← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Wild Horse Chase
00:28:16
Reporters' despatches from far and wide: a vegetarian of 37 years' standing, Nick is a...
Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello from the.
- [00:01]
B
From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
- [00:09]
A
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:12]
C
Today, a tender moment as our correspondent, a vegetarian for 37 years, examines a slaughterhouse in Romania. There's more militant violence in northern Nigeria, yet no one is being brought before the courts. The neighbours aren't happy, the economists are fascinated. Can Japan really junk austerity and spend, spend, spend its way out of recession? And a moment of alchemy as two men who went to war together meet up again in New York City. The scandal over horse meat being passed off as beef has spread to more than a dozen European countries. This weekend, the manufacturers of ready meals are checking their products. Abattoirs are under scrutiny. Government agencies responsible for food standards are at full stretch. Every day this week, the story has taken new and unexpected twists and turns. It's seen correspondents fanning out across the continent. Nick Thorpe's been on a wild horse chase across Romania trying to find the source of contaminated meat.
- [01:14]
D
Sometime after midnight at the Tehuzza Pass, high in the Carpathians from Transylvania into Bukovina, the temperature touched -17 Celsius. Hallucinating from the cold and the tiredness of a 19 hour drive, we imagined gray wolves watching us from among the pine trees and brown bears grumbling through the ruins of a souvenir shop. A mock Dracula castle soared up out of a small village, blood red in the snow, with a giant illuminated cross to match. Then a comet shot across the sky. If all three of us hadn't seen it all at once, we might have dismissed it as another phantom of the Transylvanian night. We stopped to sleep for a few hours in Vatra Dornei, the hearth of the Dorna river, where the snow was shoulder high and frozen so hard you could carve steps in it. Then pressed on, always eastwards, into the winter sunrise. We saw the goat somewhere after that, white and bearded and beady eyed as a Chinese sage, perched on the back of a low slung cart pulled by two horses. A Roumanian scapegoat, perhaps. This is a country where every household has an animal or two, where milk is collected each morning in the mountains, in churns by horse and cart, and where men gather at the Sunday horse markets to buy or sell, or just for the joy of being among such marvelous ancient creatures. The steam from the horses nostrils heats village squares. Cigarettes look puny in the big calloused hands of the peasants. Smoke streams from their nostrils as though Imitating the horses. Clover for the animals protrudes from beneath the blankets in every cart. Sometimes you see carts piled to heaven with hay, ambling down the road with an urchin balanced on the very top, holding it all in place with the power of his or her gap toothed grin. We were welcomed with open arms at the slaughter house in Botochan. I have no secrets, swore Mr. Kazakuts, the owner. So we had to visit every part of his super modern facility. There were moments of tenderness, even for me, a vegetarian of 37 years. The moment the cow being led to the slaughter stopped to be nuzzled by another through the bars, kissed on the nose, I nearly said in a motherly farewell. Up to 4,000 horses are slaughtered here a year, the director told us, all for export. Who is to say which animal is nobler than another as it enters the final stall. I watched the stun gun fell beast after beast, watched them roll, watched them hauled to the roof, witnessed the knife to the throat and the gush of blood, the final spasms, the stripping of the skin, the entrails. The only bit I missed was the beheading, but not from cowardice. After several hours of this learning the difference between a four day old horse and cow carcass, the color, smell and muscle tone, the kind lady who showed us round led us to a warm room where we could remove our hair nets and overalls and take comfort in a bowl of vegetable soup. This specially laid on for me while the others ate steaming steaks, only a few hours old as it were, from the halls below. We've never had anyone here who turned down meat before, said the cook, but she rose magnificently to the occasion. We relived every moment of the slaughter house in the TV edit room, censored out the pictures which would turn the stomachs of even the brashest British carnivores, then then ingested the best remaining cuts into the belly of the British broadcasting beast. Then we fled downtown through the eternal snows for a strictly vegetarian lasagna in a restaurant full of smoke and lean fellow reporters, what next for Romania after the British express their fears of both their ponies and potential plumbers, if the guilt of other labellers further down the food chain gets them off the hook this time, people across the whole of Eastern Europe will have cause for celebration if Dutch or French or even Welshmen shoulder the blame. For too long the east has been seen as a nest of cruelty and corruption, I too would argue. But some cliches actually draw the visitors on our way home. Through Transylvania, we stopped at the mock Dracula castle for a quick bite. The view from the ramparts is breathtaking. Of the Ratnai snow tops palace painted horse fat yellow in the wintry dusk, a bust of Bram Stoker, author of the Dracula legend, gazes after another horse and cart after a big bowl of vegetable soup, the best yet we resist the temptation of a Dracula dessert, fruit ice cream and jam in a pancake and walk out through the Wolf Room into the dying day.
- [05:54]
C
And that's Nick Thorpe. Foreign doctors hacked to death. Women vaccinating children against polio, gunned down in the street. A senior Islamic cleric nearly killed in an ambush. Just some in a string of recent attacks in northern Nigeria being linked to the Boko Haram rebel group, whose name means Western education, is sacrilege. The violence has been condemned by the UN Secretary General and the Nigerian president, and it's having a devastating effect on the economies of northern towns and cities like Kano. Hundreds of businesses have closed down, there's mounting unemployment, dusk to dawn curfews. Yet Will Ross says the authorities seem powerless to stop the militants.
- [06:38]
B
The latest victims were three North Korean doctors who'd been working in a town called Potiskum. Photos of their bodies are stomach churning. The three men in a row on a tiled floor. There are deep gashes where their throats were slit and the young man on the right had been beheaded, presumably using a machete. So who do you think did this? I asked the police commissioner. Well, the usual Boko Haram, he replied, referring to the Islamist militant group which has said it wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. It's thought that Boko Haram killed more than 800 people last year, some in suicide bombings of churches. The crisis has also seen the army accused of indiscriminately shooting, locking up hundreds of men without trial and and using torture. Last week in the besieged city of Maiduguri, women took to the streets, calling for the release of their husbands and sons. It was not well publicized. The journalist who tried to photograph the event was beaten by soldiers and had his camera confiscated. Kano City has also suffered terribly. In his spacious office, the powerful governor of Kano state, Rabiu Musa Kwankwasso, looked comfortable on a leather sofa in in white robes and a red Muslim cap. Several other identically dressed politicians were around him, some kneeling almost prostrate at his feet. You're witnessing the Red cap revolution, he said, referring to their attire, surrounded by photos of himself, one of which had the caption an honour well bestowed. He told me the government should talk to the militants to find out what they're after. I then asked him if he knew of any politicians that were backing Boko Haram. I'm not really sure, but none of them has been convicted, he replied. But I wouldn't be surprised by anything, he added enigmatically. Then he came up with an extraordinary revelation when I asked if he knew if anyone had been convicted for Boko Haram offences. Not yet. I'm not sure if anybody has been taken to court and convicted. Not to my knowledge, he said. Hundreds and hundreds of men arrested and not one single conviction. Is that not surprising? I asked. I believe these are questions that should be directed to the security agencies, he said, looking slightly irritated. Early in the morning, just a few days later, several women were sitting on wooden benches with their young children at a small health clinic in Kano. They'd come for what in most countries would be a very routine, uneventful polio vaccination. Suddenly, a motorized tricycle sped up to the building and shot up the clinic. Then they poured petrol on us, set fire to the curtains and locked the door, which we had to break down, one woman with gunshot wounds said from her hospital bed. Nine of her fellow health workers died. The gunmen may have been Islamist militants, but these days Boko Haram does not own up to its attacks, so no one can be sure. A few years ago, Muslim clerics told people the polio vaccine was part of a Western plot to make them infertile. The other day, I spoke on the phone to a Muslim cleric who, just the day before the shootings, had denounced the polio eradication campaign. I condemn the killing of the health workers as un, islamic Sheikh Mohammed Awal Adam al Bani told me. He also sent me a link to a website stating extraordinarily that the polio vaccine causes cancer. You see, white people don't want blacks on the surface of the earth, he he told me. The most influential Muslim leader in the area is the Emir of Kano. I visited the walled palace, but he was away, recovering in Britain after being shot at at his nearby offices. Looking pensive, the emir's advisers and followers drifted along the verandahs in their colorful robes. Some wore finely embroidered skull caps. Others were wrapped in long decorative scarves which looped under the chin. They had a distinctly top heavy appearance because so much material had been wound around their heads. A young photographer, Mohammed, pulled out some photos. One was of the emir's royal blue Daimler limousine. Just before the gunman struck. They were shooting over and over again so we got down on the floor of the bus we were travelling in. Mohammed told me he pointed to the Emir's guards in their red and green gowns. This one here was killed protecting the emir and the driver too was killed, he said, once again, no one was caught. With such a range of victims, including this revered Muslim leader, many in northern Nigeria are left wondering if anyone is safe.
- [11:21]
C
And that's Will Ross. The so called war on terror may no longer have the resonance it did during the days of the presidency of George Bush. But it's still a conflict which continues on many fronts. One of the less well known is on a group of small islands in the southern Philippines. American soldiers were posted there in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Their mandate is to advise and assist the Philippine security forces in their fight against Islamic extremists. Kate McGowan was invited to go see how they're doing.
- [11:56]
E
I always used to say that the Philippines was very American. It was once an American colony. Its people are obsessed with American food and music and many Filipinos earn a living in call centres, phoning clients and pretending to be American. But since I visited a small military barracks right in the southwest of the Philippines, near the islands of Sulu, I've realized that this little place puts everywhere else in the shade because it's just about as American as you can get. US soldiers sit in the canteen eating corn dogs and biscuits with gravy, calling each other y' all and talking about going home to Alabama. Kentucky and New Mexico is the main base of the Joint Special Operations Task Force. In other words, it's a temporary home to about 400American troops. There's no chance of them blending in with the local Filipinos. In this area, a semi autonomous, primarily Muslim region, the population is very different from the Catholic majority who live in the rest of the country. Their main influences aren't from America. They have far more in common with the Malaysians living on nearby Borneo. Over the years, several militant groups have sprung up demanding a separate Islamic state. The most violent are members of the Abu Sayyaf. And it's them that the US forces are focusing their efforts on. The Abu Sayyaf gets its funds from kidnapping foreigners for ransom. Currently it's holding two European birdwatchers, a Jordanian journalist, an Australian, a Malaysian and a man from Japan. But it wasn't the kidnappings that brought the Americans to Sulu. It was international terrorism. In the aftermath of 9 11, US intelligence realized that almost every major attack in the preceding seven years was in some way linked to these islands. The architect of 9 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, spent time in Sulu. So too did Ramzi Yousef, who had a pivotal role in the World Trade center bombings. Later on, one of the masterminds behind the Bali attacks, Dul Mattin, managed to hide here. The Abu Sayyaf was sheltering them, giving them a place to train and plan their next move. The US mandate in Salou is to advise and assist local troops in their fight against the rebels. And it's clearly paying off. The militants are nothing like the force they once were. But the Americans place equal importance on time spent with ordinary people, trying to dissuade them from joining militant groups in the first place. Which is why, early one morning, they took me in an armored convoy to see a wall painted by local children depicting their ideas of peace. Everyone was smiling, and I was given mounds of food and the special local coffee. Then we went to an event at another school where there were more smiles, more food, and more coffee. Everyone seemed optimistic about the future. So much so that the local Marine commander pulled out a tourism book with pictures of beautiful beaches and rare bird species. He urged me to come back on holiday. I reminded him that while a few hours on one of the many stunning beaches would be idyllic, that's probably all the time I'd get before a group of gunmen came out of the jungle to pick me up right now. Foreign tourists shouldn't come to Sulu. You don't know who to trust. When I stepped out of the armored vehicle for five minutes in a local market, everywhere I looked, people were getting out their mobile phones and taking photos. Your picture will be on everyone's wall by tonight, said a Philippine soldier cheerfully. I imagine my face emblazoned on a sign saying Next Kidnap victim. That didn't sound a very cheerful prospect to me. The reality is that while the US and Philippine troops are gaining ground like the Americans experience in Afghanistan, this isn't a regular battle. The Abu Sayyaf is still dangerous, and its members sometimes move among other Philippine rebel groups and even Al Qaeda linked groups that have come from Indonesia. There aren't just clashes between the rebels and the security forces. Different groups sometimes fight each other, too. More than 30 people from rival fronts died in an attack just last week. The Americans say they'll be here as long as they're wanted and until these islands stop being a haven for terrorists. And over the 11 years of their mission, they've undoubtedly had a telling influence. Perhaps one of the most defining signs of change was when the Philippine restaurant chain Jollibee decided it was safe enough to open an outlet on Salou. Jollibee is the Philippine equivalent of a US fast food joint. Fries and burgers are its staple fare. It seems that as well as becoming a little bit safer, the Silhouettes are becoming a little bit more American too.
- [16:33]
C
Kate McGowan in the Philippines. Finance ministers and bankers from the G20 nations are meeting in Moscow and seem keen not to criticise the way Japan is handling its economy. Some countries in the region, notably Korea, say Tokyo's decision to allow the yen to fall sharply has made their exports uncompetitive. But correspondents at the meeting believe the matter won't be direct addressed in a final communique. And yet Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is getting economists around the world excited. He's against austerity and instead backs an all out push for growth. So is huge government spending the way forward for Japan? Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Tokyo is not so sure.
- [17:18]
F
Since moving to Tokyo last year, I have become both fascinated and confused by how Japan works. It is a country that defies definition. It's a democracy, but it's been ruled by one party for all but a handful of the last 50 years. And then there's the economy. How does one explain what's been going on outside my front door ever since I arrived? I live on a busy street, a stone's throw from Tokyo's biggest shopping district. This short stretch of road, a couple of hundred metres long, has been under renovation now for nearly a year. To be fair, they are doing a lovely job, far superior to anything you'll see in Britain. But why is it taking so long? And what must it be costing? The other morning I came out to find two elderly men on their knees, carefully cementing the new curbstones into place in front of our building. Every stone was perfectly level, every joint tight, every and immaculate. As those two worked, five other elderly men stood around them eagerly directing pedestrians with white gloved hands and red plastic batons. Now, I'm fairly certain I would have been able to negotiate my way around this minor obstacle without the help of this crack team of uniformed pensioners. But that, you see, is not really the point. I call them Tokyo's red stick men and they are a vast army around every construction site in the city, every road repair often outnumbering the actual workers. The other night I was driving home along one of Tokyo's elevated motorways. It was well after midnight and below freezing. Ahead of me, I saw big neon Flashing arrows showing that a repair crew was out working. Then, as I got closer, I saw them. Small dark figures frantically waving their bright neon batons, one every five metres or so. The poor old guys look more like they'd die from hypothermia than prevent any accidents. Why on earth do they have those ridiculous red stick men everywhere? I asked a friend who's been here 20 years. It's regulations, he said in a flash. It turns out every construction company is required to employ the red stick men. The number based on a complicated formula. It's for safety, of course. Except it's not. It's about creating jobs. Ask my wife who is Japanese, and she'll say it's better than having them sitting at home claiming welfare like you do in Britain. And maybe she has a point. But overregulation can stifle innovation and hold back change. There's a regulation for everything in Japan. One of the strangest is that it is illegal to dance in any Japanese city after midnight. Yes, you can actually be arrested here for the crime of unlicensed dancing. As I'm not prone to dancing through the wee hours, I'm not too bothered. What does bother me, though, is the price of vegetables. In my local supermarket the other day I was perusing some juicy looking salad tomatoes until I noticed the price. Two pounds each. In shock, I asked another friend who is an economist how this could be. Well, you see, he said, those tomatoes are grown in a greenhouse and it's cold here in the winter, so it needs to be heated and the gas has to be shipped all the way from Qatar. So of course the tomatoes are expensive. Then what about apples? I countered. Why does a box of Fuji apples cost £100? Ah, yes, he said. That's because Japan's climate is terrible for growing apples. It's too hot and humid in the summer, so each apple has to be carefully wrapped in cellophane while on the tree and then soaked in pesticide to keep the bugs off. It's not farming. He chuckled. It's very expensive gardening. The products of this very expensive gardening are wonderful to behold. Again, ask my wife and she'll say japanese food is simply better fresher, more tasty, more nutritious. But it comes at a very high price and nor is it achieving its goal. Japanese farming is dying. The average Japanese farmer is now 65 years old. In 20 years, there will be very few farmers left. Everyone now agrees Japan has to change. But Japanese people are afraid of change too. And so they've put their hopes in a government that says it can spend Japan back to prosperity. No one has much idea whether it will work, but it sounds much better than giving up old ways that can look pretty absurd to outsiders, but which people here know and trust, and that's Rupert Wingfield Hayes.
- [22:11]
C
President Obama's call for immigration reform was one of the few parts of his State of the Union address, which received the approval of Republicans as well as his own Democrats. The Republicans, who lost massively among Hispanic voters in the 2012 presidential race, support calls for more humane treatment of the 11 million immigrants who are in the US illegally, and lawmakers are confident a deal will pass through Congress this year. Tim Butcher, on a visit to New York recently, was reminded once again of the key role that immigrants play in the American story.
- [22:46]
A
Gusts of icy wind hustled Fifth Avenue. The outdoor rink in Bryant park built over the underground stacks of the grand New York Public Library was packed with skaters. Around and around they went, the artful pirouetting, the amateur clowning and headgear of every design. Mufflers, beanies, furs, ear protectors bobbed along sidewalks as New Yorkers took on the first full blown blast of winter. A long overdue reunion made me think of the nearby Statue of Liberty and its famously inscribed Assurance, the one that captures the raison d' etre not just of this city, but for the entire United States of America. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free in weather as cold as this. Any arrivals in New York still have a lot more huddling to do, I thought as I waited for for Adam, stamping my feet at a set of traffic lights. We had not really seen each other for years. Since 1999, our only encounters had been virtual via email initially, later Facebook. But our experience before that had been very real and very intense. We had gone to war together. Adam is Kosovar Albanian. I had met him in early 1998, long before NATO military planners had Kosovo in their sights, when the first violence broke out between the Uch Ka, the Kosovo Liberation army and Yugoslav, that is to say, Serbian forces. He was a final year medical student with enough English nous and raw courage to make a fantastic gatekeeper for a foreign correspondent like me. Translator or fixer does not really do justice to the role played by Adam. Without him, Kosovo would for me have remained closed. We spent much time together that summer. He smuggled me into liberated territory. We set up camp in Maleshevo, the short lived Uchek capital. We met the group's Amazonian women fighters and with Adam's skill. We dodged checkpoints to reach the ancient holy places of the Serbian Orthodox Church, reliquaries and monasteries manned by bear like monks with black beards and blacker demeanours. And when, a year later, I entered Kosovo with the first NATO ground forces, it was Adam who came to my rescue. His medical skills had seen him deep in the forests, stitching up wounded kossavars, and his stories added richly to my understanding. When the circus of world news moved on, I went with it, leaving Adam behind. A few years later, he himself left Kosovo and joined those streaming to New York in search of a new life. When I spotted him for the first time on the other side of Fifth Avenue, he was, no surprise, greyer and more portly. Before I could consider too closely what this might make me, we had hugged and made for the warmth of a coffee shop. There then followed two tender hours of catching up and reminiscing. You remember when we were in Maleshevo and we watched the first game of the World cup in that imam's house? Adam prompted. Brazil were playing, but I can't remember who against. I struggled to remember. Oh, come on, it was Scotland. I thought you were meant to be British. Adam's sharp memory had me blushing. Eventually we came around to the issue of how he came to leave his homeland. Things got complicated after you left, he said, sipping his latte. I was working with a friend, and there was a situation that led to him being shot. They had tried to kill him but failed. I took to carrying a gun for my own protection. In the end, I had to leave for my security. And how was it arriving in New York City? Well, you'd be amazed how many Kosovars were already here, he said, smiling. Almost all of those Italian family restaurants you see are really owned by Albanians, so I could get plenty of work while I studied for my medical license. It was difficult at first, but who has an easy ride when they arrive in New York? It was worth it, because finally my family was able to join me from Pristina. Now I work as a psychiatrist in the public health sector over in New Jersey, and you know what they say about Americans. They're mad enough to keep us shrinks busy forever. The conversation moved on to those intense days of war almost 15 years back, and we did what any member of the journalist tribe does when gathering after many years, apart from slagging off the louder mutual acquaintances and wondering whatever happened to the quiet ones. But as we left the shop and Adam, without even blinking, paid the exorbitant 28 pound charge for parking his car in Manhattan for only two hours. I thought about the alchemical power of America. The Adam I had first known had been a quiet, bookish student from the backwoods of the Balkans. Now he was a healthcare professional in one of the most advanced societies on the planet. Quite some transformation for someone who simply yearned to breathe free.
- [28:04]
C
And with that tale from an icy New York City, Tim Butcher brings this edition to a close. I'll be back on Thursday and Saturday of next week with more from our own correspondence. Do join us. Goodbye.