02/09/2017 Witness


02/09/2017

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Welcome to Witness, here at the British Library in London.

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This month we have another five people who have witnessed

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extraordinary moments in history first-hand.

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We will be remembering a royal wedding in Japan,

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a remarkable feat of engineering under the Alps, and a new

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But first, we are going back to August 1947, when India gained

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independence from Britain and was split into two

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countries, mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan.

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Partition affected the lives of millions of families.

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Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan's was one of them.

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I am Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, known as Sulaiman to family and friends,

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I am from a Muslim family which once ruled a very large feudal estate,

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including the beautiful a palace in Mahmudabad in

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But the Indian government is laying claim to my property,

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No-one is paying for it, so these days, everything is crumbling.

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The partition of India into two states, a Muslim majority

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state called Pakistan, and a Hindu majority

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It was estimated that one million people died,

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Some Muslims went to the state of Pakistan.

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It was not just the country that was divided.

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In the late '50s, my father took Pakistani nationality,

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and that is when my family's problems began, because when India

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and Pakistan went to war in 1965, the government laid

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There was an act of Parliament called the Enemy Property Act,

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which empowered the government to take over temporarily

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It was not just our family which was affected.

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The properties are worth billions of dollars.

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But our issue is that only my father took Pakistani nationality.

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We had to fight our case from the lowest to the highest

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And the Supreme Court judge said that by no stretch of imagination

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could I be considered an enemy, and considered me the heir

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to my father's properties, but then the government went

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and changed the laws and the battle has begun again.

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I suppose, like so many people in India and Pakistan,

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we are still caught up in the repercussions of partition

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and the acrimonious relations between India and Pakistan.

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In a way, I have been forced to live in the past.

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And with apologies to Yeats, I feel as if I am drowning

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in a beauty that has long since faded from this Earth.

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Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, speaking to us from his beautiful

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Next, to the summer of 1965, when a remarkable feat

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The Mont Blanc tunnel runs for 11 kilometres under the Alps.

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The dream of decades has come true and the Paris-Rome motor journey

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To both France and Italy this was an historic occasion.

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The joint opening ceremony was performed by General DeGaulle

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From here, this looks a pretty big hole, but when you think

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of the size of the mountain through which it is being driven,

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it is rather like trying to drive a needle through the granite

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Franco Cuaz is 91 now, and long retired, but he still lives

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Now, in 1977 a state hospital near Paris began quietly changing

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Obstetrician Dr Michel Odent believed that childbirth had

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He wanted a more natural approach, so he introduced a pool

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There is something special about the relationship

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As soon as it is lifted into the air, its lungs

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Dr Michel Odent, obstetrician, this is his maternity unit,

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run according to his deeply felt beliefs about women

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The right place to give birth would be the right place to make love.

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When I arrived in 1962, the way women were giving birth

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was the same as in any hospital, on a table, with legs in stirrups.

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But gradually, gradually, we reconsidered everything.

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We have introduced the concept of home-like birthing rooms,

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a smaller room with no visible medical equipment,

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to help women to feel more at home in the hospital.

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At a time when they still have the vision as hospital

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as a place where you come when you're sick, to die.

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1:00am, and a young couple have driven 150 miles

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to have their first baby here, in an ordinary state

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By changing the environment, we have attracted more women

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to our maternity unit, women coming from far away.

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And that is why I became an obstetrician!

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From 200 births a year, to 1,000 births a year.

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A pool to help mothers ease the pain of labour.

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Babies are occasionally born under water.

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We have painted the walls in blue, dolphins on the walls.

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They wanted to enter the birthing pool before it was full.

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The main objective was to break the vicious

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All medication, all drugs have side-effects.

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After being in the womb in warm fluid for nine months,

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the baby emerges happily into the warm water

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with its life-support system from the mother still intact.

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I remember the visit we had with this British obstetrician.

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Well, I do not think we would have room for it in our hospital.

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And I find Dr Odent's views about it a wonderful mixture

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I do not think the word "mysticism" is appropriate.

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It is true that I tried to consider in a scientific language

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TRANSLATION: It felt like a family atmosphere, very reassuring.

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It gave you confidence in yourself, and that is what I needed.

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I was pleased when I heard women talking in a positive way

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We have to learn from positive experiences,

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Michel Odent now lives in London and birthing pools are widely

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

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or you can catch up on over a thousand radio programmes

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Next, we're going back to August 1972 when the dictator Idi Amin

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ordered Uganda's Asian minority to leave the country, accusing them

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80,000 people were forced to leave Uganda, including Gita Watts.

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We had 90 days to sort everything out, to get out of the country and

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he sort of made the impression that if we didn't get out on time, we'd

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be sitting on fire. More than 12,000 towns and villages like this in

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Uganda. In every one of them, the Government is pressing its campaign

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against the Asian traders. The Asian community was close-knit, all the

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Asian shops inrolled together and we all knew each other. Each family and

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all the kids knew each other. We weren't well off but we were

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comfortable. People started rushing to the embassies and my dad had to

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sign everything over. That means his assets and his business, over to the

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Ugandan bank. We were given ?55, that's all he was allowed to take

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with him. It was just unbelievable, you know, after everything that he

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earned, he was just left with ?55. When we first got to the airport,

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people's luggage was opened and people were checking for gold and

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money and, for some reason, my parents put a ring on my finger. We

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were told to get that ring off me because the ring was so tight we

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struggled to take it off. My parents tried everything to take this ring

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off. In the end, it was cut off. The scariest bit was that we had

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soldiers with guns and knives surrounding us. I was panicking

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trying to get this ring off. It was a relief that we had to go on

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display when the plane was taking off. My dad was probably thinking,

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you know, he got his family out of the country at last. But he was

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leaving back something that he really loved, the country that he

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loved. The Asians arrived in cold wet weather at Stansted, whole

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families arriving with little cash. The few belongings they brought

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often seemed of nothing more than sentimental. The time of the year we

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arrived it was winter time. That made it worse as well with the rain.

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I had not seen the snow before. We were scared because we didn't know

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where would we go. I mean, my mum was told to take us to Leicester, a

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town called Leicester, we didn't know what it was like, we didn't

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know any English when I grew up and went to secondary school I came

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through a lot of racial abuse from kids, you know, calling names and

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waiting for me outside school and wanting to like beat me up and not

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liking my colour. Recently, we just went back to Uganda. I just wanted

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to see the country that I was born in and why my parents loved that

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country so much. It was nice to go back to the hospital where I was

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born. It really was an amazing experience. In all, 60,000 Asians

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were expelled from you began Da, nearly half settled in Britain,

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including Gita watts. Finally back to 1959 and a ground-breaking Royal

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wedding in Japan. Witness has been to Tokyo to meet a TV director whose

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coverage of the TV event entranced the nation. So he marries a

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commoner, breaking tradition of over 200 years.

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The ceremony lasting 15 minutes took place in a wooden shrine within the

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walls of the imperial palace. There was no hint of any western influence

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in the wedding ritual. In robes such as the members of the imperial

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family have worn for centuries, the Crown Prince and his bride were made

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man and wife. Burdened by no fewer than 12 kimonos, it took the

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Princess three hours to dress. The total weight was 33 pounds.

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Cheers accompanied them all the way as they proceeded on their drive

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through Tokyo. That is all from us this month. I

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hope you will join us next month back here at the British Library.

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We'll have five extraordinary accounts of hiss true through the

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eyes of people who were there. For now, from me and the rest of the

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team at Witness, goodbye. It's certainly looking like a

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weekend of two halves. Best of the weather today, cloud and some rain

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on the way tomorrow. Especially in the west.

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