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at more than 40. Now, it's time for Witness, with | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Hello, and welcome to Witness, with me, Tanya Beckett. | :00:00. | :00:29. | |
I'm at the British Library in London to bring | :00:30. | :00:31. | |
you five more unique glimpses into history | :00:32. | :00:33. | |
This month, we'll hear from the victim of one of India's first | :00:34. | :00:40. | |
high-profile sexual harassment cases. | :00:41. | :00:47. | |
A Berliner who remembers West Berlin's Soviet blockade. | :00:48. | :00:49. | |
And the musicians behind a Swahili pop | :00:50. | :00:50. | |
But we start in Mogadishu in 1993, when a US raid against a | :00:51. | :00:56. | |
Abdul Aziz Ali Ibrahim was an eyewitness to the incident which | :00:57. | :01:04. | |
What I remember is, people were lying on | :01:05. | :01:14. | |
the streets, even including Americans. | :01:15. | :01:24. | |
I knew Somali people would pay a very, very | :01:25. | :01:26. | |
The drought came, and many people were dying. | :01:27. | :01:33. | |
That was the reason why the United Nations | :01:34. | :01:35. | |
intervene by force - to deliver food. | :01:36. | :01:47. | |
General Mohamed Farrah Aidid was the most powerful warlord in | :01:48. | :01:53. | |
The Aidid militias started fighting with the United Nations | :01:54. | :01:58. | |
peacekeeping mission, so Americans started | :01:59. | :02:00. | |
going after Aidid, and the | :02:01. | :02:04. | |
When it was confirmed that Aidid's generals, | :02:05. | :02:15. | |
supporters and allies were meeting, the Americans decided | :02:16. | :02:17. | |
This was an enemy territory, and it all | :02:18. | :02:23. | |
Just a few kilometres away from my home, I started seeing | :02:24. | :02:29. | |
When they passed, the Aidid militias started blocking | :02:30. | :02:41. | |
the streets, so even if Americans wanted to go | :02:42. | :02:43. | |
Around 3:30pm, we arrived where the meeting was | :02:44. | :02:47. | |
When they started, the Aidid militias started shooting. | :02:48. | :02:53. | |
When the first helicopter was hit, it was | :02:54. | :02:55. | |
And where it landed, it is less than 700 yards | :02:56. | :03:02. | |
While the first helicopter was down, they were | :03:03. | :03:10. | |
trying to defend themselves, and Americans were trying to protect | :03:11. | :03:14. | |
that helicopter, and another helicopter was also shot, so things | :03:15. | :03:17. | |
The Somali militias were firing everywhere. | :03:18. | :03:30. | |
Every space they can see or shoot Americans, they | :03:31. | :03:33. | |
The Americans were firing back, and any threat they | :03:34. | :03:43. | |
have seen, they were shooting, including civilians, because they | :03:44. | :03:45. | |
18 Americans were killed, and 73 Americans wounded, and I heard | :03:46. | :03:59. | |
people saying 1000 Somali people were the casualties. | :04:00. | :04:02. | |
The Aidid supporters and militias, they were | :04:03. | :04:09. | |
dragging the dead American soldier in the streets of Mogadishu, and the | :04:10. | :04:16. | |
people that were celebrating were from Aidid's part, they were not | :04:17. | :04:19. | |
We are very, very sorry for the loss of those who came | :04:20. | :04:22. | |
The American government decided to pull out their troops | :04:23. | :04:28. | |
So, once again, the fighting started by the warring | :04:29. | :04:37. | |
Taking down these helicopters, it was a very | :04:38. | :04:48. | |
successful operation for them, but for us, it was disaster. | :04:49. | :04:51. | |
Abdul Aziz Ali Ibrahim went on to become a | :04:52. | :04:54. | |
Next, we're going back to 1948 and one of | :04:55. | :04:57. | |
the first confrontations of the Cold War. | :04:58. | :05:00. | |
The Soviet Union blocked access to West Berlin, so the Western | :05:01. | :05:03. | |
powers started to supply the city by air in what became known as the | :05:04. | :05:07. | |
Ulrich Kirchbaum was a child in Berlin | :05:08. | :05:15. | |
TRANSLATION: We didn't know anything different. | :05:16. | :05:23. | |
It was only three or four years after the end of | :05:24. | :05:25. | |
Our flats had been destroyed, but it didn't bother us. | :05:26. | :05:36. | |
There was a lot of disease, nothing to eat. | :05:37. | :05:46. | |
Berlin was separated into four parts, | :05:47. | :05:50. | |
surrounded by the Soviet occupation zone. | :05:51. | :05:54. | |
The Soviets tried to force the Western powers out. | :05:55. | :06:01. | |
ARCHIVE: On June the 18th, all road traffic from the | :06:02. | :06:03. | |
The reason given, a bridge was under repair. | :06:04. | :06:07. | |
TRANSLATION: Overnight, all traffic was stopped. | :06:08. | :06:08. | |
ARCHIVE: There was one way into Berlin which the Russians couldn't | :06:09. | :06:17. | |
put under repair - the right of way by air. | :06:18. | :06:20. | |
There are three air corridors to Berlin, from Hamburg, | :06:21. | :06:25. | |
from Hanover, and in the south from Frankfurt. | :06:26. | :06:28. | |
TRANSLATION: Every plane they could find was sent to Germany | :06:29. | :06:31. | |
There had never been anything like it. | :06:32. | :06:38. | |
ARCHIVE: It takes a lot to feed 2.5 million people, keep them healthy | :06:39. | :06:41. | |
TRANSLATION: They landed here, in Templehof airport. | :06:42. | :06:52. | |
There would be American lorries waiting. | :06:53. | :06:55. | |
Berliners would unload the planes and they | :06:56. | :06:58. | |
would go back to Frankfurt in a kind of loop. | :06:59. | :07:05. | |
They would bring medicines, fuel, household supplies, everything | :07:06. | :07:07. | |
We stood on the balcony, and we timed it on our | :07:08. | :07:12. | |
In the end, every 90 seconds, a plane would come, vroom, | :07:13. | :07:17. | |
over our house, then on over the rooftops to land in Templehof. | :07:18. | :07:22. | |
And during these flights, one pilot had an idea. | :07:23. | :07:39. | |
Gail Halvorsen was a 19-year-old Lieutenant, and he was | :07:40. | :07:42. | |
standing at a fence when some children came up to ask him for some | :07:43. | :07:45. | |
So, he said, why don't I drop sweets down from the plane? | :07:46. | :07:50. | |
So, where three or four years ago, there | :07:51. | :07:52. | |
had been bombs being dropped, now, there were little chocolate bars, | :07:53. | :07:55. | |
each wrapped in an individual little parachute. | :07:56. | :07:57. | |
Whenever he came over, he would move his wings up and down, | :07:58. | :08:02. | |
After a year and three months, the airlift came to an end. | :08:03. | :08:20. | |
ARCHIVE: It's a great day in Berlin, a day | :08:21. | :08:22. | |
Soviet planners did not understand our determination to fulfil our | :08:23. | :08:25. | |
obligations to the people under our charge. | :08:26. | :08:32. | |
TRANSLATION: The Soviet Union had seen that they couldn't | :08:33. | :08:36. | |
get round the Berliners, they couldn't break their will. | :08:37. | :08:43. | |
This airlift meant that our gratitude to | :08:44. | :08:51. | |
-- This airlift meant that our attitude to | :08:52. | :08:54. | |
the Americans, to the English, the French, changed radically. | :08:55. | :08:56. | |
We had been enemies during the war, but | :08:57. | :08:58. | |
Ulrich Kirchbaum, speaking to us from | :08:59. | :09:01. | |
Templehof airport in Berlin, one of the centres of the airlift. | :09:02. | :09:04. | |
And he still lives just around the corner. | :09:05. | :09:07. | |
Now, we're going back to 1956, when five American missionaries were | :09:08. | :09:10. | |
killed by members of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon jungle of | :09:11. | :09:13. | |
They had gone there to try to convert them to Christianity. | :09:14. | :09:20. | |
Valerie Shepherd's father was one of the missionaries killed. | :09:21. | :09:26. | |
My father and the other four missionaries | :09:27. | :09:27. | |
definitely knew it was dangerous, but they were willing to give up | :09:28. | :09:30. | |
their lives in order for the Huaorani to know the truth, | :09:31. | :09:37. | |
My father arrived in Ecuador in March 1952 to | :09:38. | :09:48. | |
be a missionary to indigenous or primitive tribes in the Amazon | :09:49. | :09:51. | |
He found out about the Huaorani through another missionary who | :09:52. | :10:05. | |
This missionary said that the Huaorani were very | :10:06. | :10:08. | |
violent, Stone Age, and they knew nothing about the outside world. | :10:09. | :10:10. | |
It just caught his heart, and he felt | :10:11. | :10:12. | |
that those were the people he was supposed to go to. | :10:13. | :10:20. | |
My father and a missionary pilot took several | :10:21. | :10:23. | |
flights over the Amazon jungle, looking for this group of Indians, | :10:24. | :10:27. | |
and eventually came upon this one very small settlement of the | :10:28. | :10:30. | |
It seemed an old man stood behind the house and waved | :10:31. | :10:44. | |
with both of his arms, as if to signal for us to come down. | :10:45. | :10:48. | |
The pilot by that time had found a spit of a beach | :10:49. | :10:57. | |
along the river that he knew the Huaorani could walk to. | :10:58. | :11:02. | |
These five men decided to set up camp on that | :11:03. | :11:04. | |
After three days of waiting at the camp, there were | :11:05. | :11:14. | |
three Huaorani that came out of the jungle - | :11:15. | :11:18. | |
The joy of the five men was that they | :11:19. | :11:21. | |
were perfectly friendly and there didn't seem | :11:22. | :11:24. | |
But the Huaorani were, of course, suspicious of these white | :11:25. | :11:29. | |
men and really had no idea of the goodwill | :11:30. | :11:31. | |
They might be deceiving them, they said. | :11:32. | :11:37. | |
They might be tricking us, and we had better kill them | :11:38. | :11:40. | |
We believe it was around three in the afternoon, ten men arrived at | :11:41. | :11:49. | |
the beach, and with their spears, they brutally speared all five of | :11:50. | :11:52. | |
the men and left the bodies in the water. | :11:53. | :12:01. | |
After my father's death, my mother got to know two Huaorani | :12:02. | :12:04. | |
women who had fled the tribe because of | :12:05. | :12:14. | |
and they said, we want you and the pilot's | :12:15. | :12:16. | |
While we lived with them, and we were there almost two and a half | :12:17. | :12:26. | |
years, I, of course, got to know all of the tribe | :12:27. | :12:29. | |
and the ten men who had done the killing. | :12:30. | :12:31. | |
Amazingly, I really don't remember being afraid | :12:32. | :12:33. | |
They were always laughing, and they would always make my mother | :12:34. | :12:37. | |
laugh, so I simply enjoyed being with them. | :12:38. | :12:46. | |
Of course, it was a tragedy, and of course, I have often | :12:47. | :12:55. | |
wished that I had known my dad, still do. | :12:56. | :12:59. | |
believe that God allowed this to happen so that more and more | :13:00. | :13:03. | |
people could actually see what real commitment to Christ means, and I | :13:04. | :13:06. | |
really don't believe their lives were wasted. | :13:07. | :13:08. | |
Today, the Huaorani tribe still lives in the Ecuadorian | :13:09. | :13:10. | |
Remember, you can watch Witness every month on the BBC News | :13:11. | :13:14. | |
Channel, or you can catch up on all of our films, | :13:15. | :13:16. | |
along with more than 1000 radio programmes, in our online | :13:17. | :13:19. | |
And now to the Indian state of Punjab and the country's first | :13:20. | :13:29. | |
high-profile sexual harassment trial. | :13:30. | :13:35. | |
In 1988, Rupan Deol Bajaj was a high-ranking female civil servant, | :13:36. | :13:40. | |
but none of that mattered when she was sexually harassed | :13:41. | :13:43. | |
at an official party by the state's top policeman. | :13:44. | :13:48. | |
She may be working-class, an officer, she may | :13:49. | :13:52. | |
In 1988, I was serving as special secretary | :13:53. | :14:03. | |
There was a dinner party hosted by the Home | :14:04. | :14:18. | |
Secretary, and Mr KPS Gill, who was the director-general of police, was | :14:19. | :14:20. | |
He called out to me and said, Mrs Bajaj, I want to talk to | :14:21. | :14:26. | |
He got up and he came and stood in front of me, | :14:27. | :14:30. | |
He put the finger in my face like that, and he said, up. | :14:31. | :14:37. | |
So, I said, Mr Gill, go away from here. | :14:38. | :14:54. | |
And I got out from the gap in between him and me, | :14:55. | :15:02. | |
and when I was going, that | :15:03. | :15:03. | |
Always, people have considered it to be a very trivial | :15:04. | :15:10. | |
thing, but I could not get over the enormity of it. | :15:11. | :15:19. | |
Letting it go meant living with lowered self esteem, | :15:20. | :15:21. | |
gulping down my humiliation, facing that person every day, facing all | :15:22. | :15:24. | |
Consequences of complaining, I had not really | :15:25. | :15:30. | |
Nobody was willing to take up the case for me | :15:31. | :15:37. | |
because they were so frightened of the DGP. | :15:38. | :15:40. | |
He was the highest-ranking police officer, with all the powers | :15:41. | :15:42. | |
No one wanted to do anything against him. | :15:43. | :15:46. | |
And I found that no one had ever filed in | :15:47. | :15:52. | |
section 509 and 354, which are the lesser offences | :15:53. | :15:55. | |
17 long years of my life, all of it was taken up by this one | :15:56. | :16:05. | |
The lower courts had quashed the case, they had thrown it out. | :16:06. | :16:11. | |
The case reached the Supreme Court, and | :16:12. | :16:13. | |
it was the Supreme Court which called for all the records, | :16:14. | :16:16. | |
reinstated the matter, and also laid down... | :16:17. | :16:20. | |
They reprimanded the High Court judge and said, this cannot be | :16:21. | :16:27. | |
All the people, in every household, this | :16:28. | :16:30. | |
was the talk between husband and wife. | :16:31. | :16:37. | |
I attended the proceedings of the trial throughout, along with my | :16:38. | :16:55. | |
But on the day the verdict came, I specially requested, I said, | :16:56. | :17:04. | |
KPS Gill was expecting to win, so they had | :17:05. | :17:10. | |
And then my husband's driver rang up and said, | :17:11. | :17:14. | |
madam, he has been convicted on both counts. | :17:15. | :17:17. | |
I fought against the mindset of a society. | :17:18. | :17:27. | |
People have started saying, now, offences | :17:28. | :17:28. | |
Rupan Deol Bajaj retired not long after the final judgment in the | :17:29. | :17:39. | |
She now runs an academy helping people get into the Indian | :17:40. | :17:43. | |
Finally, this week, we are going back to Kenya in 1980, when | :17:44. | :17:48. | |
the booming tourist industry turned a Swahili pop song into a global | :17:49. | :17:51. | |
# Kenya nchi nzuri, Hakuna Matata...# | :17:52. | :18:17. | |
The tourists were just crazy about this | :18:18. | :18:21. | |
It went silver then gold, then it went platinum. | :18:22. | :18:27. | |
That came as a complete surprise to me. | :18:28. | :18:38. | |
I started the group, Them Mushrooms, in 1972. | :18:39. | :18:44. | |
Me and him were working in a cement factory in Mombasa. | :18:45. | :18:47. | |
There was a lot of tourists coming into Mombasa, so | :18:48. | :18:50. | |
it was a very vibrant scene in Mombasa. | :18:51. | :18:54. | |
We were playing mostly Congolese stuff and Kenyan music, or | :18:55. | :19:00. | |
whatever, but when we realised that we could make more money and playing | :19:01. | :19:04. | |
for less time for tourists, we switched to play these cover | :19:05. | :19:06. | |
versions of chart music from Europe and from America. | :19:07. | :19:11. | |
One night, I think it was late 1979, I was sitting at | :19:12. | :19:23. | |
the pool bar after a performance, and there were these tourists in the | :19:24. | :19:26. | |
pool, played around and joking, trying to speak Swahili. | :19:27. | :19:32. | |
And I got this idea, maybe we should write a | :19:33. | :19:36. | |
song with the simplest words in Swahili and get the tourists to | :19:37. | :19:49. | |
learn Swahili while they sang along and danced to our music. | :19:50. | :19:52. | |
All guests and visitors are welcome to Kenya. | :19:53. | :20:09. | |
When we finished, another tourist would come and say, can you do this | :20:10. | :20:35. | |
We had to do it about 20 times, and any financial | :20:36. | :20:40. | |
We had to do it about 20 times, and then the financial | :20:41. | :20:43. | |
director of PolyGram said, here's my card. | :20:44. | :20:45. | |
We didn't know that it was going to be this big. | :20:46. | :20:50. | |
After recording, the rest was history. | :20:51. | :20:53. | |
When we signed the agreement with PolyGram at that | :20:54. | :20:55. | |
time, I didn't know much about copyright ownership. | :20:56. | :20:57. | |
We were just happy to have our music recorded and | :20:58. | :20:59. | |
so many people have wanted to do cover versions of it. | :21:00. | :21:02. | |
Most Kenyans say this is a song for the tourists, | :21:03. | :21:04. | |
But they are proud of it and at least it has | :21:05. | :21:10. | |
given some kind of identity to Kenya. | :21:11. | :21:19. | |
Any Kenyan who goes overseas, they are always asking, you know | :21:20. | :21:22. | |
the song and start singing, which is a big honour for us. | :21:23. | :21:33. | |
Billy Saro Harrison, and Terry Kalanda Harrison, | :21:34. | :21:34. | |
That's all from Witness for this month. | :21:35. | :21:43. | |
We'll be back here at the British Library in March. | :21:44. | :21:46. | |
Next month, don't miss our India direct | :21:47. | :21:48. | |
From me and from the rest of the witness team, goodbye. | :21:49. | :22:20. | |
After a burst of cold air at the end of the week, things are more mild | :22:21. | :22:26. | |
this weekend. It has been cloudy and windy across many parts, but there | :22:27. | :22:28. |