← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Stranded at Sea
00:28:11
Around the world. Today - the increasingly desperate plight of men, women and children...
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent. We make one version of the program for the BBC World Service, but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ad.
- [00:17]
B
Hello. Today nobody wants them. There's nowhere to go. The Asian migrants desperate and stranded at sea. Mounting violence, growing insecurity in Afghanistan and the country still has no Defence minister. An aristocrat airbrushed From Hungarian history 70 years ago makes a triumphant return to Budapest. And mixed feelings in the Azores as the islands out in the mid Atlantic get set for a surge of sun seeking northern Europeans. The Thai navy is this morning reported to have towed a boat full of migrants away from its islands and back out into the Andaman Sea. Yesterday the United nations urged Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia not to turn back vessels containing migrants. Its Human Rights Commissioner said the policy was appalling. Jonathan Head says it's become clear thousands of migrants are now adrift in Southeast Asian waters. Many are ill, half starved and dehydrated and in need of medical treatment.
- [01:19]
C
It was six years ago that I first heard reports of the boats carrying Rohingya Muslims across the Andaman Sea to Thailand and learnt of the appalling conditions on board. This week, for the first time, I encountered one of these crudely converted fishing boats. The cries of distress, the pleas for water and the emaciated bodies we could see as we approached them drifting near the Thai Malaysian border. These are overpowering impressions. I shall never forget how people had endured two to three months on board. These overcrowded wooden hulks was hard to imagine. The decks were filled with people staring back at us in the hold. They were packed onto narrow shelves reminiscent of the slave trade. What can their lives be like back in Myanmar for them to endure this? The reason we've rarely seen these boats before is because they're a link in the long chain of a secret trade. It's a trade that began accidentally, driven by the need for Rohingya to to escape persecution and prejudice in Myanmar. Their only way out is by boat. They're not allowed to travel inside their own country. And their destination of choice is Malaysia, a Muslim country with plenty of low level jobs. But Malaysia polices its sea borders efficiently. The easiest way in is or was through Thailand, exploiting endemic corruption and a very porous land border. An entire industry grew around smuggling the Rohingyas. It was an industry with a callous indifference to human lives, except for the profits they can generate. And the profits turned out to be huge. One boatload of Rohingyas can be sold to Thai brokers for 20,000 pounds. The brokers then hold the Rohingyas for ransom, demanding more than 1,000 pounds per person, an enormous sum for their families to raise before they can move on. They're held sometimes for many months, in remote jungle camps, often with no shelter, no mattresses, no facilities of any kind. But the terrible abuses in these camps, long known by Thai officials, have now been exposed. With the discovery of mass graves, Thailand is finally acting to shut the trafficking networks down. So the boats that once unloaded their human cargoes in the dead of night have stayed offshore. And in at least one case, the smugglers have fled, leaving the migrants without a crew or a working engine. This was the boat that we found. Usually, little is known of the boat's fates until the brokers phone with their demands for money. That at least confirms that the migrants have survived their sea journey. But on this boat, two people carried phones with Thai SIM cards. They called their families to tell them of their increasingly desperate plight as they drifted aimlessly. But they were unable to describe where they were, so no one could find them. They could see hills, they said, and lights. It wasn't much to go on, but piecing together sightings by fishing crews, snippets of information from helpful Thai military contacts and a location search by the phone company, we worked out that they were probably just inside Thai waters, somewhere between the resort island of Koh Lipe and the mainland. Two ferry rides later, we were standing on the island's brilliant beaches, talking to the commander of the small navy post there. He insisted we go out immediately on his powerful launch to have a look. Although the sun was setting, we roared around the island, stopping to question startled squid fishermen through a megaphone. No one seemed to know anything about the stricken boat. But the next day there was a breakthrough. Fishing boats had found it not far away and they were surrounding it until the navy got there. There was a snag. Though our commander was ordered not to take any media with him, his bosses were nervous about negative publicity. We dashed back along the beach. It's low season now on Koh Lipe, and there are very few fast boats around. By good luck, though, we found a small speedboat. After a gut churning 40 minutes on a choppy sea, we saw it unmistakable, with coloured cloth suspended across the decks and a black flag. We are Myanmar, Rohingya, they'd written. And there was the heartrending sound of wailing and crying. And then we could see them, some frighteningly thin, holding out their hands to us at the time of writing. We still don't know what will happen to them. The navy boarded the boat, repaired its engine and sent it on its way out of Thai territory. Despite the obvious medical needs of its passengers, a policy known as pushback adopted by all the countries in this region, they still dream of reaching Malaysia, where they have relatives and the chance of decent lives. Eventually, some of them will probably get there.
- [06:19]
B
Jonathan Head in Thailand. The attack on a guest house in Kabul this week, which left 14 people dead, several of them foreign nationals, is a reminder that conflict there didn't end with the departure of British and American combat forces. In December, the Taliban claimed responsibility for what was described by the British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, as a callous act of terrorism. Gunman opened fire as an audience gathered to hear a concert of classical Afghan music. Such attacks against innocent civilians should not, Mr. Hammond said, be allowed to threaten a more peaceful future for Afghanistan. When the country's new leader, Ashraf Ghani, came to power last year, he said insecurity in the country would be brought to an end. David Loyne in Kabul says the President is now under increasing pressure to deliver on that promise.
- [07:10]
D
After international combat forces staged elaborate handover ceremonies in December, folded up their flags and went home, there were a series of local all Afghan events, shows of strength to tell elders and officials who was in charge now. Most were addressed by the head of the armed forces, General Sheikh Mohammed Karimi, the most Anglophile of Afghans, the first Afghan officer to train at Sandhurst more than 40 years ago. In his speeches he stressed that now, for the first time since the 1980s, Afghanistan was on its own, responsible for its security. There were deep throated roars of Juand, Juand. Juand. Life, Life. Life. In response from the soldiers, I was particularly keen to go to the rally in Helmand, where there'd been so much British effort with an Afghan pilot. We flew in a tiny, very light single engine plane with canvas seats that felt a little like sailing in a dinghy. Its propellers beat the thin mountain air, straining to make it over the Charisia Bridge to the south of Kabul and before heading towards the flat desert landscape of Helmand. The huge former British and American base is deserted, with one corner taken by a far smaller Afghan force. It was here that I first heard reports that dissident Taliban fighters were flying the black flag of Islamic State. Spool forward three months and I've just been to Kundu's in the northeast, where there are credible reports of many IS fighters. And unlike Helmand in the south, where is are fighting against their former Taliban comrades. In the north, they're in alliance. The governor of Kunduz, Omar Safi, another Anglophile Afghan graduate of Leicester University, is coordinating a complex campaign against an enemy who came close to his provincial capital. So close that at one point he and his staff made plans to fly out to safety. The insurgents were pushed back just in time, over a simple supper of rice, beans and okra shared in Afghan fashion. Sitting on the floor in his modest guest house, Safi told me that one reason the attack against his capital was so ruthless and nearly succeeded was because of the presence of foreign jihadis wearing black Islamic State headbands in the first 24 hours of the new government offensive to retake ground. Nine of the 35 insurgents killed were foreign and three Chechen women guerrillas had been found among the dead. But the enemy is even more complex than that. Criminal mafia gangs smuggling drugs, alcohol and weapons across the nearby border to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have their own militias. And there are mujahideen bands from the war in the 1980s, when Islamic guerrillas were financed and armed by the US in Afghanistan. This complex web of security threats was never unravelled by the international forces who arrived in 2001, who had a simplistic obsession with the Taliban and Al Qaeda rather than tackling any of the other causes of conflict. So Afghan forces, now fighting on their own, as their commanding officer reminded them in those rallies, have to take on this task for themselves. There is residual air support being provided by NATO, but Afghan requests for strikes are rarely granted and were turned down in Kunduz. Afghan forces are far better than many of the international troops who trained them expected them to be by now. But they're taking heavy casualties and are not backed up by similar commitment from the country's politicians. It took months of argument brokered by the American Secretary of State John Kerry last year to provide a so called government of national unity. There were several more months of wrangling before ministers were appointed and most were promptly rejected by parliament, including General Karimi that Sandhurst trained head of the army who'd been selected as Defence Minister more than a year after the election. Most government departments do now finally have ministers ratified by Parliament. President Ghani has set them 100 day targets to achieve in order to kick start some momentum into a system that has been drifting for too long. But despite worsening insecurity, with the UN reporting higher civilian casualties than in any other year since the fall of the Taliban, there is still no Defence Minister. Afghanistan cannot afford any further delays. In this, a year which will be the most complex year for security, amid signs that at last the Afghan government may be willing to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban, the country's not going to fall back into the hands of the Taliban. There's been too much progress, too much change. But the nation's political elite is letting down its armed forces as another fighting season gets underway.
- [11:53]
B
David Loyne in Kabul. The threat posed by the group, which calls itself Islamic State, has become a top priority for security services everywhere. While Jordan's armed forces have so far protected its borders from is, the kingdom's been locked in an ideological and also an online struggle with the group ever since it joined the military coalition carrying out airstrikes. The propaganda war reached its height in February when Ayaz published that video of its fighters burning alive. A Jordanian pilot, Dominic Casciani, has been to Amman to find out whether the rest of the world can learn lessons from this kingdom's response to the extremists.
- [12:33]
A
Dima Farage wears her heart on her sleeve, or to be precise, wrapped around her shoulders with a touch of catwalk style as she comes towards me through the bustling old streets around Oman's Al Husseini Mosque. She's unmistakable. Big Jackie O sunglasses and big salon hair. But most importantly of all, she's worn her traditional red and white checked Jordanian scarf. What's that? I ask, referring to an embroidered badge of a crown and a star. Oh, that's just something very important, I wanted to add when we were preparing for the protest march. You know, this scarf is part of our culture. Well, so's the crown. And on that day we all stood with the king and the pilot's family. Dima is one of Jordan's most well known and prolific social media activists. By the time I finish the sentence, she's probably sent another tweet. She's not a journalist, simply a businesswoman who's unashamedly patriotic, and her take on current affairs is followed by tens of thousands. The day she wants to tell me about was the 6th of February, when Iman's higgledy piggledy downtown streets were packed with people who were angry and mourning. They'd come out after Friday prayers to march over the murder of the Air Force pilot Muada Al Kasasbeh. For six weeks, the world had watched as is appeared to prevaricate over what to do with the pilot they'd captured. But it was all cruel theatre. They'd already killed him and only delayed telling the world while they waited for their filmmakers to finish the video of his death. Islamic State wanted the video to go viral on the Internet so it could shock and threaten the west and challenged the order of the Middle East. We followed a march's route past juice stalls and spice shops along King Talao street. And Dima tells me that February day was like no other moment she'd experienced as a Jordanian. The nation was indeed shocked and under attack. But instead of disintegrating, people united and sent back a message the fighters couldn't ignore. There were Muslims, Christians, tribal chiefs, ethnic Palestinians and Iraqis, she says, full of excitement. All of us together, many of us were carrying the pilot's image, not the image that is wanted the world to see, but Muad in uniform. Even the Queen carried that picture. It was an amazing moment. But before she gets carried away, she pauses. Those were the darkest days. As Dima and I talk amid the increasingly loud pre prayer announcements booming out of the mosque, a man comes across to say hello. He's recognised Dima and wants to thank her for her work. And he trusts into my hand an official looking leaflet denouncing Islamic State. Now, I'm not knocking his intention, but the dense slab of text is the absolute opposite of what is pours into the smartphones of the young. And the video of the pilot's killing remains the most potent example of the Islamic State's social media machine. We felt that Ayas had entered every house in Jordan, says Dima. This was a cyber war. She and thousands of others had tried during the crisis to marshal their own digital weapons. They went online sharing the hashtag WeArellMouad, a statement that they wouldn't be silenced. It didn't go unnoticed. We were attacked. She exclaims. Ayas hijacked our hashtags. The Jordan social media timeline. They were all over us. Ayas would send pictures of chopped off hands and worn. That's what we'll do to you, she says. One of them sent me a message saying he knew my home, my family. And then they decided to create fake accounts in my name using my face. Me cursing Jordan. It's all very depressing. I think everybody I meet here agrees there's a generational ideological struggle that can't be solved at the flick of a switch. The problem is nobody here or in the west has come up with a way to silence is it's always there somewhere, always being shared by someone, always online. The extremists just laugh at official counter narratives as they promote their simple vision to would be recruits. Hashtags like weare all Moad are snappy, but are they really anything other than slogans? Dima smiles. Look at what ordinary people did on that day, she says, and what the region has already learnt from the Arab Spring. If ordinary people refuse to be silenced, then their message ultimately cannot be ignored. And that, she tells me, brings change.
- [16:56]
B
And that's Dominic Kashiani. Now Hungary is no stranger to occupation. During the last 500 years it's been taken over by the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Germans and the Soviets. So it's perhaps not surprising that those brief periods when the country was independent, proud and prospering are deemed particularly worthy of commemoration. So the Fidesz government of Viktor Orban is busy re landscaping Kossuth Square in the center of the capital, Budapest. The idea is to highlight various figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries whom they reckon deserve a place in Hungary's heritage. The latest statue to go up features one Count Eula Andrassy. And while no one's criticizing its artistic merit or indeed the man's achievements, Nick Thorpe tells us it has set off a heated debate about what went wrong in Hungarian history.
- [17:49]
E
A hot Hungarian sex machine on top of a Russian cream cake was how one journalist lovingly described the giant bronze figure of Count Jula Ondrassi sitting astride his horse, nearly 14 metres tall, beside the south wing of the Hungarian Parliament. Mark Odeskalchi, the great great grandson of the count, was a little more reserved earlier that morning as we stood watching the cranes lift the vast equestrian monument into place. This is a proud moment, he said. Isn't he magnificent? At the very outset of the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1867, Andrassy was admired by fellow statesman Ferenzdack as a gift from God for his role in persuading the Austrian nobility to cede power to the Hungarians in the new Dual Monarchy. As prime Minister, then foreign Minister of Austro Hungary, he oversaw the most prosperous and self confident decades of Hungarian history before the First World War. The new statue is an exact replica of the one erected here in 1906. Count Andrassy was airbrushed from the history books by the Communist authorities after the Second World War because of their dislike of aristocrats in general and the monarchy he served in particular. His statue was dismantled and melted into one of Stalin, who stood near the city park until he too was torn down and dismembered during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. And now the count is back, riding purposefully away from parliament, courtesy of Viktor Orban's Fides government. His statue is the final piece in the complete re landscaping of the square to make it look just as it did in 1944, before the German occupation of Hungary. This follows the logic of the new Hungarian constitution, which lumps together the German and Soviet occupation, which followed as a single period of lost Hungarian sovereignty. Only in May 1990, with the restoration of parliamentary democracy, did Hungarians regain control over their own destiny, says the preamble to Hungary's Basic Law. Andra's statue is actually the third, which the government has restored at great expense in the square around Parliament. In recent months, the whole square has become a sort of stage play in which different heroes enact roles carefully interpreted by the current government. In June last year, the Prime Minister unveiled an exact facsimile of the statue of Istvan Tiszan, the prime Minister assassinated in 1918, just to the north of the Parliament building. The statue should be a symbol of the beginning of a new era of nation building, Viktor Orban suggested in his speech, and added, why shouldn't a disintegrated liberal era be followed by a prosperous and inspirational national era? And why should it be impossible that providence has chosen us, the Hungarians of today, to achieve this? It's this claim to have a monopoly on Hungarian historical truth which upsets the government's critics so much. In 1944, before the invasion, they point out, Hungary was an ally, albeit an often reluctant one, of Nazi Germany. They accused the prime minister not only of twisting Hungarian history to suit his own requirements, but of casting a curse on the future of the country as well as of the men celebrated in the four statues which now adorn the square, said Andras Gerre, a liberal historian. Two died in exile, one was assassinated, and only one, Count Andrassy, was successful. On top of Istvan Tissa's statue, barely visible from ground level, is a huge snake strangling a roaring lion, all carved in white limestone. They are rewriting the hierarchy of historical heroes, another historian, Attila Pook, told me. At the centre of the government's efforts is the powerful Veritas Institute, which began work a year ago. The task of studying and re evaluating Hungarian history should be done without anger and bias and based upon new studies of primary sources and basic research, states the welcoming page on its website. The Hungarian Parliament sunbathes beside the sparkling Danube like an extraordinary white octopus. In its new square, the dark bronze statues on polished white stone preen their feathers or brood into their mustaches. Beside it, 133 new trees planted to replace those cut down last year are brilliant in their green early Summer dresses. Little jets of steam shoot up from beneath new paving stones like dry ice. To the delight of passing children and Japanese tourists, the stage is set for new dramas of Hungarian history and new interpretations.
- [22:31]
B
Nick Thorpe in Budapest. The budget airlines have of course revolutionised travel in Europe. They've opened up distant corners of the continent at once unimaginable prices. Until just a few weeks ago, there was one notable area that had escaped their attention. The Portuguese islands of the Azores, 850 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean. But now the low cost airlines have touched down in the archipelago. And as Simon Calder's been finding out, in the southernmost island, Santa Maria, there are arrivals being greeted by the locals with some enthusiasm and some apprehension.
- [23:07]
F
When I touched down at Santa Maria, I was disappointed not to find a sign saying welcome to Concord Island. But I cheered up a few seconds later. In the middle of the pint sized terminal, I found the Concord bar serving beer for barely a pound a pint. 1980s prices in the 80s. Concord island, as I shall call it, was one of the elite locations served by the Anglo French super supersonic jet. As Venezuela grew fabulously rich on oil, Air France chose to connect Paris and Caracas at twice the speed of sound. The plane's thirsty engines couldn't make it all the way to South America on a single tank and Santa Maria was the obvious pit stop. While this mid Atlantic fragment of Portugal measures only 10 miles by 6, with a population of under 6,000, it boasts the ocean's longest Runway, courtesy of a now abandoned American base. Thus the rich, powerful and glamorous were invited to stretch their legs and perhaps visit the Concorde bar while their aircraft was refuelled ahead of blasting off to Caracas. I arrived on the day's only scheduled flight, the 20 minute hop from Ponta Delgada, the capital of the Azores on neighbouring San Miguel Island. I was the 13th and last passenger to board the plane, which had space for six times as many. But that unimpressive load factor could soon rise. I flew to Santa Maria partly because I'd long yearned to visit Concord island, but also to find out how the final stages of Europe's no frills aviation revolution might play out. Until this year, anyone without access to a private jet could visit the Azores only aboard Portugal's state run airlines. But the government in Lisbon dismantled the barriers to entry at the start of the summer season. Within a week, the two biggest low cost airlines in Europe launched flights between Lisbon and Ponta Delgada for a round trip of 1,800 miles. Ryanair and EasyJet charge as little as 40 pounds, return about one fifth of the previous lowest fare for Azoreans. Mainland Europe has suddenly switched from a once every year or two extravagant to a plausible prospect for a weekend away. And in the other direction, the archipelago's tourist industry expects a surge in the number of visitors. Which is precisely what worries some of the people living amid the benign beauty of Santa Maria. Jetty is a petite woman in her 50s, with a certain windswept and weather worn look that she shares with her adopted island. Four years ago she uprooted herself from home in Luxembourg and moved here along with her cheerful Chihuahua. I met them on a breezy spring afternoon in Maya, a fishing village clinging to a ribbon of habitable land between the vertiginous volcanic hillsides and the ocean. It's as far as you can go from the airport along the island's main road, though it would still have been well within earshot of Concorde's deafening roar. These days, the background noise comprises the soothing wash of the ocean over volcanic rock, a rhythmic sound strangely similar to breathing and equally comforting. But Jetty is uncomfortable about the Azores belated appearance on the no frills map of Europe. Good for tourists, but not for us, she predicted as we patrolled the shore, failing to find anywhere for a coffee. Jetty became part of the 100 strong expatriate community, she says, to escape the crowds. Now she fears, the island will lose its carefree character as tourists converge on the only white sand beach in the archipelago, Prior Formosa, part of a natural reserve. Santa Maria, she says, is known as the Algarve of the Azores and could attract a surge of sun seeking northern Europeans. High above that beach, which has not a soul on it, I get a different view from Avellino, a builder. More visitors, he says, mean more jobs and more reasons for young people to stay on Santa Maria. Rather than moving to the mainland along with his brother Manuel, Avellino is putting the finishing touches to a new network of overnight huts for hikers. He's resurrecting old farm buildings to cater for the kinds of tourists he expects to arrive nature lovers, not sunbathers, seeking solitude and a certain serenity. A niche experience, in other words, just
- [27:53]
B
like Concorde, Santa Maria in the Azores, the latest stop off in Europe's cheap fares aviation revolution. Simon Calder there, bringing this edition to a close. Next week it'll be two programs again on Thursday morning as well as on Saturday. Do join us twice. Goodbye.