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From Our Own Correspondent
The Ghosts of old Naples
00:28:21
Reporters. Today: Alan Johnston on the richness of the past lying in the bones of the...
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Narrator
Thank you for downloading this podcast we make from our own correspondent for the BBC World Service as well.
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Hugh Sykes
But this is the edition broadcast on
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Presenter
Radio 4 and it's introduced by Kate Ady. Hello. Today, Tunisian voters stick with one of their country's founding principles, that God must be separate from government. There's help at hand for a woman in Pakistan who can no longer look at herself in the mirror in the heart of old Naples. The sad plight of the brick red church of the skull and inbred and undead. It's a hillbilly zombie film, but are they laughing down there in Bluegrass, Kentucky? And then there was one. Tunisia, the cradle of the Arab Spring, is today its only real survivor. The revolt there infected at least half a dozen other Arab countries with rebellion and protest and toppled the leaders of three of Egypt, Yem, Yemen and Libya. Egypt has reverted to authoritarian rule. Libya is almost a failed state. And Yemen has become a battleground between the new government and opponents who range from Shia separatists to Al Qaeda. Tunisia, exceptionally, has just had its second set of democratic elections in which a secular alliance prevailed over an Islamist party. Hugh Sykes witnessed the Arab Spring and its decline in Egypt, and this week he was in Tunisia.
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Hugh Sykes
It was in Tunisia nearly four years ago, in December 2010, that the Green shoots of the Arab Spring first appeared. A street trader called Mohamed Bouazizi, who was sick of being harassed by the police and bullied by municipal bureaucrats, set himself on fire. His suicide lit a fuse, which gathered pace and became a revolution. After weeks of protest, in sympathy with Mr. Bouazizi, the corrupt, nepotistic dictator Zinabadin Ben Ali, who'd run the country as if it were a family business, was forced to scuttle away to another nation of dubious governance. Saudi Arabia. The country which later sent troops across a causeway into Bahrain to snuff out the Arab Spring there. Eventually, in Tunisia, there were elections and a party called Enada, which means Renaissance, came to power in a coalition. Enada, often described as moderate Islamists, but many Tunisians suspect them of harbouring a hard line Islamist agenda. They supported a constitution which enshrined equality for men and women and freedom for all religions and for none. Respect for atheists in a Muslim country, but a country which is not an Islamic state. But the Inada party attracted considerable suspicion when they proposed an amendment to the law, Article 28, which was widely understood to have defined wives as complementary to their husbands. Tunisian women would never accept this. Tunis businesswoman Zeyneb Ghariani said to me and they didn't. Nearly 7,000 unveiled women mounted a continuous mass protest against Article 28 during Ramadan two years ago. The article was defeated. Are Tunisian women liberated? I asked Zeynep. Yes, they are. She said. One of the most rewarding and affordable ways to travel around Tunisia is by Luage shared minibus taxi. I went about an hour and a half north of Tunis for four and a half dinars. That's about one pound fifty or two American dollars. It was a bargain for the company as well. A woman wearing a headscarf next to two women who were not started chatting to me before I'd even said I was a reporter. She insisted that Tunisia was tranquilly now, calm. Pas de probleme. As we slowed down every now and then, Madame, she wouldn't tell me her name, proudly pointed out to me the numerous checkpoints that we were having to drive through. Security for the people, she said. There's no war here. I suggested to her that evidence of real security is no checkpoints, no need for them. The threat is marginal, but the checkpoints are needed. Violent extremist Salafist Islamists still skulk in the shadows. Salafists believe in what they say is the pure Islam of the ancestors, the the Salaf. In the week before the election, Tunisian police reported that they'd arrested a man who they said was planning to attack a bus full of foreign tourists. He led them to a house near Tunis where a gang of Islamists were hiding. After a 24 hour siege, one man, five women and a policeman were dead. This kind of event is unusual in Tunisia. But there are other unsettling signs which point to an unresolved problem. In 2012, a university dean was attacked by Salafists for demanding that women students uncover their faces during lectures. It's a university regulation. A rock was thrown through his office window. One of the students accused him of slapping her on the face. The dean was prosecuted, not the rock thrower. He was found not guilty, but the threats persisted and he now has an armed bodyguard. There were armed police and national guardsmen at polling stations on election day. The election results appear to be a victory for secular Tunisians, but it was a victory for them by default. It was the Inada Islamists who were actively defeated. The first Inada government ended in early 2014, not long after the coup which brought the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood presidency to an end. In Egypt, the Egyptian coup of 2013 was resoundingly popular. There, far more people took to the streets of Cairo, demanding the removal of Mr. Morsi than had occupied Tahrir Square in 2011, demanding the removal of Hosni Mubarak In Tunisia, the Inada Islamists got out and handed over to a government of national unity before they could be kicked out for failing to improve the economy or address unemployment. The leader and founder of NIDA Tunis, the Call of Tunis party, which won the most seats in the October 28 election, is Beji Hyde Sebsi, an 87 year old former minister in the regime of the ousted president Ben Ali. And Mr. Sepsis supports one of the founding principles of modern Tunisia under its first post colonial president, Habib Bourguiba, that God must be kept separate from government.
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Presenter
And that's Hugh Sykes. Now there are various countries around the world where acid attacks on women have become, if not commonplace, then certainly quite frequently. The motives are varied. Sometimes the attackers are men who feel their wives have dishonoured them or who've had marriage proposals rejected. Campaigners in Pakistan say there have been more than 150 cases there this year alone. A woman who owns a chain of well known beauty parlours in Pakistan has set up a charity to try to help these victims. She employs some in her business. Shaima Khalil has been along to one of her salons to meet them.
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Musarat Misbah
The beauticians are hard at work in this high end salon in one of Lahore's affluent neighborhoods. The sound of women's chatter and laughter is mixed with the roar of hair dryers and the hiss of hairspray bottles. There are many treatments on offer here, manicures, pedicures, massages, facials. But the pictures on the wall are striking. They don't just show beautifully made up models with the latest hairstyles. There's also a series of photos of women with disfigured faces. Some are missing an eye, others have noses and lips which have melted into lumps. These are pictures of women who've had acid thrown into their faces. Alongside them, a big poster calling for donors to help victims of these attacks. Musarat Misbah's salon has been a refuge for women whose faces have been burnt for more than 10 years now. It all started when a young woman came to her with her face completely covered. When she removed her veil, I was so shocked I had to sit down, Musara tells me. In front of me, she continues, there was a woman with no face. Her eyes and nose were gone. Her neck and face were stuck together so she couldn't move them. Musarat Misbah has been in the beauty business for more than 35 years and this woman had hoped she might be able to help her look better. So Musarat called some doctors and asked them to help and this is how the charity started. She's now helped hundreds of acid attack victims with donations. She's been able to pay for their medical treatment and then she trains them so they're able to get jobs. Some now work at her salon. Bushra Shafi is one of the most experienced beauticians here. She also had acid poured onto her. The scars on her face are quite visible and so is her smile. Under the red lipstick you can see that her mouth has been badly burned. Bushra tells me she was brutalized by her in laws as punishment for not paying enough dowry money. My husband, brother in law and father in law poured acid on me. My mother in law tied me down so I wouldn't move. She said my two children were there, they saw everything. They didn't take me to the hospital for 10 days and my face swelled up so much it was just a big slab of meat. Bushra hasn't seen her children since that day. She's surprisingly calm as she recalls the horror she faced. But she does break down when she mentions them. She came to Musarat for help and spent years undergoing operations. Now, after 150 of them, she. She says she finally has a chance to start a new life. I ask her if she ever feels envious making other women look beautiful. She shakes her head and smiles. I've got my eyesight back, my hearing back. I have a nose I can breathe from, I have a tongue, I can speak again. I'm very grateful to Allah, she tells me Bushra was lucky. She found help and a way to make a living after her attack. But there are hundreds of women here in Pakistan who are still suffering in silence. And even those who go to the police rarely get justice. Trials can take years and sometimes the victims and their families are pressured into settling out of court. Homma Shahid is another woman who came to Musarat for help. Unlike most of the other women who came from poor backgrounds, Homma is a university professor. She was attacked outside her house in one of Lahore's well to do suburbs. It was 10 days before my wedding, she tells me I was about to marry the man who adored me. But all of a sudden my life changed. Homa spent months in hospital and will need many more operations. Her husband to be, she says, is very supportive, but the marriage plans have had to be put on hold. Her face is covered with a protective mask which she hides with a headscarf. The man who poured acid on her is still at large. We sit down in her garden and Homma shows me pictures of herself before the attack. A beautiful young woman with olive skin, long dark hair and a big smile, none of which is visible today. I ask her what it feels like now to look in the mirror after the attack. I haven't seen myself yet, she replies. I'm overwhelmed by the sheer brutality of the crime and I still don't have the strength to look at my face. My family have covered up all the mirrors.
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Presenter
Shaima Khalil In Lahore, our correspondent Alan Johnstone, recently concluded a posting in Italy. He's now back here with a new job in broadcasting House in London. Three years in Italy, he says, leave indelible memories. Among them the visits he made to Naples. Few cities have quite as spectacular a setting stretching as it does around a beautiful bay in the brooding shadow of Mount Vesuvius. There are layers and layers of history in its ancient foundations. Large parts of the historic centre are now listed as a World Heritage Site. And yet, walking through its ancient streets, you realise that many of its churches and other buildings are in poor condition. Some look on the verge of collapse, with weeds entangled in their rotting masonry. But there are people who are determined to care for this city's extraordinary heritage, as Alan found out.
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Alan Johnstone
What you noticed first was the human skull. Shining white in the sun. It sat on two crossed bones. It wasn't real, it was carved out of stone. But still it wasn't what you'd expect to find on the front of a church. And what a building it was. Its facade was brick red, but running up the centre was a thick green stain. A slimy looking fungus was feeding off some leaking pipe buried in the bricks. Along the roof, vegetation flourished, thick clumps of grass nodding against the blue of the sky. And the air of neglect and decay was accentuated by a pile of rubble. Perhaps something high on the facade had come plunging down, shattering on the cobblestones. The skull and bones over the entrance were a sign that in centuries past, this church was also a cemetery. Down in the sacred earth beneath its walls there would have been vaults where racks of human bones were to go in and explore. The old place would have been grimly fascinating, and it ought to be drawing in visitors. But that's not possible. The church's blue doors were bolted and probably hadn't swung open for years, and that bitterly frustrates the man who was showing me round the alleyways of old Naples. Gabriele Castillo was born and raised in the city centre. And he's rightly proud of its history. It's one of the oldest continuously inhabited locations on earth. There are traces in its stones of the Greeks who arrived centuries before the time of Christ, and Romans and Byzantines and Normans and Spaniards all came and went. But for Gabrielle, not enough is being done to preserve and promote the city's extraordinary legacy. For him, the sad plight of the brick red Church of the Skull was a case in point. He had shown me three or four other churches that seemed similarly abandoned. One of them had been burnt out in a fire. Now it stood lost behind a rank of huge rubbish skips. I watched a middle aged woman stop in the street, and as she slowly smoked a cigarette, she stood and stared into the church's ruined, dark depths, trying perhaps to glimpse a little of its splendid past. Of course, Gabriele argued that none of this was good enough for a UNESCO World Heritage site. He represents a group of activists who are pressing for change, but he fears no one's really listening. The mayor of Naples would certainly argue that that's not true. He's announced plans to pour 100 million euros into projects to enhance the historic centre. And for all the gloom of those who worry about the place, Naples has so much to offer that is magnificent. I'm not only talking about its grandeur, monumental buildings and museums, but I stepped into one of its countless lesser known churches. A vast place that's witnessed more than 400 years of worship. Columns rose to a painted ceiling where a riot of angels seemed to be riding a cloud that was wheeling through the heavens from the dome. Shafts of sunlight flooded the altar, gleaming on a golden cross. And in the pews towards the front, a lone figure in a dark coat sat motionless. The church was part of a monastic complex. For generations, monks would have lived and prayed and worked around its cloistered courtyard. Later, it became a textile factory. It produced uniforms for the royal guard of the Spanish Bourbon kings who once ruled Naples. In more modern times, the building was battered about by a range of less glamorous little businesses. But the monastery is now being restored. A group of artists is turning it into a craft and cultural center. As they worked, an area of plaster high on the wall came away and an image was suddenly revealed of a figure on a white horse, leading soldiers in armour. They were all advancing on a lone woman. The man on horseback is supposed to be a pagan Roman emperor, and the female figure is Saint Catherine. Legend has it that she was put to death, martyred for refusing to marry the emperor, preferring instead to devote her life to Christ. And those restoring the cloisters hope that as they peel away more of the plaster, more of these fine Renaissance artworks might appear all around the courtyard. It's just one more small example of the richness of the past that lies in the bones of the buildings in the historic heart of old Naples.
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Presenter
That's Alan Johnstone. Australia, like Britain and so many other countries, is having to face up to the threat posed by the so called Islamic State not only overseas but also at home. Recently it raised its terrorism threat level. It also introduced a host of new anti terrorism legislation amid estimates that there are Perhaps a hundred is supporters operating inside Australia and another 60 Australians actually fighting for with the group in Syria and Iraq. But as our man in Sydney, John Donison's been finding out, the country's long established moderate mainstream Muslim community is paying a price.
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Narrator
Salah, a cheerful chap, likes to shoot the breeze. An Egyptian Australian, he works in my local newsagent in central Sydney with the soothing, melancholy tones of the shanteurs, Umm Kulthum behind us on his stereo. Our topics of conversation range from the weather, usually good, to the price of ciggies, a dollar a packet in Egypt, a dollar for just one cigarette in Australia, to immigration and asylum seekers. But increasingly, our morning chinwags have turned to the daily diet of depressing news from the Middle East. Saleh has been in Australia for 10 years. He left Egypt long before the country's Arab Spring briefly blossomed and then quickly wilted back home. In Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, he was a young lawyer. He doesn't miss the place or the job. In Egypt, the police do what they want, he told me. They have no regard for the law or for people's dignity. In Australia, the police are great, saleh said. They respect you. But that was a month or so ago, before Saleh became one of the latest victims of a spate of Islamophobic attacks in cities across Australia. As he walked home from work one evening, he was assaulted by a white man brandishing a chair, saying he wanted to kill all Muslims. Saleh was left with a broken hand and a bitter taste in his mouth. Despite the attack being caught on cctv, the police, he says, have made little effort to catch the assailant. Saleh's high regard for Australia's boys in blue has now waned a little, and just a few days before it happened, Saleh had warned me that the number of attacks like this was on the rise. It came as the Australian government stepped up its campaign to tackle Islamic extremist groups operating here. The country's terrorism threat had been raised to severe. Security at Parliament was stepped up and more than 800 police had just carried out the biggest anti terrorism raids in the country's history. One man was charged. He'll face trial for allegedly plotting to behead a random member of the public and drape them in an Islamic State flag. The government estimates There are around 60 Australians fighting with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and a further hundred or so supporting them back home. That may seem a lot, but with a Muslim population of around half a million, it is of course a tiny minority. And it is the majority of Muslims, long established and on the whole pretty well integrated in this country, that are paying a price. Sadly, the beating and Islamophobic abuse Saleh suffered are not unique. Mosques in Brisbane and Sydney have been vandalised and daubed with racist graffiti in recent weeks. A Muslim woman in Perth was abused as she did her shopping and had her headscarf ripped off. And one woman got in touch with me to say her husband, a turban wearing Sikh, had been shouted at and repeatedly called a terrorist as he enjoyed one of the most Australian of pastimes lawn bowls. Not so long ago, I went out to Australia's biggest mosque, which lies in the suburb of Lakemba in Western Sydney. I was there to get some television footage during Friday prayers for a piece we were doing about Australians fighting with Islamic State overseas. I was, I confess, a little on edge. Waving a camera in people's faces as they go to worship is understandably not always welcome. My concerns, though, were unnecessary. Almost without exception, we were greeted with warmth and not a little good humour. What have we done this time, mate? One manasse with a smile as he slipped off his shoes and headed inside. And another chunky looking fellow, built like a prop forward with a thick black beard, lumbered towards us with a serious air. You better not say the wrong thing, mate, he warned with a thick Aussie twang, or we'll cut your bloody head off. He went on, breaking into a warm, teasing grin. His classic dry Australian sarcasm washed down with a wink. This week I caught up with Saleh, his hand still swollen and strapped up. We talked some more about his time in Egypt. He explained how by law back there, everyone's ID card has to specify a person's religion. Then he told me, here, it doesn't matter what I am, whether I'm Muslim or Christian. It's simple. I'm Australian.
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Presenter
John Donison in Sydney. Now, if It's Saturday. It must be Detroit. The American president's there today on the latest leg of a state to state sprint aimed at winning support for Democrat candidates in Tuesday's vital midterm elections. But it's the Republicans who are feeling optimistic. They're buoyed up by the president's low popularity ratings, caused largely by feeling he's just not doing enough to fire up a wheezing US Economy. The outcome will hinge on a handful of tight races, including one in Kentucky, which features the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. Our colleague James Kumarisami is there. He's been talking to the holder of another, more humble office who's concerned about the image of his state.
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James Kumarasami
Johnny Cummings is facing the sort of dilemma that most elected officials would give their right arm to have. In his case, that's the arm he uses when he cuts people's hair, because Johnny, the mayor of the small Kentucky town of Vico, is also the local hairdresser. And more unusual still, he's an openly gay man in the conservative eastern part of the Bluegrass State. His dilemma is that no one is running against him in Tuesday's mayoral election. Driving across America at this time of year, you're bombarded by yard signs with the names of candidates for police chief and county coroner. In Kentucky, even jailers are elected. For Johnny, his automatic re election seems more like a prison sentence. I guess I've got another four years of fixing the sewage system and trying to get investment into our town, he sighs, puffing on a cigarette and sipping gingerly from a Styrofoam cup after a heavy night out in a nearby town. Like many small town mayors in America, I've met Johnny, a gregarious man in his early 50s, is a big character, but his homosexuality marks him out as an atypical Appalachian, according to the stereotype of the suspicious, gun toting redneck, Someone like Johnny shouldn't be living in Vico, let alone running it. And that's not all, because last year, under Johnny's guidance, Vico passed an ordinance or local bylaw forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation. With a population of just over 300, no one's sure exactly how many it is the smallest town in America to take a public stance against homophobia. Spend time in Johnny's company, and it's clear he isn't just trying to change minds about gay people, but about local people in general. He allowed a comedy called Hickey the Hillbilly Vampire, with the tagline inbred and undead to be filmed in the town and later on to be shown there to general approval. It's important that we laugh at ourselves, he told me, rather than have others laugh at us. But the economic challenges are no laughing matter. Vico is at the heart of a region of that's struggling to wean itself off a declining coal industry that used to support the community. Coal even provided the town with its name. Vico is an acronym of the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company owned by Eleanor Roosevelt's family which established the town. Standing outside his office handing out cigarettes to passing townsfolk, Johnny points up at the tree lined hills looming over the town and in a muted rainbow of warm autumnal colours. Those hills used to be dotted with coal miners houses, he told me. We had eight bars and five churches. Vico was the Vegas of Kentucky. You used to need a shotgun when you came into town on a Saturday night. These days it's more one horse town than one armed bandits. Vico still has three churches but no bars and there's little evidence of economic activity, although Johnny hopes to change that by opening a distillery. Vico's unconventional mare has not gone unnoticed. Far from it. After the anti discrimination law was passed, Johnny found himself with a string of offers to make a reality television program in the town. One pilot episode was made, but Johnny's not holding his breath for anything more. In any case, he didn't enjoy the experience. They wanted me to say lines, he told me. I wasn't prepared to do that. His suspicion also partly stems from the fact that the hillbilly has become the latest character to be served up on the reality TV plate shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or Duck Dynasty. Look them up. If you're not an aficionado, pander to the redneck cliches that make so many Kentuckians bristle without any prompting. Most people I've met over the past week have brought up the H word. The image of the toothless, clueless hillbilly, they tell you, is the last acceptable prejudice in America. Perhaps, one local musician suggested with a chuckle, we should call ourselves Appalachian Americans if we want to be taken seriously. Mayor Johnny Cummings has a rather earthier phrase to describe himself. I guess I'm a redneck queer, he smiles. And there ain't too many of us around.
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Presenter
James Kumarasami there with the unconventional mayor of Vico, bringing this edition to a close. More memorable encounters, I hope, in our programmes next week. So please join us again on both Thursday and Saturday mornings and I hope I'll have more of a voice, then goodbye.