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From Our Own Correspondent
The Migrants Who Made it
00:28:02
The Via Roma in the Italian island of Lampedusa -- Alan Johnston says that for the who...
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Hello from the.
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From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting
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House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. And in this edition, a Pakistani boy charged with murdering a girlfriend who's still alive. Tougher sentences build more jails. There's a furious debate in France about overcrowded prisons in the Senegalese capital, Dhaka. Tension and anxiety, all because of sheep. And we venture out across the Bactrian plain to one of the oldest cities on earth. Evidence that Afghanistan's not only been a place of conflict, but also a treasure house of secret, magnificent history. The Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, has been speaking to President Obama about Italy's concerns over the tide of migrants arriving on its southern shores. They met at the White House on Thursday. Afterwards, Mr. Letta said Italy was taking on its responsibilities, but the rest of Europe needed to do more to help. Already this month, 500 asylum seekers have drowned in separate tragedies in the Mediterranean. For Italy and the other countries along its northern coast, the problem has become an acute one. It's now launching a new naval operation it hopes will control the flow of migrants, as well as offering them protection. Alan Johnstone has been talking to some of the migrants who've made it.
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The main street in Lampedusa's little port is called Via Roma. And for the migrants who come in from the sea, this is, in a sense, the road that leads to Rome and the rest of Europe beyond the road to what they hope will be better lives in a richer world. And all along Via Roma, you find those who have just landed spending their first days in this, their imagined promised land. The wealthier arrivals can afford to sit at cafe tables and sip drinks in the autumn sunshine. Often they're Syrians, members of a middle class suddenly forced to flee the chaos in places like Aleppo and Homs. And then there are those who can't afford the cafes, young men who don't have much more than the cheap clothes they wear as they wander down the street. Larry was one of those, just 16 years old and from a village in Igbo state in Nigeria. He said that he'd lost his parents and that an uncle had treated him badly. So he decided to take a chance, risk the dangerous journey that brought him to Lampedusa. Maybe, he said, he could get an education in Europe. There was no hope back home. And as he stared at the pavement on Via Roma, he said again with feeling, no hope. Further up the street, I met Raj, his longish, wispy Hair and beard were already grey, but he was perhaps still only in his late 20s. He used to be a nurse in the city of Homs. He was a refugee from the madness of Syria, where his brother had been killed, although his family don't know exactly where or why. Raj's eyes widened as he talked of the horrors of the journey to Lampedusa. The people smugglers robbed him of everything before putting him on the boat bound for the island. And as he stood on Via Roma, the only document he had left was a Syrian driving license. But all the same, Raj seemed to exude an air of relief, and he smiled easily. He'd survived, and now that he'd made it to Europe, he'd do any work anywhere. But of all the stories I heard on Via Roma, it's Daniel Habtay's that I'll remember longest. He's a preacher who lives in Huddersfield now, but he'd come to Lampedusa to support the Eritrean refugees around him. He knows what they've been through. He came this way 11 years ago. It was a journey that started with what he described as his desperate decision to flee the oppression in Eritrea. And it began when Daniel slipped out of his army barracks one night and headed on foot for the border, the moon lighting his way. He waited in Sudan for his wife and baby girl to arrive. And then they set off across the Sahara. Fifteen days, crammed into a pickup truck with more than 30 other migrants. Sometimes they had to get out to push or walk through the heat to lighten the vehicle's load in the sand. And sometimes they saw dead bodies lying by the trail. In Libya, Daniel and his wife and child found a boat. It was tiny and hopelessly overcrowded. And as it set out to sea, he said to himself that he'd been crazy to risk everything in what lay ahead. One of the passengers was pregnant and went into labour. In the darkness of the second night, Daniel had worked in a hospital. And so, while the terrified passengers around him looked on in a heaving sea, with dawn breaking, he delivered a baby boy. He cut the umbilical cord with a razor and tied it with a shoelace. How can this be? Some of the passengers wondered. We're about to die and a baby's born. But Daniel, the preacher, just said hallelujah. The boat steamed on and eventually Lampedusa rose up out of the sea. I put it to Daniel that there are many in Europe who say that it just can't take in an endless stream of migrants, that it has too many troubles, that There aren't enough jobs or schools or resources of many kinds for its own people, never mind Africa's masses. Daniel replied that he could understand that argument, but that in the end, the need to show humanity was greater. He argued that Europe had been blessed with many riches, and he asked what the point of them were if it wasn't to help those less fortunate.
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And that was Alan Johnstone. So there was no Nobel Peace Prize in the end for Malala Yousafzai, the teenager from Pakistan shot by the Taliban for championing education for girls. Despite speculation that she'd win it, the honour instead went to the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Weapons. The political leader and former cricketer Imran Khan has since said that Malala's nomination was in itself an honour for everyone in Pakistan. It was, he added, recognition of the struggle of girls and women against tyranny and oppression. Owen Bennett Jones has been finding out that Pakistan's a country full of human stories, and many of them are about women.
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Many of the women hosting TV shows in Pakistan present an image of the country that few in the west would recognize. With veils cast aside, they are assertive, funny and glamorous as they report on the hard news and the celebrity gossip. But there are so many faces of Pakistan. Many women in rural areas must look at their screens, wondering if the women they see there live in the same country as them. Parveen is 20 years old, and I met her in a lawyer's office in Lahore filled with law books, papers and, on the wall, framed certificates showing the lawyer's qualifications. Parveen looked both nervous and capable at the same time. She had approached the lawyer, she explained, because she needed help to extricate herself from a very tangled tale. When she was 15 years old, her parents, they lived in a village in Punjab, married her off to her first cousin. But it wasn't what Parveen wanted. She'd fallen for another boy in the village and wanted to marry him, but her parents said no. She had to marry her first cousin. With the situation unresolved, she refused to move into her first cousin's house. In fact, she never did. Eventually, the situation became unsustainable and she ran away to Lahore, to one of the women's shelters, where she was found a job as a maid to a family in the city. Then news came from the village. The boy she'd wanted to marry was in prison. It happened like this. The police found the body of a woman who'd been shot in the chest. And with no one claiming the body, Parveen's father thought of that boy who, as he saw it, had ruined his daughter's marriage prospects and decided he'd get his own back. He said the body was that of his daughter and he accused the boy she'd wanted to marry of being the killer. The police arrested the boy and put him in jail, where he awaits trial. But Parveen, of course, is still alive, which is now rather inconvenient for the father, and she fears he'll now try to track her down and kill her. After all, her mother had long told her that if she ever sullied the family honor by not marrying her first cousin, then she would be killed. It was a question of honour. Hopefully, Parveen will now find a way out. Her new lawyer will take her to court to establish that that dead body is not in fact hers and that she is alive and well. She will never be able to see her family again, but she might be able to move elsewhere in the country and live in peace. It is even possible, if he can clear his name, that the boy will one day be able to marry her. As I listened to Parveen tell her story, it reminded me of another girl who'd been adopted by a Pakistani colleague. At the age of 14, this girl was found lost in a remote area near the Afghan border. The police took her in and she told them her incredible story. Her father had set up what's known in Pakistan as a suicide bomb factory, a place where young boys are persuaded to kill themselves in the name of jihad. The father had even persuaded his oldest daughter to kill herself, and she'd done it in Afghanistan. Then his attention turned to his second daughter. He told her she'd go to heaven if she blew herself up. But I didn't want to, she told the police. So when I was sent out to look for our missing goat, I just ran away. The police were unsure how to handle the situation. They put the girl in the cells as much for her own protection as anything else. At least it got her off the street, which is when my colleague heard about it. And to cut a long story short, she offered to pay for the child's fees in one of Pakistan's orphanages in another part of the country. The police said, fine, as long as a magistrate agreed. At times like this, Pakistani officials can move with tremendous speed and flexibility. Everyone thought it was for the best, and the magistrate made my colleague the legal guardian. When the girl arrived at the orphanage, there were some difficult months. She had difficulties settling in, partly because she didn't have enough Urdu, she spoke Pashtu. To get on with the other children, she even threatened the other girls that she'd kill them in a suicide attack. So the teachers at the orphanage then isolated her, making her even more unhappy. But then the army heard about her, provided a psychologist and after treatment she's now much better integrated and with her erdo improving, has lots of friends and good school results. So two one of so called honour and the other religion. Or at least a version of it. And in these two cases anyway, some hope for the future.
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Owen Bennett Jones in Pakistan. France is in the midst of a heated debate over penal reforms. Overcrowding in French prisons is among the worst in Europe. It's been linked to high suicide rates, violence among inmates and attacks on prison staff. Under French law, they're not allowed to take strike action. But there's still been a string of protests and blockades, which have delayed court hearings and jail transfers. Some politicians say tougher sentences are needed. Less crime, they argue, would mean fewer prisoners. Others insist that's not the answer. It'll just clog up the jails even further. The one thing they do agree on is that action must be taken, and soon. Christian Fraser's been to visit one of France's largest jails.
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Laurent Caillard is a neat man. His sitting room, where we place our camera, is immaculate. Everything in its place. Please ask if you need to move anything, he says abruptly as we push his armchair to one side. The first lesson of prison. He smiles. Don't touch anyone else's possessions. Mr. Kayard is a psychotherapist. He spends a lot of time in prisons, unpicking the thoughts of hardened criminals. I wonder if the strict order of his home is a reaction to the ugliness and chaos he encounters at work. Five years ago, while working inside a French prison, Mr. Caillard was thrust reluctantly into the role of hostage negotiator. A colleague was being held by a convicted rapist who had a sharpened piece of glass to his victim's throat. A protest, said Mr. Caillard. The prisoner's cell was filled with pigeons. They were defecating in his shower. The walls were moul, the window was broken. That was his future. Well, it was his future. The standoff, which lasted 11 hours, was brought to an end by an armed elite unit. The prisoner was shot and later died from his injuries. But those conditions Mr. Caillard describes are not unusual inside France's prisons. Indeed, the system has been roundly condemned by the European Union. Fresnes, in the southern suburb of Paris, is France's second biggest prison and a fair example of the problem. It houses twice as many inmates as it should. Sometimes there are three men to a nine metre square cell. The frustrations this extreme confinement creates can be heard along every corridor. Men banging on doors, cursing and screaming. I think if I was a prisoner, I might survive the interminable boredom, perhaps even the suffocating claustrophobia. But the noise. After barely an hour, I was more than ready to leave. But before that, in a cavernous central corridor from which these galleried cell blocks extend, we met the prison governor, Stephan Scotto. He's a strict disciplinarian, not altogether at ease with the media, and I sense, not all that willing to disengage from his day to day role to talk to me in his presence, untrapped behind bars, I was instinctively deferential. When they built this prison in the 19th century, he started, the public were opposed to the inclusion of toilets. It created a scandal. People thought the cells were too comfortable. Well, today we are limited in what we can offer. He went on. No, we can't put a shower in every cell. Yes, the cells are too small. No, the medical facilities are not up to scratch. Every day at Friend, hundreds of these prisoners want to see a doctor. The demands keep growing. The only thing that doesn't change, he said, is is the number of my staff. We do the best with what we've got. And he's not the only one to complain. The lack of resources and the growing concern over increased violence inside prompted hundreds of prison officers to demonstrate this summer they're not legally entitled to go on strike. So instead, they gathered outside their jails, blocking deliveries and setting fire to tires and wooden pallets. France faces a dilemma, as do 16 of the 28 European Union countries where jails are now officially overpopulated. The question is, do the governments build more prisons or do they find new ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders? In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy's response was to bring in a law to deter repeat offenders by handing out mandatory minimum sentences. Did it work? Not on current evidence. The prison population has ballooned. The Socialist Justice Minister, Christian Tobira, last week called on Parliament to review Mr. Saakozy's law. We need more effective sentencing, she told me. Sentences that work. Without doubt, solutions are needed for a tottering French penal system. But the debate these days is increasingly about economics and what can be afforded. Ideological arguments are pushed to one side. The French government is committed to cutting the public deficit to 3% of GDP. By 2015, prisons. Building them and running them are an expensive business. And there's another problem. In France and across a large swathe of Europe, the prison debate is confined by the political realities in this country. In polls for the upcoming European and municipal elections, it's the tough on crime rhetoric of the far right, the Fronte national, that leads the way. Which minister in the beleaguered Socialist ranks is going to suggest that the court should send fewer people to prison?
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Christian Fraser in Paris. Afghanistan in recent years hasn't enjoyed the most positive of reputations. It tends to be regarded purely as a place of war and suffering, corruption and poverty. And while it certainly is a land much fought over, it's also a country with an extraordinarily vivid history. Because of its position at the crossroads of Asia, it has for thousands of years been a meeting place of traders of different civilizations and cultures. As a result, it boasts some of the world's oldest, most magnificent and historically significant sites. Along with a group of Afghan and French archaeologists, Lynne o' Donnell's been to visit some of them. They shed light, she tells us, not only on Afghanistan's past, but on the development of human civilization from India to China and beyond.
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Across the far northern Afghan plain, a hot wind blows the dun coloured dust into blinding clouds and the women's burkas into blue billows. It's 40 degrees in the shade, and even the small black goats being herded through the sand dunes look sapped by the heat. These are the lowlands of Balk, where ancient trade routes attracted nomads, warriors, settlers, adventurers and evangelists who left behind secrets that archaeologists are just beginning to unlock. For the Bactrian Plain is the treasure house of Afghanistan's secret history. Across this desert, Alexander the Great marched his army, killed the King of Balkh and married his beautiful daughter Roxane. One and a half thousand years later, Genghis Khan swept through and destroyed teeming cities that were melting pots of diversity. The philosopher Zoroaster, founder of the first monotheistic religion, three and a half thousand years ago, lived and possibly died here. Rumi, the 13th century poet who wrote in Persian, was born in Balk and is also, some Afghans like to think, buried here. Camel trains loaded with freshly harvested cotton lope across the parched landscape against a backdrop of mud walls built to stop the encroachment of the desert on the fertile bulk oasis. The French archaeologists are here to take a sample of the walls, which surrounded a huge hexagonal fort, its shape only visible on satellite photos. Strategically placed for both defence and water. They dig deep into the foundations to fill a metal pipe with dirt, so scientists in Paris can gauge the last time the quartz in the clay saw light. For now, they're guessing around two and a half thousand years. Nearby in Dalatabad is the tiny, hospitable village of Zadian. We can only go with an armed police escort as the Taliban are active. Little girls in colourful scarves run squealing from the communal water pump. As I raise my camera, men in baggy trousers and turbans emerge to greet us from a shady walled garden. I look up and my jaw drops against the flawless blue sky. A sun baked clay minaret towers over us. It was built in the 12th century, missed by Genghis Khan and his marauding Mongols, and by most visitors to this corner of the world ever since. In the oasis of Cheshmari Shofar, a huge white rock shaped like an anvil is the sole evidence of a city where Zoroastrian priests performed rituals for the thousands of people who lived here 600 years before Christ. On the altar's flattened top is a well for oil which burned a perpetual flame that would have been visible across the valley. The French like to wonder if it was here that Alexander married Roxane. French archaeologists have worked in bulk for almost a hundred years, interrupted by wars and invasions and in the late 1990s by the Taliban, who believed history only began with Islam in the seventh century. In fact, in Afghanistan, Islam displaced Buddhism. The Taliban showed their contempt for history when they destroyed the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Today, archaeologists are confirming Afghanistan's role in spreading prosperity and philosophy across a quarter of the world for thousands of years. They see the greatness of the past as an example for the future, and in bulk, see not the violence of the present, but the romance of antiquity. The original Bulk is one of the oldest cities in history. All that remains is a dusty field surrounded by monumental walls that are slowly being revealed by painstaking excavations. In seven years, about 20 metres of the foundations have been brought back to life. Visible from the top of the walls are the courtyards of the modern village, where life goes on as no doubt it always has. Washing hangs out, children chase dogs, donkeys pull carts, and the hot wind blows up endless clouds of dust. In the timelessness of Bulk. Whatever comes next, when the war ends and foreign troops leave the country at the end of 2014, will soon be absorbed into Afghanistan's never ending history.
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And that was Lyn o'. Donnell. Muslims around the world have been celebrating the festival of Eid al Adha. It commemorates the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim Abraham in the Bible to follow God's orders and sacrifice his son. In the end, of course, it didn't come to that. Instead, a sheep was provided. And today, in many places, a sheep will still be sacrificed. Traditionally, some of the meat is given to the poor, while the rest may be served up at a lavish family din. In the West African state of Senegal, where 90% of the country is Muslim, there's been a bit of a problem this year. As Thomafessi's been learning, it's all to do with the rising price of sheep.
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Preparations for the festival always generates great scenes. A couple of sheep crammed into an open boot of a taxi, others tied onto a car's roof. And there was a man crossing the streets with a ram on a leash. Not that sheep are an unusual sight here you see them all the time. But in the run up to Eid, they're everywhere and everyone is talking about them. For most Senegalese, getting a sheep for Tabaski, as the festival is called here, involves long term financial planning. Mr. Diop, one of the men who works in our office building, told me proudly that his family's celebrations had gone very well. I wondered if it had been a struggle for him to buy a sheep. His smile faded. He'd been saving money for it, he said, every single month this year. He had to. He said it was simply unthinkable not to have a sheep to slaughter on Tabaski Day. It's a question of pride. It's certainly not mandatory under Islam, but it is a social obligation here. People who can't afford a sheep feel deeply shamed in their neighborhood. And it isn't just food for the family feast, yet more money needs to be spent on new clothes. Mr. Diop said he spent some £300 on the occasion. That's a huge expense for a man who earns hardly a quarter of that every month. The mayor of Dakar banned the presence of sheep downtown a few years ago because of the disruption they caused. But just a street away from the city center, the There's a strong smell of animals getting fed in muddy potholes. At this time of year, hundreds of thousands of sheep are being brought in from neighboring Mauritania, Mali and Niger, and from farms all around Senegal. Just under a million have been slaughtered around the country for the festival, but everybody's saying it's been particularly bad. This year. The sheep have been more expensive than ever, and that's been disastrous for the many families who already struggle to get by on a daily basis. And it's already a time of heavy spending as it comes right after the children's return to school. So the local media this week has been full of tips about how to reduce the bill for Tabaski. One woman, for example, explained that she wouldn't be buying carrot and cabbage because they usually end up in the bin. Waste is the great irony of the festival. In every family, men want to show that they can afford to sacrifice a sheep, but inevitably there are piles of leftovers. There's a palpable tension and anxiety in the atmosphere during the days leading up to Tabaski. Taxis get more expensive, street vendors become more aggressive, they're desperate to sell. Criminality suddenly increases. A TV report explained that it was even possible to insure one's sheep in case something bad happened to it. Before celebrations, a number of street muggings led the French Embassy to tell its nationals to take care. And there have been reports of trucks transporting sheep being attacked and stolen. Eyewitnessed a group of angry women in traditional outfits being dispersed by security forces near the Presidential palace. It turned out they were protesting after the first lady had helped some poorer women buy sheep for their families. For Tabaski, these protesters clearly didn't receive any money and were loudly making their feelings known. So has this festival become a real burden for the people here? Undoubtedly. The social pressure is huge and painful. My friend Mr. Diop told me he had to deliver or he'd lose face in front of his wife and children. The day before Tabaski, I woke up to an SMS message asking whether I wanted to take part in a text quiz to win a sheep. It was being organized by the mobile network. I thought I should try to give it a go. The questions were all about Islam and there were loads of them. I did quite well, answered most of them. But a day later, the questions were still coming. I gave up. But I didn't mind not winning. The sheep by that time had already eaten a very great deal of mutton.
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Tomafesi in Senegal Content now perhaps to eat salad for a few days. And that's it. More from correspondents around the world on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.