25/02/2017 Witness

at more than 40. Now, it's time for Witness, with

Hello, and welcome to Witness, with me, Tanya Beckett.

I'm at the British Library in London to bring

you five more unique glimpses into history

This month, we'll hear from the victim of one of India's first

high-profile sexual harassment cases.

A Berliner who remembers West Berlin's Soviet blockade.

And the musicians behind a Swahili pop

But we start in Mogadishu in 1993, when a US raid against a

Abdul Aziz Ali Ibrahim was an eyewitness to the incident which

What I remember is, people were lying on

the streets, even including Americans.

I knew Somali people would pay a very, very

The drought came, and many people were dying.

That was the reason why the United Nations

intervene by force - to deliver food.

General Mohamed Farrah Aidid was the most powerful warlord in

The Aidid militias started fighting with the United Nations

peacekeeping mission, so Americans started

going after Aidid, and the

When it was confirmed that Aidid's generals,

supporters and allies were meeting, the Americans decided

This was an enemy territory, and it all

Just a few kilometres away from my home, I started seeing

When they passed, the Aidid militias started blocking

the streets, so even if Americans wanted to go

Around 3:30pm, we arrived where the meeting was

When they started, the Aidid militias started shooting.

When the first helicopter was hit, it was

And where it landed, it is less than 700 yards

While the first helicopter was down, they were

trying to defend themselves, and Americans were trying to protect

that helicopter, and another helicopter was also shot, so things

The Somali militias were firing everywhere.

Every space they can see or shoot Americans, they

The Americans were firing back, and any threat they

have seen, they were shooting, including civilians, because they

18 Americans were killed, and 73 Americans wounded, and I heard

people saying 1000 Somali people were the casualties.

The Aidid supporters and militias, they were

dragging the dead American soldier in the streets of Mogadishu, and the

people that were celebrating were from Aidid's part, they were not

We are very, very sorry for the loss of those who came

The American government decided to pull out their troops

So, once again, the fighting started by the warring

Taking down these helicopters, it was a very

successful operation for them, but for us, it was disaster.

Abdul Aziz Ali Ibrahim went on to become a

Next, we're going back to 1948 and one of

the first confrontations of the Cold War.

The Soviet Union blocked access to West Berlin, so the Western

powers started to supply the city by air in what became known as the

Ulrich Kirchbaum was a child in Berlin

TRANSLATION: We didn't know anything different.

It was only three or four years after the end of

Our flats had been destroyed, but it didn't bother us.

There was a lot of disease, nothing to eat.

Berlin was separated into four parts,

surrounded by the Soviet occupation zone.

The Soviets tried to force the Western powers out.

ARCHIVE: On June the 18th, all road traffic from the

The reason given, a bridge was under repair.

TRANSLATION: Overnight, all traffic was stopped.

ARCHIVE: There was one way into Berlin which the Russians couldn't

put under repair - the right of way by air.

There are three air corridors to Berlin, from Hamburg,

from Hanover, and in the south from Frankfurt.

TRANSLATION: Every plane they could find was sent to Germany

There had never been anything like it.

ARCHIVE: It takes a lot to feed 2.5 million people, keep them healthy

TRANSLATION: They landed here, in Templehof airport.

There would be American lorries waiting.

Berliners would unload the planes and they

would go back to Frankfurt in a kind of loop.

They would bring medicines, fuel, household supplies, everything

We stood on the balcony, and we timed it on our

In the end, every 90 seconds, a plane would come, vroom,

over our house, then on over the rooftops to land in Templehof.

And during these flights, one pilot had an idea.

Gail Halvorsen was a 19-year-old Lieutenant, and he was

standing at a fence when some children came up to ask him for some

So, he said, why don't I drop sweets down from the plane?

So, where three or four years ago, there

had been bombs being dropped, now, there were little chocolate bars,

each wrapped in an individual little parachute.

Whenever he came over, he would move his wings up and down,

After a year and three months, the airlift came to an end.

ARCHIVE: It's a great day in Berlin, a day

Soviet planners did not understand our determination to fulfil our

obligations to the people under our charge.

TRANSLATION: The Soviet Union had seen that they couldn't

get round the Berliners, they couldn't break their will.

This airlift meant that our gratitude to

-- This airlift meant that our attitude to

the Americans, to the English, the French, changed radically.

We had been enemies during the war, but

Ulrich Kirchbaum, speaking to us from

Templehof airport in Berlin, one of the centres of the airlift.

And he still lives just around the corner.

Now, we're going back to 1956, when five American missionaries were

killed by members of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon jungle of

They had gone there to try to convert them to Christianity.

Valerie Shepherd's father was one of the missionaries killed.

My father and the other four missionaries

definitely knew it was dangerous, but they were willing to give up

their lives in order for the Huaorani to know the truth,

My father arrived in Ecuador in March 1952 to

be a missionary to indigenous or primitive tribes in the Amazon

He found out about the Huaorani through another missionary who

This missionary said that the Huaorani were very

violent, Stone Age, and they knew nothing about the outside world.

It just caught his heart, and he felt

that those were the people he was supposed to go to.

My father and a missionary pilot took several

flights over the Amazon jungle, looking for this group of Indians,

and eventually came upon this one very small settlement of the

It seemed an old man stood behind the house and waved

with both of his arms, as if to signal for us to come down.

The pilot by that time had found a spit of a beach

along the river that he knew the Huaorani could walk to.

These five men decided to set up camp on that

After three days of waiting at the camp, there were

three Huaorani that came out of the jungle -

The joy of the five men was that they

were perfectly friendly and there didn't seem

But the Huaorani were, of course, suspicious of these white

men and really had no idea of the goodwill

They might be deceiving them, they said.

They might be tricking us, and we had better kill them

We believe it was around three in the afternoon, ten men arrived at

the beach, and with their spears, they brutally speared all five of

the men and left the bodies in the water.

After my father's death, my mother got to know two Huaorani

women who had fled the tribe because of

and they said, we want you and the pilot's

While we lived with them, and we were there almost two and a half

years, I, of course, got to know all of the tribe

and the ten men who had done the killing.

Amazingly, I really don't remember being afraid

They were always laughing, and they would always make my mother

laugh, so I simply enjoyed being with them.

Of course, it was a tragedy, and of course, I have often

wished that I had known my dad, still do.

believe that God allowed this to happen so that more and more

people could actually see what real commitment to Christ means, and I

really don't believe their lives were wasted.

Today, the Huaorani tribe still lives in the Ecuadorian

Remember, you can watch Witness every month on the BBC News

Channel, or you can catch up on all of our films,

along with more than 1000 radio programmes, in our online

And now to the Indian state of Punjab and the country's first

high-profile sexual harassment trial.

In 1988, Rupan Deol Bajaj was a high-ranking female civil servant,

but none of that mattered when she was sexually harassed

at an official party by the state's top policeman.

She may be working-class, an officer, she may

In 1988, I was serving as special secretary

There was a dinner party hosted by the Home

Secretary, and Mr KPS Gill, who was the director-general of police, was

He called out to me and said, Mrs Bajaj, I want to talk to

He got up and he came and stood in front of me,

He put the finger in my face like that, and he said, up.

So, I said, Mr Gill, go away from here.

And I got out from the gap in between him and me,

and when I was going, that

Always, people have considered it to be a very trivial

thing, but I could not get over the enormity of it.

Letting it go meant living with lowered self esteem,

gulping down my humiliation, facing that person every day, facing all

Consequences of complaining, I had not really

Nobody was willing to take up the case for me

because they were so frightened of the DGP.

He was the highest-ranking police officer, with all the powers

No one wanted to do anything against him.

And I found that no one had ever filed in

section 509 and 354, which are the lesser offences

17 long years of my life, all of it was taken up by this one

The lower courts had quashed the case, they had thrown it out.

The case reached the Supreme Court, and

it was the Supreme Court which called for all the records,

reinstated the matter, and also laid down...

They reprimanded the High Court judge and said, this cannot be

All the people, in every household, this

was the talk between husband and wife.

I attended the proceedings of the trial throughout, along with my

But on the day the verdict came, I specially requested, I said,

KPS Gill was expecting to win, so they had

And then my husband's driver rang up and said,

madam, he has been convicted on both counts.

I fought against the mindset of a society.

People have started saying, now, offences

Rupan Deol Bajaj retired not long after the final judgment in the

She now runs an academy helping people get into the Indian

Finally, this week, we are going back to Kenya in 1980, when

the booming tourist industry turned a Swahili pop song into a global

# Kenya nchi nzuri, Hakuna Matata...#

The tourists were just crazy about this

It went silver then gold, then it went platinum.

That came as a complete surprise to me.

I started the group, Them Mushrooms, in 1972.

Me and him were working in a cement factory in Mombasa.

There was a lot of tourists coming into Mombasa, so

it was a very vibrant scene in Mombasa.

We were playing mostly Congolese stuff and Kenyan music, or

whatever, but when we realised that we could make more money and playing

for less time for tourists, we switched to play these cover

versions of chart music from Europe and from America.

One night, I think it was late 1979, I was sitting at

the pool bar after a performance, and there were these tourists in the

pool, played around and joking, trying to speak Swahili.

And I got this idea, maybe we should write a

song with the simplest words in Swahili and get the tourists to

learn Swahili while they sang along and danced to our music.

All guests and visitors are welcome to Kenya.

When we finished, another tourist would come and say, can you do this

We had to do it about 20 times, and any financial

We had to do it about 20 times, and then the financial

director of PolyGram said, here's my card.

We didn't know that it was going to be this big.

After recording, the rest was history.

When we signed the agreement with PolyGram at that

time, I didn't know much about copyright ownership.

We were just happy to have our music recorded and

so many people have wanted to do cover versions of it.

Most Kenyans say this is a song for the tourists,

But they are proud of it and at least it has

given some kind of identity to Kenya.

Any Kenyan who goes overseas, they are always asking, you know

the song and start singing, which is a big honour for us.

Billy Saro Harrison, and Terry Kalanda Harrison,

That's all from Witness for this month.

We'll be back here at the British Library in March.

Next month, don't miss our India direct

From me and from the rest of the witness team, goodbye.

After a burst of cold air at the end of the week, things are more mild

this weekend. It has been cloudy and windy across many parts, but there