05/01/2018 Witness

from me. At 10pm a full round-up of

the day's news but first here is

another chance to see the most

memorable stories from witness over

the last 12 months.

Welcome to the special edition of

witness from the British library.

Hello and welcome to

a special edition of Witness

with me Tanya Beckett,

here at the British

Library in London.

We'll be looking at five of the most

memorable stories from the witness

team from the past 12 months.

We'll meet an archaeologist who's

worked on the Terracotta Army site

for decades in China.

A friend of anti-apartheid

icon Steve Biko.

And the mother of one of Argentina's

disappeared children.

But first, after independence

in 1947 India was split

into two states.

One of the majority Muslim,

the other majority Hindu.

The repercussions of that split

are still being felt.

Mohammad Amir Mohammea Khan,

the Raja of Mahmudabad,

tells Witness how partition

affected his family and his home.

I am Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan,

known as Sulaiman to family

and friends, the Raja of Mahmudabad.

I am from a Muslim family which once

ruled a very large feudal estate,

including a beautiful palace

in Mahmudabad in

which we still live.

But the Indian government is laying

claim to my property,

saying that it is enemy property.

No-one is paying for it, so these

days, everything is crumbling.

This dispute goes back to 1947.

The partition of India into two

states, a Muslim-majority

state called Pakistan,

and a Hindu-majority state of India.

It was estimated that

a million people died,

ten million people were displaced.

Some Muslims went to

the state of Pakistan.

Many Hindus came to India.

It was not just the country

that was divided.

Families were divided, too.

In the late '50s, my father took

Pakistani nationality,

and that is when my family's

problems began, because when India

and Pakistan went to war in 1965,

the government laid claim

to our properties.

There was an act of parliament

called the Enemy Property Act,

which empowered the government

to take over, temporarily,

the properties of Pakistanis.

It was not just our family

which was affected.

Thousands of families were affected.

The properties are worth

billions of dollars.

But our issue is that only my father

took Pakistani nationality.

I have always been an Indian.

My mother was always an Indian.

We had to fight our case

from the lowest to the highest

court, and in every court, we won.

And the supreme court judge said

that by no stretch of imagination

could I be considered an enemy,

and considered me the heir

to my father's properties.

But then, the government went

and changed the laws,

and the battle has begun again.

I suppose, like so many people

in India and Pakistan,

we are still caught up

in the repercussions of partition,

and the acrimonious relations

between India and Pakistan.

In a way, I've been forced

to live in the past.

And, with apologies to Yeats,

I feel as if I'm drowning

in a beauty that has long

since faded from this earth.

Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan

there, speaking to us

from his beautiful palace in India.

Now to one of the greatest

archaeological finds of the 20th

century.

In the spring of 1974,

local farmers in China accidentally

uncovered the site of the vast

Terracotta Army.

Our next witness is an archaeologist

who has dedicated her career

to the remarkable

life sized figures.

It is a vast pottery army slowly

being unearthed from the tomb

where it has lain for more

than 2000 years.

At one time...

I've worked at the site

for many years.

She still works at the site

of the Terracotta Army in Xian.

In 1977, anti-apartheid

activist Steve Biko,

leader of the Black Consciousness

Movement in South Africa,

died in police custody.

Weeks earlier, he had been arrested.

Witness has spoken to

Biko's friend Peter Jones

who was arrested with him.

I miss my friend Steve Biko and I am

forever in his debt.

Steve Biko is one of the people that

originated the new generation of

young political minded black people.

The Black Consciousness Movement.

We believe in our country there

will be no minority, no majority,

there will just be people.

And those people will have the same

status before the law

and they will have the same rights

before the law.

The apartheid government ensured

there was no resistance

against its doctrines

and against its policies.

There was a roadblock

and they then searched the car.

They found an identity document

which was mine, they then said,

"Who is Peter Jones?"

And I said, "That's me".

He said, "Oh, and who

are you, big man?"

That's now Steve.

And Steve said, "I'm

Steve Bantu Biko."

And we were then locked up

together in one cell.

The next morning we started

getting an uneasy feeling

because there were now more police

and in a convoy of three cars

we sped towards Port Elizabeth.

In Port Elizabeth was

the headquarters of the security

police for that region.

The building has been converted

into a block of flats.

Steve Biko was being walked to his

death along this very corridor,

a man poised to fill the void left

behind after Mandela was jailed.

We got taken up to the fifth floor

and we were manacled each

to a separate window.

One of the senior police,

a major, came in and said,

"Now I can confirm that

you are officially being

detained under section six

of the terrorism act."

That is the act in which you

literally disappear.

They separated us, I only had

a chance to shout Steve's name

and that was the last time I saw

Steve alive.

Three weeks and three days later,

I just heard a lot of commotion,

many, many people singing protest

songs, the cell next to mine

was being filled with many people.

Then this young man told me

that they have just returned

from the funeral of Steve Biko

and that was the first

time that I heard about

the death of Steve Biko.

I went to my mat that was my bed

and I then just sat there...

With...

To me, it was like a huge hole

in my soul, just inconsolability

which even today would make me weep

at unexpected moments.

The police said the leader

of the Black Consciousness Movement

had lost his life by accident

when his head struck a wall

while he was being restrained.

Steve Biko's family believe

he was thrown at the wall quite

deliberately by the police officers.

Steve Biko's death and the brutality

of it highlighted like no other

event at the time the extent

to which the apartheid regime

would go to protect itself.

Peter James remembering

his friend, Steve Biko.

Remember, you can find all of our

programmes online. In the late 1970s

thousands of young men and women

were detained in Argentina for their

opposition to military rule, amongst

those who went missing was Anna

Maria, her mother spoke to Witness.

They are called the mothers, in the

centre of the capital, where they

hold the same sad demonstration

every way, they have all had at

least one relative who has

disappeared.

In the offices of the muscles of the

disappeared. In 1953 American

husband and wife Julius and Ethel

Rosenberg were executed by electric

chair after being convicted of

spying for the Soviet Union. Our

final witness is the Rosenberg's son

Robert.

One of the greatest

peacetime spy dramas in the history

of the nation reaches its climax as

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg

convicted of transmitting secrets to

Russia into the federal building in

New York to hear their doom.

The

last time I saw my parents was in a

prison just a couple of days before

they were executed in June 19 53. I

have this very strong visceral sense

of a warm and loving family and my

father played word games with my

brother. I sat on my mother's lap,

they were pretending like nothing

was wrong, that we would see them

like we would see them in another

few weeks. My brother, he knew that

was wrong, and he wanted them to

acknowledge the terrible situation

that we were all in. And so he

started wailing, one more day to

live. Both my parents were children

of the depression, they grew up in

poverty on the lower East side of

Manhattan, and my father Julius was

an electrical engineer, a member of

the American Communist Party, and my

mother Ethel was a housewife will

my father was arrested in July,

1950, in New York City. My mother

was arrested, both were charged with

conspiracy to commit espionage and

the government said Julius Rosenberg

was a master spy who led an atomic

spy ring that stole the secret of

the atomic bomb and gave it to the

Soviet Union in 1945. Julius was

guilty of espionage but it didn't

have anything to do with the secret

of the atomic bomb, he had no

knowledge of this, and it is hard

for me to believe that my mother

didn't know about what he was doing

but there is no credible evidence

that my mother participated in it in

any way. This was the great red

scare, the McCarthy period, the

government was saying there was this

international Communist conspiracy

that was out to destroy our way of

life. Fear makes powerful people do

very dangerous things. The trial at

which they were convicted was a

travesty, we now know that the judge

said Goody communicated with the

prosecution that evidence was

fabricated and the chief prosecution

witnesses perjured themselves. The

government of the United States used

the death penalty not as punishment

but as extortion, the purpose as one

of the FBI agent said, we didn't

want them to die, we wanted them to

talk. There was a worldwide movement

and a mass movement even within the

United States at the height of the

McCarthy period to save the lives of

my parents. They were executed on

June 19, a month after my sixth

birthday. My brother hung his head.

I came in and I knew something was

wrong, but I didn't want to hear

about it. Even a month after the

execution I'd say, when are we going

to see mum and dad, and he would

have to remind me that they were

dead. My parents should not have

been executed and we took on a

campaign to exonerate Ethel. Have we

given up? No, we haven't thought of

my brother and I are marathon people

and we will keep going.

Robert

remembering his parents. That is all

from this special edition of Witness

at the British Library, but we will

be back soon to bring you more

extraordinary moments of history.

And the remarkable people who

witnessed them. But for now, from

the anti-rest of the team, goodbye.

-- from me and the rest of the team,

goodbye.