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From Our Own Correspondent
Sahafa BBC
00:27:59
The human stories behind the news headlines: dodging bullets while trying to reach of...
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Thank you for downloading the latest edition of BBC Radios from our own correspondent, the best in news and current affairs storytelling. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today we hear that when you get shot at by people in flip flops, it's good if you can identify yourself in the local language. Sahafa BBC seems to work in Yemen. Not able to wash for three days and no bath or shower in sight. That's reality for some who've had to flee South African violence. Weak tea, but strong emotions in eastern Anatolia, a region with a turbulent past. And what are the chances of getting pneumonia each time you stay in the same foreign country? That's if you count Russia and the Soviet Union as the same country. Saudi airstrikes and street battles have continued in Yemen this week, even though with less intensity and despite an announcement by Riyadh that its initial military operation was over. The bombings are aimed at halting the advance of Shia Houthi rebels from the north. But there's no sign that these fighters, who are supported by Iran, have been beaten and Yemen's embattled president remains in exile. Almost a thousand people are estimated to have been killed over the past month and many are questioning if Yemen can survive in its current borders. Olagarans recently been to the southern Yemeni port of Aden, where she heard calls for the country to be divided.
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As we lined up in front of our rusting boat, a colleague who was staying behind decided to take a photo. Thanks, I said. Nice to have a picture of the team. It's not for that, he replied. If anything goes wrong, it will help identify your bodies by your clothing. We were well aware of the risks of entering this particular war zone and our trip had been meticulously planned. But suddenly the intense African heat turned turned cool. We said our goodbyes and climbed on board for a 21 hour voyage from Djibouti to Yemen. On paper, it was the perfect cruise. Calm, blue seas, constant sunshine and the occasional passing dolphin. The crew served us hot sweet tea and flat bread for breakfast and fish straight from the Gulf of Aden for dinner. Alas, we had company from a small army of cockroaches, but we had chartered a boat normally used for live stock. It was plain sailing until we neared the southern port of Aden where there had been another round of Saudi air strikes that morning. A sudden gunshot had us diving for cover. It came from a vessel full of heavily armed men in traditional Yemeni wrap around skirts and flip flops. One started waving a rocket propelled grenade in our direction. They demanded that Everyone on board, line up on deck. Couldn't be pirates, I thought. We were too near land. And Somali pirates are not the threat they used to be, thanks to the presence of international warships in these waters. Since our visitors didn't identify themselves, we did. Sahafa BBC. We shouted. BBC journalists. Once they heard that, they lowered their weapons and rushed forward, offering profuse apologies. Welcome, welcome. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It wasn't the only time we heard that during our brief visit. Once on dry land, we headed to the nearest hospital, where six more war wounded had just arrived. There was no electricity and the generator was running out of fuel. We can't even do x rays, said Dr. Mohammad Mohsen, a harried orthopaedic surgeon. I often have to just patch patients up and send them home to make room for new ones. Almost 50 people have died at the hospital in the past month, most shot in the head or heart, the signature of a sniper. An hour later, we were in a sniper's killing ground in the frontline area of Al Kalua. It's under the control of locals from the so called Popular Resistance Committees. They are the DIY defenders of Aden trying to keep Houthi rebels out of their neighbourhoods. Akram Yafuz, a softly spoken social worker, pointed out a red brick building on a hilltop occupied by the Houthis. He insisted the local fighters would win, though. They are outgunned. They have tanks and we have Kalashnikovs, but our heavy weapons are in our chests, he said, pointing to his heart. We moved up the main street towards the last checkpoint held by the militia. The road is exposed to sniper fire and the Houthis had been shooting hours earlier. Chaos erupted when a car tried to turn the corner into the line of fire. The fighters across the road suddenly pointed their guns at us. When we shouted once again that we were journalists, they came running over and there was another round of armed apologies. Sorry, sorry. Across town, we sat down with around a dozen fighters at their makeshift headquarters, a decrepit compound which they said was used by British forces in colonial days. The youngest was an 18 year old called Ahmed Nasser, who's still at school. I'm ready to die for this, he said with conviction. They came all the way from Sana' a to fight us on our land. We didn't go there to fight them. The militiamen see the Houthis as northern invaders trying to overrun their southern homeland. They want Yemen to be divided again, north and south, as it was before 1990. Everyone should go to their own land, said Ghassan Haider, a salesman turned fighter. No compromises, no middle ground, no federation. The only winner so far in Yemen's latest civil war appears to be the local branch of Al Qaeda. It has been exploiting the chaos to rob a bank, conduct a jailbreak and expand its territory. Soon we had to rush back to the port. Our ship had been warned to go before dark. As we sailed away, dense black smoke was rising from Aden. We could leave in safety while so many others could not. It was my turn to feel very sorry.
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Ola Guerin Now Back in Cairo yesterday, the South African president, Jacob Zuma met more than 50 representatives of foreign nationals in the country in the wake of a wave of violence against migrants from other parts of Africa. President Zuma said they'd agreed to work together to find a long term solution to ensure such attacks never happen again. Over the last three weeks, at least seven people have been killed, mostly by South Africans who are themselves poor and often unemployed. This followed remarks made by the king of the Zulus, Wellitini, that foreigners must pack their bags and go home. About 2,000 who fled in fear of their lives in and around the city of Durban are now housed in a government camp. Audrey Brown went to meet them.
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I've listened to people like Fios from Zimbabwe who told me how worried he was now that he won't be able to go for treatment for his leg, which had been shattered in an accident he suffered as a truck driver. He became a mechanic and I was a good one, he says. But a mob broke into his workshop and stole his tools, and now he can't work anymore. His wife was hounded out of her job as a domestic worker because her employers were afraid of being targeted by attackers. I had just finished talking to young Armando from Mozambique, whose face had lit up when I asked about the two guitars taped together slung over his shoulder when I noticed the slim, elegant man standing to one side, a cell phone in his hand. He was beautifully dressed, in a lilac checked shirt and blue jeans. A gold crucifix on a thin chain hung around his neck. He clearly wanted to talk, but there was something wary about him. His name was Omex Sam Elias from Malawi. They had broken into the house he shared with four other Malawian students and taken everything laptops, money, everything but the clothes he stood in and the cell phone in his hand, which he'd managed to save by shoving it down the front of his pants. They didn't beat him up, but he saw his housemates being assaulted, covered in blood, cowering in fear. He had no choice but to abandon his studies in fashion design. And now he was here in this camp, waiting to go home on one of the buses provided by the Malawian embassy. His voice was controlled as he described the attack that left him destitute, anguished as he wondered why he and his friends had to endure this violent, inexplicable hatred. He described the state of the toilets, the overcrowding in the tents they slept in, the squalor of the camp with restrained horror. My colleague, a seasoned producer who'd seen much of what there is to see in places like these, still stepped away as the sadness he felt spilled out over his cheeks. I've not bathed for three days, continued Omex. How would you feel not having washed for three days? I can imagine what it feels like not to wash for three days, I thought. What I don't want to imagine is what it would be like not to know when next I'll have a bath. King Zwelitini had held a special meeting the day before, and he'd asked his subjects to protect nationals from other countries. Do you believe the king? I asked Omex. I don't believe him, omex answered. How can I? Do you hate South Africans for what they've done to you? I pressed on. Something moved behind his eyes. I dare not think what it was. No, I don't hate South Africans, he replied. But they don't want me here, so I must go. Will you ever come back? I asked. Not now, was the answer. There is a time for happiness and a time for sadness, and this is a time of sadness for me. My job as a journalist is to tell the world who these people are, to help them say what had been done to them. But my responsibility as a South African stretches much further than that. I owe it to people like Fios from Zimbabwe to remember that we here in this place where we do terrible things to others, were once despised for who we are. When we were hounded out of our country for standing up for our rights, people like Armando in Mozambique gave us shelter and treated us with respect. They struggled with us to free Nelson Mandela from jail. They celebrated with us when we chose him as our first democratically elected president. They willed us success as we tried to build a nation of which we could all be proud. And lest we forget, they too were dragged into the vicious migrant labor system that built this country. So the least we can do is offer them safety in our country. We cannot fail in this.
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Audrey Brown in South Africa, the killing of an estimated 1 million Armenians 100 years ago in what was then the Ottoman Empire. Now Turkey is considered genocide by many scholars and by 20 countries around the world, including Canada, France and Russia. The United Kingdom and the United States do not use the term, though the Turks strongly deny it was genocide, insisting the massacre was part of a conflict in which people died on all sides, whether Christian Armenians or Muslim Turks. On yesterday's anniversary, the presidents of France and Russia joined the commemoration in Armenia's capital, Yerevan. And this year, for the first time, a Turkish government minister attended a mass at an Armenian church in Istanbul. There are elections looming in Turkey, and Paul Howard has been to the former Armenian homelands in eastern Anatolia, an area that's now mostly Kurdish, to try and understand the country's complex history and perhaps its future.
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In Doyubayezit, the day begins, as it always does, with Kurdish tea. For such a strong, independent culture, the weakness of the ubiquitous chai here never ceases to surprise, especially compared to Turkish tea, which would easily support a spoon. But the tea, of course, is not the only difference between Turks and Kurds. A completely distinct language, only available in Turkish state schools as an elective subject since 2012, is one of the more obvious examples. Nor is the Turkish Kurdish conflict the only source of deep rooted disagreement in this region. The area at the foot of Mount Ararat and beyond, now mostly peopled by Kurds, was once an Armenian heartland. I learnt more about this a couple of hours drive away from Doyubayezit in the ancient city of Ani. Founded more than 2,000 years ago, Ani's strategic location on a triangular promontory protected on two sides by deep river gorges, made it a major citadel on the nascent Silk route. By the mid-900s, it was so successful that it became home to the Armenian kings, who transformed it from a fortress to a fortified city of around 200,000 people, with a nickname revealing its exalted status, the city of a thousand and one churches in the world. At that time, only Constantinople, Cairo and Baghdad were reputed to have been its equals. Now, like so much of the surrounding area's Armenian heritage, the city's erstwhile scale and magnificence is only hinted at. The grandeur of the walls reveals its stature, the beauty of the few remaining buildings, its cultural and architectural pedigree, the vast piles of rubble covering most of the site, the questionable commitment by the authorities to its preservation, the rise and fall of Annie is now ancient history. But as we prepare to leave this beautiful and desolate place, the enduring difficulties of life in such A cultural crossroads are confirmed by the weather. There's lightning and thunder coming from behind the watchtowers and artillery terraces, glowering at us from just over the Armenian border, very nearby but still stubbornly closed. The fighting a century ago between the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian population is still an open wound, and the facts are bitterly disputed. We stop in Igdir to visit a memorial to this conflict. But the Turkish Genocide Monument and museum pointedly ignores the one to one and a half million Armenians killed a hundred years ago. Instead, it remembers the half a million or so Turks said to have died in the fighting which raged across the region for 50 years from 1870. What's more, it asserts that this was the region's true genocide, before blaming the violence on the nefarious actions of imperialist powers and outside agents. This tacit justification of Ottoman aggression is as close as it gets to any acknowledgement of Armenian deaths. There is certainly no apology. Built less than 20 years ago, the monument's poor state of repair, very leaky roof, cracked flooring, speaks of disinterest from current authorities, though the Turkish flag still flies high outside. After a sombre drive back to Doyoubayezit, I soon find myself in the realm of contemporary rather than historical disagreement. Drinking more tea in the hotel lobby, I am surrounded by people listening to the reading of a letter from jailed Kurdish independence leader Abdullah Urjalan, issued to mark the traditional New Year celebration of Nevroz for the government in Ankara. Urjalan is a terrorist, the Turkish state is indivisible, and any Kurdish separatist thinking is treason. After the Deaths of some 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, over the past few decades, as Turkey has tried to crush his movement, Erdilan's letter now calls for a congress to consolidate the current fragile peace and to sort out the remaining sticking points, like language teaching, among others. Opinion polls suggest the main Kurdish political party, the HDP, could for the first time break through the 10% barrier in the national vote and hold the balance of power after the Turkish general election this June. That would be a historic result. How Turkey deals with the twin challenges of coming to terms with its past and resolving the present tensions in its eastern hinterland will say much about its future.
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Paul Howard in southeastern Anatolia next month, Chinese President Xi Jinping will be the guest of honour at President Putin's military parade in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in the Second World War. Western leaders are boycotting the event and sending their ambassadors instead to signal their displeasure over events in Ukraine with the impact of the year long American led sanctions against Russia, China has become a crucial lifeline for the country as it's the only major economy that is not bound by the sanctions. China Russian relations have been turbulent in the past, but Moscow and Beijing are now closer than at any time in more than 50 years after our China editor Carrie Gracie went to meet a woman whose whole life story embodies this love hate relationship.
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Only the angels are new, said Inna as she gazed around at the gilt framed paintings, the carved pillars darkened with age and the scarlet curtains her eyes rested on. A pair of plaster angels who definitely wouldn't have been present in the years of devout atheism. The fiddler played Russian folk songs and a merry chatter rose from the other diners to reverberate among the chandeliers. The waiter bent deferentially for Inna's order, But the elegant 72 year old was caught up in being 11 years old again when she came to Beijing's Moscow Restaurant for the first time. These were happy days for her family and happy days for relations between the vast communist neighbours. I had a lovely childhood side in her, wondering aloud whether the red cabbage soup would taste anything like the old days. Inna's father was a legendary Chinese communist of the early 20th century. In those days, being a communist in China was almost like choosing martyrdom. Hunted and murdered by the government of the day, the likelihood of these rag bag revolutionaries coming to power seemed vanishingly small to most. While on the run in 1930s Moscow, Lili San met and fell in love with Inna's mother Lisa, a young Russian publisher. The they married and moved back to China in time for their six year old daughter Ina to witness Chair Mao proclaiming the founding of the Communist People's Republic. The Soviet Union sent experts to help build the socialist utopia. These were halcyon days for the Li family. Half Chinese, half Russian, they were celebrities among the elite at Beijing's Moscow restaurant, which was famous with the Soviet engineers for its real Russian chef, its caviar, its vodka black bread and red cabb cabbage soup. Bosht, said Ina from somewhere deep in her throat. It must have come from the Russian part of her being, which is obviously exacting on the subject of bosht because she then wondered aloud whether it would be any good and decided against ordering it. As soon as the waiter had backed away, she picked up her story again. An idyllic childhood which came to an abrupt end and at the age of 16, when she returned from a study trip to Moscow and found everything in Beijing very, very wrong. Before, her home had been full of guests and laughter. Now there were no visitors, her mother was tearful, and her parents bedroom door was often closed with urgent whispering and weeping drifting from behind. Was 1960, and it would be another quarter of a century before Inna visited Moscow again. The people of Russia and China endured a terrible falling out between socialist Big Brother in Moscow and so called Little Brother in Beijing. The Soviet experts all left China. Beijingers were instructed to dig air raid shelters and an underground city in case of attack. Fortress China spiralled into a state of paranoia in which everyone with foreign connections was suspect. My parents were declared spies, said Ina as she picked up her soup spoon. She related quite calmly how her father was hounded to death by the Red Guards of Chemimao's Cultural Revolution, how her mother was imprisoned for eight years, and how she herself spent two years in solitary confinement. Ironically, the prison in which she was incarcerated had been built on a plan provided by the very Soviet experts she'd sat among at the Moscow restaurant in the old days. What a tragic story, said I. Tragic, yes, she replied, but typical. She squared her shoulders as if shaking off that chapter, and moved on to describe how the family's fortunes improved along with the thaw in relations between Beijing and Moscow after Mao's death. Her mother is still alive at the grand age of 101, saved, said Inner, by indomitable optimism and at a refusal to indulge in self pity. To underline the point, she said, her mother jokes that Inna's father was imprisoned as a suspected Japanese spy by Stalin in the late 30s, so her own incarceration in a Chinese jail was just evening up the score. Ina herself now teaches Russian literature to university students and is married to a Russian scholar. Her sons are bilingual and her grandson is learning Russian. Despite all the suffering along the way, she told me she can never feel it was a curse to be half Chinese and half Russian. Two great languages, two great cultures. That, she says, was always a blessing.
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Cary Gracie in Beijing When President Xi Jinping travels to Moscow next month, the Russians won't just be celebrating the end of the Second World War in Europe, but their own significant role in the Allied victory over Hitler in 1945. It was a defining moment that brought to a close what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. As preparations for the big day on 9 may get under way, Kevin Connolly returned to Moscow, where he first went as our correspondent more than 25 years ago. He found that despite enormous changes since Then there's still plenty to remind him of the old days, not all of it good.
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It is a strange feeling to return after a long absence to a city where you once lived. And nowhere is that more true than in Moscow, one of the few places on earth where the past really is another country. It feels like working as an archaeologist of your own past, searching for the bones of the old Soviet capital beneath the surface of the modern Russian city. I ended up retracing my own footsteps a little too faithfully, contracting pneumonia here again, as I once did in the period when I lived through five long, dark Soviet winters long ago. Still, even a fleeting glance of this extraordinary place is enough to give you a feeling for what has changed and what has remained the same. Spring sunshine still comes in sudden bursts with the intensity of a match being struck in a darkened room. And some old habits die hard. A waiter, politely told he'd brought fizzy mineral water instead of flat, reacts with intense exasperation, as though he's going to have to remove each of the offending bubbles individually with a pair of tweezers. In another restaurant, a manager helpfully works her way through the enormous menu, placing an X against the small number of dishes which are actually available, like someone filling in a giant pools coupon. But there are more positive echoes of the old days, too. Pride in the victory of 1945 in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War remains undimmed, Russia's immense contribution, the defining achievement of this country's own greatest generation. A small shop not far from where I'm staying is already offering T shirts for the big day next month that say simply, thank you for our victory, Granddad. But it's the figure of Joseph Stalin rather than Granddad, who dominates the memorabilia, white of jacket and luxuriant of moustache. When I lived here 25 years ago, Stalin was almost nowhere to be seen, and little emphasis was placed on his personal role in the victory of 45. Now he is back, rehabilitated in the popular imagination, the repression of his time somehow balanced against the scale of that desperate victory. The favourite image of him has a kind of serene geniality to it, not unlike the one used in old Soviet birthday cards at the height of the cult of personality, which read, thank you, Stalin, for my happy childhood. The shelves of the shop next door to the little souvenir stand show that in other respects things have changed to a startling extent. Its basic stock in trade appears to be the murder weapon, and it offers a wide range of replica firearms alongside a choice of knuckle dusters, choppers, cutlasses, daggers and bayonets. It is another rather shocking difference from my own time, when the people of Russia were disenfranchised and disenchanted, but were also generally unarmed. After a prolonged boom based on high oil prices, Russia is now facing a downturn based on low ones and deepened by sanctions imposed by the west as a punishment for those actions in Ukraine, Russian counter sanctions against European produce are patchy. They don't appear to include French wine or Scotch whiskey, for example. But the tit for tat deepens a familiar sense of otherness about Russia, the idea that the default setting on its relationship with the west is one of mutual suspicion and hostility. But the most familiar feeling of all this time around for me was the feeling of contracting pneumonia for the second time in Moscow. Surely something of a record for a foreigner. Much has changed about the medical system since my day, when ambulance crews sometimes used to supplement their income by picking up taxi passengers at the roadside when they were on duty. There are more Western drugs now and a general atmosphere of crisp efficiency in the clinic and the doctor's office. But unchanged below the surface is that curious Russian ability to conceal immense private kindness behind a rather forbidding public face. The reassuring hand on the shoulder when one grim test result follows another. With all that has changed and all that has stayed the same, it was a relief to find that there is still in that sense at least no better place for the traveller to fall ill or for the sick man to find himself far from home.
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Kevin Connolly and we wish him a speedy recovery. And that's it for today. More stories from our correspondents around the world at the same time next Saturday. I do hope you'll join us. Goodbye.