← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The Hyenas Come to Town
00:27:59
London may be infested by urban foxes and Delhi beseiged by urban monkeys but Addis as...
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This is a download from the BBC. It's the latest edition of from our own Correspondent, broadcast on Radio 4 and it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, living on the edge of a revolution, our correspondent in Kiev on history unfolding on his doorstep. The thousands of men and women who've gone missing amid Syria's brutal war. 34 years at the top. How has he managed it? A question Zimbabweans ask as their leader, Robert Mugabe, celebrates his 90th birthday. And why two hideous beasts with jaws as powerful as those of great white sharks are staying in the spare room of a house in Addis Ababa. Dramatic developments in Ukraine this morning. After weeks of anti government demonstrations, the presidential palace in the capital Kiev appears to have been abandoned. Demonstrators who've been calling for the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych are still in the city's Independence Square. The whereabouts of the President are not known. There are reports that he has left the city. One of the main opposition leaders, the former boxer Vitali Klitschko, says he'll now ask parliament to vote Mr. Yanukovych out of office. This morning's developments come at the end of the bloodiest week since the unrest began in November. Scores of people were killed in clashes in the city centre between police and protesters. Our man in Kiev, David Stern, lives close by.
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Nearly every day for the past three months, I've passed through the protest camp. Whether working on a story or not, my clothes are saturated with the smoke from the activists campfires. If I'm feeling a bit hungry or cold, I can grab a quick snack or a cup of hot tea from one of the many volunteer stands handing out free food. When I went to the post office to pay my bills, the main lobby was invariably packed with protesters, tired and sooty, snatching some sleep on the few chairs or slumped against the wall. Now it's been turned into a field hospital. As I do my shopping, there are always activists in front of me, stocking up on food or sometimes on vodka. And as the standoff continued and violent clashes broke out, the streets around my apartment were transformed into a carapace of makeshift barricades which seemed to spring up like mushrooms. One day the street is clear, the next activists are standing next to piles of snow and debris, directing traffic and throwing gimlet eyed stares at men they think look suspicious. Of course, I never expected to be living in the middle of Ukraine's biggest post independence crisis. When I moved here five years ago, living next to a combat zone has been strange to say the least. Especially One that has been contained in such a compact area in the city center. Now the turmoil has turned deadly. Like so many people here, my wife and I see much of it unfolding on the television, with its images of fighting just blocks away from us, the bodies laid out on the square and the angry clashes elsewhere in the country. As the number of dead climbs and climbs. We look at each other silently, not believing what is taking place in our lovely city. Often my thoughts turn to the many activists I have met. One in particular, a member of the ultra nationalist rights sector, has been on my mind especially. We struck up our acquaintance in December as I was watching riot troops mass close to my apartment just before their first big push to try to clear the square. He told me his name was Frank, a pseudonym. Unlike many of the right wingers who seem on the whole to be a tall bunch, he was small and wiry when he took off his ski cap. His head was shaved. A disguise of sorts, he said, to hide from the security services. We spent the next few hours walking around Kiev, looking for other locations where the riot troops might be assembling. As we walked, Frank told me about himself. He grew interested in the far right while he worked in Ukraine's security services. He also told me about his family. I grew to like him. He also described the right wing movement. This was still before the political crisis had become lethal, he said in case the police drove the protesters out, the ultra nationalists had stockpiled weapons and would unleash a partisan war. At the time, I thought this was all braggadocio. Now I'm not so sure. Many questions have been raised whether the right wing has initiated clashes with the police. I can't answer this. What I can say, though, is once the fighting erupted, far right activists have been passionate participants. They have also played a sizable role in the protest camp, which itself has been an influential but not a decisive force in the general anti government movement. As the crisis has intensified, downtown Kyiv has been inundated by scores of ultra nationalist fighters. They march in formation with wooden clubs and metal rods, wearing helmets and ski masks, and shout glory to ukra. But the right wing, in fact, is only a small part of this Euromaidan, as it's become known, protest movement. There's a wide range of groups involved, including Jewish and gay activists. All ideology seems to have been forgotten, shelved or muted in the single goal of removing President Yanukovych. Frank himself seemed a bit unclear of what his group, the Patriot of Ukraine, stood for. They say we are fascists and anti Semites. He said to me, you don't think that, do you? I do in fact think this, or something close to it. I've seen the group's website and spoken with other activists. There are some who say the right wing is experiencing an upsurge only because of the widespread rage and loathing of President Yanukovych. Once he is removed, they say, the ultra nationalist movement will deflate. This may be so, but that's a question for another day, once peace is restored to Ukraine. Right now, I think about Frank and hope he's okay.
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David Stern in Kyiv. The UN Security Council's to vote later today on a new resolution for Syria, which calls for immediate and unhindered access for those delivering humanitarian aid. The resolution, which also demands that all attacks on civilians be halted immediately, has substantial international support. But previous resolutions aimed at pressurising the regime of President Al Assad have been blocked by Russia, with support from China. Meanwhile, there's growing concern at the UN and elsewhere about the large number of people who've been detained, either by the security forces or the rebels. Lise Doucet is in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
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This is a story about two men. It's also a story about 200,000 other men and women. That's the number of people now said to be held in detention centres across Syria, most in appalling conditions. No one is exactly sure how many there are. The government flatly denies there are that many rebel fighters who take prisoners, too. Don't reveal numbers and names. The two men I met in Syria know a lot about detainees. One is a human rights lawyer, the other an interrogator. First, the lawyer I met, Anwar Booni, in an office in Damascus, tucked inside a street of shops selling car parts and industrial tools. He smiles a lot, but there seems to be so little joy in his life. He tells me, if you count up all the years he, his brother, his brother in law, his sister, other family members have spent in prison, it comes to 70 years. Anwar came out of jail three years ago. He says his crime was to speak out against torture and corruption. He was accused of making the nation weak. Now his mission is to try to help those who are still detained somewhere in Syria. His mobile phone rings constantly. The stories he hears are unbearably sad. The first call comes from a distraught mother. Her daughter is in a terrorism court. Her two sons and her husband suddenly disappeared. Then last week, an official called her and said, come get your son. He's dead. Thousands of Syrians have disappeared in the past few years. Anwar tells me Thousands. Nobody knows where they are, he declares, almost jumping from his chair. How can you understand this? He demands rhetorically. Behind him are cabinets bulging with files full of details about missing people. Gilt edge legal textbooks are arranged in neat rows. There's even a miniature Scales of Justice. But I should point out, this isn't Anwar's own office. It belongs to his colleague, another human rights lawyer. He disappeared a year ago. There's been no word about him since. Now to the interrogator. When I meet him, he's also sitting in someone else's office. It probably belonged to the principal of the Al Andalus School in the city of Homs. The school is now a center where some 300 young men are being held for questioning. They fled the rebel held Old Quarter of the city during a temporary truce, which enabled a UN brokered aid mission to bring badly needed food into the besieged area and bring women, children, the elderly out. The men weren't included in this deal. UN officials now visit this school day and night to keep an eye on what happens to them next. On the interrogator's desk sits a notepad from the UN's refugee agency with its slogan, One refugee without hope is too many. They're making me into Mr. Nice Guy, he jokes. But this man is the face of a brutal war, and literally so. A bullet pierced his cheek during one of the fiercest battles for this city. With his sunken face and twisted mouth, he promises forgiveness for the gunmen who disfigured him for life. That person, he adds, might even be among those now held in the school. He oversees the questioning of the men for what he calls their links to terrorism. But he also conducts what are known as re education classes. A large crowd, including some who tell us they are rebel fighters, gathers to listen. Some sit cross legged on the floor, engrossed in his lecture. Others stand at the back, stone faced, arms crossed. They clearly don't buy his pitch for reconciliation, not when their own future is so uncertain. Will they really be set free in the amnesty, officials here promise? Or will they be sent to one of Syria's notorious detention centers when UN officials move on? When I ask the interrogator why he is ready to forgive, he replies, I want my country to go back to what it was. And that may be the only point these two men agree on a love for Syria. And while the lawyer tells me that even after all he has seen, he still believes in his country, its people. Syria is the most beautiful country in the world, he gushes. It has the gentlest of people. But this vicious war now tears their beloved nation apart. So much so that many now say Syria as we knew it is gone. These two men, like many other Syrians I meet, refuse to believe that it's the smallest of threads that link them across a dark divide.
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Lee's doucet in Damascus Africa's oldest leader, Robert Mugabe, marked his 90th birthday yesterday, receiving medical treatment in Singapore. His aides say he was having a routine and long planned eye operation and otherwise. The man who has been ruling Zimbabwe for nearly 34 years is fighting fit. He is expected back tomorrow to take part in official birthday celebrations due to take place in a Stadium some 50 miles from the capital, Harare. Meanwhile, state enterprises, government ministries and supporters have been showering praise on their leader. In the state owned newspaper, the Herald, he was lauded as a beacon of excellence and an icon and pillar of inspiration. Kim Chakanetsa says some Zimbabweans do still see him as a great African liberator. Others feel he's lost his way.
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For much of my childhood, I thought the president was my uncle, or at least a relative. Why else, I asked my mother, would we have such a large portrait of him hanging on the walls of her office? Only later would I realize that Mugabe is everywhere. He hangs from the poles that line the white street that leads you from the airport into the capital. He is above doorways in hospitals and under fluorescent lighting in school halls. This was the man who had come to my father's school before independence and roused them with a speech urging the schoolboys to seize their own destiny and strive for self rule. He was brilliant and focused, my father says of that meeting, and there a critical change of tense he was when talking to people about Mugabe. Tenses are key. They're those who sit in the he was camp who regret his wasted potential. He could have been one of Africa's greatest statesmen is a refrain I've heard often. But there are still today many in the he is camp. A few years ago, a man from Botswana I had just been introduced to suddenly became very animated when he found out I was Zimbabwean. I admire your president so much. He's a hero. He tells it like it is. The west has no business dictating what Africans can or cannot do. I was born on the cusp of the country's independence, riding in on the wave of euphoria that followed when the country was both the jewel and and breadbasket of Africa. Crime was low and optimism high. I was the beneficiary of the much admired education system, of affordable health care, and of a system that, although flawed, worked. Books, broadcasts and even documentaries are now devoted to our slow slide from breadbasket to basket case. To quote a popular headline, how hunger and hyperinflation became the norm and we found ourselves reluctant paper billionaires holding bundles of $50 billion notes, the weight of which was often greater than what you could buy with them. Legend has it that a notice on the Zimbabwe and South African border read, please don't use Zimbabwean dollars as toilet paper as they block the toilets. Other changes are more visual. They're the vast green tanks of water that dot the landscape of more affluent neighbourhoods. Water, which was once a risk turn away, has become a sought after commodity. And the gentle whirr of generators has become a staple night sound, at least for those who can afford them. Others can only reach for candles when the daily power cuts come. More worrying is the growth and bribes and kickbacks. Driving up and down the country can be an expensive business, with policemen pulling you over and fining you for this or the other. So, at age 90 and 34 years at the top, how has Mugabe survived amid all the change? It's a question that I've heard and a conversation I've had many, many times. And everyone, it seems, has a different theory. They range from superior political nous to brute force. The issue of force can't be denied. It was under his watch, after all, that the brutal Gukurahundi military operation took place in the early 80s. The operation was to quash political rivals and left the bodies of an estimated 20,000 victims in disused mines and mass graves in the Matabele land. Mugabe's only concession was to later refer to that period as a moment of madness. The one point even his fiercest critics agree on is that he is a shrewd and intelligent tactician. Speculation about his health is a national pastime, and it is to be expected when someone in a country with an average life expectancy of 50 years enters their 10th decade. Any disappearances from the public arena for any extended period of time immediately triggers questions. Mugabe is not oblivious to the chatter he once joked about the obsession with his mortality. I've died many times. That's where I've beaten Christ. The secret, he says, is regular exercise and avoiding alcohol and cigarettes. As with his other birthdays, this one will be a public affair. Last year's involved an 89 kilogram cake and the year before an 88 kilogram cake. Reports say the cost of last year's Cake ran into the thousands of dollars. And it was quite something. A towering replica of the ruling party's headquarters, framed by the black, green, red and yellow colours of the country's flag. 34 years on and 90 years in, the man in the portrait looks much the same. The years have been kind to Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The same cannot be said of the country he governs.
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And that was Kim Chakanetsa. Listeners to last week's programme may have sensed that the two reporters making a radio documentary about the fractious relationship between China and Japan didn't always see eye to eye. The reporters are themselves from China and Japan and there's no doubt the lingering animosity between the two countries. But much of it stretching back to the Second World War, has resulted in some thought provoking listening. As you can hear for yourself, the second part of their missing histories is on the BBC World Service this weekend. Now the producer charged with working with these two reporters and emerging with the radio documentary was Neil Roselle.
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Two weeks on the road in two proud nations with two ambitious reporters. My mission, which I chose to accept, was to turn it into a two hour radio documentary. At times I wished I hadn't. Here's an email I sent to my editor from a train on the evening of our 11th day together. Sino Japanese relations are at a new low. They've been trying to work it out on the seats next to me, but one just said, save your breath. And now there's a dense silence between them. I sat on that quiet train thinking of China's ancient Daoists. Or perhaps it was Japan's ancient Buddhists, the ones who said, the best way to protect yourself from a sword is to step out of the way. There would be no shuttle diplomacy from this producer. I could help make a radio program, but I could not make them best friends. The project was always going to ask a lot of everyone. Consider the backdrop, the legacy of the Second World War in Asia. Japan's occupation of northern China began in 1931. The full continental war broke out in 1937, still two full years before the war in Europe. By the time it was all over in 1945, at least 14 million Chinese were dead. Up to 100 million had been forced to flee their homes. And for context, the Syrian refugee crisis today involves just under 22 and a half million people. So China suffered deeply at the hands of the Japanese. But it did, as an American ally, win the war. Japan won the peace. For all of China's amazing growth in the last generation, living standards remain far behind those in Japan. That's the backdrop now. The presenters. In the Japanese corner, Mariko Oi, BBC reporter, educated in Japan and Australia. History nerd, the one who pitched the program in the first place. In the Chinese corner, Haining Liu, freelancer, formerly of Chinese State Television, educated in China and Britain. My plan was simple. In the first hour, Mariko shows Haining around Japan. They go to schools, read textbooks, visit monuments and meet nationalists and moderates alike. In the second, they go to China and reverse roles. The magic, I hoped would be in how they would interact with each other. To that end, one of my first suggestions was don't be too polite. I'd already worked in both countries and knew the value placed on Face. I worried that the need to be a good host or a good guest would leave some disagreements unsaid. And the whole reason we were making the program is because there are disagreements. There have been violent anti Japanese demonstrations in China. There's the dispute over islands and the fact that senior Japanese politicians continue to visit the Yasukuni shrine, which honors, among others, the spirits of those who launched the war in China. Two hours of we really do get along is not interesting, and more importantly, it's not true. But it turned out that maybe I didn't fully understand Face in person. They were cordial initially, but cracks soon emerged. One interview ended after we agreed that we had enough material and that we should let the interviewee get back to her young family. Then one of the reporting duo said, have I asked enough questions? Don't worry, the other replied, it's about her answers, not your questions. I thought, ouch. But it came at the end of a couple of very long days in which there had been tension and tears. I put the question and the response down to fatigue. But that was day two of 14. The silent train journey with my sword dodging ancients was still more than a week away. I'd encouraged my colleagues to keep audio diaries during the trip that we could possibly use in the program. I didn't listen to them until I got back to London, which is a pity, because one of the entries might have helped me understand what was going on. I should let go of thoughts of winning the competition, the reporter said. Rather than being defensive, it's essential to free myself from winning and saving face. A noble aspiration. They did manage to talk again. The program, I think, is a success. In other circumstances. Hai Ning and Mariko have every reason to get along. They share a birth year, a love of food and travel, a global outlook and ambition. I'm sure that if they weren't having to talk about massacres and provocations for days on end, they might just be friends.
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Neil Roselle There now. You can hear a good deal of moaning about urban foxes by people living in London and other big cities, particularly when the creatures overturn the bins, leaving a trail of rubbish strewn along the road. Judging by the size of some of them, big as a fair sized Labrador, they're on to a good thing in town. Plenty of food, easily accessible, and none of those threatening hunting types with their horses, hounds and annoying horns. But of course, it's not only British cities which see four legged incomers from the countryside, as Martin Fletcher's been finding out. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, it was late evening.
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Stephen Brend, a zoologist with the Born Free foundation, was driving me to the airport to catch a flight back to London. Have you got time for a 10 minute detour? He asked as we passed the British Embassy. Of course, I replied. So he turned off the road and up a dirt track between some rough shacks and a collection of battered old jalopies that passes for a taxi rank in Ethiopia's capital. There. Look there. Stephen exclaimed. In the beams of his headlights, I saw several pairs of eyes glinting in the darkness like tiny mirrors. As we drove closer, I began to make out the shapes of the animals behind those eyes. They were hideous beasts, as large as the largest dogs, with coarse brown spotted fur, elongated necks and front legs much longer than their back ones, so that their backs tapered away from their powerful shoulders. Hyenas, said Stephen. Some of the fiercest predators on earth. And they were brazenly scavenging around a collection of rubbish skips right next to a football pitch and less than 50 meters from people's homes. As we watched, a group of teenagers walked up the track, right past the animals. They're mad, stephen remarked. Hyenas have jaws as powerful as those of great white sharks, he explained. They can crush an elephant's leg. They devour every last morsel of their prey, bones included. I mean, there's nothing left, he said. London is infested by urban foxes. Delhi is besieged by urban monkeys. Addis Ababa is plagued by urban hyenas. They've moved into the city from the surrounding hills, and they've taken up residence in the capital. In some ways, they perform quite a useful service. They keep the city's growing population of stray dogs and feral cats under control, and they consume the carcasses of dead horses and other animals but there are now reckoned to be somewhere between 300 and 1000 of them living in the city. And they're dangerous. In 2011, the airport authorities had to call in hunters to shoot a pack of hyenas that was posing a threat to planes as they landed and took off. People living near a public cemetery have complained of hyenas digging up and eating the corpses of the poor that are buried in shallow graves. The hyenas tend to hunt in groups, and one night a guard at the British Embassy saw a line of 40 running along the back fence of the compound. Periodically, the hyenas attack some of the many Ethiopians who sleep rough on the streets of Addis. Every night, a volunteer at a clinic run by a Mother Teresa mission in the city said that a couple of times a month he has to treat homeless and destitute people who've had fingers and toes gnawed by hyenas while they were drugged or drunk. On one occasion, a man was brought in after a hyena had ripped much of his scalp away while he was sleeping, leaving it hanging down over his eyes. Last year, a mother camped outside St Stephanos Church near the Hilton Hotel had her baby son snatched from her arms and killed by a hyena. In December, the authorities organized a cull and licensed hunters killed 10 hyenas who were living on an overgrown 4 hectare site near the heart of the capital, which they had reached along the bed of the Cabino River. At least half a dozen other dens have been reported close to the city centre. The authorities had to act again when a female hyena built a den in a drainpipe in a densely populated area right behind the US Embassy. She gave birth to two cubs there. She was eventually shot in January and Stephen took the month old cubs home. They're now living on the bed in his spare room. They're called Screamer and Stylo and they're ugly looking creatures. They destroy the mattress, the curtains, the cupboards, everything. They've no sense that they're not still in a drainpipe. Stephen complains they emit piercing high pitched screams. They have to be fed fat, enriched milk three times a day with a bottle, the last time at midnight. For all that, says Stephen, they're quite cute in their own little way. But when the cubs reach six months, he'll have to transfer them to Bornfree's animal sanctuary and on the edge of Addis. They'll simply become too dangerous, he says. A little nip for them is amputation for us.
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Martin Fletcher there with the not so cuddly guests in the spare room and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be back with more correspondence stories from around the world next Thursday and Saturday mornings. Join us, won't you? Goodbye.