← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Seventy-Two Snipers
00:28:00
Correspondents' stories. Today: Hugh Sykes is in Cairo where the mood, at the end of a...
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Hi. This is a download from BBC Radio. It's the latest edition of Radio 4's From Our Own correspondent and it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, braving the sniper's bullet at a marketplace in Syria, walking in Minsk in the footsteps of the man accused of killing President Kennedy, crossing a bridge in Hanoi, part of Vietnam's history, but not perhaps of its future, and suffering a head injury in Chad and a close encounter with the local A and E department. But first, Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood has called for more protests starting later today in support of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi. Scores of people were killed yesterday as protesters in and around the city's Ramses Square clashed with security forces. There were also violent confrontations in Alexandria and other cities. They came as the country was still reeling from the deaths of hundreds of people on Wednesday when police moved in to clear two camps which had been set up by the protesters. Hugh Sykes is in Cairo this morning.
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In my rather faded, elegant central Cairo hotel, I have a large double room with ensuite high ceilings, wooden floorboards and a four story balcony. It'll cost the BBC 220 Egyptian pounds a night, bed and breakfast, eggs extra. That's about 22 British pounds. In the wood panelled dining room, the tables have cream linen cloths and sensible chairs. On the walls there are prints, photographs and portraits. Random images. A rose with its Latin name, the white Sacre Coeur church in Paris. A still life of flowers in a vase. An unlabelled discoloured and fading photograph of an oil platform at sea. And a pencil sketch of an old man with a beard and gentle eyes. One evening I'm looking at that bearded face with fellow guest Suleiman, who's a schoolteacher on holiday from Upper Egypt. I tell him the portrait reminds me of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney or Anthony Quinn, says Suleiman. Ah, say I, Zorba, teach me to dance. Wait, says tall lanky Suleiman and he strides off down the corridor. I sit on a sofa in the hotel lounge. The dark upholstery and the stern rows of mostly empty tables in the dining room and and the sliding glass panel between them and strong tea in white catering cups poured from stainless steel pots recall English seaside hotels in Blackpool or Bournemouth. On the lounge TV there's footage from a helicopter of hundreds of fires burning red in the dark. Down in Rabah Square where the main Muslim Brotherhood sit in used to be. Suleiman bounds back in with his laptop. Click, click. And on the screen appears a YouTube video clip from Sorbo the Greek Anthony Quinn arm in arm with Alan Bates, teaching him to dance slowly to one side and back and forward and back and faster and faster and on the lounge TV women are wailing, men are screaming, and there's a row of corpses in white shrouds in a mosque. I try to count them, but the report ends and a newsreader appears. Click click again on Suleiman's laptop and on the screen now, Petula Clark singing Downtown when you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go. And Suleiman and I both join in as she hits Downtown. This is downtown. That's what the centre of Cairo is called on the maps. When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry seems to help. I know downtown we're sitting together watching old video clips because we can't go downtown. There's a curfew, there's no noise or hurry, just dark and almost completely deserted dusty Cairo streets. From my balcony I can see a few solitary figures walking along a taxi or two and occasionally a pair of blue Mubarak era police vans driving by. Later, Suleiman has put the golden oldies clips away and is watching the television. Masked men are shooting now. Who are they? I ask. The Brothers, he replies. The allegation, strongly denied, is that Muslim Brotherhood militias were inside the sit in camps and that they fired at the police. The Brothers say that's a lie and that the army and the police massacred more than 2,000 of their supporters. The official government figure for the number of dead is bad enough, more than 500. Many people here are pleased that the sit ins have ended, but not happy at all with the way it was done. Because it's provided the Muslim Brotherhood with a gift, they say, new martyrs for their narrative of decades of victimhood since the organization was founded 80 years ago. But several people have said to me that the Brotherhood deliberately allowed women and children to stay in harm's way, knowing that the military would come and clear the camps with extreme force. Karim Grace, a bookseller with his Twitter and Facebook tabs open on his laptop, told me that the Brothers were effectively using their own innocence as human shields. But the police and the army knew that there were scores of innocent women and children there, and it was the police and the army who attacked. And now the bloody scenes in Ramses Square. And I'm thinking again of that portrait in the hotel dining room, the face that reminds me of Seamus Heaney and of his poem the Cure at Troy. History says he wrote. History says don't hope on this side of the grave. But then once in a lifetime, the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea change on the far side of revenge. But the fires burning in Ramses Square on Friday night suggest that hope and history will not rhyme in Egypt for a long time yet.
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And that was Hugh Sykes. Fighting between government forces and rebels continues to ebb and flow across Syria this weekend. Aleppo, Syria's second city in the north, is still at the centre of the battle. Part of it is now held by rebel factions, the rest is under control of regime loyalists. And there's only one place where people can cross from one side to the other. It's at the Bustan Al Qasr street. But Hannah Lucinda Smith says snipers are operating there and crossing over is dangerous.
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Today at about midday, I treated someone who had been shot in the arm, sam tells me. He was a child. They usually are. I think that the snipers are aiming for kids. Just kids. Sam, crouching behind sandbags at the Buston Al Qasr crossing point, is the only doctor on hand to treat those targeted by the snipers. He's 25, speaks in an urbane North American drawl and has humorous eyes twinkling above his surgical mask. He's the son of Syrian exiles who settled in Canada. I was in the final year of my studies to become a cardiac surgeon, he tells me, but then he felt that he had to come here. Now he sleeps in a room in the field hospital where he works, and in his time off he comes to Buston Alcassar to wait for the snipers to open fire. The pavement he sits on is dotted with dark brown blood stains. On average, I treat about 10 people a day, but Fridays are always the worst, he Sundays. Yesterday, about 30 people were shot here. Everybody reacts differently to the sound of the sniper's bullet. When shots ring out, the sea of people in the marketplace parts as most people press themselves against the walls of the buildings, as if somehow that will save them. But the fatalistic ones just carry on walking straight down the middle of the road in a gesture of defiance. Sometimes they just fire in the air to scare people, I'm told, but sometimes they don't. Sam's work bears witness to that. The frenetic energy of Buston Alcassar's marketplace is supercharged with fear. At first we stayed away, a market trader tells me. But then we started coming back. What else can we do? We have to live. Sarah is an activist and a student and she runs the gauntlet every week. Her home is on the rebel side of the city and she crosses over to pick up her notes from the university, which is in the regime held part during exams. She crossed almost every day in her determination to do well. One day I crossed in the morning and by the time I came back 15 people had been killed there. She says she did pass her exams, but she's disappointed with her marks. I did better last year, she tells me. No wonder, I reply. And many families in wartime Aleppo can only buy food if they cross over into opposition held territory. Until recently, the checkpoint was controlled by a group of rogue rebel soldiers who tried to extort money from the already desperate people using it. The last time I came to Bustin Alcassar they tried to arrest me and confiscate my camera, but then a sniper opened fire. In the confusion I escaped. Now it has been taken over by Haras Urrea, one of the city's largest rebel brigades. It's progress for the people who use the crossing point, but also a sign of how fluid and unstable Aleppo's testosterone charged local politics has become. This is a city of fiefdoms. Last week Bustan Al Qasr belonged to the criminals, today it belongs to Harrah Zuraya, and next week, who knows, the rebels. Take me to meet Abu Yassin, a senior official in the rebel held part of the city's Sharia Court police force who's now in charge at Bustan Al Qasr. On a corner where the main street meets the side road, he points to the buildings where the snipers are stationed in a government owned tower block, in an apartment building, in a Minaret. There are 72 snipers aiming towards us, he says, and they only ever shoot at civilians. Some people in the rebel areas want the crossing point closed altogether. Those at Friday demonstrations here no longer call for democracy or freedom or human rights. They want the complete dismemberment of this already fractured city. And while closing Busta Nalkassa might stop regime informants coming into the rebel side of the city, it would be disastrous for many. It would mean failure for Sarah and maybe starvation for the families on the regime held sides. Because however chaotic, however deadly, Bustin Alcassar is a lifeline. It's the last artery connecting a divided city and the only choice for many people and the mass of human beings who throng around it. Sam in his field clinic, Sarah with her lecture notes and the market traders in the snipers sights tell the real story of Aleppo's conflict, one of people trying to carry on with their lives amidst a war they never chose.
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And that's Hannah. Lucinda Smith Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam is a calm and somewhat genteel place compared to its southern rival, the country's economic capital, Ho Chi Minh City, formerly, of course, Saigon. Nevertheless, it's growing fast. New buildings and facilities are springing up. Industrial production's booming. Economic forecasts are optimistic. Back in the first half of the 20th century, this city of some 6 million inhabitants was the capital of French Indochina. Reminders of its French past are everywhere, in its villas and mansions, its tree lined boulevards, and also its famed cuisine. And as Petroch Trelawny's been finding out, there's one colonial era construction which is
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particular revered There are not many pedestrians on Langbyn Bridge. A man in a Panama hat walks briskly as if he has an important meeting. He's wearing a pair of shorts made of cotton printed with headlines from the London Times. An old lady sporting a non la the classic conical Vietnamese hat walks a third of the way across and then turns back. I'm the only other person on foot, getting strange looks from the scores of motorcyclists that speed past me every minute. Building work started on Langbyn Bridge at the very end of the 19th century. The colonial government built it as a way of showing the people of Vietnam that they were here to stay one and a half miles across. It was one of the most spectacular bridges in the world when it opened in 1903. As my walk begins, I cross over the reclaimed banks of the Red river, mineral rich land planted by dozens of small scale market gardeners. One of the farmers has built an impromptu picnic area for himself and his friends with a faded Coca Cola umbrella and a few rattan chairs. Pedestrians must negotiate their way along a narrow walkway made of thin concrete slabs resting in steel frames. Where the frames have rusted or the concrete chipped, you get a clear and vertiginous view of what's happening below. Soon I'm above the river with its constant flow of barges filled with sand. They lie improbably low in the water as they're towed downstream, halfway across a sandy overgrown island that provides a refuge for some of the city's destitute citizens. I've just passed the ramps down to the island when I hear a strange thudding sound. The bridge begins to vibrate and then shake. A train rumbles along the track in the middle, dirty exhaust belching from its diesel engine. This is the railway line that links Hanoi with the port city of Haiphong, meaning the bridge was once strategically vital, first helping swell the economic prosperity of Indochina and then later as a supply route for beleaguered French soldiers fighting Vietnamese nationalists. In time, it became key to communist North Vietnam's fate, the subject of patriotic songs and poems and an all too visible target for American bombing raids. While some of the bridge is original, much of it has been rebuilt since the war. It looks battered all over, a riveted ragtag of different styles and materials. Today, the train is only carrying passengers. Most of the freight seems to be balanced on the back of motorcycles. A lady carries bunches of the Thai basil, used to garnish bowls of pho, the national noodle dish. A man carries reams of white A4 paper, several of them torn open, the sheets flapping in the breeze. There are loads of pineapples, electrical equipment, anonymous boxes. One rider loses control of his cargo of a dozen empty plastic water cooler bottles. Horns blow as bikes swerve out the way, the loose containers. Some of the riders are out for a smartly dressed young couple, the woman riding side saddle, an older man going against the flow, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching a fresh baguette. I've come at a quiet time. At the weekends and at sunset, Hanoians flock to the bridge and photograph each other against the backdrop of their city. The handrails are covered in declarations of love made in white correction fluid. Some are more ominous than others. I'll be waiting for you, one person has written. Tell me why? Asks another. The future of this much cherished landmark is up for debate. Half a dozen bridges cross the river now, and there's talk of tunnels as well. Growing wealth means the traffic flow on the city's roads gets ever busier. Vietnamese railways want to reroute their track. One architect won support for his idea to turn the bridge into a museum covered in glass, with the central island made into a pleasure garden. At the end of last year, Vietnamese officials even asked the French if they would help finance the restoration of the bridge. Walking back towards the city, I try to count the tower blocks through the thick haze. 15, 20, maybe a few more. But unlike Saigon and Bangkok, this is still a relatively low rise city, colonial era buildings seeming to define the shape of the skyline. Many of those old buildings have been brought back to life, the roofs fixed, walls painted yellow, green shutters restored. While over the fast flowing red river, the great Langbyn Bridge waits patiently for its loving makeover.
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And that was Petroch Trelawny in Hanoi. It's 10 years now since the first oil was pumped to the surface in the central African nation of Chad. At the time, the project was hailed as a chance to ensure Chad's oil money reached all sectors of its society. The country was supposed to be taking part in a unique revenue sharing experiment supported by the World Bank. Well, in the last decade, oil's said to have earned Chad some $10 billion, an enormous amount to pour into such a small economy. So how has the cash been spent? Celeste Hicks recently went to Chad to find out, for example, whether the cash has done anything to improve the country's appalling maternal health record.
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It's a hot, humid morning in Jermaine. I arrive on time for my appointment with Dr. Daniel Dangar, a softly spoken gynaecologist in his 40s, one of seven at the city's new Mother and child hospital. Half an hour later, he arrives, rushing past the hospital's armed guards. Sorry I'm late. He gasps. I've been training students at the university. You're doing both jobs? I ask as we walk into the hospital's cool, air conditioned hallway. Would you open a hospital like this before all the staff are fully trained? Says Dr. Dangar, a hint of perplexity flashing across his brow. The hospital is an impressive peach coloured building. It has risen rapidly from the remains of a cleared marketplace in the centre of town. Dr. Dangar is proud of the modern and reasonably clean facilities. In one room, a tiny premature baby girl named Huda is being tended in an incubator by two young midwives. Outside the delivery room, there's an orderly queue of women waiting on benches. There's even round the clock electricity and running water. It doesn't sound like much, but on my last visit to a maternity wing in Chad, I had to step through blood and amniotic fluid caked to the floor. At the gate, Dr. Dangar shakes my hand goodbye. But as I turn away, the sun blinds me and I walk smack bang into a roughly finished road sign. For a second the world goes dark and bright lights start flashing across my vision. I look down and see bright red spots of blood on my new white shirt. Oh, madam, I was going to tell you to watch out. Cries Dr. Dangar, back inside the hospital's emergency ward and the young doctors clamour to treat me. Be careful, whispers Dr. Dangar. She's a journalist. The irony of him then sticking an unwashed finger into my open wound seems lost on him. The bleeding soon stops. It takes four medical staff to patch me up One is responsible for pouring the iodine, one for holding the dressing, one for cutting the surgical tape and one for sticking the dressing to my forehead. I have to admit that I'm quite impressed. I leave the hospital just 20 minutes later with a neatly bandaged forehead. But buildings like this, and their persistent lack of qualified doctors and nurses are at the heart of an argument which has been raging in Chad for a decade. The question is how to make the country's enormous windfall work for everyone's benefit. Oil money has created a country of extremes. Jamena's new maternity hospital is part of a whirlwind construction boom. In five years, most of the city's dirt roads have been carpeted in tarmac, the dilapidated centre torn out and replaced by an ostentatious French style plaza with a triumphal arch, along with a host of new government offices. But in Chad's remote east, it's easy to understand why mortality rates among the under fives have stubbornly refused to improve. Chad still has the fifth worst rate in the world. In creaking maternity wings in towns like Abece and Gosbeda, you'll meet women who struggled in labour for three or four days before their husbands allowed them to go to hospital. Too late, of course, you see babies born with spina bifida and other conditions with no hope of survival unless the mother can pay for a long, grueling car journey to bigger hospitals. You'll find wards without a single stethoscope. In one new hospital built with oil money in the Dober region, There are just two doctors for more than 50,000 people. The equivalent figure for the US is about 130. At the beginning of the oil project, the World bank saw all this coming and laid elaborate plans to oblige the Chadian government to spend 80% of its revenues on social development and to save for future generations. Chad ripped up those plans, prioritized high profile building projects over education and spent millions on weapons. As I stare at myself in the mirror, picking and poking the scar on my forehead, I think back to the newborn babies I met in Jamena. Like tiny premature Huda, with many more billions of oil dollars to come, I wonder what kind of future is waiting for her.
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Celeste Hicks, back from Chad and with head wound now fully healed, it might be nearly 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But there's still heated debate about the circumstances of his death, and particularly about Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing him in the early 1960s. Before the shooting, Oswald lived in Minsk. When that city was part of the Soviet Union. David Stern has just been there. It's now the capital of independent Belarus. And he found that people there still remember Kennedy's supposed killer. Some of them surprisingly fondly, Lee Harvey Oswald.
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His name can evoke a range of emotions. Anger among those who believe him to be the lone gunman who assassinated President Kennedy, militant disbelief among those who don't, and perhaps most of all, a yearning among those who want to know what exactly happened during those fateful November days in Dallas when a young President was murdered and his accused assassin was then himself gunned down two days later. What I didn't count on was that his name would inspire warm memories. I'd come to Minsk to follow in the footsteps of Oswald, who had lived here for two and a half years after having defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. I was not hoping to find the smoking gun, so to speak, conclusive proof that Oswald was in fact Kennedy's killer. No, too many people had sifted through the details of Oswald's life like gold prospectors in a stream and failed to come up with any nugget of evidence. I did not expect to be any different. What I wanted was some clue to the man himself. Something that would fill out his character, create a person in place of that two dimensional image that many of us have seen. The one of Oswald crumpled over and crying out in pain as he is shot in the stomach by the nightclub owner Jack ruby. Oswald, a 20 year old former Marine, moved to the USSR because he said he was a Marxist. Soviet authorities did not trust him, however, and initially rejected his request to defect. After he made a half hearted suicide attempt in his Moscow hotel room, the Soviets changed their mind and allowed him to stay. They sent him to Minsk, a distant provincial capital which might as well have been Siberia. He was assigned a job at a radio and TV factory and allocated a one room apartment in the center of town. I visited this flat, which commands a striking fourth floor view of one of Minsk's main parks and its opera house. The street where the building is located is called Communist street, just as it was in Oswald's day. In fact, many things in Minsk haven't changed since the Soviet era. Belarus may be independent, but it's still under an authoritarian system. The KGB keeps a tight lid on developments and is still called the kgb. All of this made it easier to form an image of Oswald walking the streets creating going to his factory job and meeting acquaintances. One of his best friends was a medical student named Ernst Titavets. Titavets knew English well and attached himself to the young American. They attended concerts and dances together and Titavets played Cupid's helper. When Oswald met his future wife, Marina, whom Titavets described as attractive in a raw sexual sort of way. I just like the guy, said Titavets, who is now a spry 74 year old neuro researcher. He added that Oswald once saved him from being hit by a car and said that Oswald had a sharp sense of humor. He loved to laugh and play practical jokes. But Titavets said that Oswald was obviously troubled, even though he tried to hide his emotions. He was stoical and he was always clean with well dressed and put together, no matter what, Titavets said. I asked what did you think when you heard that Oswald had allegedly killed Kennedy and then himself was shot? I couldn't believe my ears. I deeply believe he was innocent. He was incapable of killing anybody, Titavets said. This was in fact a refrain that I heard throughout my time in Minsk. No one believed that Oswald could have assassinated the US President. This of course, proves nothing. Oswald never fully opened up to anyone. And in any case, it's human nature to believe only the best about your friends. Still, it was somewhat unnerving to hear so many good things about a person whose name is associated with one of the most infamous acts of our era. But the biggest surprise was yet to come. I met one of Oswald's former workmates, Vladimir Zhydovich, at a local cafe. He, like everyone else, told how Oswald was a good guy and he couldn't imagine him a murderer. At the end of the interview, he asked a favor. If I ever go to Dallas, he asked, would I lay some flowers on Oswald's grave from him and the other colleagues at the factory? The request took me aback. I didn't know what to say. On the one hand, this was Oswald we were talking about. A man who may have slain a political leader and without a doubt altered world history. On the other hand, Zidovitch's appeal came from the heart. He obviously cared for Oswald. I don't usually turn down entreaties when they are that sincere. And even now I haven't made up my mind what to do.
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A quandary for our own correspondent, David Stern, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again next Saturday morning with more from reporters around the world. Until then, goodbye.