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From Our Own Correspondent
Turmoil in Thailand
00:28:12
Correspondents with stories from around the world: in this edition, Jonathan Head on a...
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Hello.
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This is from our own correspondent, a download from BBC Radio.
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And here with the latest addition is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the winds of change whisper in the trees. A North Korean waitress sings us a Christmas carol as her country undergoes its biggest leadership upheaval in years. We find out why more than a thousand women a year seek out the skills of an American they call the Michelangelo of the nipple tattoo. Hear about a Syrian air Force officer imprisoned by his own government, locked up by the rebels and then held captive over the border in Lebanon? And can it be true? Are French women really starving themselves because they believe a fat female is a failure? First though, to Thailand, where the leader of the protest group trying to bring down the government says the Prime Minister must resign. If she doesn't, she'll be forced out. The Prime Minister, Yingluk Shinawat, who has already called an election in a bid to placate the protesters, has now arranged a meeting for tomorrow to discuss the reforms they're demanding. What happens next could depend on the country's powerful army, which so far has declined to take sides. Jonathan Head in Bangkok says at the heart of this political turmoil is a debate about democracy.
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When more than 90 people died on the streets of Bangkok three and a half years ago, most to the guns of their own army, many Thais hoped that the shock of so much violence would bring this country's warring factions to their senses that this could never happen again. Those of us who have lived in this country for some time have learnt never to say never again. For the past two weeks, I have watched old battles replayed, often in the same old way, sometimes in the same places. To the outside world, it must seem that Thailand has gone mad. A veteran politician and ruthless backroom dealer has decided to overthrow a government that was legitimately elected and still has a clear majority of the seats in Parliament. He's led thousands of protesters to occupy government buildings, storm police barricades and he's declared himself to be the head of an alternative government. Instead of arresting him, though, the Prime Minister has offered negotiations. She's ordered the police to avoid violence at all costs. Yet she leads a party that's won five successive elections, an extraordinary record anywhere and unprecedented in Thailand. How has this happened? The mainly middle class followers of this protest movement explain it in one. Thaksin. Thaksin Shinawatra of the Prime Minister, a self exiled billionaire who founded the ruling party and still wields a great deal of influence over it from his base in Dubai. They call it the Thaksin regime and they blame him for everything they think has gone wrong with their country. Corruption, lawlessness and a weak democracy. Is it possible all this mayhem running for eight years now is the doing of a single man? I've met Mr. Taxan a number of times. He's like other immensely successful politicians, charismatic but thin skinned, vain but brimming with confidence. Nothing really exceptional. Was he corrupt? Almost certainly. Was he exceptionally corrupt? Nobody's yet proved that he was already very rich before holding any political post. Yet some of the smartest, best educated people you can meet in Thailand loathe him and fear him. And when you ask what it is that they fear, the most common answer is that he can buy everything in Thailand, even its democracy. This sounds far too melodramatic until you realise that these protesters are speaking of what they know about their own country. This is, after all, a place where assassins can be hired for a modest sum, where the children of wealthy families get away with serious crimes, where helpless refugees are sold as slaves by the Thai police. Middle class Bangkokians aspire to the tastes and standards of Europe and the us. But they know that the business and political worlds they inhabit here are often dark, barbaric and lawless. For years, though, this has been carefully concealed under a veneer of old world courtesy, by the clubby intimacy of elite families who have known each other for generations. And by elevating the monarchy to symbolize virtues that are largely absent in everyday Thai society, these facades have allowed Thais to think of their country as more civilized than messed up neighbours like Cambodia and Myanmar. Thaksin, a man from a provincial family who made his millions from mobile phones, had no time for such affectations. He told Thais they too could get rich like him. And he gave this message to everyone, even the impoverished farmers of the north and northeast, people rarely considered by Bangkok's residents except as maids, drivers and construction workers. They loved him for it and they voted for him in huge numbers ever since his first election victory 13 years ago. But his limitless ambition and his ability to win elections time and time again strike fear in the hearts of city people. They believe he'll squeeze them out of business and politics completely, which is why they cannot accept another election as a way out of the current deadlock. But the arguments they use are self defeating. Repeatedly, I've heard perfectly decent people telling me that rural folk are too uneducated to know Thaksin's true nature, so their votes shouldn't count. But what of the millions who voted this government into office? One woman in a North Eastern Village snorted in disgust when I mentioned the scepticism of Bangkok protesters. These people in Bangkok have gone to university, even overseas, she said. How come they don't understand what democracy is? We in this village with no education, we understand exactly what it is, and we won't give it up without a fight.
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Jonathan Head in Thailand South Korea's been voicing its fears after a leadership purge in the north, which has seen the country's second most powerful man executed, while others, it's believed, have escaped abroad. The president of the south has expressed her concern and warned of the dangers of a destabilising of relations between Seou and Pyongyang, the North's key ally. China has described the execution as an internal affair, but says it hopes stability can be maintained. Lucy Williamson's just been to the Chinese city of Dandong, which is on the border with North Korea.
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There's a seaside feel to this Chinese border town. Riverboats glide past as wedding couples pose for photographs. There are lights strung up along the waterfront. Music floats in from somewhere, the notes blown about in the wind. Looking across this narrow stretch of the Yalu river, it's hard to believe that the other bank is North Korea. Hard to believe because this border is nothing like the notorious Demilitarized Zone where North and South Korea meet, with its bristling weapons and twitchy atmosphere. The mood here where North Korea meets China is very different. There's no visible security, no armed guards patrolling the riverbank, no razor wire along the promenade, at least not on the Chinese side. But then the North Korean shoreline doesn't look very inviting. Dandong. Shiny skyscrapers face a stunted vista of idle factories and sludge, colored buildings lowering in the scrubland on the opposite bank. One Dandong local told me that the North Korean skyline had barely, barely changed in 40 years. The only new buildings to appear, he said, were warehouses built to store all the goods being brought over from China. Dandong is North Korea's gateway to the world, a place where the long alliance between the two countries takes physical form. As a result, Dandong is full of North Koreans, party officials, businessmen and government contracted waitresses. If I tell you that many of my hotel staff understood only Korean, not Chinese, you'll get a sense of how many Korean visitors were talking about. I met my first members of Pyongyang's elite, three middle aged men at breakfast. Their clothes were almost identical, but then so were their hairstyles and their regulation lapel badges bearing the portraits of North Korea's leader. Brand new versions of the Badges, they told me, issued just days before. They said they were investors come to China on business. This is a gold rush town for North Korean businessmen, and the evidence is lined up at the nearby cargo port. The yard is full of trucks, dozens of them, covered in the dust of North Korea's roads and stacked with the goods that each side is hungry for coal and other natural resources coming out of North Korea, construction materials and equipment on the way in. But North Korean truckers eat in different places to party officials. We found them packed into a string of small canteen kitchens along a stretch of highway on the outskirts of town. They'd already begun drinking and were ordering lavishly, the table crammed with meat, vegetables and other dishes. They were surprisingly friendly, at least to begin with. Yes, I'm North Korean, one of them told me. I heading back there later today. Where are you from? My reply that I was from the UK didn't seem to faze him at all. But then, Dandong already has a large Tesco supermarket where North Korea's wealthy are reported to shop. More drivers turned up, and suddenly no one at the table would even make eye contact with me. But I'd learnt one valuable lesson. Restaurants are a great place to meet North Koreans in Dandong, so I headed for my third meal of the day to a hotel chain run by the North Korean government. There, two waitresses, both in their early 20s, took turns to ask me shy questions and flirt with our local driver. Was I married? They asked, and where on earth had I learnt my few words of Korean? North Korea sends waitresses over to Dandong for months or years at a time, monitoring their movements and collecting their pay packets, most of which go to the government. One of our waitresses told us she had only recently arrived and, as if she were still in a job interview, proudly listed the subjects she'd learnt at school mathematics, chemistry, biology and our Leader's Revolution. Her English lessons also seemed to be a highlight. They seemed to have consisted largely of singing English language songs. I'll show you, she said, and standing stiffly behind my chair, proceeded to sing When a Child is Born, A silent wish Sails the seven Seas. She sang the Winds of Change Whisper in the Trees. When she'd finished, I asked her whether there was any difference between North Korea and China. The people's minds are different, she said. North Koreans function together. The Chinese are individuals. I wondered about her comment as I walked out onto Dandong's truncated broken bridge, a relic of the Korean War. From there, I could hear the music blaring from Dandong's bars and clubs and see the neon pulsing through the falling dusk like a mini Las Vegas perched on the edge of the riverbank. And you couldn't help but wonder what they think on the other side, watching it all from the silent, unlit shore.
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Lucy Williamson Breast cancer is one of the biggest health issues in America. The average American woman has a 1 in 8 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime. The treatment, of course, can be grueling. If it's caught in time, surgery can prove effective. There are nearly 4 million American women alive today who've lived through diagnosis and treatment, but still, there's a lot for them to come to terms with, not least the effects on their physical appearance. Some women opt for breast reconstruction, but the devil can be in the detail, as Katie Watson's been hearing in the unlikely setting of an American tattoo parlour.
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There's something very familiar about the suburbs of small towns across America. The roads are big and distances long, but sooner or later you're guaranteed to come across a strip mall, a little open air shopping complex along the side of a main road, usually with a 24 hour pharmacy, a little supermarket and perhaps a restaurant. And so there I was, 20 minutes outside Baltimore, parked outside one of these strip malls. This one, of course, had a pharmacy as well as a vet's, a hairdresser's, a tanning shop and a tattoo parlour. Little Vinnie's Tattoos to be precise. And it was Little Vinnie I'd come to meet. He was a friendly man, dressed in a tweed waistcoat, a striped shirt and a smart felt hat. Vinnie shook our hands, welcomed us in and showed us around his business. The walls were covered in tattoo art, with catalogues lined up at the back of the room with packed with thousands of designs to choose from. A classic heart with a dagger through the middle, perhaps, or maybe your favourite cartoon character. Or if you're feeling patriotic, you could choose from a bald eagle or the American flag. A few customers were sitting on the benches, waiting to go in one of the six studios along the side of the wall, each with a black crushed velvet curtain for a door. But one studio on the other side of the room stood out to me. It had more of a structure to it and a wooden door much like an office or a doctor's surgery. Rather appropriate really, because although Vinnie has no medical training whatsoever, he's become a bit of a star in the medical world. He no longer spends his day tattooing anchors on men's biceps. In fact, most of his clients are women and they have One thing in common, they are all recovering from breast cancer. A few years ago, a doctor in Baltimore asked Vinnie to help out with a patient who had had breast reconstruction, leaving nipples so realistic were his skills in creating 3D nipple tattoos. Patients started demanding him over doctors who typically carry out basic tattoos as the final stage of reconstruction. Now, he says it's just taken over his life. Vinnie sees between 12 and 1400 patients a year and he travels across the country and beyond to prove it. There was a map in his studio with pins in it showing where people come from. He has clients in countries as far away as Saudi Arabiano. Mean feat in a part of the world where tattoos are considered haram or forbidden. When I was visiting, Sarah had just finished her appointment and was beaming. Sarah's in her mid-30s and last year she was devastated to find out she had cancer. Just a few months after being given the wonderful news that she was pregnant. Within a month of giving birth to her son, she had to have an operation to remove both her breasts and said the first time she took off her bandages it was the hardest day of her life. Every time you go and take a shower, you see these scars that are a permanent reminder of what you just went through, she told me. But now she can smile. I have other tattoos, but I never thought I'd be getting my nipples done. It's certainly a conversation starter, she joked. A self confessed bad boy who learnt his trade while in the army, Vinnie says there are a million people who need this done, but just a handful of people doing it. In fact, he was even asked to fly to the United Arab Emirates recently because there were about 20 women who wanted his tattoos. But sadly, the husbands had to give them permission and only three women got it, so he couldn't go. Such is his reputation, he's affectionately nicknamed the Michelangelo of nipple tattoos. But Vinnie plays down his talents. He says his work isn't artistically challenging, it's easy to do. In fact, he got fed up a few years ago and decided to stop. He said enough was enough and wanted to get back to regular tattoos. But then one day a woman called him up to ask for an appointment. He said no and she sounded so upset. Then out of the blue, his sister called, telling him she had breast cancer too. It was a sign, he said, he had to continue with this work. You lose the artistic satisfaction, but then you gain this other satisfaction. That's incredible, he says. I wasn't prepared for how it was going to make me feel.
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And that was Katie Watson. 30 countries have now been invited to the peace talks on Syria, which are due to take place in January. They're calling the gathering Geneva 2, which is a bit confusing, as the discussions will actually take place in Montreux. The conference is aimed at ending a civil war that's been going on for nearly three years. So far, none of the rebel groups has said it will go. Indeed, some Islamist fighters are warning that anyone attending will be regarded as a traitor. The conflict has cost more than 120,000 lives and seen millions of Syrians displaced from their homes. James Harkin has been meeting some of them just over the border in Turkey. One man, previously an officer in the Syrian Air Force, he found teaching English
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what is your name? How old are you? What do you do? No sooner had I arrived at Qamishlo Hearth than I found myself in front of a semicircle of 20 beaming children enthusiastically reciting the English they'd just been taught. Their teacher, a skinny, slightly theatrical man wearing sawn off shorts and a pork pie hat, invited each to step forward in turn and talk to me, the bona fide English speaker. Then he stepped forward himself. My name is Luail, he said. I'm 35 years old and I'm a pilot. It was perfectly true. Lu I al Jarf, to the delight of his pupils, spent 15 years as a navigator in the Syrian Air Force. One evening he went to the room where he sleeps, lined with empty whiskey bottles, and brought back his graduation certificate from the Aleppo Flying Academy, along with pictures of him sitting thumbs up in the cockpit of a clunky Russian airplane owned by the Syrian Air Force. After class another evening, he instinctively made a play for one of the teaching assistants, a glamorous Kurdish. You know, I think I'm in love with you already, he told her. It takes more than 10 minutes to fall in love, nodded the young woman. But Luay didn't seem at all convinced. Occasionally he'd reflect on the misery of his circumstances and throw up his hands. I'm in a bad mood, he'd say, and go quiet. He has plenty to be miserable about. Lui's problems began in in May 2011, shortly after the Syrian revolt broke out, when he and his colleagues were asked to police the growing anti regime demonstrations in Damascus. When he gave an order not to shoot, he says, he was arrested and sent to a jail run by the feared Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate. His fiance deserted him. Her parents wanted the status of having an airman in the family and couldn't cope with his sudden fall from grace. The authorities would have treated him more harshly, he says, but for the fact that he's an Ishmaeli Muslim, one of the smaller and more exotic pieces of Syria's many sided religious mosaic, and one which largely still supports the Assad regime. Luai was set free after six months, but his problems continued. Short of money, he left Syria to work in a restaurant in Beirut. That was a mistake. In August 2012, he was detained by a prominent Lebanese family seeking hostages to exchange for their fellow Shia who were being held by Syrian rebels. Luay sat in a dank Beirut House for 50 days before he was rescued by the Lebanese police. He fled back to Syria passportless, but was worried the authorities there might find out about friends he had in the Syrian opposition. So he jumped on his motorcycle and made for Hasakah in rebel held north Syria. That was a mistake too. At a checkpoint, Luai was arrested as a possible regime spy and handed over to the Islamic extremists of the Nusra Front to await his day in a Sharia court. But that day never seemed to arrive. In the meantime, his captors beat him with Kalashnikovs and tormented him with electric shocks in an attempt to force a confession. Some of them, he says, were as young as 16. Worse, according to Luai, they'd begun to suspect that he was an Ishmaeli to the purists of Nusra, esoteric offshoots like the Ishmaelis, or heretics. They even found his family threatening to kill him unless they pressured the Syrian regime to arrange a prisoner swap. Are you joking? His brother told them. The regime hates Luai too. The worst was won. Looking outside his cell window, he saw a regime security man being beheaded with a knife. He couldn't sleep for 10 days after that. After two and a half months in his third prison, Blue Eye was set free in April this year. It was an incredible stroke of luck. A passing rebel, recognizing him from opposition circles, wouldn't leave until Nusra let him go. From there, he was brought like an orphan to Kamishlo House. With all the children here, Luai is getting broody, but the conflict has robbed him of his livelihood and his marriage prospects. Like every other Syrian young man I've met, his life has come to an abrupt halt.
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James Harkin There, the image of the chic and slim Parisian woman has been making other women feel uncomfortably inadequate since at least the late 18th century. That was when Queen Marie Antoinette, actually an Austrian, held sway over a notoriously fashion obsessed court in Paris. Today, the best seller lists are full of books on how today's French woman stays slender and successful, using knowledge handed down from mother to daughter over generations. But is it really true that French women don't get fat? Well, apparently not. Figures suggest that among European nations, women in Romania, Italy and Bulgaria are all skinnier. But with pharmacies full of miracle claiming slimming products, new fad diets almost daily and billboards plastered with with images of sylph like female models, the constant pressure to be thin is putting French women under considerable strain, as Joanna Robertson's been discovering.
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C', est, says Isabelle. Chic plus mance et gal SUC. Isabelle's a 50 year old director of a fashionable Paris art gallery. She's talking about French women and their figures. Chic slim equals success. That's how it works here. If you're fat, you won't get that job. But if you've got the silhouette, chic, ultra slim, elegant, you're more or less made. Isabel's actually quite fat, an all too rare exception to the rule. But being self employed, she says she can get away with it. Isabel likes being overweight in a society that's so obsessed with thinness and conformity. Being fat makes me feel free, she says, even though I never find anything to wear in the parish shops. I remember vividly the last time I tried. She laughs, the look of horror on the shoppers assistant's face. Madam, she cried, we certainly have nothing for you here. It's said that every French woman feels the need to lose at least 2 kilos, however thin she might be. And the slimming business in France is huge. Pharmacies tout miracle claiming diet products and women's magazines run endless columns on how to tone and hone. Most of the pressure French women feel comes from other French women. Isabelle says her female friends are revolted and angered by her weight. It's a society with zero tolerance for fat. Fat is a dirty word, an offensive insult. It's difficult to come right out and say it. Thankfully, there's an array of flattering euphemisms to choose from. One is not fat. One is ronde, robust, forte, solide d' au dou, rendelete, round, robust, strong, solid, plump, chubby and even. En roubaix, enrobed. An adjective otherwise used to describe a mouth watering coating, usually of thick chocolate on sweets and cakes. But in this case it refers to a woman richly coated in her own body mass. There's an idea put about in what the French call the Anglo Saxon press, that French women don't grow fat. They simply follow a set of mystic Rules handed down from mother to daughter that govern their personal grooming, comportment and most of all, their eating habits. A sensible balanced diet, plenty of fresh produce, three meals a day plus a small tea time treat. Absolutely no snacking, regular exercise, nothing to excess. In fact, what any educated Western woman would probably teach her children. Whatever their nationality, though, most French women do follow this regime and maintain healthy, reasonably slim figures. In reality, to become really thin with that wafer thin silhouette, many need to almost starve themselves. There are plenty of Parisian middle class families who'll sit down to a frugal meal of steamed vegetables and a cup of herbal tea in the evening to avoid gaining weight and the detox. A controversial, purifying diet is an accepted part of daily life. There's simply no mystery about it. Of course French women get fat, says Sylvia, who's editor in chief of Encyclo Fille, a well respected guide to health and beauty for teenage girls. But the fact is they daren't. And some will even starve themselves, because in this society a fat female is a failure. Fat women are regarded as stupid. Their lives are out of control. They're judged ugly, weird losers, explains Sylvia. Women have come so far in France. We've a political voice, good childcare, access to work. But instead of becoming more confident, we're increasingly obsessed with our weight and shape. Coco Chanel freed us from the corset over 80 years ago, but we've fallen for a mental one instead. A silhouette of supposed perfection that's unattainable and leads to eating disorders and misery. Everywhere one looks in Paris, she's there, that idealized French female, pouting glamorously from adverts on buses, gazing big eyed from billboards on the metro. Petite, fragile and oh so very slim. She sells practically anything. Floor cleaner, lipstick, discount car insurance, even food. Ice cream. Parfait perhaps, or a rich French cheese poised tantalizingly just beyond the reach of her gorgeous half open mouth. It's an absolute tyranny, says Marjorie, a 49 year old business executive herself. Pencil slim. The tyranny of the silhouette, we call it. But it's also a kind of dream. It represents total success. In the uk, television shows women of all shapes and sizes doing all kinds of things. I Love that. Chubby 55 year olds kissing men full on the mouth. You'd never see that here. Marjorie works near the Paris suburb of St. Denis, where there's a large North African population. She's inspired by these women, their full curvaceous figures and the way they walk tall. They're so much more feminine than our Parisian chic, she says. But the sad truth is that if they want careers here, they're going to have to get skinny to get ahead.
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Oh, dear. Mid December is hardly the time to think about getting skinny. Joanna Robertson in Paris bringing this edition to a close. We'll have more tasty morsels next Saturday. Do join us. Goodbye.