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Rebecca Kesby:
It is 5:06 GMT. Hello, this is Weekend Live from the BBC World Service with me, Rebecca Kesby and over the next three hours we’ll be looking at all the day’s news. In about half an hour, we’ll be joined by our two panel guests to give us their perspectives on world events today and later this hour we’ll be looking at the impact of the Vietnam War on those who were displaced by it. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen will be here talking about a new book on the Vietnamese diaspora 50 years on.
First though to the latest twist in the tariff tale, another change to U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy. Late on Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol quietly published a notice explaining that smartphones, computers and other electronics imported into the United States have been exempted now from Mr. Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries, and of course those much larger Chinese import taxes. So is this a change in policy because Mr. Trump is worried about the impact of tariffs on U.S. consumers or is he worried about his close friends and supporters in the tech world? Well, Jonathan Ernest is an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University. He says the Trump administration may have realized it will take longer to achieve its aims than initially thought.
Jonathan Ernest:
It seems as though the Trump administration is in actions like this and pulling back is essentially giving into an extent and saying it would be very costly for us to keep these extremely high triple digit tariffs in place. But the more that they’re pulling back from these, the more that the tariffs aren’t accomplishing that initial goal of on-shoring more production and manufacturing in the U.S. and it’s sort of an admission that those sort of things take a lot of time. It’s a very costly thing to move production, say onshore to the U.S. of a lot of these electronics and components.
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, Takara Small is a national technology columnist at the Canadian Public Service broadcaster CBC. She joins us live from Toronto. Takara, good to get you on the program. What’s your take on this latest Trumpium U-turn? Do you think this is about the concern for the U.S. consumer maybe or is it more about the big tech bros as they’re known, the tech bosses which are so close to Mr. Trump?
Takara Small:
I think a lot of it can be traced to the impact it’s having on tech companies. Many people who watched his inauguration would have noticed that you had the founder of Amazon, you had the CEO of Google. So many companies were there and very present and I think we’re starting to see perhaps their influence and their perhaps fear being replicated in his response. Although I must say regardless of whether the tariffs have been lifted, the economic effect will still impact these tech companies and consumers around the world, not just the U.S.
Rebecca Kesby:
I mentioned that this had been announced rather quietly. They left it to the border control department, didn’t they? It didn’t come from the White House. Does it indicate another climb down though and will he be criticized for sort of not planning out this strategy in detail?
Takara Small:
I mean the criticism has been quite loud and vocal online, not just from consumers but from those within the Republican Party. I think the reason we haven’t seen him post something about this is because it kind of flies in the face of how Trump has acted over the last couple of weeks. He very much tends to rely on bravado. He tends to be very vocal when it comes to tariffs. This is a huge step-down and maybe could be seen as an embarrassment.
Rebecca Kesby:
So what will the impact be on consumers though? I mean lots of people were worried that their computers and phones would really increase in price. Will this be welcomed by them?
Takara Small:
We’re still going to see, at least I believe we’re still going to see the cost baked into products. The one thing businesses dislike more than anything is uncertainty. It makes it very hard to project what revenue, what expenses will be. And you still have companies unsure as to what perhaps his next post will be about his next tariff response. So consumers, and again, not just in the U.S. around the world because a lot of manufacturing can be traced back to China and the relationship with America, I think consumers are still going to see the increase. We’re still going to see that unpredictability. Unfortunately, that may extend for the next four years.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yeah. Just briefly, I mean we are talking about smartphones and computers. Does this change in the policy on the tariff also extend to component parts that make up those bits of tech?
Takara Small:
It does extend to those. So I’m sure there are many small businesses as well as large corporations who are sighing with relief. Many were looking at offshoring to Vietnam or India in the interim, but manufacturing within the U.S. that could take years to do to compile. So, this interim pause it’ll make sure that tech companies have what they need and perhaps they may influence him.
Rebecca Kesby:
Good to speak to you, Takara Small. Thank you so much for joining us live from the CBC there in Toronto.
Now in the end, the talks were both indirect as Iran wanted and direct as the Americans preferred. This is yesterday’s meeting aimed at creating a new reproachment over Iran’s nuclear program after Donald Trump took the United States out of the agreement during his first term. It was hosted by Oman. Its officials acted as the intermediaries between President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. Whilst the two principals sat in separate rooms, but their paths did cross briefly and they did exchange a few words. Later, Mr. Araghchi gave his assessment to Iranian media.
Speaker 4:
[foreign language 00:06:02].
Speaker 5:
We talked indirectly for about two and a half hours with back and forths. I’m grateful to my brother [inaudible 00:06:08] foreign minister for hosting us. I think he scuttled between two rooms four times. He informed and conveyed thoughts of each negotiating team to the other. As the first session, it was constructive and held in a calm and very respectful atmosphere. There was no inappropriate language and both sides showed their willingness to reach a comprehensive agreement that is acceptable for both sides.
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, Foreign Minister Mr. Witkoff agreed to continue talking next week. Just before we came on air, I spoke to journalist Farnaz Fassihi who’s covering the talks for the New York Times.
Farnaz Fassihi:
The talks seem to have gone better than expected. Both sides are describing it productive and constructive and positive. And the fact that they’ve scheduled another round of talk so soon within a week is a good sign. So there’s two components to these talks. There’s one that’s political and it requires goodwill, the will to actually resolve the standoff. And then once they start talking about the details of what this deal would actually look like, it’s quite technical and challenging because you’re talking about a stockpile of enriched uranium that can, if Iran decides, can make two or three bombs. You’re talking about complicated sanctions from the American side that target different layers of Iran’s economy from oil revenues to international banking to purchasing dollar and Iran wants to see those lifted. So that is where the real challenge will come, but I think that it does appear that at least politically they’ve met good progress.
Rebecca Kesby:
President Trump is a man in a hurry though, isn’t he? And he said he wants a deal quickly and again because he says this with a number of his policies, but with this particular story, could that end up being something of a political mistake because the longer it takes to get any deal and as you’ve said, it could be difficult, that could end up starting to look like a failure?
Farnaz Fassihi:
Well, I think that’s too soon to say that. I think that the fact that they don’t want to drag this on may actually be beneficial. I think one of the significant things to note about today’s talks is that Iran and the U.S. are just talking to each other. Previously in all the different rounds of nuclear negotiations, the talks were happening with the European members of the deal, France and Britain and Germany, which wasn’t part of the five but was plus one and Russia and China, so there were a lot of opinions and a lot of different mediators. And now it seems like both the U.S. and Iran want to sort of get rid of the other actors and talk directly, indirectly to one another, at least for now through a mediator and possibly directly.
So I think the fact that they’re both interested in getting this done faster rather than dragging it out is actually a good sign because look, they do have a framework of an agreement from JCPOA in 2015, so they do have a roadmap of what it would look like to curb Iran’s nuclear program. I think the challenge is for it to look like it delivers something more than what that deal under President Obama delivered from the American perspective and for Iran, how much of an economic relief it can get.
I want to also note that one of the Iranian officials I spoke to today who was involved and briefed about the talks said, “Look, in 2015 we went to negotiate to lift sanctions. This time around we’re negotiating to lift sanctions but also to prevent war.” The time is of essence because Iran’s nuclear program is advancing and Israel is impatient about doing something about it. And I think that if there is an incentive from all sides to resolve this so it doesn’t lead to military strikes on Iran and then Iran retaliating and a wider catastrophic war.
Rebecca Kesby:
On that, President Trump has repeatedly warned that he is prepared to use military force against Iran if no deal is reached. Do you think he is serious about that? I mean he is the man that gave the order for the assassination of General Soleimani.
Farnaz Fassihi:
Exactly. The Iranians know that Mr. Trump can be unpredictable and that I think the view in Iran is that this is not a bluff, that the combination of Israel’s win on Iran’s various proxies from Hamas to Hezbollah and the weakening and losing Syria as sort of a regional base for Iran, all of these things have put Iran in a place where it’s looking around and seeing how its allies were taken out by Israel. It doesn’t want to be in that situation. And that combination of a war plus the economic situation in Iran with the currency plunging, with inflation skyrocketing, it’s not a good combination. It can put Iran in a situation where it’s fighting two battles, it’s fighting a domestic battle and it’s fighting an external war. And that could even collapse the regime. And I think the Iranians understand that this is an existential moment that they’re in.
Rebecca Kesby:
Journalist Farnaz Fassihi there from the New York Times.
Now polls have closed in Gabon’s presidential election. It’s the first since a military takeover two years ago ousted the Bongo family who had been in power for more than half a century. According to the Interior Ministry turnout was 87%. The country is casting ballots at a time of high unemployment. There’s regular power and water shortages and a lack of infrastructure and heavy government debt as well. The general who led that coup, Brice Oligui Nguema is the favorite to win it seems. He was a former aide of the Bongo family and his nearest rival is the deposed former prime minister, so there’s a lot to talk about.
Let’s catch up with the BBC’s, Paul Njie, who’s in Libreville, the capital of Gabon covering these elections. Paul, welcome to the program. Just remind us of this coup and all the characters involved.
Paul Njie:
Hi, Rebecca. So the coup happened in August 2023, just minutes or moments after former President Ali Bongo was declared winner earlier in the morning and the military officials led by Brice Oligui Nguema seized power and said that we’re dissolving the elections and the electoral body. They put an end to the Bongo system because they said that those results were not free and fair and they took over the country from that moment, essentially set up a transition for two years and 19 months into that, they have organized elections and they believe that they are ready to transition to constitutional order.
Rebecca Kesby:
And I mentioned there the general who led that coup does seem to be the favorite to win. Have we had independent observers watching the polling and what’s their assessment? Has it been free and fair so far?
Paul Njie:
Oh, yes. We’ve had international observers here and the [inaudible 00:13:33] leader himself after voting praised the conduct of the polls saying that the presence of those observers meant that everything was done transparently. And when we did speak to a couple of observers, they also said that the votes were being done in calm and serenity and that the process was going well. However, there were slight complaints of organizational lapses by some voters and the main election challenger, Alain-Claude By-Nze had actually raised a number of issues which he believed could potentially be related to irregularities, notably with the handling of voter cards.
Rebecca Kesby:
Briefly there, Paul, I mentioned some of the issues, the high unemployment and power cuts and so on. What have been the main issues in this election campaign?
Paul Njie:
Yeah, essentially unemployment has been a key talking point, especially youth unemployment, which stands at nearly 40%. We’ve spoken to several young people here who say that they hope their next president will tackle this because it’s becoming such a big deal. They also hope that governance will be improved because for the last 55 to 56 years under the previous regime, the Bongo dynasty, they say that they have not really felt the benefits of their rich mineral and natural resources. And so the one that the wealth of the country be distributed equitably. So they’re saying that the next president should try and also diversify the economy, which is totally greatly reliant on its oil wealth. So basically these are the key issues that are being discussed today and most importantly, the quest for justice for past atrocities in the country.
Rebecca Kesby:
Okay, good to speak to you Paul. Thanks so much for joining us there from Libreville, that’s the BBC’s Paul Njie there.
Now the Russian ambassador to Britain has told the BBC that America is not Moscow’s ally. Andrei Kelin was speaking as the U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin. Mr. Kelin said that since Donald Trump had become president, the two countries had been working on resolving their differences, but it was a slow process. He also said Russia was looking for a full settlement to end the war with Ukraine but was only interested in a long-term solution.
Andrei Kelin:
We have our vital priorities and our vital interest in this conflict and they should be not only taken into account, they should be implemented and Americans are very well aware of our position. We do not want a ceasefire for just to make it spectacular gesture to show it publicly or for the media. We need full-scale settlement once and forever, so ceasefire is the first step, but after that we need a serious framework for a treaty or something, an agreement or whatever it will be, which will put an end towards any escalation in the area.
Rebecca Kesby:
The Russian ambassador to Britain, Andrei Kelin there. While there is concern not only about the ongoing war in Ukraine, but on whether Russia is waging a campaign of stamping out the Ukrainian identity from occupied areas. Ukrainians living there face severe punishment for daring to disagree with the Russians, not just for activism, but also for speaking to the media, even their own relatives put them in danger sometimes. The BBC’s Vitaly Shevchenko reports.
Speaker 9:
[foreign language 00:16:59].
Vitaly Shevchenko:
This is a Russian army recruitment advert broadcast by a Russia-run TV station in the occupied Ukrainian town of Melitopol. Propaganda like this is part of Moscow’s efforts to stamp out Ukrainian identity in occupied areas. However, many of the locals are resisting Russian rule and long for a return to Ukraine. Maria, not her real name, uses a Ukrainian proverb to describe the danger she’s facing.
Maria:
There is a saying here [foreign language 00:17:32], “You have fear in your eyes, but your hands are still doing it.” Of course, it’s scary. Russians are trying to forbid here everything that is Ukrainian language and also traditions. Even Ukrainian holidays are forbidden.
Vitaly Shevchenko:
Broadcasting Maria’s voice or revealing her name would put her in great danger. This is why she’s voiced by one of our colleagues. Maria is a member of an all-female underground group distributing leaflets and newsletters as a form of peaceful resistance.
Maria:
We are doing a lot of different actions and we are trying to use a little bit of art, so we are creating leaflets with our messages to Russian occupiers and Russian soldiers. For example, you are in Ukraine, so don’t forget about this. We are trying to burn Russian flags, Russian propaganda.
Vitaly Shevchenko:
Aside from Maria’s group, there are others practicing various forms of resistance from distributing Ukrainian symbols to subversion and reconnaissance. An atmosphere of fear and suspicion is ever-present though. I reached out to friends to speak to their relatives living in occupied areas, all of them said, “No, that is too dangerous.” My friend Sophia now lives here in the UK but is originally from an occupied village in Zaporizhzhia region.
Sophia:
About a year ago, my parents were searched by the Russian Security Service FSB. They confiscated their phones, accusing them of telling the Ukrainian army about where Russian troops were stationed. That wasn’t true. And later the Russian army told my parents that they had been reported by their neighbors. I try not to provoke anything like that. I have to read between the lines when they tell me about what’s going on.
Vitaly Shevchenko:
Another friend Kateryna tells me that someone she knows in the occupied part of Kherson region was thrown into jail for talking to her brother who supports the Ukrainian army. According to the Ukrainian government and independent investigators, more than a hundred Ukrainian activists and journalists have been killed under Russian occupation and hundreds more are imprisoned.
Speaker 9:
[foreign language 00:19:46].
Vitaly Shevchenko:
Besides broadcasting on their TV stations, there are numerous other ways in which Russia is attacking Ukrainian culture, language and history in the occupied regions. Russian propaganda posters line the streets and in schools, children are forced to attend classes glorifying the Russian army and school books justify the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin is also forcing Ukrainians in occupied territories to take Russian passports. Sophia tells me that her parents are unable to top up their mobile phones or insure their car just because they’re refusing to take Russian passports. With the U.S.-led efforts to negotiate peace in Ukraine, the Theorizers at Kiev could be forced to give up at least some of the territory occupied by Russia.
Rebecca Kesby:
The BBC’s Vitaly Shevchenko reporting.
Now this is one of the sounds of summer here in England. It’s the sound of Morris dancing. Just imagine people dressed in white with straw hats decorated with flowers. They’ve got bells tied to their shins and shoes hopping and skipping about waving sticks and sometimes handkerchiefs. It’s a tradition that’s thought to date back to Anglo-Saxon times here in Britain. But recently it’s been popular in Australia, Canada, Finland, even Russia. On Saturday, Duncan Bhaskaran Brown from Oxfordshire in southern England set a new world record by dancing non-stop for 11 hours. My colleague Shaun Ley asked him why.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown:
Nobody had tried it before, so I managed to dance continuously for 11 hours and two minutes.
Shaun Ley:
Wow. And for those who don’t know, you need to give a little description, I think for people listening around the world as to what Morris dancing involves and why it may not be quite as simple as it might sound to a lot of people.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown:
It’s a kind of traditional English folk dancing. We dressed in white, I’ve got bells on my legs, ribbons, a hat with flowers on, and we wave hankies around, which sounds all very nice and genteel, but actually the style we do is quite energetic. It’s stepping, so I probably raised my knees about 25,000 times today
Shaun Ley:
Given that you were the pioneer of this particular record, presumably there’s not a kind of existing training regime for extreme Morris dancing, if I can call it that you could lift off the shelf or even find helpfully like we find everything else on YouTube these days.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown:
No, no. YouTube drew a blank, so we were kind of making it up as we go along. I’m lucky to have some really great people around me and we worked a lot on my general fitness through just running. We worked on some specific muscle groups that I used an awful lot today, so I’m quite glad we did that and well, I just did a hell of a lot of dancing on the spot.
Shaun Ley:
You mentioned the bells. Did that start to get a bit annoying after, I don’t know, three and a half hours there?
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown:
Yes. I have a feeling I’m going to be dreaming about bells tonight.
Rebecca Kesby:
Morris dancer Duncan Bhaskaran Brown speaking to the BBC’s Shaun Ley there.
Speaker 15:
This is the BBC World Service, looking back at an iconic moment for women’s football.
Speaker 16:
It’s July 10th, 1999, the World Cup final in Los Angeles. Brandi Chastain for the USA steps up to take what could be the winning penalty. She scores. The USA are world champions. Brandi rips off her football shirt to celebrate in front of 90,000 fans and one of the most famous photographs in sporting history is taken. I’m former USA player, Heather O’Reilly. Let’s hear from Brandi about the game.
Brandi Chastain:
Hey, we’re here. We will help the landscape be better.
Speaker 16:
And from the photographer who found himself in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 18:
I get a call saying, “Hey, you nailed the shot and it looks fabulous.”
Speaker 16:
USA’s 99ers, the photo that inspired a nation at Bbcworldservice.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Rebecca Kesby:
Still to come, we’ll be in New Zealand where a controversial bill has just been rejected by the parliament there. But the debate has opened up lots of questions and concerns about Maori rights in the country. As the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, what’s the long-lasting legacy for those who were displaced by it? And we’ll be meeting our panel guests with us for the rest of the program. It’s all coming up after the latest World News.
Chris Barrow:
BBC News with Chris Barrow. Israeli missiles have destroyed the intensive care unit and surgery department of the only hospital still functioning in Gaza City, the Al-Ali Baptist Hospital. A local journalist said the Israeli military phones to give a 20-minute evacuation warning. Patients and the wounded were filmed leaving.
The United Nations in Sudan says it’s gravely alarmed at the recent killing of more than a hundred civilians, including nine humanitarian workers in Darfur State, reportedly committed by the RSF militia, which is fighting the government.
The Trump administration has excluded a range of electronic goods including smartphones, computers, and semiconductors. From its import tariffs. The move will offer relief to tech companies as well as partially relaxing the trade war with China.
Counting is underway in Gabon’s presidential election. It’s the first since a military takeover two years ago ousted the Bongo family who were in power for more than half a century. Turnout is said to have been high at 87%.
Algeria has protested after France indicated one of its consular officials for involvement in abducting Algerian dissident in France. The dissident Amir Boukhors, who was given asylum in France was kidnapped for one day last April. Algiers denies its officials guilt.
The former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro says he’ll probably need surgery after being admitted to hospital on Friday for what he called unbearable abdominal pain. Mr. Bolsonaro said on social media he was in a stable condition, but the doctors told him this was the most serious situation since his stabbing attack in 2018.
A new study has concluded that more than 3 million children around the world died in 2022 from infections that are resistant to antibiotics, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia. Antimicrobial resistance is now one of the greatest global health threats.
That’s the latest world news from the BBC.
Rebecca Kesby:
You’re listening to Weekend Live from the BBC World Service with me, Rebecca Kesby. As we come to air, there are reports Israeli missiles have destroyed the intensive care unit and surgery department of the only hospital still functioning in Gaza City. We’re watching that story carefully and we will bring you the latest updates as soon as we have them.
Let’s meet our two panel guests with us for the rest of the program today. They’ll be lending us all their analysis and personal takes on the events and issues of the day. With me here in the studio is Nitasha Kaul, a British Kashmiri academic, writer and poet. She’s professor of politics, international relations and critical interdisciplinary studies at the University of Westminster in London. And we’re also joined down the line by Alistair Burt, distinguished Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute. That’s a think tank. He’s also a former long-serving British MP for the Conservative Party and a former foreign office minister. Alistair Burt, welcome to program.
Alistair Burt:
Good morning, Rebecca.
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, you’ve sort of gone into the think tank world and I know you’re doing a lot of consulting as well and helping with charities and so on. Just tell us though about some of the years you were in the British Parliament because towards the end that was very interesting time to be involved in British politics, I should think.
Alistair Burt:
Yeah, I had 32 years as a member of Parliament in two different constituencies, which is not uncommon in the United Kingdom. I served in the governments of John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, and enjoyed a variety of different ministerial roles from social security and health issues through to the foreign office. And I was minister for the Middle East effectively for a five-year period, which covered 2011 and the upheavals then right through till 2019. The domestic politics, of course, were altered hugely by Brexit in 2016 and eventually I left Parliament in 2019 because I could not advocate for the Conservative Party’s position on Brexit anymore.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yes, it was a very divisive issue here in all the parties actually in Britain, wasn’t it? For young people listening, Alistair, many say, “Oh, I’m not interested in politics,” what would you say to anyone thinking about a political career? Would you recommend it?
Alistair Burt:
Yes, because ultimately if you want to get things done, the way to do it in the United Kingdom is through Parliament and through legislation. Of course it needs all the other attributes of a democracy. You need people prepared to campaign, take up issues, you need a free media and press. But ultimately, the decision makers in Parliament and I used to talk to young people at school and asked them what they were interested in and what they wanted to see change and said, “Well, at the end of the day it’s me. If you want to see change, you’ve got to persuade people like me and then we move towards change.” Now I chair a university, I chair Lancaster University in the north of England, one of the United Kingdom’s top 10 universities, so I’m still in touch with young people who want to see changes in the world, want to see a world that’s shaped better for them for the future. So I remain involved in the democratic process just in a different sphere.
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, Alistair Burt, very good to have you with us for the whole program today and here in the studio Nitasha Kaul. When I read out your job description, it’s very varied, isn’t it? How do you manage to straddle being a novelist, a poet and an academic? It sounds quite taxing.
Nitasha Kaul:
It’s actually quite interesting. And I think that there’s just so much in the world that the more languages we have of communicating why it’s important to think about things feels quite natural. But yes, you’re right in that it is quite rare to do interdisciplinary work. I trained as an economist originally 25 years ago, which feels like a long time ago.
And it seems that I think now that when I think back, I think a lot of what I’ve worked on have also been driven by world events. The recession in 2008, the significance of thinking about the relationship between economic principles and people’s lives following on, especially in large parts of the world, particularly India, 2014 onwards, the Democratic backsliding that’s been going on, so now I direct, apart from my academic work, I direct the Center for the Study of Democracy and the democratic backsliding, recession as well as the changes in global order and the creeping tide of authoritarianism preoccupies a lot of my work and that’s what I’ve been doing in more recent years, quite a bit of,
I’m also, as you mentioned, originally from Kashmir and I’ve authored political fiction. My first novel was called Residue. It was set in Berlin and was about divided places. It was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. And my more recent novel called Future Tense was published in 2020. And interestingly enough, it set in the period between 2014 and 2018 about young people’s lives in conflict. And then in 2019, the changes happened to the region. And I found myself as an academic expert actually giving testimony on the region at the U.S. Congress.
Rebecca Kesby:
Goodness. [inaudible 00:31:55]
Nitasha Kaul:
I feel that there’s, Alistair just mentioned the young people. There’s many ways, and I think education is an important way in which we can speak about these principles and the changes.
Rebecca Kesby:
And very briefly, I mean, when you are writing your more artistic work, I guess, do you think that draws people into politics and current affairs in a way that they would be turned off if they were just watching the news?
Nitasha Kaul:
I think that’s very much the case because what we see around us are projects of persuasion and these are successful political projects of persuasion. And as social scientists, we draw the line between choice and constraints. And we think of what are causal relations here sometimes, but in a more affective sense, we’re thinking about people’s lives. And I think that helps reach a larger number of people and get people to really feel why does it matter to think about something. And I think that feeling and affect part, I think the arts and culture has a really important place for that.
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, we will be talking about culture later in the program. Nitasha Kaul and Alistair Burt with us throughout.
Let’s head first today to New Zealand and this is a big political story that’s been going on there this week. And Alistair, I wonder if you can imagine a scene like this taking place in the UK House of Commons.
Speaker 22:
[foreign language 00:33:22].
Rebecca Kesby:
That is the sound of politicians in New Zealand’s parliament breaking into a Maori folk song in celebration. This was after lawmakers voted decisively against a controversial bill that proposed reinterpreting New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. That document was signed with the colonial power Britain back in 1840, and it established the rights of both Māori, that’s the original indigenous people there, and non-Māori in the country. The bill that’s just been defeated is called the Treaty Principles Bill, and it was put forward by the right-wing ACT Party. The debate has been intense over this issue. There’ve been lots of street protests, and you might remember this moment from November when the nation’s youngest parliamentarian tore up the bill on the floor of the house and then led a haka, which is a ceremonial Māori dance.
Speaker 23:
[foreign language 00:34:19].
Rebecca Kesby:
Well, quite a dramatic moment there and obviously probably quite moving as well. Many in the country feared that reinterpreting, the Treaty of Waitangi would lead to a weakening of hard-won Māori rights rather than increasing equality. Around 18% of New Zealand’s population is Māori, but statistically they are more likely to live in poverty, they are more likely to have health issues and die younger, so the colonial legacy is having something of a negative impact in many communities.
Let’s speak to an MP with the Te Pati Māori Party, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. I hope I’ve said that right, Debbie. Good to have you on the program. Just talk us through your response to the defeat of this bill first of all.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
Yeah, we’re extremely pleased and have always been overwhelmed with the support and opposition to this particular bill. I guess what it’s coming down to in Aotearoa is a healthy, unhealthy debate about the existence of the treaty, the existence of indigenous rights. And the right wing, certainly David Seymour viewed it as bringing a bill through that would no longer be separating races. And rather than acknowledge the indigenous rights or the founding document of treaty, it became really heated. And so we’ve had a hundred thousand mobilized on this as part of a national protest. And 300,000 submitters is actually the largest that we’ve ever seen in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Rebecca Kesby:
Okay. So you mentioned David Seymour there. I think he’s the leader of the ACT Party, is that right?
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
Yes.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yeah. Okay. So I mean in terms of what it’s done for the wider community though in the debate within the country, what are your thoughts on that?
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
Yeah, I think what we’ve got in Aotearoa is a very younger Māori population, so 70% of the Māori population is under the age 35. And then we have right wing parties where there’s a lot older population who haven’t enjoyed a curriculum in education where the state of Aotearoa post colonization has been openly discussed with education of the treaty and the foundation and that it’s vision to actually harmonize and have two groups of people, the indigenous peoples, and those that are there by the rights of the treaty, live well and live in peace.
So I think it’s been frustrating for us politically because there’s a lot of, as you mentioned in the introduction, inequities that need to have some targeted effort. But what it has done is galvanized a really strong opinion that the treaty is our founding document. It is to be respected and there’s obviously a lot more education that needs to happen around it.
Rebecca Kesby:
Aotearoa, of course, being the Māori name for New Zealand.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
New Zealand, sorry.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yeah, no, that’s absolutely fine. We like to make sure we hit all the bases on this program. Debbie, let me introduce you to Alistair Burt and Nitasha Kaul who are with us today as panelists. I’m sure they have questions or contributions to make on this. Nitasha?
Nitasha Kaul:
Thank you. I think it’s really heartening that the bill failed with 112-11, 11 people voting in favor. I think it represents the wider right-wing resentment that we see in lots of contexts around reinterpreting history and trying to construct a politics out of it.
So in the Treaty of Waitangi, it’s now nearly two centuries old from dates from 1840. It’s one of the less worst treaties, if I may put it that way, because say for instance, I’ve done a lot of work on imperial geopolitics in the Himalayas, and when I look at, say the 1910 treaty, for instance, between Britain and Bhutan, it has a lot more problems and it took a long time to do anything with it. So I think that the good thing that New Zealand, Aotearoa has been doing is to have these evolving interpretations in a more progressive direction to increase representation and address the historical structural injustices. And this bill was an attempt to sort of take that back, walk back with it.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
That’s right.
Nitasha Kaul:
And the fact that it’s, as we’ve just heard, the fact that the backlash has actually constructed a consensus against the bill is I think positive and heartening.
Rebecca Kesby:
For the country. Alastair, your thoughts?
Alistair Burt:
Yeah, I was very interested in what Debbie had to say and the progress of this bill. I speak with a certain amount of humility. We are 12,000 miles away from New Zealand, so offering comments seems to be something I should do with trepidation and care. But my sense was that the voices you listened to are those who overwhelmingly rejected this. This was a very public bill, it was out there for debate, and I’m sure Debbie and others must be hugely enthused by the response it got from other political parties. I know there was a bit of a process to get it to a position where it could finally be decided and voted on, but also the sense of the public.
And my question for Debbie would be a real sense, where do we go from here and what is the next step to redress some of the issues she spoke of in relation to the Māori people?
Rebecca Kesby:
Debbie?
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer:
Yeah, thank you. Really great answers. And I guess having been the last of the nations and the pacific colonized, there’s a lot that is to be learnt from other people, so I appreciate hearing your views.
One of the things that we think is that it’s time now to be able to discuss how we embed Te Tiriti and that it’s not something that is brought up that we continue to, and I guess what I mean brought up ad hoc, it’s often brought up in the courts and it’s not something that everyone has an understanding, as I said, particularly an older generation.
But I think the opportunity largely before us is to have a really good discussion of what constitutional transformation looks like for New Zealand and also foster some national unity and understanding, be able to strengthen some of our institutional frameworks, which I think that’s why the principles were being looked at by them in the first place. But there has to be a reaffirmation of the treaty’s role in governance, and I think that’s where certainly the next generation and certainly our party would like to see it go where we have better Māori crown partnerships and they’re integral. They’re not just there in lip service and we see them at really nice events. So I think there’s some real great meaningful dialogue and co-governance arrangements and ideals that we can explore. Certainly next generation are looking forward to that.
Rebecca Kesby:
All right, Debbie, so nice to have you on the program. Thank you very much indeed for joining us live from New Zealand Aotearoa there. That’s Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. She’s an MP with the Te Pāti Maori Party in New Zealand.
Now this month marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, known of course in Vietnam as the American War. It was essentially a civil war really, between a pro-Western government in the south of the country in a communist Russian-backed group in the north under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. A hot proxy war, if you like during the Cold War era, America was heavily involved from the mid-sixties right to the end in April 1975. But in spite of its overwhelming military superiority and air power, it couldn’t defeat the guerrilla tactics of the communist forces of the Viet Cong.
By April the 30th, ’75, the Viet Cong had made it as far south as the southern capital, Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City and the U.S. troops began to withdraw. Many Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans, had reason to fear reprisals from the communist forces. And they began a desperate scramble to leave the city. Thousands headed to the U.S. Embassy, which tried to airlift people to safety and helicopters. It all became known as the fall of Saigon. And just to remind us of the moment, here’s a little clip from the archives because a few years ago I interviewed Stu Herrington, who was a U.S. captain on duty at the embassy that night running the evacuation, and he was on the last helicopter out.
John Tidmarsh:
It’s seven o’clock. Good evening. This is John Tidmarsh with Newsdesk and from South Vietnam where it’s now the middle of the night, we are now waiting for just one word, surrender. It could come at any time. The Saigon government is reported to be ready to meet any condition.
Stu Herrington:
The thought wasn’t so much about, look at all the lives we’ve wasted and now we’re being forced out of here. We were so busy just keeping the crowds calm that the thinking about what it all meant and how sad and tragic it was, really only caught up at the very last moment. Actually, I was able to get people out. I and quite a few others in Saigon had set up a little system. Some people have called these black operations because we were really sneaking people out. In our delegation, we had about 30, 35 Vietnamese employees who all had families. So that last 10 or 12 days was a non-stop breaking of the rules as we looked for ways to smuggle people out behind the back of the embassy in most cases because we felt an obligation to the Vietnamese.
Rebecca Kesby:
Operation Frequent Wind was the call sign to evacuate Saigon. That order finally came in the afternoon of the 9th of April.
Speaker 27:
The word to evacuate came out of a small walkie-talkies, handed out to the leaders of prearranged evacuation groups.
Rebecca Kesby:
In the early hours of the 30th, a presidential order came to abandon the evacuation of locals and to focus on getting the last Americans out. There were just 420 Vietnamese still waiting in the embassy compound.
Stu Herrington:
I made my excuse and the excuse was that I had to take a leak and made my way into the embassy up the stairs to the rooftop pad. So this helicopter that could have taken 50 Vietnamese lifted off at 5:30 in the morning from the roof of the embassy with 420 Vietnamese and even some South Korean diplomats waiting patiently in the parking lot to be evacuated. And we left basically in an empty helicopter.
Rebecca Kesby:
And as you flew out over Saigon, knowing that you’d lost the war, probably lost comrades in battle and that you’d left those people behind at the embassy, how did you feel about that?
Stu Herrington:
I was sick. I was so upset. I felt absolutely terrible that I had given my word to these folks that I would only leave when they left. And that having given that promise in good faith over and over and over all night, we then fled the coop.
Rebecca Kesby:
That was Stu Herrington speaking to me there for Witness History a few years ago. The full episode is still available online. Well, it is 50 years on now from that moment, but its impact is still felt, especially for those in the Vietnamese diaspora that ended up scattered around the world. There’s a new book out on this exact subject. It’s called The Cleaving, and we can speak to its co-editor now, Pulitzer winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, welcome to the program. Thank you very much for coming on. Tell us about this book.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Well, thanks so much for having me. This is a collection of dialogues between 37 different Vietnamese writers of the diaspora after the events that you just described in 1975. 130,000 Vietnamese refugees fled, but eventually the diaspora grew to about 4 million people in dozens of different countries. The largest populations were in United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany. And these writers come from all these different places. There was even one writer from Israel where 300 Vietnamese refugees fled. And so the book is a sort of a landmark collection demonstrating how one of the most important ways that the Vietnamese diaspora has asserted itself is through its storytelling, particularly through its literature.
Rebecca Kesby:
And what kind of stories have people had, the ones that have ended up in completely different countries?
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
There’s a common bond. I mean, the war in Vietnam, the fall of Saigon and so on, the sense of a loss of a country for so many people in the diaspora has meant that a lot of the literature, whether it’s novels, poems, memoirs, or non-fiction histories have been really concerned about the meaning of the war for the defeated Vietnamese and their difficult place in the host countries that they ended up in. In the United States, for example, the United States does not like losers and does not like memories of having been defeated and so Vietnamese Americans occupy an ambivalent place there. So a lot of the literature is shaped by these kinds of themes, and we’re starting to see that change. It’s 50 years after the end of the war, the generations that lived through it are fading away. Newer generations born in the United States or in these other different countries are emerging with a completely different set of concerns.
Rebecca Kesby:
And do they still feel connected to the old country?
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Yes, in different ways. I think if you were born in Vietnam, if you were someone who was raised by somebody born in Vietnam, that sense of a connection to the country is still very strong and it’s not necessarily a political connection, although oftentimes it is. Oftentimes, it’s simply linguistically, cultural, gastronomic.
Rebecca Kesby:
Of course.
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
All of those are really important. Absolutely. But the younger generation who’s like two or three generations removed, I think it’s a much more historical sense of where they came from rather than a more emotional sense.
Rebecca Kesby:
Nguyen, I want to bring in Alistair Burt, and Nitasha Kaul with us on the program today. And Alistair, I mentioned how many different hats you are wearing at the moment. I think one of them does involve working with Vietnamese people.
Alistair Burt:
That is right. I have the honor to be the UK’s commissioner on a body called the International Commission on Missing Persons. And this was a body set up after the Balkan War to help identify the lost and the missing in that war, those who had been interred in mass graves. And the DNA techniques, another work that ICMP was able to pioneer was a contributory factor in the convictions of those at The Hague some years later for their part in the war.
ICMP continues to work in areas that have been involved in conflict and loss of life through natural causes, but one of the areas of work we are involved in now is Vietnam. And my take on this is there’s been a remarkable partnership between United States funders, ICMP and Vietnam to try and identify the location of maybe the 900,000 who were lost Vietnamese, who were lost during the conflict, whose bodies have not been able to be found or identified and the identification of the loss, of the lost is a vital part of closure for people. And the cooperation that we’re seeing is a remarkable gesture of reconciliation by the Vietnamese after all that they suffered. So our work is involved in that because new DNA techniques are able to help identify those who have been interred in the ground for many years as a result of the conflict and you can imagine the difficulties that causes.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yeah, absolutely. Viet Thanh Nguyen, I don’t know whether you’ve got a response to that and also whether the country has managed to heal itself because obviously it was such a devastating war. Is there a sense of national unity there now?
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I mean, generally speaking, I think there is a sense of national unity. The Vietnamese who won run the country, and they’ve done incredible work in economic transformation, rebuilding civil society and things like that. But of course, it’s still a politically repressive government, and that means that you’re allowed to do almost anything you want in Vietnam. You can be a capitalist, it’s perfectly fine, but you just can’t contradict the government. So I think there’s some real red lines there around how the past is remembered and the past has to be remembered, especially the revolutionary past only in heroic ways.
The history is still there and there’s still tension. Vietnam wants to promote a touristic image that will bring in capitalist investment, but it still wants to keep alive a memory of its heroic, revolutionary struggles, and the costs that were paid by the Vietnamese people. And certainly all those missing people is an enormous issue, as you might imagine. And it’s a deeply politicized issue because for two decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States had an embargo on Vietnam. And one of the key sticking points for lifting that embargo was to get the Vietnamese to find what were supposed to be 2,200 missing American soldiers in Vietnam. So even this issue of recovering the dead is deeply fraught politically in many ways. And the difference between 2200 dead missing Americans and the 900,000 that Alistair Burt referred to indicates the vastly different human consequences that these two countries paid.
Rebecca Kesby:
Yeah. Briefly, Nitasha, your view on this?
Nitasha Kaul:
Well, a nation is an imagined community. And writers I think are migrants of the imagination. In a sense, writing and storytelling is very central to our existence, and especially if there is this past of tragedy and conflict. So I think that the fact of putting together these voices in the diaspora is such an important act to be able to convey that forward, how tragedy is remembered forward and how it can be healed from.
Rebecca Kesby:
Thank you. And so that book there co-edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Cleaving. And Nguyen, thank you very much indeed for coming on to tell us about that.
