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From Our Own Correspondent
The Missing Students
00:27:51
Despatches from around the world. In this edition: Will Grant on the protests in City...
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Kate Adie
Thank you for downloading the latest edition
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Razia Iqbal
of BBC Radio's from our own correspondent,
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Annie Dashinger
the best in news and current affairs storytelling.
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Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Will Grant
Hello. Today we just want our friends back. Scandal in Mexico as families demand answers in the case of the 43 missing students. What's Qatar really up to in Syria? A question for an intelligence chief. Over dinner in Doha, we find unease in the old Kasbah in Algiers. There are fears that violence could once again consume the country and a corner of these islands that's very quiet, very dark and the very best place to get a view of the stars. It's been another harrowing week for the families of the students in Mexico who were abducted by police in the small town of Iguala. The Attorney General announced details of what his office believes to be their apparent murders outside the town. But the victims family do not accept the official version of events. The protests have now come right to the front door of the Presidential palace. Will Grant has spent the week in Iguala, a town thrust into the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
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Sergio Choa
There are 43 empty desks in the main square in Iguala. Each one has a photo taped to the back of a young man between the ages of 18 and 22. Jorge Luis Gonzalez Parral. Magdalena Lauro Villegas Abel Garcia Hernandez. Jorge Alvarez Nava. The list goes on, all neatly arranged in rows. They sit beneath a banner which reads we can't start class because 43 of our classmates are missing. The simple but hauntingly powerful protest has been placed outside the charred and blackened remains of the municipal palace. The Mexican flag painted on an outer wall now black with soot. Inside, workmen are piling up the debris from a very different form of protest, a more radical and direct one. Almost a month after the 43 students went missing and with still no meaningful answers from the authorities, their classmates patience ran out. They threw Molotov cocktails through the windows of the municipal palace and ransacked the offices of Mayor Jose Luis Abarca. The patio of the palace is now a small mountain of ash covered computer equipment, burnt out filing cabinets and broken tables and chairs. The air is thick with dust while underfoot the floor is covered with strewn papers, the ground crackling with the sound of broken glass as you walk. The student's ire is understandable. Mayor Barca and his wife fled the town after the young men were abducted and were described by the Attorney General as the chief suspects in the disappearances. They were found and arrested last week, cowering in an abandoned house. In the low income neighborhood of Istapa Lapa in Mexico City. But if the government had hoped for some praise for the arrests, they haven't placated Sergio Choa. He was with the students when they were rounded up by the municipal police and hauled off to who knows what horror. We don't care if they've arrested the mayor, the 19 year old trainee teacher tells me, his eyes blazing with defiance. We just want our friends back. He's convinced of two things. The 43 are still alive and the and the police are holding them somewhere. I saw the police take them and now they're trying to make out they haven't got them to spin us a yarn. Sergios shows me around the tiny dormitory he shared with seven other student teachers, their clothes still hanging up. All but one of them were kidnapped on that fateful night. Next to Iguala is a much smaller town called Kokula. While it might seem melodramatic to describe it as evil, it is definitely a place where the sense of something sinister having happened still hangs in the air. We drove to the edge of town, heading towards the rubbish tip, an area that the forensic teams have already examined. As we turned down the twisting country roads, it was impossible not to imagine making the same journey late at night, afraid not knowing where you're being taken or by who, your hands tied behind your back, the plastic handcuffs cutting into your wrists. As we turn the final corner, three pickup trucks of federal police appear from nowhere, their guns raised, their manner twitchy. They insist it's not safe. We can't guarantee your safety around here at the moment, one officer explains my reflection looking back at me and his mirrored sunglasses, which he doesn't remove for a second. People know you're here. There are alcones, meaning hawks or lookouts. We won't be seeing the rubbish tip on this occasion. As they escort us back to the comparative safety of the main square. Two days later, the Attorney General, Jesus Murillo Karam, explained his version of what took place in Kokula in grisly detail. The official version of events is on the 26th of September, the police in Aguala rounded up the student teachers who had travelled to the town to disturb a political rally by the mayor's wife, as she was due to run for office herself. They threw the 43 into their trucks, lying on top of each other, causing around 15 to die from asphyxiation. They drove the young men to Cocula, where they handed them over to members of a gang called Guerreros unidos, based on three confessions, Mr. Morillo Karam says they shot the remaining students in the back of the head and burnt their bodies at the rubbish dump using diesel, gasoline, tires and plastic. The victims, mothers and fathers don't accept Mr. Morillo's story and want independent verification that their children are dead. The attorney general, who rarely takes questions from journalists, ended the press conference with some incredibly insensitive words. Enough, I'm tired, he said.
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Will Grant
Will Grant In Mexico, the Indian prime minister may have called in Parliament for more protection for the country's women, but still the media is full of stories about the violence they're suffering. New laws were introduced after the infamous gang rape of a woman aboard a bus in Delhi back in 2012. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, said women deserved respect and dignity. But still the attacks continue. Razia Iqbal tells us that often the victims come from what's regarded as a low caste, while the perpetrators are from a higher one. She's been gathering stories in western Haryana, a state with one of the highest rates of sexual violence.
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Razia Iqbal
Even on a winter's day, the capital of India is anything but cool and peaceful. But taking the road out of Delhi before dawn, heading west, there is a chill in the air and a steady silence. The morning stirs slowly, with men and boys relieving themselves by the sides of roads and with vehicles, from dilapidated trucks to cows pulling carts, starting their early treks to their destinations. As the pale sun, a polka dot, pops up behind us, the nature of rural poverty becomes quickly evident. I'm on my way to western Haryana to meet a teenager called Shabnam. She lives on the second floor of a crumbling building. The three small rooms and a tiny balcony she shares with her mother comprise the bathroom, toilet, kitchen and spaces where beds are rather than bedrooms. Daily prayers are being chanted at a nearby temple. Shabnam is a shy 18 year old from the lowest Dalit caste. She's dressed in a yellow tunic and cobalt blue leggings and snazzy matching yellow and blue trainers. She's round faced and pretty, understatedly made up with a little eyeliner and pink lip gloss. She understands some English and I conversational Hindi, but we have a translator, so there is no misunderstanding, because her story should be told with the utmost clarity. In the middle of the afternoon, when she was 16, she was stopped by several men who bundled her into a car. They drugged and raped her. Around 12 of them took turns and made a video of their assault. Shabnam was left bloodied and dazed. She told no one and went to school the next day. More than a week later, her injuries and her desire for justice led her to tell her father. To his credit, given the social stigma attached to rape, he supported her. But the rapists from the higher Jat caste prevented them from going to the police, saying they had political backing and if they wanted to, they could kill her and no one would care. A security guard where her father worked showed him the video of her rape and his strength to support her disappeared. He killed himself. Shabnam, though, is resolute. She was raped a few months before the notorious attack on a young woman on a bus in Delhi. She died and the subsequent protests changed the law, if not attitudes. Her death was a watershed moment because the woman was middle class and opinion formers and politicians felt she could have been their child or sister. Not so with those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy who face prejudice from the whole legal system, from the police to the courts. Rape in states such as Haryana is particularly egregious. Shabnam's strength and resolve means she feels she can help others where she was not helped. Some of the men who attacked her and have been acquitted, others convicted but are appealing. She has to live with an armed bodyguard because her attackers continue to threaten her. She's training to be a lawyer with a group called Human Rights Network, whose lawyers also need armed bodyguards. With the armed bodyguards, Shabnam took me to a nearby village to meet a family which has suffered an appalling tragedy. Rashmi, the daughter, disappeared after leaving the house to relieve herself in a nearby field. She was found dead in a water tank which provides the village with its drinking water. She'd been raped. She was 13. Her parents, though inconsolable, are resigned to the notion that this is what the higher caste do. To the Dalits, these women and girls may be untouchables, but only in name. The rape of Dalit women and girls by higher caste men appears to be a caste privilege, politically protected and socially sanctioned. But for Shudnam, none of this is written in stone. Two years on, she still suffers physical pain from that attack and there's a blankness in her face, not uncommon in those who've experienced trauma. Yet the same face lights up and her shyness disappears when she tells me she's entered a Bollywood hip hop dancing competition. Her snazzy shoes now make sense, as does her determination to not allow one event, however harrowing, define her. I leave her in awe, but with fingers crossed and hope in my heart that she'll win both dance and legal battles.
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Will Grant
Razia Iqbal so Qatar has been cleared of corruption charges over the decision to allow it to host the 2022 World Cup. The decision, announced this morning by world football's governing body, FIFA, will come as a relief in the Gulf state, which in recent times has been the subject of a series of damaging headlines not just connected to football. There have been reports of human rights abuses suffered by its Asian construction workers. Amnesty International says the country has failed to acknowledge the existence of labor problems and the need for improvement. But what's proved most vexing to the authorities in this rich and peaceful country is the suggestion that it's damaging peace prospects in Syria by supporting extremist groups. Frank Gardner has just been to Qatar to investigate.
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Frank Gardner
It's late in the evening, but the tables are packed. Families have gathered for a weekend feast. Fathers puffing contentedly on shisha pipes, mothers fussing over scampering children. The moon is up, the summer heat of the Gulf has subsided and everyone is out enjoying the breeze that rustles through the whispering fronds of the date palms. I've come to this open air restaurant, Doha, to see someone who has his finger on what Qatar is really up to in the Syrian conflict. I've come to see the chief of security and intelligence. Two years ago, he was put in charge of his country's Syria file. Qatar has since succeeded in getting hostages out of captivity in Syria without, he tells me, paying a ransom. Weaving between tables, I am ushered through to a private room. The staff bring water pipes with apple flavored tobacco. Charming and deferential, they are Syrian, part of the 50,000 strong Syrian community here. This is, after all, one of those Gulf countries where locals are heavily outnumbered by expatriates, although the intelligence department, I learn, is the only one in government with entirely Qatari drivers. Later, I'm told some of the waiters were unnaturally keen to listen in on our conversation. The Qataris believe that the Syrian regime has eyes and ears in their capital. The intelligence chief leans forward and looks me straight in the eyes. We are being unfairly judged, he says. We do not support terrorism anywhere, but we know who is spreading these stories about us. He blames some of their Gulf neighbors. I don't know why they are going to such lengths to spread these bad rumors about us, he says. I suggest it could be because of Qatar's well publicized support for political Islam, which they see as a threat to their rule. The chief counters that Qatar has done its best to ask the aging Islamist preacher Yusuf Al Qardawi to to tone down his Sermons. What more do they want from us? He asks. The waiters clear the tables, leave the room, and the conversation turns to Syria. The intelligence chief insists that Qatar is on the side of the U. S led coalition against both the Assad regime and the jihadists of Islamic State. But he complains it's getting no credit for this. Yes, mistakes were made early on in the conflict. He admits some money did end up in the wrong hands as rebels shifted their allegiances. But he points out that Qatar hosts the vast and secretive U.S. facility at Al U? Daid, from where U.S. central Command runs all its air operations over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. And then there's the undisclosed training base for Syrian rebels somewhere out in the Qatari desert. We have nothing to hide, said the chief when I met him in London a few weeks earlier. Come and see it for yourself. But it turned out that the other coalition partners would not hear of a journalist getting inside it. The CIA run the training in conjunction with the Qataris and they want it kept top secret. But don't worry, he says, Tomorrow we will take you as close as we can. Soon after dawn, I check out of the hotel, grab a croissant for the journey and haul myself into the front seat of an expensive four wheel drive. Mohammed is at the wheel, a young intelligence officer with designer sunglasses and a flashing white smile. Somewhere out of town, we rendezvous with an escort vehicle at an abandoned petrol station and set off west towards the Saudi border. The walled villas and rows of shops peter out, giving way to a flat, featureless desert, a land of pylons, scrub bushes and the occasional camel farm. The training has been going on out here for over a year, the Qataris tell me, taking batches of a hundred so called moderate rebels at a time through three week courses in infantry, weapons, mortars, rocket propelled grenades and basic level tactics. The rebel soldiers are brought out through Turkey and returned the same way. There are other training camps too, in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. We reach the end of the road, literally. There is a solid roadblock up ahead and a guard post. The Qatari officers in our convoy are reluctant to get into an argument with the guards on duty, even though this is their country and their base. I can get no closer than glimpsing a distant camp on the horizon with a radio mast and a shooting range. I point out that I have not seen a single Syrian soldier. The next batch, they tell me, are still in the hotel. They will start tomorrow. By now the whole thing is starting to seem like a desert mirage vanishing into the shimmering haze. The Qataris are asking me to take them at their word. But later I do manage to get confirmation from a Western diplomat that the camp does exist and it is training Syrian rebels. It's a modest contribution, admit the Qataris. The numbers are not huge, maybe 1200 recruits a year. Sadly, the war in Syria is likely to last a lot longer than that.
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Will Grant
And that's Frank Gardner. Algeria is one of the few countries in North Africa which didn't experience those popular uprisings which came to be known as the Arab Spring. This is a place which suffered years of instability and brutal conflict both before and after it secured independence from France. And now the violence is back. This time it's jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which are carrying out attacks aimed at overthrowing the regime of President Abdelaziz Butaflika. Hamilton Wende says it's leaving many Algerians fearful of the future.
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Kate Adie
Excuse me, sir, but do you want to see the Eisenhower room? It seems an odd question, as I am staying at the Hotel El Jazeer in central Algiers, but then I remember that the famous American general had been in North Africa during World War II. I am led up a flight of stairs and down a darkened, silent corridor to a door that opens onto a somewhat kitchenly decorated room with stiff couches and a small wooden writing desk. The view through the window, though, is onto a magnificent garden of palms, bougainvillea and bright yellow cannas. The warm sunlight of the Mediterranean fills the room. It is hard to believe that in this tiny space, balanced so perfectly between shadow and light, the fate of the world had once hung in the balance. It was from here, in 1942 and 1943, that General Eisenhower led the campaign which drove the Axis powers out of North Africa and paved the way for the defeat of fascism. The city of Algiers is filled with such half remembered pockets of history and war. The end of fascism brought freedom for Europeans, but Arabs remained under French colonial rule. Finally, in 1954, an insurgency broke out which quickly grew into a nightmare civil war as the French resisted independence. By 1963, as many as a million Algerians had been killed and 40,000 French. Down the hill from the Al Dazer Hotel is the white walled labyrinth of shops and tiny apartments called the Kasbah. Here, on a number of occasions, in its narrow, winding, cobbled streets, French soldiers and police were ambushed by fighters at the fln, or National Liberation Front. Little in the Kasbah has changed. Today there is no real tourist industry and people look strangely at foreigners wandering through its alleyways. We cannot stroll there without a plainclothes police guard wandering discreetly alongside us. Violence has been the lot of Algerians for decades. After the FLN kicked out the French, the country effectively became a one party state. In the early 1990s, it crushed calls for more democracy, sparking another civil war. For a decade, the Algerian government fought a range of Islamist insurgent groups. Up to 200,000 people were killed before a ceasefire was declared in 1999. It was a terrible time, farouk, an interpreter I'm working with, says. We cannot go back to those days. You cannot imagine how it was then. And now we are frightened again. We have more freedom today than before, but things are going bad. We see more women wearing the headscarf. They don't want to get in trouble with the extremists. They would rather just live their lives. He echoes what so many in Algeria say. The country remains under tight control, and many from all sectors of society are unhappy with the recent presidential election, where Abdulaziz Butaflika won a fourth term with an alleged 80% of the vote. Yet the past haunts people's memories, holding them in its grip, making many reluctant to speak out. Algiers is a tense, uncertain place again. The last 18 months have seen a series of extremist attacks in the country. Recently, a French visitor, Herve Godel, was taken hostage and then beheaded. On video, I visit a factory an hour's drive out of town. Men and women are working alongside each other, but they're reluctant to talk about the renewed violence. They are, I think, fearful of the consequences. But as we speed back to town on the highway, my host suddenly says, you see, there's nothing to worry about. No one has attacked us. It is small consolation. The fact that he felt he had to say it hints at his fear of the brutal past, re emerging in all its hideousness. Algerians, though, somehow remain optimistic. At a language school, I visit the middle class. Young women and men are laughing and filled with hope. I want to be an astronomer, one young woman wearing a traditional headscarf says. I want to be an engineer, another woman, unveiled, says, while her friend adds, I want to work with shale gas. Ambitious dreams, even today. And of course, for decades, they were impossible ones. Here. That evening, I stand on a high point above the city. The call of the muezzin drifts out across the vastness of the pool bay, echoing through the glistening turquoise and pink sky. As the day ends below, a poignant mix of memory, anger and hope fills the city. As the sun sets and the light turns dark over the angular skyline, I reflect on what a fragile balance it is.
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Will Grant
Hamilton Wende in Algiers Those nighttime pictures of planet Earth you see taken far out in space, make it quite clear that there's not much in the way of complete darkness left. Left here, the lights from our town, cities and traffic illuminate even the countryside. It seems the tiny channel island of Sark is an exception. However, they are careful with their lights there and are proud that at night there's almost nothing but darkness. Visitors by the boatload arrive during the summer holiday season. But now, with winter on the way, Sark's long nights come into their own. And Christine Finn, who's just been there, says it's the perfect place for stargazing.
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Annie Dashinger
Annie Dashinger is keen to give me a souvenir of Sark. I have arrived at her home at dusk and as we have a cup of tea waiting for the night to fall, she hands me a fridge magnet. It's a map of Sark, but not as the tourist brochure has it. Looking closely, I see a peninsula tweaked into the pointed hat of a witch. A broomstick is fashioned from the shape of the far west coast. There is a black cat in the far east. Annie is proud to introduce herself as a white witch, if that surprise didn't leave me coughing on my cuppa. Her other title is Starfleet Commander of the island's astronomy group Sastros. Just don't call her the Chair. I didn't want a title that sounded like a piece of furniture, she says. Sark's 600 strong population is just as individual as the author Mervyn Peake. Founded in the 1940s, he was inspired to write a fiction about a man called Harold Pye. Landed there on a mission to spread love. It's certainly a romantic place. There were two weddings the weekend I visited. A change in the law makes it easier for starry eyed non islanders to toast their marriage under one of the best views anywhere of Venus and Mars. And that's official. Sark was the first island in the world to achieve dark sky status. The international designation is so coveted it's the first tourist sign you see coming up the steep way from the harbour off the boat from the big island of Guernsey. Not that I noticed it arriving as I did in driving rain and wind on a tractor hauled charopang called the Toast Rack. Tractors are the only mechanised vehicles allowed on the island. The lack of cars with their annoying headlights makes it much easier for Sark to be lauded for its perfect darkness. There are no street lights either, and the most irritating light is likely to be that beaming down from the moon. Sark's dark sky has been scientifically endorsed. A team of experts made the hour long boat crossing and carefully inspected the buildings on the island. They noted all the illuminations, advising on how essential lights could be pointed downwards and chasing other random glows out of the dark. Sastros has a helpful leaflet for incomers. Here in Sark, we note any new lighting. If this is excessive or inappropriate, we visit the offender and suggest a better, cheaper and less intrusive way of illuminating their property. The Sakis, as they're called, take their dark sky very seriously. Many of the islanders keep binoculars to hand and if venturing out at night, they'll mask their torches with red cellophane. Twice a year, Sarc's astronomy Society holds what it calls Starfest celebrations, with international guest speakers helping to promote Sark's bid for a proper island observatory. Just now, the Sarcees are gearing up for the Leonids, a shooting star display of up to 100 an hour that passes through the constellation of Leo. At this time of year, Annie had just been hosting a meeting of dozens of star spotters of all levels of knowledge. A telescope was installed in her garden and around it necks strained back to follow the creamy trail of the Milky Way. There's plenty of potential for poetry. If the sighting of the aurora borealis in winter is not the shimmering green curtain of the Arctic. Sark's skyshows still inspire artists and photographers. In the words of stargazer Penny Preville, the island's own northern lights shimmer with the subtle striations of colour in the red spectrum, with duck egg blue just coming in as though introduced by an eyedropper. Walking in such pitch darkness takes some getting used to, and when the moon is but a sliver, imaginations work overtime. But Penny says nighttime here is far from scary. It's magical indeed. Over tea at Annie's, talk turns to island folklore, ancient mysteries, and then darkens to the unexplained beyond the curtain windows. The night, just as Sastros promises, is very quiet, very dark and utterly peaceful. We go outside again, looking up into a sky lit by a waxing moon. Annie produces her wand, a laser pointer, to make it easier to identify the constellations. Suddenly, a collective gasp. Just where Annie is pointing, with a bright green ray, there emerges a massive blazing shooting star, as if by magic coaxed out of Sark's deep dark sky.
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Will Grant
Magic in the skies over the channel Islands. Christine Finn there, bringing this edition to a close. Remember, you can hear our stories anytime by downloading the podcast, but I'll be here again on Saturday morning at half past eleven and I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.