The role of foreign fighters in Ukraine

Guests: Rene Provost, Asya Metodieva

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We were going to use another name, Francine, actually, when they said all the names of the woman who were anonymous and they got to my name. It just felt wrong. So I told them I was going to go read my name. And I remember the gasp.

MATT GALLOWAY: Toufah Jallow came forward to say that she'd been raped by Yahya Jammeh. It was big news for a number of reasons. He was the president of Gambia. There wasn't a word for rape in the country's dominant language. And the consequences of her speaking out were severe. In 30 minutes, Toufah is here to talk about why she spoke up, how she fled to Canada and what her story did to set off the MeToo movement in Africa. Also this morning, COVID cases are rising again in Europe, Canada too. Coming up, Dr. Lisa Barrett on what we should make of this. As masks come off across this country and later,

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I found that the music really did want to tell specific stories for each instrument. It was very clear right from the get go that the trumpet had to be a soldier and the oboe had to be a bit of a weirdo, but a lovable weirdo.

MG: in a crisis. The role of art can be to soothe, but also to enlighten in an hour. CBC Music host Paolo Rapalo is here to talk about how music can help us reflect on the war in Ukraine. We begin, though, with the Canadians who are heading overseas to fight. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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[Foreign speech] Ukraine, has started welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country when. The first of 16000 are coming to defend the life and liberty of us and of everyone. I'm sure it will be successful.

MG: That's Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky welcoming foreign fighters to Ukraine. They make up a so-called international legion, and the Ukrainian government says the group is now at least 20000 strong. Two of those fighters ended up in hospital and over Ukraine this week.

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VOICE 1: My name is AlexaI was working as a combat medick in our vehicle hit a mine and blew up. So that's how I ended up here. Unfortunately, I wasn't formally trained. I have some hospital experience and medical experience, but I've never worked in combat before. It's my first time, so... I felt a calling to come here. I felt like it was the right thing to do. I feel like what's happening here, what Putin is doing is evil, and there is no reason to be putting all these people millions and millions of people through the suffering and torment that they're going through. And I felt like I needed to be here and try to help in any way that I can.

VOICE 2: The thing is like, there's a lot of evil out there, and I don't like what they're doing to these civilians and what they're doing to all these people and my boys and me feel the same way about, you know, there has to be justice in this world for people that want to live free, and that's what we fought for.

MG: There are Canadians in that international legion as well. A sniper who uses the nom De Guerre Wali is one of around 550 Canadians in the Ukrainian that the Ukrainian government says have volunteered in the war. Wali was rumoured to have been killed, but he turned up very much alive this week.

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It was very dangerous speech. That was the first week at the very frontline that was the first combat experience in Ukraine against Russians, and it was violence. We suffered casualties like the NATO sniper I was working with was wounded by a bullet and it was just like in a room beside me. But he is good, is good. So I wasn't killed him just wounded, so we had to be evacuated. It was pretty violent, though, the evacuation, because the US trying to encircle us. So we had to like fight our way through. But yeah, I'm with another Canadian right now. Nicknamed Shadow his first combat patrol. We got engaged, we got the wounded and you did an amazing job, kept this cool. Very good soldier. And he loves it.

MG: Members of the Canadian Armed Forces have been banned from travelling to Ukraine to fight, and for anyone who does go military or otherwise, there are legal risks. Rene Provost is a professor of law at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. Renee. Good morning.

RENE PROVOST: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you make of the fact that hundreds of Canadians have apparently gone to Ukraine to fight in this war?

RENE PROVOST: Well, it's it's not an unusual phenomenon for people who are not nationals of the countries at war to join in the fight. So in itself, it's not unusual. What is unusual, perhaps, is that this would happen in such large numbers and that they would be incorporated in a very kind of a rapid, somewhat improvised manner into the armed forces of one of the belligerents.

MG: Let's talk about the legal ramifications here. Russia has says that it will treat all foreign fighters in Ukraine as mercenaries. What does that mean specifically?

RENE PROVOST: So that is a statement that is cause for extreme concern because it in fact does not align with international law on the protection of people taking part in hostilities. The the notion of a mercenary is one that is very precisely defined in the Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols to which Russia is a party, and it aims to cover a reality that grew out of the experience in Africa in the 1970s. And so there are elements such as the prime motivation of foreigners being the design for private gains corresponding to material compensation of pay that is in excess of what ordinary soldiers are paid, and also not being part of the armed forces of the country in question. In this case, if Canadians are paid at all, it's certainly no story about them being paid large amounts of money and the International Lesion for Territorial Defence, which is the division of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in which foreigners are integrated, is indeed a part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. So it's very clear that these are not mercenaries under international law.

MG: And yet, if they are defined as mercenaries by Russia legally, what protections does that offer them?

RENE PROVOST: So. So that is the concern is that normally combatants who take part in hostilities as members of the armed forces are a privilege that is the expression in international law. What that means is that they cannot be prosecuted for taking part in hostilities, fighting a war that is the privilege. The compensation for that is that they can be directly targeted by the enemy. What Russia has announced is that they will prosecute any Canadians or any other foreigner that they capture, merely for being a soldier in the Ukrainian army, and that such a prosecution would in itself be a violation of international law.

MG: Why do you think Russia is doing that?

RENE PROVOST: Well, the clear intention is to forestall the inflow of foreigners on the basis that these people, if indeed they are highly trained militaries or veterans, can make a difference in the fight between Ukraine and Russia. So clearly, the hope is to isolate or was to isolate Ukraine. This is, you know, this has not been a success in this way, nor in any other way. There's been a great deal of solidarity with Ukraine. And so but that certainly is the intention is to try to prevent foreigners from coming in.

MG: There are laws of war and these are people who have volunteered to go and fight in a war that that their country is not party to. But what are the laws that these foreign fighters have to follow Canadian or otherwise?

RENE PROVOST: So, so the laws are the same for everyone.

MG: So they're bound by, for example, the Geneva Conventions.

RENE PROVOST: Of course. Of course. So all Ukraine and Russia, all parties to the Geneva Convention and indeed Russia is one of the founding nations of international humanitarian law in the 19th century played a key role in the evolution of international humanitarian law that eventually led to the 1949 Geneva Convention. So there is a strong history of embrace of international humanitarian law by the Russian military. And as for Canadians, you know, they're bound as individuals regardless of nationality by rules that are applicable to any armed hostilities, also under customary international law. So there is no grey zone here. The rules applicable to the conduct of hostilities, including things like not targeting civilians or. Engage in indiscriminate bombing, all of this is very clearly applicable to every party to this conflict.

MG: And if they violate those rules, whether that's deliberate or because they're going in without training and there they are, just caught up in the moment, if I can put it that way, what happens if those rules are violated?

RENE PROVOST: So a violation of international humanitarian law is a war crime. And so as a result, it is possible for any individual who commits a war crime, regardless of how intense the situation becomes to be prosecuted in any country around the world. The principle of universal jurisdiction So this applies, of course, to Canadians or Russians or Ukrainians or any other soldier in this conflict who commits a war crime.

MG: You said that this is not unusual beyond the numbers. What is perhaps unusual is that the Canadian government seems to have at least tacitly endorsed the idea of citizens individually going and fighting for Ukraine. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Melanie Joly, has said that it's understandable that people of Ukrainian descent might want to defend their homeland, their motherland, and that it is their own individual decisions. Do you think the Canadian government is treating Ukraine differently than other conflicts? Say, if Canadians wanted to go and fight in Yemen with the foreign affairs minister say, Well, I understand their concerns and you know, it's their own individual decision if they want to go and fight in Yemen.

RENE PROVOST: And so governments do have attitudes that vary from government to government and from conflict to conflict. In some countries there are statutes that explicitly prohibit the nationals of that country to join in the fight in another country. South Africa is one example of a country with a statute like that. It is, you know, part of the government's prerogative to decide which regimes are its friends and which are not. And to say, for example, that it would be problematic for Canadian to go join Bashar al-Assad's Syrian armed forces fighting against the Democratic Forces in that country. So for Canada to do so is not that unusual, and it is a practise that we see replicated in other governments around the world.

MG: Just finally, I mean, there are also foreign fighters with the Russian forces. What do we know about them?

RENE PROVOST: So indeed, there are reported foreign fighters around on the Russian side. Apparently, Russia has been recruiting people in Syria. And the interesting thing as often seems to be the case when Russia accuses an adversary of doing something is because they are doing it. And here what we hear and this remains to be confirmed, is that Russia is offering significant monetary compensation for people with fighting experience in Syria to come to Ukraine to fight against the Ukrainians. And so paradoxically, this is a lot closer to the definition of mercenaries than the Canadians because of this mature compensation and because it's perhaps less likely that these Syrians would be incorporated into the armed forces of Russia. So there is a possibility for foreigners to join the Russian side on similar terms as Canadians are, and in which case they would equally be treated as privileged combatants and have to be granted prisoners of war status. But that is not necessarily so, and we can be maybe a little sceptical that there would be a groundswell on the part of Syrians to want to join in a good fight in in Ukraine that parallels what we see for Canadians going to fight on the Ukrainian side.

MG: Rene, good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

RENE PROVOST: My pleasure.

MG: Rene Provost is a professor of law at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. He was in Montreal, Asya Metodieva is a researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague and has been listening in Good Morning to You!

ASYA METODIEVA: Good morning, great to join in.

MG: Great to have you. Why do you think we're seeing foreign fighters joining the war on both sides in Ukraine?

ASYA METODIEVA: So let's start from there that foreign fighters do not simply go to a war zone and we can look at different examples throughout history, but they go to fight for a political or social product. And the Ukrainian conflict doesn't make any difference in this sense, the way the war in Ukraine has been framed by political elites across Europe. Also, Canada and and the US is as a Kohl's in support of the West. This is a fight for Europe, for democracy, for the liberal values that we all share. So this framework basically was the ideological, the ideological cake for many people to decide that this is important to embrace the coals in Ukraine as their own. And this is why we have people not only from neighbouring countries joining the war in Ukraine, but also coming from Japan or from the US or Canada. And let me let me say that this is not a new phenomenon. We've been seeing foreign fighters across most contemporary conflicts, and many of them, for instance, joined as mercenaries, as you discuss on on the Russian side. But what we see as a very interesting phenomenon is that people joining the Ukrainian side are overwhelmingly motivated by by their own values supporting the idea of Europe.

MG: There has been some concern that some of Ukraine's recruitment has opened the door to far right fighters, the assault regiment, which has been actively recruiting online. How concerned are you by that?

ASYA METODIEVA: So as of became part of the Ukrainian army in the very first phase of the fight, and what we can see so far is that the global far right doesn't speak in a single voice. They are not united regarding the conflict in Ukraine. Are they supporting the Ukrainian calls? Are they on the Russian side? From this point of view, I would say that what we observe so far is that a very insignificant compared to the overall numbers, far right groups are joining the conflicts in Ukraine and specifically the US of the allies apart. So my prediction is that so far, the global far right is not represented to the extent that they basically have the overwhelming numbers of foreign fighters in Ukraine.

MG: As you say, this is not a new phenomenon. And one of the things that Renee pointed out is that perhaps the numbers here suggest that this is different from your perspective. How does the involvement of foreign fighters in this war compare to past wars?

ASYA METODIEVA: Look, some researchers make this distinction between showing, shall we call them foreign fighters or volunteers? And I think that from the western point of view, the work of volunteers is kind of, you know, we support the good cause. They're fighting for the good calls. And from this point of view, we're looking for some distinction. So they are different because they are on the good side, strong democratic or western point of view, underlining

MG: that even in that language and calling them a volunteer, that that suggests that they're doing something beyond fighting.

ASYA METODIEVA: Yes, that's true. And again, like we can see, like people having different remote involvement in Ukraine, it's not always about participating in fights. But what we can see is that there are a lot of similarities that they share with two other groups of volunteers and fighters across conflicts. For instance, the way of mobilisation on social media, the way people decide to go together in small groups of friends, for instance. But the main distinction that, let's say can be made is that they're joining the Ukrainian army, right? So we don't see like groups of foreign fighters just going to Ukraine, fighting randomly or creating new units which are independent from the Ukrainian army. And this is a very strong motivation because what we saw in Syria, for instance, is that we had all sorts of rebel groups. We had terrorist organisations in being part of the War Theatre, which is not so far the case in Ukraine.

MG: Are you at all troubled by the encouragement to even tacitly by governments, including Canada's, for those two Canadians to go and be involved in this conflict?

ASYA METODIEVA: All I can say is that politicians should be held accountable tomorrow when we have all the questions. For instance, once these foreign fighters are coming back to the West, how are they going to be reintegrated into societies? Do we have programmes to help them, for instance, go back to their previous lives? Do we have some, some supports planned in all these questions, I think, are questions of tomorrow. They're not like that important today, but all politicians were there to encourage people to go individually and supporting the Ukrainian couples should bear in mind that, yes, we still have legislation in place and they have to make a political decision how to treat these people tomorrow. Are they going to be heroes or criminals? And on the other hand, there is this like question mark regarding security. For instance, if a person who participated in the war in Ukraine comes back and they still hold some anger or or other feelings related to the war, and they decide to commit a violent act in the West against, let's say, to bomb a bus full of Russians. We need to think about the political consequences of this encouragement. This is my over overarching argument.

MG: Why they went and what support they got in going.

ASYA METODIEVA: You mean you mean on the Ukrainian side?

MG: Yeah, what I just mean when you talk about those considerations, that one of those considerations is whether they were supported by governments and going over to be involved.

ASYA METODIEVA: Yes, absolutely. All I'm saying, all I'm saying that politicians like there is no harm in like basically, we all understand that Ukrainians need this support at the moment. We all understand that everybody helps the way they feel it. And this is why many people are motivated by their feelings to support Ukraine calls. However, I think that politicians should really show responsibility in the tomorrow context.

MG: Asya, it's good to speak with you about this. This is complicated. Appreciate you walking us through your insight into this. Thank you very much.

ASYA METODIEVA: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Asya Metodieva is a researcher at the Institute of International Relations. She was in Prague. The CBC News is next. And then.

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If we can talk about the dictator, if we can talk about someone who has terrorised someone, we were afraid to mention his name. If we can now sit down and discuss how he raped someone, no one is above the law.

MG: Toufah Jallow fled her country in the back of a livestock truck. She never thought she would tell the world the reason why, until recently. In six minutes, my conversation with the woman who launched an African MeToo movement. I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

She publicly accused Gambia's ex-dictator of rape, sparking a MeToo wave there

Guest: Toufah Jallow

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, when art mirrors real life in just under 30 minutes, we'll hear the cello's tale and talk about the lines between art, politics and censorship. But first, the woman lighting a fire under Africa's MeToo movement. Just a warning, this next story is about a survivor of sexual violence who will be speaking candidly about her experience.

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Yeah, I did not want sex with me or pleasure with me. What he wanted to do was to hurt me. What he wanted to do was to teach me a lesson. What he wanted to do was to manifest his ego, just like many of us can't believe that a girl can say no. Someone like Yahya Jammeh and in his position, I found it very disrespectful for a 19 year old from not an elite background or not the daughter of a president to somehow gather some kind of audacity to say no to him, that he is a man probably who hasn't had so many no's.

MG: That's too Toufahh Jallow testifying before Gambia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the fall of 2019. Earlier that year with Human Rights Watch, she and two other young women accused the former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh of rape. Speaking at publicly was a big moment in Gambia where rape is still heavily stigmatised. Toufahh tells her story in her memoir Toufah The Woman Who Inspired an African MeToo movement to four Jallow joins me in the current studio. Good morning.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Good morning.

MG: Congratulations on your book!

TOUFAH JALLOW: Thank you so much.

MG: This story starts with a pageant, and the pageant is meant to empower young women in Gambia. It's sponsored by the State House, and the winner receives a scholarship to study abroad. You won that pageant when you were 18 years old. Who did you want to be in? What did you want to be?

Speaker 3: I wasn't sure. Sure. Just like many 18 year olds, but I know I wanted to go to school because I've seen it salvage my mother and a lot of women in my community. I want it to be in the field of ads, anything that is more of an expressive career. And that pageant was such a huge opportunity. I mean, one of the biggest in the country at the time to follow one's education.

MG: What did it mean? I mean, why did you feel like given your aspirations, that that was something that you wanted to enter?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Because the main goal of the pageantry was to win a full scholarship anywhere you wanted in the world. And as I said, that was a huge thing for a lot of us. 22 of us participated all around the country and you were supposed to showcase talent and even have a community project that you would walk on before you go to study. And the idea of having the opportunity to go anywhere, whether that's Ghana or America or Europe, to study whatever I wanted to and not have my middle class family have to pay for that. That was a huge price that I felt like I could have earned.

MG: When did you meet the former president? When did you first meet him?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Well, right after the pageant, because we are supposed to meet him. So we have a formal meeting where you have all the ministers and is broadcasted on TV. And after that, I had to walk with him, not him directly, but the Minister of Education under him to implement the projects that I was supposed to work on as the winner of the pageant. So I was 18 years old when I first met him, and then he called for my presence in the quest to discuss about my project.

MG: What did it mean for someone like yourself to meet with the president of the country?

TOUFAH JALLOW: It was huge, actually. I mean, I've never seen him face to face. Mind you, he's also a larger than life person. This is someone who has been in the presidency since I was born. He's the only president I knew in my lifetime. And all you saw of him was a persona on TV. You hear people screaming in the streets as he would throw biscuits and T-shirts at people that were running behind his motorcade. He was a person when he was about to leave or takes the highway, nobody moves for at least three hours. He was the man. Everything that is powerful in that country was him. But it never gave of dictatorship. To me, that was my normal, as it was for a lot of teenagers.

MG: And so one of those meetings, the man, as you describe him, asks you to marry him. And I don't know whether asks or is that says?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Demanded or ordered.

MG: Says you're going to marry him. Yeah.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Thinking about it now. It just felt a bit weird because we've also had previous conversations where this man told me that I was to focus on my education, that I had a future ahead of me and he took a role of a father for a very long time. Now I understand that to be grooming, of course. So when he said that, I thought it was a test, you know, when you are talking and advising someone and all of a sudden you throw them a golf ball. That's what I thought was happening. But that was not it. And as naive as I was, I thought I could say no to a marriage proposal and move on with my life. So was I wrong.

MG: I wrong? Well, you write in the book, I mean, he asks you to marry him. And essentially so that was that. Yeah. When that when the president asks you, is there any option?

TOUFAH JALLOW: I thought I had it. That's why I said, Oh, no, I don't want to get married now, you know? I just don't want to. I thought I had an option, but in that type of situation and dictatorship, you really just don't.

MG: We heard in that clip that we played in the intro. You refer to the audacity that you had to turn the president down. Where do you think that came from, that audacity?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Questioning? That is one of the reasons why I wrote the book is taking the time to really ask myself where the first tunnel came from and what inspired the book was me being in a place where I feel like I do not fit the two narratives that we're being thrown at me. One was that I wasn't Gambian enough. I wasn't African enough to talk about sex and sexuality and body parts as openly as I did. And the other narrative is like, I must have gotten to this place of expressing my feminism's because I've been saved by a white country or Canada to be more specific. And the truth is, there's an in between that one of the narratives is denying all of my experiences. The other is also not recognising all the women and experiences of feminism's that have been in my community and my family. So I think the first to know where did that come from. It's from the women and my mother and my grandmother who raised me. People that have resisted all forms of patriarchy in their own small ways.

MG: Can you tell me about your grandmother?

TOUFAH JALLOW: My grandmother. They such a generational conflict between me and her, because in some ways before now, I used to think she wasn't feminist enough, you know, because this is also a woman who married off her daughter, my mother, when she was 16 years old, she had to sit her exams and give birth to me the next day after her last paper. So it was an arranged marriage. But also it is a woman who stood and made sure all of her kids went to school. It is a woman who refused to be in a polygamous marriage in a country and a culture where every man has four wives, almost. She's also a woman that would say no and fight back, you know? And she was economically independent, and she took all of her seven kids to school from her own pocket. So there's just that dynamic and exploring that and that nuance of feminism and what it means to her was actually a huge part of this book.

MG: Who she is in some ways, it feels like echoes what happened in your response to what happened to you. The next time that you saw the former president, he called you to participate in these events that marked the beginning of Ramadan. And that's when you say he raped you.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yeah.

MG: After that incident, and I'm sorry for what you went through after that incident, you come to the point where you say the shame is not mine. How long did it take for you to get to that point?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Long time. I usually do say to two timelines for survivors of sexual violence. That is the actual ticking time that we know the clock. And then there is an emotional ticking clock. And sometimes it can feel like a lifetime. So when I see people question survivors as to how long it took them will count in months and weeks. They forget and negate the emotional clock that ticks and us. I mean, I run off with nothing but a passport in my waist and a hijab to hide my identity. But when I was running, I wasn't running away because I thought I would ever speak of it or come to a place of saying No, I want to transfer to shame. Actually, I was very ashamed when I was running away. And I thought I would be for the rest of my life. But it got to a point where I could not carry to shame anymore. It was too much of a burden to carry alone, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

MG: Why did you feel like you needed to run away? You escape Gambia. Why did you feel like you needed to leave?

TOUFAH JALLOW: There were two options. One, I stayed behind and I would be called in by the president and his soldiers will come and pick me up. And I would be raped over and over again until my no's become yes. Or I leave everything behind and go into the wilderness, which is what I did.

MG: You talk about the wilderness. You write in the book about entering the unknown when you left your country, what was that like?

TOUFAH JALLOW: I was numb looking at it. I think I was having an out-of-body experience because I wasn't sure what I was going into or what I wanted. All I was sitting about is what I did not want, and that is to be raped for the second or third or fourth time. I left because the experience of homelessness and all of that pain and suffering was much more better than going through what I have experienced. It really changed my life forever.

MG: You went to Senegal.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yeah.

MG: And you write about this in the book The Steps that you had to take in some ways to hide who you were and what you'd gone through, but also to try to find people who would support you there. Who did you find who was there that was able to take care of you?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Strangers, actually. I mean, I use the hijab, a niqab to hide my identity. I made up stories in order to get into trucks that carried livestock because I couldn't take the general transportation means because they were looking for me at this point. I called one person that I was familiar with who lived in Canada at the time, and he connected me to someone that worked at security services at the time in Senegal. And through him, I met other people heads of police, people that were in the security department. But these were total strangers. And it was also important to say that in the story that when people find themself in homes and places, and they are displeased. What type of people they met along the way?

MG: Who was trying to find you?

TOUFAH JALLOW: The president, the ex-president of The Gambia, my rapist. The idea is that I went missing and they were surveilling me when I ran away. I took a basket to the market pretending that I was doing groceries, and I snapped into a taxi and found my way from one car to the other, from one truck to the other. Even using a wooden boat to cross the river, the security personnel were asked to look for me. My parents were brought in for questioning. Days on days, on days

MG: and in the media. They started talking about you as well.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Exactly. But you know, in the terms that favour the presidency, because the headlines at the time was pageant girl missing or Pageant Girl refuses a marriage proposal of the president.

MG: So you were in real danger as you're trying to get free and get safe?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yes, I was. And the fact that I did not tell anyone. If they caught me, the narrative would have been I went missing. I disappeared. And that's it. There is no other person on Earth to collaborate or say, this is what had happened to me.

MG: You eventually made your way here to Canada.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yeah.

MG: How did you choose Canada and how did you choose Toronto

TOUFAH JALLOW: on a map?

MG: What do you mean? It's hard to tell this story. Yes, there is a map.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yeah, it was a map. I was sitting in the in an office and an immigration office, and you know, the guy is asking me, Lamine, he's like, OK, so where do you want to go? Canada wants to accept you in as a project that person. I didn't even know what that meant at the time. And I said, What do you mean by where I want to go? Is Canada not like one big thing? No, they're different cities. And I remember him pointing to Vancouver and saying, Yeah, it's OK, but it's rainy. But Toronto here is close to New York. It's like a version of New York. So that's all I need it. And when he told me is diverse, there's a lot of it is a huge black community. I said, Yeah, sure. So I pointed my finger at it and he circled it, and that's it.

MG: Did you know anything about Canada or Toronto?

TOUFAH JALLOW: No, no. I mean, I know that a country called Canada existed, but I never had the time to take my time and check my preferences. Where do I want to be? How the transit works? None of it really mattered. I was just happy to come to another country

MG: first impression when you arrived here.

TOUFAH JALLOW: I shocked the roads because I remember a taxi cab got me from the airport through an immigration officer, of course, and a resettlement programme manager, and they put me in a cab to head to Lippincott, right by Patterson College

MG: in downtown Toronto.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yes, it was a long ride. Mind you, gumbo is a very small country. We are less than two million people. So, yeah, it was a huge difference.

MG: You are an exile at that point. You're out of your country. You're worried about your safety if you return. Who were you in this country, do you think? What kind of person did you become in Canada?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Invisible. I was just one of those people on the TTC and on the bus who wouldn't talk and did not have friends, just a lone young person. And if you saw me with my backpack, you will just think I'm a student, but I'm not. I'm just really going down the subway and up again. Canada, of course, provided that anonymity because nobody knew me, which was such a comforting thing. But also it just made me sink deeper into into my shame and hiding who I was

MG: because I say, I mean, you're on the bus with your backpack, but what kind of things? Not physically, but what kind of things are you carrying as you're trying to be anonymous in this country?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Who I was, you know that I am healing from you, just being raped by the most powerful person in the whole West African region that I cannot go back to where I come from, that I am in a refugee shelter with other refugees, and my story is not similar to any of the ones that I am hearing and not finding the words to express what has happened to me. I really want it to be invisible. And Toronto offered that

MG: while you were here back home, he lost the presidential election and he was exiled from the country the next year. What did that mean to you in terms of what you were going through as you see that happening on the other side of the world?

TOUFAH JALLOW: I remember being very proactive because what happened in the later part of the dictatorship is Gambians, who were exiled like me, or a lot of people that were politically active started to do radio programmes, and you could access this online. So they had a way to reach the masses, of course, because the radio stations back home where censored everything was and sometimes they were even closed down to internet so that people don't have access. So I remember listening as I walked or jobs. I would have small headphones in my ears. And although I was here physically, my mind and soul and spirit was just back home, especially towards that election, because for me, him losing meant that I am not a refugee anymore, that I can go back, that I can see my mother because before then, the only alternative for me to. My family, again is to meet in Senegal or nearby country, so as I was here, I was hopeful I would find my home again that now my home will be free again, not only for me, but for the thousands of Gambians that have been exiled over the years.

MG: You also found a way to not be anonymous, to start using your voice and start using your name. Tell me about saying your name at this. Human Rights Watch press conference where you talked openly with a couple of other women who had similar accusations about what you went through.

TOUFAH JALLOW: I think what pushed me was opening a laptop, going to a Google search, trying to find Gambians who have been sexually assaulted and are visibly so in their faces, and I could not find any. And the idea that we were nothing but statistics in a human rights report or we were just numbers in the World Health Organisation reports. Did it make sense to me because one what it what it does is validate to me as a survivor of violence what we tell ourselves that narrative? Oh, it must have only happened to me. I am the only person. So accepting that there are no faces behind these stories would mean accepting that, and that just doesn't help the healing process at all. So I remember saying there has to be there have to be actual human beings behind a one out of five to five out of 10, you know, these are people with lived experiences. So that was a very pivotal point in me deciding to to speak out. And up until when I went to that human rights office, we were going to use a not a name. Francine, actually. And I remember when they said that when they said all the names of the woman who were anonymous and they got to my name and they used it, it just felt wrong because the main reason why I wanted to speak out was to humanise and put a face to the stories. So I told them I was going to go read my name and I remember the gasp on their face, and that's how that came about.

MG: Did you know that you would say your name before you opened your mouth and said the name? I don't know. There's a there's a lot that there's a lot that's riding on it.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Yeah, I don't like it. Just, you know, when you have this feeling where everything is telling you does the right thing to do. When I acknowledged to them that I wanted to use my name, I felt good. You know, I didn't feel scared right after saying it. It was a moment of empowerment.

MG: I said in the introduction, I mean, this is part of the title of your book The Woman Who Inspired an African MeToo movement. What has you speaking up done for other women who have gone through similar experiences, who have been the survivors of sexual assault, of rape and who have, because of that stigma, perhaps not spoken before? What is you speaking done for them?

TOUFAH JALLOW: You know, from 2028 going into 2019, you know, the MeToo movement and conversation was pretty much intense and understood, and it was really a hot topic in this part of the world and you have to in a burqa just ahead in that campaign. But for countries like Gambia, it really was not, you know, we did not have that conversation. We did not know we were not part of that MeToo conversation. So to have me have that press conference in The Gambia in 2019 really sparked that moment for us. And what it has done for women is to say, Oh, if we can talk about the dictator, if we can talk about someone that has terrorised our lives, someone we were afraid to mention his name without singing praises of him. If we can now sit down and discuss how he raped someone, no one is above the law. No one is bigger and women. We're feeling comfortable to talk about people that we're in ministerial positions, people that went to Oxford University, people that were prominent. The shocker for me was how it's shifted. So in the beginning I was like, Oh, it must have been only me to get into this place of like, Oh my god, is everybody.

MG: Part of MeToo is people being willing to tell those stories, but it's also action being taken against those who are the perpetrators of this violence. Have you seen that change on the continent, the continent?

TOUFAH JALLOW: I think around the world that has been the challenge of MeToo everywhere. You know, how do we hold these powerful people accountable and sometimes in the heat of the moment? Of course, there's a sense of accountability to strewn at the issue, but real accountability hardly takes place. The language around violence still hasn't changed. Sexual violence is the only crime where it is almost a given to say, allegedly for journalism to four people in the media and everywhere. When someone says My chicken has been stolen, people don't say, you allegedly said your chicken has been stolen, right? You just say, Yeah, someone's chicken has been stolen, but sexual violence is the only one. I mean, Gambia, for example. I spoke about it in a book. Yeah, John Mayer was claiming to cure HIV. AIDS and cancer and diabetes. And over the years when journalists reported on it up to now, when commissions report on it, they don't see a legend can secure. They don't see alleged HIV cure. They just say, he said he was carrying AIDS or he cured HIV and AIDS, or he claimed to cure HIV aids. So both language and a sense of accountability is missing, and it is the part that we are striving for when it comes to the MeToo conversation. For Gambia, yes, we, we we have achieved something big in the sense that now we talk about rape openly in a culture that does not even have a word for rape, mind you. And we've had a couple of powerful people lose their jobs and positions. But again, these are people we see come back to the limelight by using the internet and Facebook Live in trying to rebrand themselves, and we allow that to to happen.

MG: Would you want to see the former president prosecuted?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Oh, very much so. I exist for that. I mean, I spend most of my time doing work with the foundation and with women and survivors of violence, but also partly is walk in with institutions like Human Rights Watch, the ICC Africa Legal Aid to kind of find a way to bring justice to my case.

MG: Given what you went through and what you weren't able to say because you had to leave the country because of what could have happened to you when you go back and people are reading your story, reading the book that you've written about your story, what is that like for you?

TOUFAH JALLOW: Huge. For me, I think I just switched it all around 360 degrees. I am in The Gambia. My rapist is not. I am speaking to crowds and having access to people that he does not have access to anymore. I am inspiring a lot of young girls who will be able to say no to men like him and fight for their rights as well. When he was raping me, the idea was to take power away from me was to demean me. It was to make me realise that I am nobody and I have no voice or no say so. To really be in this place is such an irony because I speak very loud and clearly a lot of young women to look up to me and to have a book and just have people read it and resonate with it, not only in The Gambia, but around the world to know that my book is in homes that I will never be in, in my physical presence to be able to explain things more indirectly than I could ever in any interview. That's a lot. He doesn't have a book. I have a book that's cool.

MG: You're the opposite of nobody.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Exactly.

MG: I'm really glad to talk to you. This is a great book. Congratulations and good luck in the work that you do.

TOUFAH JALLOW: Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Toufah Jallow's book is Toufah, the woman who inspired an African MeToo movement. Her co-author is a Canadian journalist can put away. In a statement to The New York Times, Yahya Jammeh part party called the allegations a smear campaign aimed to tarnish his reputation. Yahya Jammeh is in exile in Equatorial Guinea. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

Speaker 4: is difficult right now. You turn on the radio and you hear Russian culture being celebrated as this terrible war is unfolding. At the same time, though, I mean, if you're going to start censoring Tchaikovsky, where do you stop.

MG: At the intersection of art and war? I'll speak with CBC Music's Paolo Rapalo about playing Russian composers, and we'll hear him tell a cellos tale. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

Paolo Pietropaolo’s The Cello's Tale; and what to consider as pandemic restrictions lift

Guests: Paolo Pietropaolo, Dr. Lisa Barrett

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The politics of war are rarely confined to the halls of government. Since the day Russia invaded Ukraine, artists and musicians have been involved in a parallel culture war. Some, like the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, have refused to condemn the invasion. Others have risked their careers in Russia by speaking up against it. The power of music and arts in times of crisis is not lost on my next guest. Paolo Pietropaolo, host. CBC Music in concert. He produced a series a few years ago called The Orchestral Tales, and he's here today with one of those stories. Paolo. Good morning.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What are the orchestral tales and why did you write them?

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Well, I'm always trying to find ways to make classical music feel a little bit more relatable, a little bit more approachable. Sometimes it can seem impenetrable, especially to the uninitiated. And so a few years ago, I set out to make this series, which was kind of a fun way to tell stories using music. I wanted to create a character based on each major instrument of the orchestra, a character inspired by all the most famous solos that I could find featuring that instrument know music that we really respond to that we recognise. And why do this? Well, it's fun. But also, I've always believed that that music can really help us make sense of the world the way that it fuses the emotional parts of our brain and the language part of our brain. And so that's how it started. And then as I as I strung all these sort of beautiful melodies together, famous melodies from the classical repertoire, I found that the music really did want to tell specific stories for each instrument. So, for example, it was very clear right from the get go that the trumpet had to be a soldier and the the oboe had to be a bit of a weirdo, but a lovable weirdo. And the clarinet was a free spirit and so on that that kind of thing. And the other thing that that sort of naturally happened while I was putting these together. And maybe it is because classical music deals so much with history and historical themes and historical figures that that I found myself turning to these big historical themes behind the stories

MG: and that comes out in what we're going to hear today. Tell us about the cello style.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: So what you're going to hear is a story about a character that I'm naming the cello based on all of these and inspired by all of these melodies, these famous cello melodies. And so, you know, the cello is is really in many ways, it's the most dramatic instrument. It's the most expressive instrument. Some would say it's very passionate. It's often been compared to the human voice, and at the same time, there's an edge to the cello. There's a bit of darkness there. There's some turbulence in cello music. So naturally, I thought this this character inspired by the cello had to be an artist, you know, passion turbulence. So, so the story that came out is about this artist, and it's a very specific story. It's about a famous ballet dancer living in a country that is under the control of an autocratic regime. And this regime is growing more and more restrictive and authoritarian every day. And this may sound familiar right now. And in the story, this dancer and her fellow artists. It's hit them, they've got to get out, they have to leave the country in a hurry. And so the story begins as she's closing up her theatre for the last time. And this is an entirely fictional story that I made up. But but in writing this story, I was really drawing inspiration from very real events of the past, specifically the authoritarian regimes of the past, especially the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

MG: As you say, this may sound familiar, and this sounds like an obvious question, but why did you want to go back to this piece now?

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: I was reading an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. It was one of the pieces that's been done about a lot of the Russian artists and journalists who've had to flee the country out of fear right now. Russians, especially Russians who are opposed to the war in Ukraine, and they're faced with these very real threats of imprisonment, living in fear, living with very few freedoms. And in this piece in the New York Times, there is this one photo that just jumped out at me of three journalists. I guess two of them are leaving and one of them was staying and they were bidding each other farewell at a train station in Moscow. And I was thunderstruck because this scene is right out of this story about this ballet dancer, the cellist.

MG: Oh, wow.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Yeah. If you supplant journalist for dancer in the story, it is exactly the same story about living in fear, feeling the need to flee, feeling a lot of uncertainty and fear about the future. And I couldn't get my head around that one when I wrote this story. I thought I was just writing about the past. Not that there aren't, you know, authoritarian regimes. In the world right now, there there are others besides Putin's. But I was so much drawing on this past that I read about a lot and research a lot for in concert because we play a lot of Russian music on classical music shows. And so this this story of Soviet artists living under the thumb of Josef Stalin and living with fear and repression is a story I think about a lot. And and you know, there were Ukrainian composers, there were Russian composers, they were Armenian composers in the Soviet Union who suffered composers, artists, writers. It's a story we all know and how shocking it is to witness it happening, unfolding right now. I never in a million years imagined that that that story, that I was retelling could come to life again, the way that it has this year.

MG: I want to ask you more about those composers and how you think about those composers now. But let's take a listen to this. This is the cello's tale.

SOUNDCLIP

Turning slowly at centre stage, the cello gazes around the empty theatre. She's wearing her favourite costume, a blood red velvet gown. Remembering all the great roles she's performed under the lights. Trying to freeze this moment forever in her mind. Her beloved theatre is closing. And she's the last to leave. In her dressing room. She changes into street clothes, takes down her favourite photos from the edge of the mirror. And looks at her reflection. But her eyes are drawn to that proclamation on the wall. This theatre to be closed by order of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment. The cello burns with fury, and she stalks out. And slams her dressing room door.

[Music]

How did things come to this in her homeland? So much hatred spewed in the papers. Such a climate of fear. All the values she believes in suppressed. The cello roughly wipes a tear from her face. And hoists her bag over her shoulder. She lingers for a moment at the stage door. It's so hard to leave this place. She takes a deep breath. And turns to face a new life. Her friends are waiting for her at the train station. The other actors, the writers, the carpenters, her family. They'll be off soon together looking to build a new theatre. In a place where they can be free. The cello snaps out of her reverie and looks at her wristwatch. She's late. She cuts across a busy street and runs to the station. Her long hair flying behind her armed guards block the entry. Her heart hammers as they demand her passport and check her tickets.

[Music]

Suddenly she's in. She shoulders her way through the crowd, frantically looking for her friends. She finally spots them as the train squeals to a halt. The doors slide open and the world seems to freeze like a photograph. The cello smiles at her friends, squeezes their hands. And helps them climb the steps into the carriage. But when they reach back to take her hand and bring her aboard.

[Music]

She looks up. I can't go with you. Someone has to stay here and pay witness. Someone has to fight back. The train starts to pull away. The cello can't stop the tears from welling in her eyes. She feels a chill. She turns up the colour of her coat. And walks away from the station. There's much to be done.

[Music]

MG: That's the cello's tale from the Orchestral Tale series by power pitcher Pal, who is joining us now. That was lovely.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Thanks, Matt.

MG: And the music will sound familiar sort of to people. What were we listening to?

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: It was. It was a blend of a lot of different moments at famous moments, mostly from the cello repertoire. There were moments from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. In fact, there were a lot of. There was a lot of Russian music in that piece. In particular, there was music by Sergei Prokofiev from his ballet Romeo and Juliet. Which to me is is is ironic because this story could be about, you know, Russian journalists and artists today. And Prokofiev himself was somebody who experienced that kind of repression living under Stalin. He was he lived under surveillance. He had to think very carefully what he said and what he wrote. You know, grappling with fighting against some of the same oppressive forces that that Russian artists and journalists are fighting against today.

MG: You talked about the turbulence that is within the music of the cello, and there has been a lot of turbulence around Russian artists in the midst of this war and how to treat Russian artists. They have had concerts cancelled. There has been talk of perhaps cultural boycotts. Some people have pushed back on that and saying that those artists, individual artists who might have nothing to do with the state itself or those who lead the state are being unduly punished. You host a classical music show on CBC Music, so I'm wondering how or if the war has changed, how you programme music for the network and how you think of some of those artists whose music we just heard?

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Well, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot and my colleagues been thinking about a lot as well as CBC music, because especially in classical music, I mean, there is no getting around the fact that Russian culture looms very large, you know, and in concert, I broadcast a lot of concert performances and Russian music comes up very frequently. And also at CBC Music, we have themed playlists that you can listen to online, you know, streaming playlists, and some of them are by country. So we have, for example, we have classical friends, we have classical England. Recently, we launched a classical Ukraine and there's a classical Russia playlist, and there have been some email complaints about this playlist and demands that we take it down. So we had a big meeting about this, whether we should take it down or not. We talked about some of these issues and we decided ultimately to post an editorial note with the playlist and keep the playlist up, saying that we're we don't want to punish the artists for the actions of the regime. Mm-Hmm. And it's a it's it's a really tricky topic, and I get it because the source of these email complaints, because I can imagine, is difficult right now. You turn on the radio and you hear Russian culture being celebrated as this terrible war is unfolding. At the same time, though, I mean, if you're going to start censoring Tchaikovsky, for example, then where do you stop? Do you keep on playing Beethoven because the Nazis loved Beethoven and they weaponized his music for their ends? So once you start thinking about or talking about, you know, censoring music, it's it's I find it a pretty slippery slope at the same time. We're not playing. We're not playing Gergiev right now on the network. That's a pretty easy decision.

MG: He is somebody who I mean, people believe he has a friendship with Vladimir Putin, but also has been explicit in not criticising the war.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Exactly. So that's a pretty easy decision to make. But some of these Russian composers and artists of the past who had to deal with the same things that we're seeing today. You know why? Why should we penalise them in some in some of them should be celebrated? In fact, I think it's also an opportunity for us now on and on the network to examine some of the voices that were suppressed in the past. The one that comes to mind specifically for me is the Ukrainian Jewish composer named Dimitri Klibanoff, who whose work was suppressed by the Soviets and who nobody's ever heard of for that reason. At the same time, you know, I don't want to stop playing Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and Shostakovich and a composer who struggled with living in the Soviet Union because a lot of these composers they stood up against in their own way how they could against these regimes. And so I think by giving a little context, sensitivity and presentation, these are all really important considerations as we continue to present Russian culture. And I think finally, for me, though, it's also about resisting the weaponization of music because I think that really plays into the hands of authoritarians and the divisions that they want. They want to, so they want to sow division, right? And and if you go along with weaponizing music and punishing artists who themselves may completely be opposed to the war, I don't think that that helps.

MG: There's always art offers us a different way into a story, and you have done that through our conversation, but also through this series and the cellist. How Pablo, it's great to talk to you. Thank you very much.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: Thank you, Mat. Thanks so much for having me.

MG: Paolo Pietropaolo is the host of CBC Music's in concert. You can hear that Sunday mornings on CBC Music.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway in some ways, after two years of pandemic restrictions, it feels like we are nearly back to normal. Most provinces have dropped mask mandates, occupancy limits and vaccine passports. But at the same time, COVID cases are rising across Canada and around the world. A reminder if you needed one, that this pandemic is still not over. Dr. Lisa Barrett is an infectious diseases doctor and researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Dr. Barrett. Good morning.

DR. LISA BARRETT: Good morning!

MG: Nova Scotia this week joined a number of other Canadian provinces in lifting mask mandates for most indoor public spaces. Is now the right time to do that?

DR. LISA BARRETT: Tons of debate about this. I think it's important to point out that Nova Scotia, like some other provinces while the mandate is gone. The recommendation from public health to continue to mask indoors in public places still exists. Is it the right thing to do? I don't know. This is a pretty grey time in the pandemic, still a big respiratory time of the year if we want to keep our cases lower controlled. Masks are a relatively easy and somewhat effective tool, along with some other measures.

MG: I guess the question is important now because we're seeing these rising levels of COVID in Wastewater. As in many jurisdictions, a lot of us are looking at what's happening in Western Europe, where they are dealing with the rising cases of this variant and what happened in past waves in Western Europe eventually came here to Canada. Should we expect what's happening there to turn up here?

DR. LISA BARRETT: So there's some heterogeneity there. We do see cases going up. In most countries, we don't see a prolonged increase in death and hospitalisations, and that probably is due in some part to vaccines, boosters and that natural immunity. Will it happen here? Of course it will. It's the same virus at this point for the most part, and we share air here just like they do there. I guess at this point, one of the big questions is will we see even if the percentage is low preventable death and hospitalisations? And do we understand enough about this disease to know whether just having had COVID means that you go back completely to normal after you have it?

MG: Right now, it feels in some ways like everyone knows someone who has tested positive. Oh yes, you say, Oh yes, because you yourself recently tested positive for COVID.

DR. LISA BARRETT: Yeah, nd I will tell you, I'm not the world's most risk laden person. I can tell you that.

MG: How are you doing?

DR. LISA BARRETT: Oh, I'm coming along. I do think it's good for people to recognise that you don't have to have lots of medical illness or be extremely on the ends of the older age range to take a while. It's for some people, it's a pretty fatigue inducing virus after you're finished and probably fall into that bucket. But you know what? I'm alright. Thanks for asking.

MG: But I mean, I can hear it in your voice. The I hope you're doing OK, but the other part of it, as you said, is if you Dr. Lisa Barrett, who I imagine take all sorts of precautions knowing what you know about this virus, if you can catch COVID. People might wonder whether it's futile to think that they could stop the spread of the virus if someone like yourself can catch COVID.

DR. LISA BARRETT: Yeah. And you know what? That's that's a really important point. And probably one of the reasons why I have mentioned that I did have COVID, I did everything. I still have no idea. In the four days before I tested positive, the four unmasked people around me, the only four did not get this virus, and it's very unclear where I did get it. So do I think people should assume that there is a lot of virus around in the community right now? They should. It's catastrophic if you get it, maybe not. But the big point here, all my precautions kept these several very vulnerable people around me from getting this virus. And I think that's the thing right now. We should concentrate on more than never running into the virus. It's how do I mitigate or limit the impact of vulnerable people around me getting quite sick with it? So that's really, I think, one of the big goals in Canada and in other places right now.

MG: Why is it at the end of March of 2022 do you think that it's still difficult for people to get their hands on rapid antigen tests that might tell them whether they have this virus?

DR. LISA BARRETT: Yeah, I really do, you know, some people have said, well, masks may not be helpful in containing the spread. And if it is, is that really even a goal? I think in a big respiratory season and lots of virus around with lots of vulnerable people, I mean the estimates of people who. Who may be at higher risk even with vaccines for death and hospitalisation is probably, you know, some people will say one in 10 Canadians. I still think we should be looking at using other tools that don't harm us too much. The tools are not restrictions, and that includes masks include staying home when you're sick and having the ability to do that because there's paid sick leave. But it also includes tests so that you don't completely prevent but limit spread to other people around you. Why we don't have in all provinces get access to those, and we do it in Nova Scotia. We are still providing those to folks. I don't know. I really think people. Think that it has to be in order to move on and to not have these quote unquote restrictions. You have to forget the virus exists in some ways as opposed to we still remember it. We could still change our behaviour a little bit. Test, make use of that information without it being a sentence of kinds. It's information for people to self-regulate their behaviour and what they do. And I think that plays in the background to a lot of what people are thinking around testing. And I think people worry that folks in the general community will misinterpret a negative test and not being positive, or that it means that they are kind of invincible or that it will prevent people from thinking they still need a vaccine, which is not the case. So I can't really explain it. It's a very useful tool. We've never had such widespread access. We know that it could help prevent spread to vulnerable people. So, you know, and the government, the federal government has really been putting an effort into finding and procuring tests. And I really think it's a challenge if people aren't getting access to them in the general public for their own use to self-regulate.

MG: Just before I let you go, how should we interpret this moment? There are politicians who are saying people are done with this and you see this. You see people who are removing their masks because they don't have to wear the masks indoors anymore. There are a lot of vulnerable people who are terrified of this and the virus continues to spread. So how should we interpret this moment?

DR. LISA BARRETT: Well, there's so much going on in the world that's a real catastrophe. I think we need to help remind people that we've gotten to this part of the pandemic, which is pretty darn good to be able to get where we are today with all of these tools and and be able to control this as much as we have in two years only. This is Guinness Book of Records in getting to this point in the pandemic. I would love to have people interpret this as the next part of a pandemic. Not that it's done and that community still matters. We still have some community to look after. We've gotten a lot of our lives back. Let's be modest about complaining about it. Focus on some of the real and big problems in the world and use things around us to look after our communities.

MG: Lisa, take care of yourself and thanks for talking to us, as always.

DR. LISA BARRETT: Thank you. Have a great morning.

MG: Dr. Lisa Barrett is an infectious diseases doctor and researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax. That is The Current for this Friday and this week. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's q. Speaking with CBC Music's Paolo Pietropaolo, not so long ago, and he mentioned the Jewish Ukrainian composer Dmitri Klevbano. His work has largely been forgotten, not because it isn't beautiful, but because his First Symphony was seen by Josef Stalin as anti-patriotic and his punishment was obscurity. Dmitri Klebanov music is seeing something of a renaissance right now, though, and so we thought we would leave you with his piano trio number two, performed by the artists of the Royal Conservatory Ensemble. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.

[Music]

The Current Transcript for March 25, 2022

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

The role of foreign fighters in Ukraine

She publicly accused Gambia's ex-dictator of rape, sparking a MeToo wave there

Paolo Pietropaolo’s The Cello's Tale; and what to consider as pandemic restrictions lift

Friday 25 March Full Text Transcript

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