo and Incidentally, footballer Didier Drogba. It's perhaps only at election time that Drogba is replaced as the dominant figure on the nation's billboards and T shirts by the country's politicians. In Ghanua, half the population appears to have a Gbagbo T shirt, and the main stadium is full seven hours before President Gbagbo arrives. For some, it's the loud music and dancing. For others, the prospect of seeing their favorite candidate elected. But when the winner is announced after one or two rounds, there will be two big losers. It is then that the behavior of these same crowds and the politicians that lead them will determine the future stability of the country.
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John James, back now at his base in the Ivorian city of Abidjan. The Louisiana State Penitentiary was once such a violent place, it was known as the bloodiest prison in the South. Today, it's still no holiday camp, but there has been some improvement in conditions there. Rather bizarrely, though, it's become famous for its rodeos, where prisoners pit themselves against beasts in a gladiatorial style contest reminiscent of ancient Rome. And Andy Gallagher has been to the jail known locally as Angola to talk to some of those taking part.
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The penitentiary stadium is packed by the time I arrive, and 10,000 pairs of eyes are focused on four men sitting at a small plastic table in the middle of the dusty rodeo ring. Each man holds what looks like a hand of playing cards, and there is an air of tension. Then a very angry, very powerful bull is released into the ring and corralled towards the group. Under the rules of this event, if any of the men even flinches, he's eliminated. Two of them have their backs to the beast as it stands and stares at them. Then the bull, an angry hunk of pure muscle and longhorns, charges headlong at the table, sending the men flying in all directions. This, I'm told by an excited man in a cowboy hat, is what they call convict poker. This prison has been staging a rodeo for almost 50 years. But those taking part aren't trained cowboys and cowgirls. They're some of Louisiana's most dangerous criminals, many locked up for life. And in this state, that means most will probably die here. Angola has its own cemetery, but every year in October, the prison opens up its doors at weekends to hold the rodeo. The grounds, closely watched over by guards wearing mirrored sunglasses, are filled with stalls selling leather handbags, rocking chairs and cribs, all made by the prisoners. But it's the rodeo that attracts the crowds and the events like convict poker that are Talked about. Long after the autumn has passed and the inmates have gone back to their daily grind, the prison guards take me through a couple of gates to the pen where the inmates are gathered. They're all dressed in distinctive black and white striped uniforms, but one of them, a convicted killer called James Benefield, stands out. He sports a shiny belt buckle showing that he won last year's convict poker tournament, a distinction he's clearly proud of. As he stands, legs akimbo, thumbs hooked into his belt on either side of the shiny trophy, Mr. Benefield, a skinny man with a deep southern drawl, insists that this extraordinary event is fun, even an adrenaline rush. You just gotta hope you don't get hurt, he tells me later. I see someone get badly hurt during another event where various men stand around the arena, each of them, bizarrely enough, inside a plastic hula hoop. Once again, a bull is released before the roaring crowd. Each of the men is supposed to stay inside his hoop no matter what, but one inmate is hit from the front. He flies into the air long enough for the crowd to let out a collective gasp. And he lands badly. As he rolls over, away from the bull, you can see one of his legs is broken. His left foot, horribly, is facing the wrong way. As soon as the dust clears, a crew of medics, or perhaps other prisoners, it's hard to tell, runs into the ring and drags the man roughly away. He's taken to a waiting ambulance. Surprisingly, perhaps, there are religious overtones to this spectacle. The rodeo started with a handful of men and women in galloping through the ring with flags flying in the breeze. One read lord of Lords. One of the horsewomen was dressed as an angel, complete with halo and wings. While the announcer held forth about Judgment Day over the tannoy. The finale of the rodeo is an event called Guts and Glory, and for this, every one of the convicts shuffles into the ring. A small coin like token is hung between a bull's horns, resting on its massive bony forehead. The man who can get hold of the token wins $500, a small fortune in Angola. The ball, when it is released, doesn't know which way to turn with so many potential targets in its sight. But as it launches itself towards a group of prisoners, one man remains glued to the spot. The ball hits him, and he gracefully rolls over the animal's head and into a ball between its hooves. Seconds later, he's back on his feet, clutching the token, triumphant and still in one piece. None of the prisoners is forced to take part in the rodeo, and most see it as a reward, a chance to spend time with their families and mix with people from the outside. But there are many who believe it simply exploits men who haven't got much else to live for. I can understand and even sympathise with that view. Yet even so, I realized that I thoroughly enjoyed the entire day's events, guts, glory and all.
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Andy Gallagher in Louisiana the English speaking world's always had a rather precious attitude towards rock music. Sure, it seems to conclude you don't have to sing in English, but if you don't, well, it'll sound a bit funny. In France, of course, language is always a live issue. There's been a string of government initiatives to try to ensure that its purity is not contaminated. But can rock really work in French? Most French people would undoubtedly answer yes and cite the work of innumerable homegrown rock bands in evidence. So why, Hugh Schofield's been wondering, are so many up and coming rock groups choosing now to sing in English?
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If you're at all interested in things French and want to have a bit of a laugh, may I recommend a website called Pardon My French? It's a kind of musical forum where amateur French performers send in French versions of of well known English and American rock songs. It's all in the spirit of high spoof, so the interpretations are comically deadpan. You can hear Le Magicien du Flipper by Le Qui, for example, and Je suis le Morce by Les Scarabet, that's the who's Pinball wizard and I Am the Walrus by the Beatles. There are songs by Les Garcons de la Ni Mallerie, the Pet Shop Boys, Les Pierre Roulant, the Rolling Stones and Les Forgerons the Smiths. And this from Le Roi. Eh bien, c' est un pour la gente de pour le spectacle trois pour CE preparer et puis va chat va. Yes, of course, it's Ne mache pas sur me soulier de suei de bleu. Naturally, the songs all sound plain daft and intentionally so. The website's just a piece of fun. However, there is a slightly more serious undercurrent I would venture. First, the people at Pardon My French are actually having a light hearted jibe at France's linguistic protection laws. These are the rules that still oblige radio stations to play a set quota of French songs. Ok, if that's the way you want it. The website is saying, here's some excellent quota filling politically correct French language content. But more to the point, the spoofs by being so hilarious, also pose the question, can you actually sing rock in French and also sound convincing? Coming from me, that sounds merely chauvinistic and Anglo centric. But the point is that the same question is also being asked by more and more young French musicians. A new generation is emerging which seems completely free of cultural and linguistic taboos. If they want to sing in English, they'll sing in English. Zut. And the officials who police the linguistic orthodoxy can, as far as they are concerned, all go hang. To be sure, there's always been the occasional French rock group that sang in English, but now it's halfway to being the norm. Phoenix, Revolver, Hey Hey, Maimai. Pony Pony, Run Run, Cocoon, The Plasticines, Aeron. There are scores of them, musicians who grew up with the Internet and YouTube and. And who've lost the whatever it is, instinct or sense of cultural duty that their forerunners had to sing in the national tongue. But is it just a fad, a way of being in the modern groove, man? Or is there actually something about the English language that attracts these young French singers and makes them prefer it to their own language as a medium for musical communication? Well, their point of view is that English simply works better. Frederic Riviere, or the techno artist known to fans as Anorak, told me that the rhythms and cadences of English were right for his kind of music, while the rhythms of French just weren't. A musicologist would have to explain the whys and wherefores, but that sounds convincing. I mean, English is full of one and two syllable words and it's heavily accented. So as the old poets realized, it's easy to beat out the meter. Da da da da da da. And that shifts naturally in. Into a rock rhythm. French is somewhat. What, less bumpy. Another point, though, is that the reverence the French have for their language acts as an inhibitor. Another singer told me that he couldn't let rip in French the way he wanted to because he felt so self conscious. He also spoke of what he called Gainsbourgitis. This is the mentality which afflicts French performers and makes them all want to be clones of the late revered crooner.
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Who?
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Serge Gainsbourg. But Gainsbourg was not a rock musician. He was a singer poet in the tradition of chanson. In French, chanson, the words precede and the music follows. But in rock, you need a much looser relationship with language, and that comes more naturally with the informality of English. Before anyone starts writing in and complaining about cultural imperialism, let me hasten to say that I know, there are thousands of counterexamples of French rockers and who've successfully stuck to their own language. The late Alain Bashong is perhaps the epitome. And there's the whole world of French rap. So it can be done. And maybe all these Anglophones would be better off trying to sing in French and thus communicating more directly with their primary audience rather than aping the foreigner. But I suspect it's too late. By now, cultural globalization has hit us all, including the French. As Monsieur Robert Dillon once put it, le temps, il sont achon, Jean.
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And on that philosophical note from Bob Dylan via Hugh Schofield, we've reached the end of this edition. I'll be back here on Saturday MORNING with more from our own correspondents around the world. Do join us. Goodbye.