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From Our Own Correspondent
Somalis on Ice
00:27:58
Foreign correspondents: James Copnall meets the men now controlling the opposing in to...
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Narrator/Host
Hello from the from our own correspondence
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James Kopnell
studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've
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Kate Ady
downloaded the latest edition of the programme
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Humphrey Hawksley
broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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Kate Ady
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
Hello. Today, a harsh life for the brickmakers constructing India's economic miracle sealing off a radioactive sarcophagus. Why some are worried about the attempt to cover over Chernobyl's nuclear threat. We hear how 100 years ago Britain's pioneer aviators were making history over the River Nile and how today a group of African skaters are hoping to make their mark amid the icy wastes of Siberia. The two sides in the conflict in South Sudan have sat down to peace talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. But back home, there's no let up in the fighting. Thousands of people are now believed to have been killed in three weeks of clashes between army units loyal to President Salvakia and forces led by his former deputy, Riek Machar. Aid agencies say tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced. Many are now in desperate need of help and shelter. Over the last week, James Kopnell has been talking to both the rival leaders. His first encounter was at the presidential palace in the South Sudanese capital Juba.
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James Kopnell
The Christmas decorations jarred perfect. Triangular fir trees were draped in tinsel with inviting gifts at their feet, though at a guess they were empty boxes more promised than present. Nice, I said. The official laughed and said he'd spent most of the pre Christmas period hunkering down nearby as bullets, shells and rocket propelled grenades exploded all around the presidential palace. A few days later the palace was calm again and so was all of the capital, Juba. But rebels had taken control of two major towns and some oil fields further north and and thousands of people had been killed. President Salva Kiir insists this all began when his former vice president, Riak Machar and several others tried to overthrow him. Eleven of those men were arrested, though they deny the president's accusation. Mashah fled from a city shaking from the gunshots. The reinforced metal door of his house buckled under a sustained assault, as if a giant strongman had drawn its two ends together, creating a letter C. Mashah says his bodyguards were among the hundreds killed in those first days of fighting. Whatever his initial intention, he is now leading a rebellion. As I waited to interview President Kiir, just down the corridor from the Christmas tree and a couple of kilometres from a makeshift camp holding over 10,000 desperate people, ministers in tailored suits came in and out and one soldier walked past carrying three guns as casually as a farmer transports a hoe the president, when he arrived, was wearing his trademark black cowboy hat, perhaps the one he received as a gift from George W. Bush. Keir doesn't give many interviews. I'd been trying to get one for months now. As the war radiated out around the country, poisoning life for hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese, a sit down chat was organised in a few hours. The president speaks slowly, pausing between phrases. He's a former intelligence officer who seems more comfortable observing than speaking. Those who know him well say that in meetings he listens and waits and only ever takes a decision at the last possible moment. In the two and a half years since South Sudan became independent after decades of civil conflict with the Sudanese government, antagonism between the president and his then vice president Masha was growing, although in theory they were both on the same side. Soon Masha was openly criticizing his boss and he was joined in this by other senior politicians. Salva, as the President is widely known in South Sudan, was stifling dissent within the governing party, allowing corruption, and had sacked two elected governors. They complained. Salva watched and waited. And then in July, he fired his entire cabinet, including Mashar. Out of this political quarrel, a war has grown, triggered by the alleged attempted coup of nearly three weeks ago. I asked President Kiir whether he would eventually consider some sort of power sharing arrangement with his rival. Out of the question, he said. Rek Mishar had rebelled against an elected president and could not be rewarded. Regional leaders and others like Barack Obama, have taken a similar position. Uganda's president even threatened to destroy the rebels if they did not agree to stop fighting and talk. A day after seeing Kiir, I spoke to Riek Machar on his satellite phone. Mashah smiles often and has a slight gap between his front teeth. This is not his first fight with salva kiir. In 1991, Mashah broke away from the rebel movement fighting Khartoum in the still united Sudan. Thousands died in the rebel infighting, along with just as many civilians. Kiir was on the other side of the split and has never forgiven Mashar. Over the phone from an undisclosed location, Machar told me he'd agreed to send a delegation to Addis to negotiate the so he would not commit to stopping fighting until a monitoring plan was decided on. He also admitted for the first time that the White Army, a feared militia from his own ethnic group, was part of his forces. The White army helped defectors from the army loyal to Mashar capture the town of Bour this week. The conflict has inflamed ethnic tensions. Mashhar is an ethnic Nur. Many Nur say they were targeted in Juba at the beginning of the fighting. Kiya's Dinka ethnic group has been singled out by newer soldiers loyal to Masha. The UN and others have denounced ethnic killings by both sides. Whatever the talks in Addis Ababa bring, restoring confidence among communities will not be easy. South Sudan, it seems to me, is a prisoner of its own history. The decades of conflict with Khartoum created a political class of rebel leaders and left an underdeveloped and increasingly polarized society. It would have been difficult for almost any politician to overcome such challenges once independence came. But the tragedy is that South Sudan's leaders have made a particularly poor job of it.
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
And that's James Kopnell. One of the biggest engineering projects in history is continuing this weekend amid the decaying industrial landscape of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. They're building what's been described as a gigantic metal igloo big enough to contain an entire football pitch. They hope it will seal off the hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel still buried inside the reactor, which blew up in 1986, spreading a radioactive cloud around parts of Europe. The cost of the project is being shared among some 40 nations, but it's more than a decade behind schedule, and Nick Mayo, who's just been there, says not everyone's convinced it will work.
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Narrator/Host
When Alexander Koopny speaks about Chernobyl, Ukrainians listen, and Mr. Koopny, who was a scientist there for more than a decade, is a worried man. What keeps him awake at night is the thought of hundreds of tons of radioactive fuel still buried in the ruins of reactor number four, the one that blew up in 1986. But the project to cover it with a gigantic metal dome is years behind schedule. Last winter, there was a radiation alert when part of the existing structure over the reactor collapsed, and Ukrainians are getting anxious. When will it ever be finished? They ask. Mr. Kubny knows more than most about the dangerous ruins of Chernobyl These days. He's semi retired at the age of 53. He lives in the bleak concrete new town of Slavutych, a safe distance south of the reactor. This is where most of the Chernobyl scientists moved to after the accident. Their homes had been irradiated. Chernobyl has been Mr. Coopenie's life's work. It's also a family undertaking. His father was director of the wrecked plant, and his son started work there a couple of years ago. We're a Chernobyl dynasty, he jokes. Mr. Kupny has written a book about the accident. And this year he had a legal battle with the Ukrainian authorities after he criticized their management of the reactor. He's a glamorous and well known figure in Ukraine because he's a so called stalker. One of the technicians who risked frightening levels of radiation to venture into the reactor building. He went inside 10 times to check on what was happening there, clad in protective gear, carrying a Geiger counter and a video camera. And the footage he shot is quite extraordinary. At home in his flat, he. He loaded it onto his computer and played pictures of tangled wreckage and what looked like solidified lava, flows of burnt fuel, all deep inside the derelict building. It's far too radioactive for men to work there to get the dangerous material out. His adventures have given Mr. Koopney a poetic outlook on the plant. To me, the reactor is almost a living thing, like a beast that's sleeping, he tells me, looking up from his computer screen with a grin. But the day of the Chernobyl stalker is coming to a close. Soon this nuclear mess will be sealed off by the arch, the new metal dome. Half built, it now towers above the landscape at Chernobyl. The size of it is staggering. It's tall enough to contain the Statue of Liberty and it will cost more than a billion pounds. To hold it together, 680,000 metal bolts are needed. It must be assembled at a safe distance from the reactor's radiation. Then, when it's finished, its 29,000 ton weight will slide into place on specially built tracks. It's all very impressive, but nothing like this has ever been done before. Will it work? Mr. Kootenay has his doubts. In particular, he's not sure the engineers will be able to slide the arch into place. He thinks it could veer off its tracks during that final journey. If things go badly wrong, it could even crash into the reactor. And the arch is being built under huge pressure. At the moment. The reactor is covered by the sarcophagus, an edifice of concrete and metal panels erected as a temporary measure in the months following the disaster. It's now rusting and threatens to collapse. And it should have been replaced before 2006. If it did collapse, a plume of radioactive dust could once again be released into the sky. Mr. Koopney wants to see the arch in place, but he thinks the foreign engineer's estimate of finishing by 2015 is over optimistic. The most troubling doubt of all, though, is what will happen after the arch is finished. The plan is to get the dangerous material out so it can be permanently and safely disposed of. But there's no nuclear waste dump to put it in, no money to pay for the work, and the technology does not exist to get it out. The hope seems to be that a future generation will deal with these problems, Mr. Koupny tells me. But that means that Chernobyl could still prove very dangerous for Ukraine, but far into the future. After all, the arch has been designed to last for a hundred years or so, he says, but the nuclear mess within that will be radioactive for thousands of years to come.
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
Nick Mayo there Activists in India are claiming that workers in the country's construction industry are routinely abused. Their testimony is part of the evidence put forward by an international trade union movement which is launching a campaign it calls blood bricks. It says the office blocks, hotels, factories, airports and call centers used by global companies are often built on slave labour, and it claims that no brick in any of the new buildings in India is made legally. Humphrey Hawksley has been to the brick kilns near the city of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.
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Humphrey Hawksley
The office of the Labour Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh is a vast room ballasted by his wide desk at one end his in front of which stand rows of upright chairs for his visiting delegations. I perched on one, wondering how the interview with Commissioner Dr. A. Ashok would unfold. He's a bear of a man with huge presence and a big smile, at home with his power and job, looking after the labour force in an Indian state of some 90 million people. A snappy dresser too, with thick dark hair swept back and slightly tinted glasses giving him the look of a middle aged rock star. We had got to see him through a young labour rights activist who, as Ashok strode into the room, melted back to lose himself in the bustle of the Commissioner's staff. Amid loud introductory chatter, he stayed quiet and said nothing. Over the past three days Ayeshalakrishna had taken us around open air brick factories near Hyderabad, where mud is baked into bricks that go into building modern India's economic mirac. the first kiln we visited, there was a mound of coal just inside the entrance, where women and children squatted down, breaking up chunks with their bare hands. Further along, men churned mud to mix the clay and water that was slapped into brick moulds. In front stood the furnace itself, a huge smouldering cube like monument about two stories high. Smoke seeped out of its edges, making the air so acrid that it caught in the throat and tightened the lungs. Workers lifted carriers loaded with bricks across their shoulders, then, with strain from the weight, creased across Their faces. They climbed steps to the top to deliver them for baking. Beyond the furnace were piles and piles of bricks ready to go to construction sites. According to Krishna, countless laws are routinely broken in this industry. Minimum pay, wages withheld, long days children working, sexual and physical abuse, safety and bonded labor. That curse of the Indian poor where income is never enough to repay debt. Nearby, at another kiln, Krishna showed us homes of tarpaulins flapping on poles made from tree branches where families live and for the luckier ones, mud huts with earthen floors too low to stand up in. We found five year old Madhuri there. She had come with her parents from a faraway village. We make 1500 bricks a day, said her mother, Gurabol, holding Madari's two year old brother Vishnu in her arms. Gently, Krishna pulled down the skin under Madhuri's eye. See, she is suffering from an eye problem because of the smoke. Her haemoglobin is very low. Madari shyly whispers to him. She says she has stomach problems too. He said that's probably because of the water. Her hair was matted and filthy, her face streaked with dirt, her eyes expressionless, with no sign of laughter or of childhood. So once Labour Commissioner Ashok has settled, I begin by asking, what problems are you facing with the Brickkills? You know, child labour, bonded labour, minimum wages. No, no, he says quickly. There's no such thing. I'm very happy to share with you. We've taken up a project to reduce the vulnerability of the workers. They're paid the minimum WA and the conditions are fine. Housing, drinking water, health care system and so on. There may be some pockets and they need to be rectified. And all that has been documented and presented to the ilo. That's the UN watchdog on labour. The timing of my visit here was no coincidence. In October last year, Britain amended its Companies act, requiring quoted businesses to include human rights issues in their annual reports that followed new UN guidelines that say multinational firms also have to remedy abuses anywhere in their supply chains. For those setting up factories, call centers and offices in India, indeed anywhere in the world, the new guidelines are seen as a game changer. And an international group of trade unions is now launching a blood bricks campaign to identify firms that might be in breach of these new standards for the multinationals, I ask Ashok, can you guarantee that the bricks they use are made without any abuse? Yes, we're very sure, he says, 100%. It's our responsibility to ensure there's no exploitation. I glance across to Krishna, who stays Quiet. Deliberately avoiding my gaze. He and Ashok are on the opposite sides of this issue. But now, whatever each of them claims, the multinationals will have to check for themselves. And it will be harder than ever for them to ignore the lives of
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
children like little Madari Humphrey Hawksley in Northern India. Well, the Nile has once again been in the news this week as people displaced from their homes by the fighting in South Sudan have set up temporary camps along the river. But a hundred years ago, it was in the headlines for quite a different reason. British aviators were setting off on the very first flight along the length of this famous river. One of the men on that historic journey was Gus Smith. His great grandson happens to be Britain's Ambassador to Lebanon. Matthew Teller's been talking to him about the remarkable adventure which began to unfold in January 1914.
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Kate Ady
In the early years of aviation, it was the pilot's skill which caught the public imagination. The Wright brothers came first in 1903, a few seconds aloft at barely more than head height above the ground. Then Louis Bleriot successfully made it over the English Channel when Frank Maclean, a wealthy Irish aviator, steered a biplane he'd developed with the engineering firm Short Brothers between the towers of Tower Bridge in London. The Times newspaper. The engine ran smoothly and the machine was always under complete control. But the Times made no mention of the reason for such smoothness. Maclean's mechanic, a young man named Augustus Leonard Smith, Tom Fletcher's great grandfather Gus Gus had joined Short Brothers just as the firm was moving its aviation manufacturing business from balloons to powered aircraft. Backed by lucrative deals with Maclean and other pioneers, Gus quickly rose to the peak of his trade, working at Short Brothers Eastchurch workshop in Kentucky, refining and maintaining Maclean's fearsomely complex and technologically advanced flying machines. By 1913, Short brothers, under commission from Frank Maclean, had built what they called a hydro aeroplane that could not only take off and land on water, but also carry three passengers. The French National Air League had just issued a challenge to test the viability of long distance air travel by flying from Paris to Cairo. French aviators were racing each other that autumn across Central Europe. No doubt the Brits wanted to go one better. They decided to fly along the Nile to Khartoum. The last week of December 1913 saw Maclean, another pioneer, British aviator, Alec Ogilvie, Horace Short and Gus Smith, at the naval dockyard in Alexandria on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. They were receiving a consignment of crates newly arrived from Liverpool, containing the disassembled hydro aeroplane. As flight mechanic, Gas would probably have rebuilt the aircraft himself from its 20 metre wings. To the French designed 14 cylinder engine. Lives depended on him. On the 3rd of January 1914, with passengers and crew aboard, Maclean steered the extraordinarily flimsy machine of wood and wire into the skies over Alexandria. The Times again noted the pilot, but left his mechanic unnamed. With the plane's limited range, the journey formed a series of short hops. Petrol supplies had been left at points all along the route, but even so, the team was plagued by engine trouble. 13 breakdowns, with extended delays waiting for delivery of spare parts meant that their flight to Khartoum, perhaps 1500 miles at an altitude of around 60 metres above the Nile, took almost three months. Adding insult to injury, they were overtaken by a French airman, Marc Poupre. By flying a wheeled monoplane, Poupre didn't have to follow the meandering course of the river. He made khartoum in around 10 days. That said, there doesn't seem to have been any question of a race. And the Brits persevered, reaching Khartoum on 22 March 1914. Though the prospect of a three month return no doubt prompted the decision to dismantle the plane and ship it back to England. Both Maclean and Gus Smith flew with the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I. Maclean was knighted in 1926. And Gus Love of aircraft persisted. He worked as a flight instructor between the wars and died in 1942 at the age of only 58. A few days later, the family received a letter on the stationery of the Royal Aero Club. It read, though it is a long time since my days at Eastchurch and on the Nile, Gus was so much a part of those days and of the struggle to make machines fly, that no recollection is complete without him. And it was in great part due to him that failure was avoided. The letter was signed FK Maclean. Today, Gus Smith's great grandson, Ambassador Tom Fletcher, tells me plans are afoot to commemorate the centenary of the Nile flight with an event in Cairo where a model of the 1914 plane is on museum display. I hope they're realised. For all the headline making skill of those at the controls, we now as then, only stay up thanks to the
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
likes of Gus Smith and that was Matthew Teller. A team from the Horn of Africa is on its way to icy Siberia to take part for the very first time in the Bandy World Championships. Bandy, for the uninitiated, is a bit like ice hockey, only it's played with a ball rather than A puck. Years ago, I used to referee bandy games. Wobbling around on my skates on a frozen pond in Swedish Lapland. I was rubbish. All rules could be broken with me tiptoeing around on my blades. Up to now, the teams playing it have been mainly from Northern Hemisphere countries. But later this month, in the city of Irkutsk, a team from Somalia will join them. The team's made up of Somalis who've recently gone to live in Sweden. Mary Harper's been there to talk to them and watch them prepare for the big tournament.
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Mary Harper
There, stretching out in front of me, is a giant smooth sheet of ice. It's the size and shape of a football pitch, with a little net goal at either end. It's nighttime and the sky is pitch black, lit by floodlights. The perfect white of the ice seems to glow from the inside. It's still and quiet around the pitch. I can just make out tall pine trees standing like silent guards. Suddenly, the peace is broken. Figures in bright colours swarm onto the ice. I hear the whoosh and scrape of skates, the thwack of wooden sticks hitting a ball, the occasional thump of a body coming down hard. The voice of the coach travels loud and clear through the night air. And it's then I notice something strange. We may be in a small Swedish town playing a very Swedish game, but the coach is the only white face on the pitch. Everyone else is black and they're speaking a language I recognize, Somali. This is the Somali national bandy team, and its headquarters is right here in the Swedish town of Borlenga. Ahmed Hussain is a member of the team. He's wearing a big red top that billows around his slight frame. He has an impossibly engaging smile with dark, deep dimples in his cheeks. I grew up in Mogadishu, he says, where the only thing I knew about ice was a something to put in my Coca Cola. Ahmed tells me that a few months ago, not a single member of the team knew how to skate, let alone play bandy. How? A man called Patrick came to him and a group of friends and told them about this weird game. Patrick is standing on the sidelines. I was worried about the segregation of the Somalis and Swedes in my town, he says there were riots a few months ago in the suburbs where immigrants live. Later, while having a few beers with friends, I came up with the idea of a Somali bandy team. It would get people talking to each other, and it certainly has something especially important in a town like Bolenga, where close to 10% of the population is Somali and growing every day. A Somali community worker, Mercel Issa, takes me for a walk around the area where most Somalis live. This is a Swedish Mogadishu, he says. I see a woman in typical Somali dress, a long gown, a large veil. She's holding hands with her small children, a boy and a girl, bundled up warm in thick snowsuits, their big brown eyes peeking out from tightly tied hoods. Aren't you freezing? I ask shyly. She lifts up the bottom of her veil. Underneath the is a big black coat, even though it's so cold and so quiet, so utterly different from Somalia. Not one of the Somalis I meet complains about life in Sweden. Many talk of the value of a Swedish education, and the young are ambitious. One wants to be an architect, another a stockbroker. This is very different from Britain, where Somalis often talk of police harassment, of how some of their boys choose crime over school. Of course, it's not perfect in Sweden, but there are lessons to be learned. Back on the pitch, I asked the coach, Per Hosshaug, a legendary bandy player and five times world champion, how he got the boys to this standard in such a short time. They have courage. They've lived through things we don't even want to dream about, he tells me. So getting on skates was nothing for them. I notice a Somali teenager shuffling along on the edge of the ice. It's only the second time he's had skates on. A graceful figure glides towards him, dressed all in black. A short fur coat belted elegantly at the waist, a black hat decorated with a glamorous black flower. She takes the Somali boy's hands and pulls him forwards, shows him how to skate. Like everyone else involved with the Somali bandy team, this Swedish figure skater is a volunteer. She's going with them to Siberia. They're not going to win. They might not even score a goal. But that's not the point. Something very special is happening on the ice in this small Swedish town, which has nothing to do with winning or losing. It's about getting two very different communities to talk to each other and to live together.
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Matthew Teller / Mary Harper / Nick Mayo (various reporters)
Mary Harper with that story of skating Somalis in Sweden bringing this edition to a close. I'm here next Saturday with more from correspondence far and wide. Do join us. Goodbye.