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From Our Own Correspondent
The Noise of the Typhoon
00:28:04
The noise and devastation of Hurricane Haiyan: Andrew Harding on the first town in the...
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Hello from the.
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From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting 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. Today it was like four 747s taking off in the toilet. The noise and devastation as Typhoon Haiyan struck a seaside town in the Philippines. Echoes of the Cold War as more states in Eastern Europe prepare to turn their backs on Moscow and sign trade deals with Brussels, a serious setback for the Middle east peace process. Yet in Jerusalem, people of different faiths and persuasions still seem to be getting along just about. And in Lagos, we get some useful tips on how to pronounce difficult Nigerian names from a xylophone. But first, a senior Sri Lankan minister has rejected David Cameron's call for an international inquiry into allegations of war crimes. The Minister of Economic Development, Basil Rajapaksa, who is the brother of the president, told reporters it would not be allowed. The Sri Lankan authorities have been the target of strong criticism over the activities of the military during the closing stages of the war against the Tamil Tiger rebels. There are also reports of continuing repression. Mr. Cameron, who is in Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, believes that turning the spotlight on human rights on the island can help bring about improvements. But can it? Here's our correspondent in Colombo, Charles Haviland.
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The drummers from the ancient kingdom of Kandy beat a ceremonial welcome while dancers in red and purple swirled, one of them emerging from a giant seashell. There were elephants richly adorned in fine silks and Commonwealth flags to greet prime ministers and presidents of South Africa, Pakistan, Australia and dozens more. A lineup led by Prince Charles. For a country which is sometimes threatened with pariah status, this gathering is a huge deal. Normally, few foreign leaders come here. Little wonder that inside the media center, state television journalists clustered around the screens showing it all before putting out reports praising President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the booths allocated to foreign broadcasters. Though no one was watching the ceremony, no one was interested in the formal agenda of development and business. They had a human rights story to write, and within hours, David Cameron gave it to them by flying north, north to Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, once the domain of the ruthless Tamil Tigers. Its people now witnessing post war recovery, but feeling marginalized, perplexed by the still heavy presence of an army that is from the same country but speaks a language they do not understand. Sinhalese. Mr. Cameron met families displaced from their land by the military and journalists whose colleagues were shot dead. These People see themselves as victims of the state. So too do the women who made an unscheduled appearance, women whose husbands or children disappeared around the end of the war and who desperately waved pictures of their loved ones at this rare visiting foreign leader. I met one such woman in Colombo last week. Udayachandra's son, Anton Saniston, a student who fished to earn some money, was taken from their northern village by four men in 2008 when sleeping at his cousin's house. That area was under heavy military control. She has crisscrossed the country dozens of times trying to find him. Once, a minister told her that Anton was in a top security prison in the far south of the island. She went there, only to be met with blank denials. My mind says he is alive, she told me, almost breaking down. If he had been killed, they would have put his body somewhere. But there's no trace of that. Her tragedy is shared by hundreds of others, some of whose children were with the Tamil Tigers and surrendered before going missing. Disappearances, mostly of Tamils, still happen from time to time, but. But the state bats away allegations against it. So will the Commonwealth summit bring human rights improvements here? One problem for those who hope so is that President Rajapaksa has a huge support base of ordinary, mostly Sinhalese people. They're not people who don't care, not racists, but people who perhaps are not aware. And even if they are aware, they feel there's a bigger picture that critics have missed. Take Charminder and his sister Nelum Shanti. I met them and their children at a motorbike rally. They were loving their day out and their faces filled with laughter as they told me why they support Mr. Rajapaksa. We're so happy now, they said the war is over and he ended it. Now every Sri Lankan can go from north to south with no problem. They praised him for building roads and railways and bridges. They compared him directly to the Buddha, the one who achieved enlightenment. For them, what matters is that the war is over and the Tamil Tiger's suicide bombings all over the island have ended. Buoyed by such support, President Rajapaksa has repeated during this Commonwealth summit his claim that he has asserted the greatest human right, the right to life. The rhetoric of some of his cheerleaders is stronger. Take Rajpal Abenayaka, who edits the state run daily News. Western countries display odious double standards, he says. Look at Britain's human rights violations like the invasion of Iraq. Blair is a war criminal. Why focus on Sri Lanka alone? The dark side of this is that the government here and the pro government media equate dissent with treachery, civil disobedience with terrorism. Publicly delivered threats are commonplace. Although criticism of the President and his powerful brothers is growing, it mainly stays private. People fall back on the comfort of the war victory. This morning, Mr. Cameron said in Colombo that issues must be dealt with, not ignored, if reconciliation and justice are to happen. Many thousands of Sri Lankans will quietly agree with that. But Mahinda Rajapaksa and his supporters prefer to insist that the outside world misunderstands this island and its problems.
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And that's Charles Havilland. The international aid effort in the Philippines is now starting to have a major impact across the areas most badly affected by Typhoon Haiyan. The United nations says it hopes to raise enough money to fund emergency programs to provide food, shelter, clean water and health services for six months. It estimates more than 13 million people have been affected by the typhoon, including 5 million children. Andrew Harding has been hearing what it was like when the storm hit.
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I'm sitting in the dark on Rosa's patio, swatting up mosquitoes and wondering if my mattress is going to get soaked by the rain tonight. Rosa has been apologising profusely for the state of her home, as if she just inherited a rather shabby bed and breakfast. There is plenty wrong with it. The roof is missing, so is the garden, and so are most of her neighbors houses. I'm in Giwan, the unlucky spot where Yolanda, as the typhoon is known here, first met land. After all the looting, there's a nighttime curfew now. A police van has just driven past, winding its way through the rubble and bleating a rather tinny siren. In the dark I can hear the sounds of families cooking campfire dinners in the open and the energetic burping of frogs. Rosa is a cousin of the town's young mayor. She's staying in the ruins of his home and has kindly let us camp here in the soggy, shredded remains of her old life. Giwan used to be a green and rather pretty town with idyllic beaches and great surfing. Nearby, there's an island just off the coast famous as the spot where the very first European landed in the Philippines. That was the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand magellan back in 1521. In 1944, American troops arrived here during World War II on their way north towards Japan. They left a military Runway outside town, which is still in good shape. Yesterday morning I woke to the sound of a huge plane coming into land. After Days of increasingly anxious isolation. Guy Win is finally getting help. The first big airlifts of aid are expected tomorrow. I've already seen some straight backed American soldiers in town asking questions and a group of bearded Belgian doctors working out where to set up a tented clinic. The house opposite Rosa's has more or less vanished. It's extraordinary what wind alone can achieve anything tall around here that's still standing towers, street lamps. The odd tree leans sharply to the west. Next door there's a blue van perched upside down on a wall. For some reason, a big fake Christmas tree remains standing in the driveway, its baubles more or less intact. A filthy flip flop wedged in the upper branches. A bit earlier, a tall, stooped man on a bicycle stopped for a chat. Segundo is 56, a sailor who lives two streets away. His job has taken him all over the world, and after 30 years at sea, he's familiar with storms. When this one came, he hid with his wife and two children in their downstairs toilet. He told them to relax. What happens, happens. But the noise, Segundo said it was like four 747s were taking off in inside the toilet. The air pressure hurt their eyeballs. Their ears popped. To be honest, I didn't expect us to make it, he said. I spent a lot of time here talking to families that weren't so lucky. A brother and sister trapped beneath a collapsed wall and the bodies of their own dead parents. A young mother who just popped into town reluctantly for her father's birthday. The storm killed her father and her only child. With no phones here, she hasn't been able to call her husband in Singapore to tell him the news. I'm worried he won't want me anymore now, she told me in a whisper. I have no meaning to my life. But the truth here is that it could have been a lot worse for Giwan. A paper chart on the wall in the mayor's crisis center reveals that 87 people died and 23 are missing. When you look at the wreckage and the devastation reminds me of what I saw after the 2004 Asian tsunami in Indonesia. It is astonishing that thousands more were not killed. And the mood here is remarkable too. Not exactly cheerful, but by and large strikingly optimistic. Rosa, who owns this house, has a theory about that. Her husband's also a sailor abroad right now. Their three young children have been playing in the ruins here all day while she sees what she can salvage. You see, we're poor in the Philippines, she says. That's why so many of us head overseas in search of work. She has a brother in Dubai, another in New Zealand. We're used to not having much, she goes on, so we can cope with this. Earlier, when I asked Segundo if he had any insurance, he laughed. That's for rich people, he smiled. He's due to retire in four years and must now head up to Manila to see if he can get work on another cargo ship. Not easy at my age, but we survived this storm, he said, so everything is fine. This is our second life.
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Andrew Harding the beleaguered Middle east peace process took another major knock this week when the entire Palestinian negotiating team decided they wanted no further part in it. Their spokesman said they'd pulled out because of continued Israeli settlement building and the absence of any hope of achieving results. It's still not clear this weekend if the talks, which had been going on amid great secrecy, will be able to resume. The BBC's Nicholas Wade has just been to Israel, finding out what people there think about the peace process.
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I'd come to Jerusalem to find facts, but I soon found myself confused. An Israeli woman had told me that her country faces disaster if it annexed the West Bank. Whilst in the same hour and with the same intensity, an Israeli man suggested that his country could be doomed if the west bank was not annexed. Except she didn't call it the West Bank. She called it the occupied Palestinian territories. And he didn't call it the West Bank. He called it Judea and Samaria. Her accent was South African and his was American. But both of these immigrants to Israel feel that they're saving their state. The Palestinians vision of statehood was more hypothetical, but no less contentious. Some had spoken of the one state solution with its pre1948 borders, as if that was the only possible solution. Others were equally adamant that that was an impossible dream that had never existed. Better to go with two states on 1967 borders, they said, even if they doubted that this was feasible. Israelis and Palestinians are so often separated by wire and walls and watchtowers. I watched a rare example of interaction between them at a dialogue meeting arranged by a charity. It aimed to allow both sides to hear the other's perspective in person. Two women, one Israeli and one Palestinian, shared the same chair. They spoke hurriedly in Hebrew and Arabic, leaving the translator slightly tongue tied and my brain entirely addled. This apparent gesture of solidarity amazed me, but I later discovered that they were in fact arguing over original ownership of the land. With the chair being used as a metaphor, it raised the question, was there room for them both Perhaps there were no facts to be found, only interpretations to be heard. I'd read the views of pundits and politicians time and time again, and on this trip I wanted to consult ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. Their views weren't just different, they were often fundamentally opposed to, and hours of heated speech and burning eye contact had left me drained just from listening to the two sides. I couldn't see how there could be one state or two for these people with a thousand perspectives, and I didn't know how they could live with one another when they sometimes seemed barely at peace with themselves. I found a cafe by Jerusalem's Old City and sank, exhausted into a thick leather chair. To soothe my frustration, I ordered a beer and took a deep sip. Dice clattered onto an intricate backgammon board next to me, and girls wearing hijabs dragged on their warbling shisha pipes. These Muslims didn't seem concerned by my alcoholic indulgence, nor by the Jewish students on the table next to me, or the Christian pilgrims seated next to them. The sound of church bells mixed with the mosque's call to prayer, and the breeze carried the strains of a Jewish violinist. Radio stations and ringtones offered fleeting segments of the iconic Arab singer Firouz. No barriers separated this Palestinian neighborhood from the Jewish district next door and in the Old City just below. I'd ambled between the religious quarters without quite knowing which one I was in, noticing only that the holy sites of so many different faiths seemed to sit almost on top of one another, and that their pilgrims rubbed shoulders as they squeezed through the city's daunting maze of ancient streets. Jerusalem is at the heart of the conflict that I had been sent to understand, yet somehow it seems to defy it. The Old City just doesn't seem to have space for these divisions amongst its jumbled diversity, and it doesn't seem to have time for arguments. Jerusalem has been there through centuries of people bickering, and it's there now as they bicker still. The city is the center of so much sanctity and so much controversy. Yet down on the day to day streets people live their lives, contemplate their deaths, and mostly just make things work in their own different ways. Had I at last found a fact, or was I just confused? Once again? I ordered my bill in Arabic, paid in Israeli shekels, and left the cafe, contemplating a perplexing notion. There was peace apparently at the heart
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of a conflict, and that was Nicholas Wade. A new battle for hearts and minds is underway in the borderlands of what was once the ussr, the European Union wants to sign trade agreements with four former Soviet states at a meeting in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, later this month. Russia isn't happy. It thinks the EU is trying to spread its influence to areas traditionally loyal to Moscow. There are mutterings of reprisals, trade restrictions, official obstructiveness if the countries sign up. Tessa Dunlop's just been to one of them. Moldova. Some there are convinced that hitching their wagon to Brussels can only improve their lives and incomes, but others believe turning their backs on Mother Russia would be unwise.
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Yon gang Gang cuts an unlikely figure in his crisp blue suit, the lemon tang of his aftershave contrasting sharply with the earthy smells of autumnal Moldova as he picks his way through a random assortment of bric a brac people are trying to sell a pair of scarlet stilettos, old slippers, loo paper, all strewn on haphazard plastic sheets. It's clear he's a man on a mission. I want to tell you more about my European dream, he says, brandishing a glossy printout. John is head of the local council in Farladen, a rural commune in the Republic of Moldova. Looking at his round, hopeful face and bright eyes for a moment, I too believe the dream that a shiny new EU funded undercover market will transform this impoverished village into a European honey pot. Why not? But Russia is the motherland. She pays our pensions. An old vendor grasps my hand. It's 8:30 in the morning. She's been drinking. The woman doesn't speak Moldovan, so I turn to my Russian language translator. More women gather round. There's swearing and shouting. John waits patiently by a truck of cabbages, unperturbed by the distinctly pro Russian sentiment that surrounds him. But then he's used to it. Farladan is on the Moldovan border. Many of the vendors have traveled in from neighbouring, predominantly Russian speaking Transnistria. I quickly realise that beneath his polished optimism, my accommodating host has his work cut out. Transnistria is the product of a bloody civil war in the early 1990s after the Republic of Moldova declared independence from the disintegrating ussr. It's a tiny sliver of land, an autonomous region unrecognised by the rest of the world. On the east bank and of the Dniester river people there are heavily subsidised by Russia pension supplements, school meals, student bursaries, energy supplies. And just in case that isn't enough to win hearts and minds, the 14th Russian army is stationed there from Farland Market. It's a short walk to the border, where you can see Russian soldiers and a tank behind camouflage netting. They don't wave back. In the market, Jan is sticking to his European agenda. We leave our Russian translator meticulously wiping the mud from her designer boots, and meet his constituents, local Moldovan villagers. Vasily has a friendly face and a pot belly. A large pig's head sits on the wooden trestle beside him. Vasily is here to sell his meat. Life is tough. It's difficult to cross the Transnistrian border with his pork, he says. There are quotas and paperwork. But on this side, in Moldova, there are no Russian subsidies. So are closer relations with the EU the answer? After all, that's what's proposed for the summit meeting in Vilnius later this month. Vasily nods. Yes, he says. They live better in Europe. But his upbeat observation is squashed by a female vendor who abandons her mountain of soft white cow's cheese to object. She too dislikes the border restrictions, but if she had to choose, she'd prefer to be with Russia. The Soviets, she says. I'd rather be close to the Soviets. For her it's a case of better the devil you know. By now John is tugging my sleeve. We still haven't visited the site of the soon to be EU market. We walk through the medley of people and produce to a small patch of fallow land boasting several steel pillars, apparently the new market's foundations. Jan unfurls the architectural plans for the swanky new build. Beaming again and gesticulating with his arm, he explains at last, we'll have EU standards and conditions. We're also going to get a new school here. Just behind me, John brushes off my suggestion that many seem to prefer Russia. They are old people, he says. But things are changing. We pause to watch the bustle of local activity beneath a watery winter sun. Chickens and dogs, a mishmash of Moldovan and Russian sounds, fill the air here once again, amidst this simple rural scene, it's Europe versus Russia. Councillor Yon is an EU success story, a Moldovan man promoting a message made in Brussels about free trade and quality control. But Jan's well versed enthusiasm and his stack of Euros is up against decades of Russian imperialism. He walks me to the car, a spring still in his step. Tessa, you must visit us again. Please come back in six months. You will see how much things have changed. I shake his hand. Just six months, Jan? I ask. Are you sure?
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Tessa Dunlop, news from Nigeria seems to concentrate on the fighting with the Boko Haram militants in the north on corruption in politics or unrest in the oil producing delta region. Against that backdrop, there's little opportunity to hear how the continent's most populous nation has become a hotbed of artistic activity. There's heavy demand for its paintings and sculptures at auctions across the world. And while once it was Congolese music which dominated Africa's airwaves, today it's Nigerian and not just pop music. At the main centre for learning classical music in Lagos, the buildings were constructed largely with money from oil companies and the diploma students are 100% sponsored by a mobile phone company. And Will Ross says that inside there's clearly a wealth of musical talent.
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The big band was rehearsing in the sauna. That's what it felt like in a cramped room at Lagos School of Music. It was packed with young musicians who, despite the heat, were giving it their all whilst paying close attention to the conductor Tony Chiafor, a retired lieutenant commander from the Nigerian Navy. By the end of a rousing rendition of the tune Onward Together, the saxophonists, flautists as well as trumpet, clarinet and trombone players were all drenched in sweat. I wrote that one, said Tony Ciafor after bouncing up and down enthusiastically waving his baton. He has fond memories of studying in Britain and at the Royal Marines School of Music at Deal in Kent, before later going on to head the Nigerian Navy's own music school. I may be retired, but I'm not tired, he told me, adding proudly, we're doing serious business here, serious business, and I hope you're coming to next month's concert. There was a very different atmosphere in the room where the strings were practicing. It certainly had an international flavour. A strict German conductor was guiding the Nigerian violinists and cellists. The through the Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli's 300-year-old Christmas concerto. The Musical Society of Nigeria, or Muson, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and with several events planned, there's a lot of practicing going on at Muson's School of Music, so a walk down the corridors is an aural cocktail. In one of the rooms I met John Ecloo. Wearing a diamondiferous looking earring and trendy skinny jeans, he he wouldn't look out of place in a Nigerian pop group. He closed his eyes and delivered an impressive, passionate version of Ave Maria. Next door another student, Uche, played a rickety piano accompanying Alaba, whose hands danced above the xylophone to a number inspired by West African high life music. At least I thought his name was Alaba. Say Dodo mi, he instructed as he tapped out the notes on the xylophone. That's it. Now Alaba, although it's not the most convenient thing to carry around, a xylophone is just what's needed to get to grips with the tricky pronunciation of Nigeria's Yoruba names. A former president, Oluseugun Obasanjo, was broken down to Re mi mi re re mi remi au lou chez gon au basanjo. The xylophone brings back memories of excruciatingly boring music lessons at school. I think this was largely because I was not allowed to play a whole one. Instead, each student had just one lonely note to ding at the appropriate time. Watching Alaba work his magic, I now have a new respect for the instrument. Like many students here, he started off singing in a church choir. Nigerian Pentecostal services are so lively even saxophonists and drummers learn to play in church. Al Abbah is certainly talented on the xylophone and once he's finished his diploma is he hopes to study abroad. I was offered a place at Manchester, but there was just one problem, he told me. £16,100 a year. £16,000 a year? I asked. No, £16,100, he shot back. I can't afford that. My father's not a politician, he said, laughing. This giant of a city Lagos has a thriving art scene and in addition to the wealth of music on offer, there are also several art galleries. One of them is holding an international exhibition, Lagos Photo. At the opening, Seyun Kuti, son of the late Afrobeat star Fela Kuti, performed with more than half a dozen musicians on stage. There was more dancing inside the gallery, but not involving any human beings. The artist Obi Nokedi has spent months reenacting a Yoruba wedding using black Barbie dolls. He's painstakingly created and photographed the scenes all the way from the bridal party getting their pre wedding beauty treatments as they browse miniature iPads, to the wedding lunch with tiny bottles of Cognac and Coke and then on to the dancing with the very Nigerian tradition of spraying where guests throw cash at the newlyweds. It's such an integral part of the day that I've seen women walking amongst the guests at a Lagos wedding with with massive bundles of money. People can then exchange their high denomination bills for a bundle of lower ones and still enjoy spraying the cash without going broke. But the Nigerian Barbie dolls must have been at a high society wedding. There are miniature $100 bills suspended in the air. I'm not sure if they were safe with the groom, though. The last photo shows the aftermath of the party. The DJ is the only person still standing and the groom appears to have passed out next to an empty bottle of brandy.
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Will Ross. And you heard it here first. The latest must have piece of reporter's kit. The xylophone. That's it. More next Saturday. Until then, goodbye.