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From Our Own Correspondent
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00:28:05
Quentin Sommerville talks to protestors on Cairo's streets; Andrew Harding returns to...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, dynamiting for gold in Ecuador's Andes in Florida, we meet the residents of a unique community for sex offenders. Our correspondent learns the dark arts of cyber hacking in Lille and the joys of a glass of wine in a vineyard east of Mandalay. Supporters and opponents of the ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi are continuing to stage large rallies in Cairo. The city has now entered the fasting month of Ramadan. Although many Egyptians became increasingly frustrated with Mr. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government, there continues to be widespread unease at the army's intervention in the country's polit politics. What seems to be emerging is a battle for public opinion and influence. Dozens of people have died in clashes since Mr. Morsi's removal. Both sides have accused their opponents of faking evidence and receiving support from foreign extremists. Quentin Somerville has been on the streets of Cairo during the recent demonstrations.
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The old woman in the floral headscarf had been standing in the sun for hours. Her arms were draped through the barbed wire of a barricade just a couple of blocks from where earlier that morning on a Cairo Street, 50 people had been shot dead by the Egyptian army a distance away. There were hundreds of protesters behind her, mostly Muslim Brotherhood members, and all of them President Morsi supporters. Beyond the barricade were ranks of soldiers armed with automatic weapons, tear gas launchers and black gas masks. She told me people called her the mother of Ibrahim. She wasn't easily intimidated. It was clear, even from a distance, that she was giving two of the soldiers, who were wearing body armor, a serious ticking off. I told them, she said, these people are your brothers. You're all from the same country. How can you kill another Muslim while he is praying? She'd been down the street at dawn that morning, praying with thousands of others outside the Republican Guard barracks. She, like them, believed President Morsi was being held inside. As they finished prayers, she explained, the army opened fire. There was a lot of gas. She said 45 people were killed in front of my eyes. How did the soldiers respond? I asked to her plea. They told me they were just following orders and that they would be shot and killed if they didn't. And with that, she stomped back to the protesters, shouting at them to stop throwing stones to just for good Measure. The army has a different account, that they were attacked by protesters trying to get inside the barracks, some of whom were armed. Dark forces were at work. Syrians, perhaps Palestinians, were involved too. But eyewitnesses, even those against President Morsi, dispute the army version. And this is the same army that days earlier opened fire directly into a crowd at the same spot, killing at least three. The army here is armed to the teeth. Protesters generally are not. Aside from the killings, the most shocking thing was the lack of interest from anti Morsi supporters in these murders. I spoke to someone from the opposition parties. He said these were Muslim Brotherhood lies and chose instead to focus on pictures of dead children purportedly from the scene that had been exposed as fakes. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood should take part in future elections, he said, but. But in the same breath denounced the party as untrustworthy. They should stop inciting violence, he added, as if it had been 50 soldiers rather than 50 protesters killed. In the eyes of those who stand against the former president, the army are heroes who delivered a people's revolution. In Tahrir Square, a giant laser projector beamed the words this is not a coup onto the side of a building. A civilian interim president, Adli Mansour, is meant to be proof of this. But the army is still on the streets and still issues televised statements telling political parties to get in line or else. Millions took to the streets to get rid of Morsi, who had failed to unite the country, never managed to get a proper grip on the levers of state, and let security and the economy deteriorate under his rule. This, say his detractors, means that his democratic election can be annulled. And anyway, so the argument goes, at that election, the choice was between Morsi and and the old regime, which was no choice at all. Whether this is a coup or a revolution doesn't really make much difference. It certainly isn't democracy. And it means plenty more trouble for Egypt, because the Muslim Brotherhood and their millions of supporters aren't going away. Back behind the barricades, pools of blood were baking in the afternoon sun. Occasional shots would ring out from the direction of the army. There were only warning shots to stay back, but they were unnerving nevertheless, and adding to the surreal air above, an apartment was ablaze. The fire filled the neighborhood with smoke. Occasionally blackened peoples would drift past, but no one paid attention. The fire was ignored. The focus was the barricades and the soldiers. After our camera stopped filming, a young man from the Brotherhood came up to me. He didn't give his name because he carried with him a warning. We've managed to keep the jihadists under control, he said, but only until now. They will pick up their weapons again, and how can we stop them after what happened at the barracks? The army said they intervened in politics to unify a divided society. President Morsi had to go because he didn't represent the entire country, religious and secular, rich and poor. The tragedy for Egypt is that neither
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does his successor, Quentin Somerville. Earlier this week, a Burmese court sentenced 25 Buddhists to up to 15 years in prison for murder and other crimes during a night of rioting, arson and killing in central Burma. A wave of violence in the past year has left more than 250 people dead, and over 100,000 have fled their homes, most of them Muslim. The attacks and the government's inability to stop them have marred the Southeast Asian country's image abroad as it moves toward democracy and greater freedom. Freedom after nearly 50 years of military rule, the government is particularly keen to reinvigorate Burma as a tourist destination after decades when many boycotted the country. And it has much to recommend it. As Andrew Harding found out on his first visit as a holidaymaker, it wasn't
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much of a disguise. A baseball cap, sunglasses and a few days worth of stubble. And sure enough, the man from military intelligence spotted me. And as I came through immigration, it was May 2008, my last trip to Burma's capital, Rangoon. There was a shout, then a firm hand on my shoulder. The authorities stuck me on the next plane out of the country. I'd been on the regime's blacklist for some years because of my reporting. At the time, it felt like Burma was buried beneath an immovable heap of political repression and economic misrule. But countries can change surprisingly fast. A few weeks ago, I flew back into Rangoon airport for a holiday with my family. A curt email had found its way to me from the Burmese presidency, announcing that more than a thousand blacklisted foreigners and exiles were now free to return. The drive into the city took nearly an hour. For decades, military rule has kept Burma in a sort of time warp. Attractively so, if you're a tourist looking for uncluttered streets and traditional scenes. But you'd better hurry if you still want to catch any of that, because money is now pouring into the country and transforming it fast traffic, shopping malls, etc. The headlines here used to be full of turgid claims about what some general or other was up to. Now they're salivating over the bidding war between rival international cell phone companies, all hoping to hit the jackpot and get a license to operate in one of the few remaining countries on earth where almost nobody has has a mobile. We checked into a brand new hotel in the centre of Rangoon and went to find some old friends. Sargina, sadly, was out of town. He's Burma's most famous comedian, a devout fan of Benny Hill and a dissident who spent years in jail for mocking the military regime. They let him out two years ago as part of a larger amnesty of political prisoners. These days, Sagar is furiously busy, not so much with the jokes, but but with the messy politics of a country in transition. You may have heard in the news about the horrific attacks on members of the Muslim minority in Burma. It reminds me of the nationalism that surged to the surface in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a delicate matter, said Ko Jimmy over lunch. Jimmy and his wife, Nila Tane, are a remarkable couple. They were student leaders who challenged the military back in the 1980s and have been in and out of prison ever since. I used to speak to Neelah by phone when she was on the run, hiding in safe houses, desperate for a glimpse of the infant daughter she'd been forced to leave with her in laws. Nilar was caught in 2008 and only released along with her husband last year. Her voice hasn't changed. She still has the calm, almost dreamy delivery of someone who's learned the hard way how to keep her emotions in check. Nila and Jimmy, like Zargana, are now busy trying to help steer their country towards full democracy. You can still sense their suspicion of authority, their reluctance to join the political mainstream. Instead, their focus is on educating a population still unsure about its rights and responsibilities. After what we've been through, we understand the importance of human rights, said Jimmy when I asked him about the killing of Muslims by members of the Buddhist majority. But he worried too, about the dangers of Islamic extremism, of schools preaching jihad, of and of the threat posed to Burma's sovereignty. We want an open society, he said, but we have a long road ahead of us. A few days later, we were sitting on the shores of Inle Lake in the Sharn Mountains, east of Mandalay Sunset, and a bottle of rather wonderful white wine produced by a Frenchman who runs a vineyard nearby. It was the hot season. Most of the tourists had gone the lake with its floating vegetable gardens, fishermen and villagers on stilts and was a darkening strip of silver. In the aftermath of World War II, Burma was widely regarded as the region's most promising nation. It has forests, minerals, ports and a handy location between India and China. Things haven't worked out so well, but as our tour guide ushered us into our boat for a gentle cruise around the lake, he gave a big grin. Business is good these days, he said. Change is good.
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Andrew Harding in the American state of Florida, convicted sex offenders are required to comply with strict regulations about where they live when they leave. Prison laws prohibit them from residing within half a mile of places children gather. Like schools, nurseries and parks, it can make it difficult for those released to find new homes. Linda Presley has been to visit one solution a unique community of sex offenders living together in the south of the state.
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Miracle Village is an isolated former agricultural workers camp set deep in a sea of green. This is sugar cane country. As I pull in, it looks like any small working class community. Neatly cut lawns, big old trucks, the occasional American flag. A small church painted pale blue twinkles in the sunlight. Christianity is at the heart of Life here. In 2009, an evangelical pastor founded Miracle Village. For sex offenders, the residency laws of Florida prohibit them from living within a certain distance of schools, daycare centres, parks, bus stops. Even so, at over two miles from the nearest town, Miracle Village fulfils all the criteria. Pat Powers, a round, middle aged man in a baseball cap pulled low over his head, is the man in charge. He takes me on a tour, waving and greeting his neighbors as we go. The neat, prefabricated bungalows painted a buttery yellow, were built to house sugar cane cutters. Some of them still live here, but now, out of 200 residents, more than half are registered sex offenders. One a woman, the rest men. Some viewed child pornography or molested their own children. Others abused minors when they were in positions of power. There's a teacher here, a pastor. It's a tropical paradise, pat tells me without a hint of irony as we head up Caribbean Avenue and down Pelican Lake Drive. There are avocados, mangoes, papaya. Everything grows in this rich, damp earth the colour of burnt oranges. But you have to be careful with tomatoes, he says. They rot on the vine. Pat is a born again Christian, but in a previous life he was a racquetball coach for a youth team. Then he served a lengthy prison sentence. I ask him what happened. He doesn't want to talk about it and says things like, I was stupid. I got involved with my students. Back then I thought I deserved to die. In the early 1990s, Pat was convicted in a sexual abuse case involving 11 minors. He tells me he will never, ever do it again. And now he says he's using his experience to influence others here at Miracle Village to help stop reoffending. It's certainly a supportive environment. There are anger management classes, Bible study groups and the majority of the sex offenders attend psychological treatment programmes. Matt lives here with his fiance, two dogs and a brand new addition to the family, Baby Ashton. Matt was 21 when he was convicted of having sex with a 14 year old. He says he thought she was 18. He was sentenced to 270 days in jail and 10 years probation. Matt will be on the sex offenders register for life, never free to live where he wants. I reflect on growing up in my own home town in Cambridgeshire in the 1970s. How there would have been far fewer men on the streets if there'd been a law that imprisoned them for sleeping with their underage girlfriends. One morning, I join officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office as they cruise around Miracle Village in a red pickup. TR Florida's residency law means offenders are checked regularly. Courtney Minton is a businesslike detective. She has a detailed knowledge of some of the offenders because she made the charges and got them convicted. This one was molesting his daughters, she tells me under her breath as we make our way across the grass towards a neatly kept veranda. He isn't at home, so we move on. A man I'll call Nigel is is in when we knock. A gruff old bear in shorts and a vest, busy in his kitchen. He chats amiably to Detective Minton through the window. I ask him how he likes living here. If you can call it living, he says. It's the middle of no country, he growls. So what were the charges against him? I kissed a woman. A 35 year old. You go figure it out, he says. Detective Minton sighs. Back in the cab of her truck, she looks up his records. Aggravated sexual battery. Sexual battery, lewd and lascivious conduct. It seems Nigel's done a lot more than kissing. On Sunday, I meet him again at church. Matt is in and out shushing Baby Ashton. It's an uplifting service. About 60 people, a choir and a very good band. Everyone's friendly and welcoming. There's a lot of laughter. Afterwards, I say my goodbyes. I wish them all luck and they wave me off. On the drive back to Miami, I swerve to avoid a dead alligator that's decomposing in the sun. I always find it so difficult to resolve that thing about meeting very pleasant people who've done some very bad things.
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Linda Presley earlier this year, Ecuador's president, Correa won an unprecedented third term, gaining over 57% of the vote. Much of his popularity is attributed to his government's increased investment in roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. But Correa's critics accuse him of funding these public works by gambling with the nation's future, auctioning Ecuador's minerals and precious metals to the highest foreign bidder. A new mining law has given multinational companies greater freedom to operate and compete with local companies. And in Ecuador's Andes. And Leo Johnson has discovered that a gold rush is on, with some explosive consequences.
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It's pitch black. I'm 120 meters underground, and there's a smell of blood. The Canary Indians died here, deep in the gold tunnels of Ecuador's Andes. First the Incas, then the conquistadores, working the Indians till they dropped. Get me gold, philip II said, humanely if possible, but get me gold. So old blood. There's plenty. But this smells fresh. It's got the tang of iron. I nose towards the scent. And there, hanging from the ceiling, is a bulbous red and orange mass. It's natural iron ore, rusting with the water that's dripping from it. A local miner emerges out of the shadows. Bueno, he says. This is food for el duende. And where his food is, el duende is never far. There is no word for it in English. For Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet, it's the power that surges up inside from the soles of the feet, the power that tells the bullfighter when and how to plunge the knife, the power that makes us cry at the performance of flamenco. It's the unuttered cry that marks the triumph of truth over lies. For the miners of Zaruma, el duende is also a being, a primitive force from the core of the earth. How do you find gold? It's not you. When you reach the vein, el duende, invisible, throws pebbles that send shivers down your spine. So if he's close, gold's close. Your luck might just be in. And the team I'm with are in need of luck. Fabien, 39 years old, has been working this hill since he was 14. Two years ago, he took his life savings and gambled them here in Zeruma's hill of gold. But the gold dried up for him. Time's running out for Fabien. This is a job where things can go wrong. Earthquakes, mine collapses, explosions. But even when it goes right, it's not good for the lungs or back. Want to fill a sack with $10 worth of gold? You've got to hammer out about 30kg of rock in the dark, bag it up, heave it onto your back and haul it out. But the real problem for Fabian isn't inside the mine. It's outside. It's the competition. Ecuador's dilemma is this. With endemic poverty, it's sitting on over $200 billion worth of metals. Rafael Correa, Ecuador's left wing president, has a strategy to develop by extracting these resources. We can't be like beggars, he commented, sitting on a sack of gold. And it's foreign mining companies, Chinese and Canadian, with the capital and technology, that are winning the concessions. Across Ecuador, indigenous groups have protested the loss of their ancestral lands. The Shua marching to Quito have threatened conflict. And there are early signs of possible social tension here around zeruma. Back in July 2012, in the middle of the night, four cars pulled up at the gates of Dynasty Metals, the Canadian company now mining for gold around Zaruma. 20 people dressed as police and priests came to the gate, then pulled out submachine guns and made off with an estimated $2 million worth of gold. One scenario is stalemate. The concessions get awarded to foreign companies, but social unrest grinds production and Ecuador's development to a halt. Another is that local businesses like Fabiennes get enough capital and technology in place to compete for these concessions. Smaller scale operations and with money that stays in the community. But it depends on one thing happening. Miners like Fabien have got to find the gold to get the capital to invest. The mine's gone quiet, the tunnels around us all cleared. Dynamite time, Fabian tells me. I follow him. Deep inside the tunnel, 11 black plastic fuses are sticking out of the wall. He strips them, exposing the cord, then passes me the flame. I pause. Don't worry, he says. It's finest quality Bolivian. I light the fuses. The last are the hardest. And then we run. You know what I want to say to the Bolivian dynamite industry? You are craftsmen. You are the men and women who make no mistakes. As we hit the exit, bang on time, we hear the whomps. It's the sound of a new vein of gold maybe opening up for Fabian and a different possible future for Zaruma. Later that night, Zeruma holds a festival. As a visiting Englishman, I am given both an honour and a bit of a challenge. I am called to the stage and presented with a life size portrait of the Queen of England. I am about to thank the mayor. Magnificent. It is for you. The mayor interrupts me to take back to the Queen. Surging up from the soles of my feet, I feel what must be el duende. No problem. I cry out to the crowd.
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Leo Johnson Listening to the news, it's sometimes difficult to believe that any information is truly confidential anymore. The Americans accuse the Chinese of spying on its companies, while material leaked by the spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has shown the scale of the US government's own electronic surveillance around the world. Closer to home, the European Union has just agreed to impose tougher penalties on cybercriminals. Under a draft directive, those guilty of botnet attacks and infiltrating home computers could serve up to three years in jail. Those targeting critical infrastructure like power plants, government servers or transport networks would face a five year sentence. Detecting and preventing cyber attacks has become big business, as David Shazan has been finding out.
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Arriving in Lille from Paris, you almost feel as if you're back in Britain. Lille is a red brick beer drinking city and one of the local culinary specialties is UN Welch. That's what the French call Welsh rarebit, which is a favourite in the north of France. The area used to be a manufacturing centre and many of the slag heaps from disused coal mines are now listed and protected as part of a World Heritage Site. However, I hadn't come to look at the demise of old industries, but to report on new technology. A local university offers a degree course in computer hacking. Its full title is Ethical Hacking, Data Security and Countermeasures and it's similar to courses available in the uk. But the academics in France claim theirs is one of the first courses in Europe that doesn't just train students to construct defensive systems, but actually teaches them the dark arts of hacking on the principle that it takes a hacker to catch a hacker. They were organizing a hacking competition and I was there to report on the latest ways to steal people's identities, obtain their credit credit card details or hack into their computers. In a futuristic glass roofed courtyard surrounded by high tech officers, more than a hundred hackers were hunched over laptops. All the competitors were men in their late teens or twenties, most wearing T shirts or hoodies. 21 year old Maxime said he was there just for fun, but others, like Nicolas, in his late 20s, said he was hoping a good score could lead to job offers. Skills like these are highly valued in industry and a few company executives were there to scout for talent. One of them, Pierre Alexandre, took out his mobile phone and gave me a chilling demonstration of an application he'd downloaded from the Internet, which he used to record my credit card details in an instant simply by holding his phone close to my wallet. If your card's like mine and has four curved lines resembling a WI FI symbol, that means it has a tiny computer chip and a radio antenna, which means your account information can be read by an electronic scanner. So you can make small purchases in stores or coffee shops simply by swiping the card over the scanner, without touching it and without entering your PIN. Such purchases are usually limited to €20 or €20 in the UK, but the card information can still be read even when you aren't shopping, and a thief armed with this app can stand next to you in a lift, a train, or a supermarket queue and steal all of your card details except for the three digit security code on the back. Aha, I said. No problem. Whenever I buy anything on the Internet, I'm asked for the code, so I'm quite safe. Not so, Pierre Alexandre explained gently, you can buy from sites based outside Europe without giving the security code. And, he said, some sites which ask for the code do so only to give you the impression that you're making a secure purchase, when in fact they don't bother to check the code with the bank because that requires a special agreement and the verification process costs money and takes time. On the fringes of the competition, I attended a beginner's lesson in hacking for research purposes only, of course. There I learned that Black Hats, or Les Blacats as the French call them, are those who hack with criminal intent, while White Hats, les Whiteat, are those who hack just to test security systems. In the age of cyber warfare, hackers could theoretically shut down an enemy capital's power or water. Some have made fortunes selling information they stole without their fingers leaving their keyboards, and all the students on the hacking course are vetted by French intelligence agencies. The hacking contest, however, was open to anyone, and Franck told me the competitors almost certainly included a few black hats. He showed me how he could hack into someone's computer and spy on them through the camera. At the end of the day, I headed out with him and two of the other organizers for a beer and in Welsh, that local speciality. As we stood at the bar to order, I nervously fingered my card. When I got home and sat down to write an email, I I looked suspiciously at the camera on my laptop and snapped it shut the moment I'd finished.
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David Shazan reminding us that you can never be too careful when it comes to cyberspace, and bringing us to the end of this edition. We'll be back next week on Thursday and Saturday for more from our own correspondence. Goodbye.