August 28, 2002

Tonight

Human rights in Egypt: another casualty of 09/11. Our documentary highlights the crackdown on dissent in the land of the Sphinx and the secret police.

And in Rwanda, the failure of faith -- as the Catholic Church faces its alleged role in the genocide there.

And, you might have heard that it's Yasser Arafat's last stand. Again. The tiny imperfect Palestinian once again fights for his political life. Rick has some thoughts on The Chairman's chances.

Listen to the entire program in Real audio


The catastrophe of September 11 claimed many victims, but not all were in New York.

In faraway Egypt, it's been a terrific blow to the country's fledgling human rights movement.

Egypt is not exactly a paragon of individual freedom at the best of times. But Egypt is the birthplace of radical Islam and the military government has often faced violent dissent.

Still, until recently, it offered more freedoms than most other Arab and Muslim states.

On an assignment last spring in the Middle East, Rick found the crackdown on suspected terrorists in the U.S. -- combined with the crisis in Israel -- are enormous setbacks for civil liberties in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt.

Listen to Rick's documentary

Rwanda is a place of dark secrets.

Many of those responsible for the genocide of 1994 remain at large, and may never be tried.

It was a murderous rampage. Hutu extremists slaughtered more than eight-hundred thousand members of the rival Tutsi tribe.

Some say the Churches of Rwanda harbor secrets from that time too. Perhaps, even suspects.

Perhaps now, more than ever, as we hear in this documentary prepared by CBC correspondent Margaret Evans.

Listen to Margaret's documentary

Rick's closing thoughts on Yasser Arafat, and the politics of survival in the middle East.



August 21, 2002

Tonight...

Divided Loyalties. Some British Muslms are serving with the Taliban; others are torn between their country and their faith.

Dispatches goes on spin patrol with the marines at Camp X-Ray; The United States wishes to thank you for your excellent questions, but has no intention of answering them.

And, Death In Persia; few things in Iran are as efficient as a funeral. Our guest essay tonight explains why, and wonders if George W. is picking a fight that might lead to more.

Listen to the entire program in Real audio

or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear


President Bush is driving his war on terrorism, with Britain's Tony Blair coaxing coalition partners from Europe through Asia.

But at home, the Prime Minister can't seem to convince Britain's own Muslim community that the attack on Afghanistan and the crackdown on Islamic militants was justified.

Meanwhile, the British press has been full of stories of young British Muslims fighting with the Taliban.

Blair threatened to charge them all with treason, or worse if they return to Britain.

The result is Divided Loyalties, the title of tonight's feature documentary by Nazim Baksh.

Listen to Nazim's documentary

Every now and then reporters agree to be gagged in the off-chance it might advance a story.

Military censorship is one of those ritual humiliations imposed on us by armed forces everywhere in the world.

The CBC's Sandra Bartlett was among a pod of journos who agreed to abide by U.S. restrictions, in exchange for a peek into Camp X-Ray, where the Afghan prisoners are kept in Cuba.

Listen to Sandra's report

President Bush's allegations of an "evil axis" involving Libya, Iraq and Iran leaves all three countries sputtering with indignation.

It's no secret that Iran supplies weapons to the Palestinians as well as Hezbollah. But an "axis" -- especially an evil one -- hints at something far more efficient.

Now, Iran is not renowned for efficiency. Except, perhaps, at the graveside.

And the casualties of a long war with Iraq have made Iran highly accomplished in the business of burial.

Borzou Daragahi, in Terhan, says Iranian bureaucracy might be abhorrent, and its traffic apocalyptic -- but few nations can put you in the ground faster than Iran can.

Listen to Borzou's dispatch

Next week: Rick MacInnes-Rae reports on
human rights in Egypt, post September 11.


August 14, 2002

Tonight..

Some of the best essays from our past season; the personal stories our correspondents dine out on but hardly ever get to report.

We'll hear a defining bit of madness from Zimbabwe, and a story of missiles in the upside-down Afghan night.

Then there are the double lives of Iran's youth, and some notes from the sharp end -- how close is too close when the bang-bang begins?

Listen to the entire program in Real audio


In what may be the twilight of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, Dispatches would like to draw your attention to a defining piece of madness. We refer to the capital city's new airport.

Harare International is a shining hulk of glass and steel, though the control tower is made to look like a traditional mud and wood hut.

But it's not the grand regional hub it purports to be. It is instead, a gleaming white elephant -- an island of ridiculous overspending by a nation sliding into economic ruin.

The Mugabe government has been seizing white-owned farms, while brutalising opposition blacks, scuttling any hope for new investment.

As a result, few major airlines fly into Harare anymore. And arriving is no guarantee of getting into Zimbabwe these days, as we hear from Dispatches contributor Tom Walker, a journalist with the London Sunday Times.

Listen to Tom's Dispatch


Events in and around Afghanistan have dominated our coverage for much of this season.

CBC correspondents have been rotating through various posts in the region.

For some, leaving was just as instructive as arriving.

When it came to David McLauchlin's turn to exit the riot-torn city of Quetta last fall, commercial planes weren't flying. Only American bombers were.

He had no choice but to take a long dark road to a another city.

It turned out to be a passage involving missiles and miracles and a chance encounter on a dark road with someone who could decide the outcome of the war on terrorism.

Listen to David's dispatch


Now, it's time for a party. In Iran. Which might even land you in jail.

Iran's a country poised between history and modernity. Much of it's vibrant young population is bristling under the rule of the aging conservative clerics.

For them it means living a kind of double life, moving to the spiritual rhythms of Islam by day, and the sexual sway of techno-pop at
night.

Correspondent Neil MacDonald of CBC-TV
News recently experienced Iran's contradictions firsthand, and found the whole experience rather arresting.

Listen to Neil's dispatch

There's a booming business, far away in the Caucauses Mountains.

It's in the city of Vladikavkaz, in the Republic of North Ossetia, just over the border with Chechnya.

By now you will have put the clues together and figured there's a link to the Russian offensive against the Chechens.

What's booming is the business of building artifical limbs for child amputees, maimed by Russian land mines. Here's how it appears to
Michel Cormier, Moscow correspondent
for CBC-TV News.

 
Listen to Michel's dispatch

How many times have you stopped what you're doing and asked yourself; what's the shortest route from the Shangri-La Valley into Kabul?

Normally it would be a straight line, but we're talking about Afghanistan here.

And correspondent Bill Gillespie found out the shortest distance between two points in Afghanistan is forward -- then backwards -- then forwards again, accompanied by lots of shivering Afghan high-school students.

Listen to Bill's dispatch

Finally tonight, some notes from the sharp end. Every correspondent wants to be where the action is. But how close is too close? If the gunmen are using your car for cover, you're
probably close enough?

One of our reporters had one of those magic moments during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

It was to be an opportunity to see a different thread of the middle East conflict, from awfully close up.

As Michael McAuliffe has discovered, sometimes being in the right place at the right time, can also be the wrong place.

Listen to Michael's dispatch


August 7, 2002

Tonight...

Cowboys, cocaine and the cost of doing oil business in Colombia: a documentary from the most sabotaged pipeline in the world, and how people are paying for it with their future.

And, craven idols on the dark side of the moon: Neil MacDonald, on the trials of reporting from Iraq.


Listen to the entire program in Real audio

or scroll down to the Dispatch you want to hear

In most countries, oil is viewed as the saviour of economies and an engine of development.

But in Colombia -- a country torn by guerilla warfare -- the oil patch is the cause of violent competition that's contaminating politics as well as the environment.

People living near the oilfields once marvelled at their good fortune. These days, they consider it a curse.

Our correspondent Rhoda Metcalfe sends this documentary, Black Cocaine -- from Colombia's eastern plains.

Listen to Part One of Black Cocaine

As we've heard from Rhoda Metcalfe, keeping Colombian oil flowing involves political compromises that are both clear and costly.

But there are also prices to pay for social and environmental damages, and in the long term they may be much higher.

That's because in the rush for oil, the region is losing its most basic services, as well as its long-term direction.

And when the wells run dry -- as they soon will -- the region could soon find itself addicted, once again, to an econony driven by drugs.

Listen to Part Two of Black Cocaine

(Rhoda Metcalfe's Dispatches documentary The Headchoppers: Fear Of Peace recently won a gold medal at the New York Festivals Radio Awards. To hear it, and Daniel Lak's piece on the Maoist rebels of Nepal, go to the bottom of this page.)

Oil is also at the root of the uneasy standoff between the West and Iraq, where political violence and intimidation have been raised to a black art.

Neil MacDonald, CBC Television's Middle East correspondent, recently had a taste during a trip to Baghad, during Saddam Hussein's birthday celebrations.

Listen to Neil's dispatch


July 31, 2002

Tonight...

A documentary report from Uganda looks at children forced to fight in an endless guerilla war. Marked by bloodshed, some escape home only to find their villages divided over whether to help them, or kill them.

And a dispatch from the front. The memories of a
Canadian journalist who survived a bullet in the brain attempting to cover the war in Sierra Leone.


Listen to the entire program in real audio

or scroll down to the Dispatch you want to hear

For many years, rebel forces from Uganda have been conducting a hit-and-run war against rebels in neighbouring Sudan.

Those forces from Uganda are actually working with Sudan's Muslim government, trying to drive Christians and other tribes from Sudan's vast southern oilfields.

The Ugandan rebels call themselves The Lord's
Resistance Army, but any pretense to religious
piety is undermined by their recruiting methods.

They kidnap children, and send them out to kill or be killed.

Some of these kids have escaped their captors and returned home, traumatised.

Most just want to recover a lost childhood, but as one Ugandan mother puts it, "that may take the world itself."

You see, these children are killers, and sometimes even their fellow villagers want them killed for their crimes.

Others say these children can be rehabilitated.
And for those who make it, their ordeal ends back home -- with the symbolic ritual of stepping on an egg.

From a small village in northern Uganda, David McLauchlin has tonight's Dispatches documentary: When Warriors Become Children Again.

Listen to David's documentary in real audio


The headlines out of Afghanistan this past year
were reminder that foreign newsgathering is
difficult and dangerous.

Canadian journalist Ian Stewart has his own story to tell. In the 1990's, he covered Africa for the Associated Press.

Then one hot day in 1999, he went off to cover the rebellion in Sierra Leone with photographers David Guttenfelder and Myles Tierney.

Tierney was killed; Stewart was shot in the head.

Today, after painful rehabilitation, he's written
Freetown Ambush; A Reporter's Year In Africa.

Last March he joined us from Stanford, California with a reading from it, recalling a chance meeting with a child of war in Sierra Leone.

Listen to the interview in real audio


July 24, 2001

Tonight;

Do No Harm is a doctor's story of war and tending everyone's wounds but his own; a disturbing interview with a man who may have seen too much for his own good.

The Nazis are not sleeping. These words of warning from one who knows; a recovering neo-Nazi at the centre of a chilling documentary we're calling "The Same Old Hate: breaking with the far right in Germany."

Listen to the entire program in real audio

You find them deep in war zones, armed with
biscuits, bandages and a boundless supply of zeal and humanity.

They are the NGO's, the non-governmental agencies that flock to the world's hotspots in times of crisis, caring for the victims of conflict.

But if you went further in recent years, right to
the frontline in Kurdistan, or Mozambique, or
Eritrea, you'd find another kind of volunteer.

Jonathan Kaplan is a doctor from South Africa who begs and borrows until he has enough equipment to run a one-man operating room on the front lines.

It's dangerous work and it's taken its toll on
him. He documents much of it in his new book "The Dressing Station; A Surgeon's Chronicle of War and Medicine."

Most of the authors we interview take us to
distant places but his voyage is far more personal and internal, and dark.

Jonathan Kaplan reads from his book

Listen to his interview with Rick

Germany is confronted once again with a fledgling neo-Nazi movement. In recent years, it wasn't much of a priority.

When Helmut Kohl was Chancellor they used to joke that he was "blind in his right eye." Anti-Nazi activists called his time in office, "ten lost
years."

By some estimates there are 50-thousand so-called neo-Nazisin the reunified Germany. And the few who manage to break with the movement have emerged with a chilling revelations.

Tonight's documentary report from Alexa Dvorson in Berlin is a story of two former neo-Nazi's -- and the tireless commitment of one of them to alert her fellow Germans to their threat.

Listen to The Same Old Hate


July 17, 2002

Tonight: Japan

In Japan, bowing is an art. It can convey respect, regret and other sentiments, depending how it's done.

Bowing is at the very heart of what it means to be Japanese.

So, imagine trying to fundamentally restructure it, and you get some idea of what the country's great economic minds are up against.

Japan's mammoth economy is sick and labouring under the fourth recession in a decade.

It's under tremendous Western pressure to
implement economic reform to prevent the sickness spreading.

But, in a country where reform must come from
concensus, nothing happens quickly, or can. You
might as well tamper with the art of the bow.

Tonight, in a full-edition documentary,
Dispatches contributor Jennifer Westaway
examines Japan's economic and cultural dilemma.

Listen to the entire program in real audio


July 10, 2002

Tonight...

One of the great pop tunes of the '60s was sold for a song in South Africa. Now they want it back. We'll hear why the Lion won't Sleep Tonight.

Still with Africa, the desperate drive for cheaper AIDS treatment has science looking to an ancient panacea that's been growing right under its nose.

And, Japan's listing economy. If those stereos are so good, how come the country's broke?

Listen to the entire program in real audio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

This story combines some of our favourite themes -- history and music, injustice and redemption.

It begins -- as a lot of good stories do -- with a song.

You may know it as "Wimoweh", that swooping refrain also known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

It's a joyous celebration of the human voice, yet it masks a dark secret that began in South Africa years ago.

From Johannesburg, David McLauchlin prepared this dispatch:On The Trail Of
Wimoweh.

Listen to David's piece in real audio

And our thanks to Daniel Feist in Johannesburg, for his encyclopedic knowledge of the music of Africa.

And if anyone out there knows anything about Dave's banjo, we're still looking.

Now;

There are those who believe Africa holds other secrets, especially when it comes to an affordable treatment for AIDS.

Over the next ten years, the virus is expected to kill seven million people in South Africa alone.

Some drug companies do sell anti-AIDS drugs at greatly reduced prices.

But even five-dollars a day is beyond the means of most.

Nor can the government afford to provide expensive anti-retro viral drugs, which can turn a death sentence into a manageable chronic illness.

But now it emerges that a common South African flower may help prolong the lives of the infected.

"Dispatches" contributor Carolyn Dempster reports now, on the power thought to be locked in a simple plant.

Listen to Carolyn's piece in real audio

The plant is called "Sutherlandi frutescens", and it's currently under study by the Phyto-Nova Company of Capetown, South Africa.

The Japanese economy has fallen and it can't get up. Four recessions in ten years have sure put paid to the old "jobs-for-life" mentality.

And just like "The Full Monty", you hear folk tales of middle-aged men -- too ashamed to tell their families they've been fired -- so they suit up each morning and head off to non-existent
jobs.

Our guest essayist, Jennifer Westaway is just back from Japan where she's been working on a full-edition documentary to air next week.

Japan is a long way from Canada, but she says we'd better care about the plight of the salaryman or there'll be hell to pay.

Listen to Jennifer's dispatch in real audio



July 3, 2002

Tonight... Degrees of outrage: American responses to September 11. Shock, fear, patriotic zeal -- and anger.

The people of the United States emerged suspicious, and hell bent on payback.

For some, a spike in weapons sales satisfies a demand for personal security.

Meanwhile Conspiracy theorists are big on talk and load. We'll hear a former U.S. diplomat who was part of a scam recruiting Islamic radicals into America. But first: the mixed moods at Ground Zero in the days just after.

Listen to the entire program in real audio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear.

September 11 tested every American's capacity for sympathy and recovery, and now, for normalcy.

But, there was a troubling period when it was hard to know just how to behave. The CBC's Connie Watson captured that painful and uneasy stretch in a dispatch she filed to us from New York City, back on September 26.
Listen to Connie's dispatch.

As the reality of a long-term war set in, many Americans turned to self-defence.

The President gave assurances of security and even retribution. But his promises didn't seem to be enough for those still feeling vulnerable and threatened.

They're turning to the time-honored means of American security: guns. And in the wild western desert of Nevada, CBC Correspondent Laura Lynch found an entrepreneur with a vision of a new Citizen Army for his country.

Listen to Laura's documentary.

  The events of September 11 are also focusing the minds of conspiracy theorists in the United States.

One of the latest theories suggests that the terrorists responsible for the attacks, may have been helped into the United States by the CIA and the State Department.

A former American Foreign Service officer, now a practising lawyer in Washington, says his experience gives that theory some credibility.

Michael Springmann is a self-styled whistleblower, but in 1987 he was a Visa Officer at the American Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He says back then, the Consulate was a front for recruiting guerillas to be trained in the U.S. by the CIA and Osama bin Laden.

Rick asked Mr Springman, "What triggered his suspicions?"

Listen to Rick's interview.





 June 26, 2002

Money for nothing; The Foreign Aid Fiddle.

From a dam that can't make power, to corrupt dictatorships that renege on foreign aid billions -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have had far too many failures, according to our insider and our documentary report.

Last January, just before the World Economic Forum's annual headscratch, we compared the noble intentions of the foreign-aid financiers with their spotty records.

Now, the G8 powers are meeting in Canada to discuss some of the same issues. And guess what? Nothing much has changed. We'll hear a chilling tale from the vaults of the IMF and the World Bank, the agencies that control western economic aid. It's about an African village in the very shadow of a giant hydro dam that produces no electricity.

And if it ever does, the people living closest to it are unlikely ever to see any benefit. In fact, they've already lost plenty.

The scary part is that this is not such an unusual tale. But don't take our word for it. We'll hear from a World Bank economist, now on leave.

Dr. William Easterly is also author of "The Elusive Quest for Growth; Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics."

And from the African country of Mali, Joan Baxter reports on the monster debt that poor country took on, to build the Manantali Dam.

Listen to the entire program in real audio
or scroll down to to hear the documentary of your choice.

Listen to Part One of Joan's documentary

Listen to Part Two of Joan's documentary





June 19, 2002

Murder in Jamaica: a full-editon documentary by Rick MacInnes-Rae that opened our 2001-2002 season last September.

A Canadian Jesuit Priest now lies dead alongside the many other casualties of Jamaica's growing gun culture. Martin Royackers loved the poor, and they loved him back -- some even calling him Father One-Speed for the frantic way he drove.

Then on June 21, 2001, he was found with a bullet in his chest, dead on the steps of his church.

We're asking tonight: Who Killed Father One-Speed? And the answer is a story of God, guns and globalisation.

Listen to the show in real audio

Rick's documentary Who Killed Father One-Speed? originally aired September 5, 2001. It was among the finalists in this spring's Canadian Association Of Journalists awards.  

Join us Wednesdays 7:30pm, 8:00 in Nfld. on CBC Radio One.

Award winners Rhoda Metcalfe's The Headchoppers: Fear of Peace originally ran on Dispatches on May 16, 2001. It's a full-show account about the paramilitary forces of Colombia, and how they take over a large city. On June 20 it won a Gold World World Medal at the New York Festivals.

Listen to Rhoda's The Headchoppers.

This season, Dispatches aired two more of Rhoda's documentaries from Colombia -- Black Cocaine (Feb 20) and Alice in Contrabandland (May 29). Listen to them by clicking on the 2001-02 season at the upper right of this page, and scrolling down to the show.

Two Dispatches pieces from last year also won awards from Amnesty International Canada.

Bruce Edwards's Gee's Bend; The Crossing won for best piece in the Audio/Visual category. It's about racial healing in a couple of small towns in Alabama, separated by the Alabama River -- and a wider racial divide. Listen to Gee's Bend; The Crossing.

Vera Frankl's documentary Muna's Story won an honorable mention. It's the story how music healed a young girl who was a victim of torture.
Listen to Muna's Story

Bonus audio from Nepal We promoted Daniel Lak's piece on the Maoists rebels in Nepal for the last show of our 2001-02 season. Unfortunately we were unable to get it to air for that day, and it ran on CBC's The World This Weekend instead. We had e-mails from people who missed it, so here it is.
Listen to Daniel's documentary.

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