• BBC coverage
• FAQ Militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is the World.  Militants in Pakistan have carried out scores of attacks during the past few years.  Several of them have targeted foreigners, so today’s attack in the capital, Islamabad, was in one sense not all that surprising, but in another sense, it was shocking.  A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a heavily fortified UN compound.  Five employees of the World Food Program were killed.  They were colleagues of Amjad Jamal.  He’s a spokesman for the World Food Program in Islamabad.  And Amjad, first of all, we’re very sorry for the loss of your colleagues.  Now, you weren’t in the building at the time of the attack, but you did rush back.  Have you been able to kind of piece together what exactly happened?

AMJAD JAMAL:  Yes, indeed.  I was in Musafirabad, as you mentioned, and I was not in Islamabad.  I was on a duty travel, and I heard from my colleague in Islamabad that there’s a blast in our office.  It was found out that a suicide bomber somehow managed to get into our building, and that’s where he blew himself up.

WERMAN:  Now this is a heavily fortified compound, and we know most of this now based on security cameras.  But given how heavy the security is, is there any sense now how the attacker actually managed to penetrate the premises?

JAMAL:  The footage and the evidence collected from the scene, and also the briefing made by the interior minister did also suggest that this suicide bomber was in an Armed Forces uniform.  And somehow, he did not enter from the main gate, but he entered from the other side of it where our vehicles are parked.

WERMAN:  And this was, we should remind our listeners, this was your workplace.  That’s got to be terrifying, not just that it happened, but at your workplace, a policeman impostor managed to get inside.

JAMAL:  Absolutely right.  This is worrisome, how someone can just enter into a UN compound or UN building and can damage.

WERMAN:  The World Food Program has a noble mission, feeding the hungry.  Do you have any idea why you were targeted?

JAMAL:  Indeed, the United Nations system in Pakistan has earlier received threats from the militants and from these extremist elements.   Our work is serving humanity.  We are feeding the hungry too.  And also in Pakistan, as you know, there are food crises, there are economic crises.  So targeting humanitarians and targeting humanitarian agencies will not only hamper our humanitarian work, but it will also attack the poor of our country.

WERMAN:  You referred to the people who perpetrated this act as militants and extremist elements.  Do they have a name?  Do you know more specifically who it might be?

JAMAL:  Nobody has claimed any responsibility yet of this particular suicidal attack, and earlier, the threats received were from various smallest organizations.

WERMAN:  Now, Amjad, five of your colleagues were killed today, people you knew and whom you worked with.  Tell us something about them.

JAMAL:  Yes, indeed.  This is absolutely heartbreaking.  These colleagues, four of them, the national ones, I have worked with them for so many years.  I’ve known them since 2003.  It’s a very long association that I had with them.  These are really very, very dear colleagues.  I mean, the entire staff of WFP, I know each of them personally, because of me traveling a lot in the area of our operations.  And these colleagues were like the lady at the reception.  We deal with her, say every second hour, we talk to her, we have some common issues that we discuss, we have official issues to discuss.  The guys in finance, you know, everybody goes to finance quite often.  These were really problem solvers, not problem creators, on official issues, on personal issues. I really have no words to express.  I’m really sad, tomorrow or day after when I go to the office, I will not see their faces.

WERMAN:  Amjad Jamal is spokesman for the World Food Program in Islamabad, whose offices were attacked today by a suicide bomber.  Our condolences again, Mr. Jamal.  Thank you for your time.

JAMAL:  Thank you very much indeed, Marco.

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• Illustrated transscript
• BBC coverage
• In pictures: villages destroyed

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is the World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston.  Indonesian officials in West Sumatra say some villages engulfed by landslides after last week’s earthquake will be left as mass graves.  A spokesman said money would be better spent on the living than on retrieving about 400 bodies believed to be buried under the mud and rocks.  Some semblance of normal life is returning to the provincial capital, Padang, but bad weather is hampering efforts to get aid to outlying areas.  Reporter Ann Dornfeld visited one of them.  She sent us this story from the village of Bungus Timur, about 12 miles south of Padang.

ANN DORNFELD:  Corrugated metal roofs rest intact on small piles of rubble.  A house with a missing wall reveals what appears to be a teenager’s bedroom, complete with a poster of a pop star still tacked to a remaining wall.  The men of Bungus Timur are crowded around an aid truck that’s just arrived with emergency supplies.  The fat bags of tarps, blankets, and toothpaste sit within reach, but there aren’t enough to go around, and the villagers are debating who should get help first.

[Villagers speaking Malay].

DORNFELD: All 40-year-old Ernawati can do is watch. Women here don’t have a say in such matters.  Ernawati goes by only one name.  That’s common in Indonesia.   She works in the rice fields, husking grains in a small wooden mill.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

DORNFELD:  Ernawati had been in the fields all day and just arrived home to her three children when the earthquake hit.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

INTERPRETER: I screamed, “God Almighty! God Almighty!” Everything shook. My house cracked, and the houses around me crumbled. I thought it was doomsday!  Our house is no longer safe. We are sleeping on the street under a plastic sheet.

DORNFELD: Ernawati says her children are in shock.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

INTERPRETER:  Especially my youngest child is traumatized because of the quake. Every time I try to take him near the house he runs away.”

DORNFELD: In the four days since the earthquake, the family has eaten only donated instant noodles and rice.  They cook them in river water.  Ernawati says they can’t afford to buy vegetables.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

INTERPRETER: I get paid in rice – about three kilos a day. That’s worth about a dollar fifty.

DORNFELD: Her husband works in the rice fields, too, when there’s work.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

INTERPRETER: My husband and other men in this village also collect sand from the banks of the river to sell for construction.

DORNFELD: The sand Ernawati’s husband gathers is mixed into cement and used to lay bricks.

People in West Sumatra say unscrupulous builders often dilute their cement mixtures with extra sand.   Some say that might explain why so many of the destroyed buildings in the region are now piles of bricks, while wooden structures remain mostly intact.  It’s time for Ernawati to go back to the rice fields.  The farmer has work for her today, and she needs her paycheck of rice.

But with her house destroyed, what she really needs is some money.

ERNAWATI:  [speaking Maylay].

DORNFELD:  She says, “Maybe after people rebuild their houses they’ll need more sand, and the men can get more work. But right now,” she says, “our life is only getting more difficult.”  For the World, I’m Ann Dornfeld in West Sumatra, Indonesia.

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MARCO WERMAN: A tale of two cities along the U-S-Canadian border is heading for an unhappy ending.  The towns are Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec.  They sit right next to each other.  In fact, the library and the opera house straddle the border.  One resident of Stanstead says her community and Derby Line are like brother and sister.  But now, brother and sister are being separated.  A pair of five-foot-tall steel gates are being put up across two streets.

Raymond Yates is the Mayor of Stanstead, Quebec, and Mayor Yates, tell us about these gates.  Why have they been put up and who decided to put them up?

MAYOR RAYMOND YATES:  Well, we’ve been fighting this issue really to be able to keep our streets open, because of the historical facts of Stanstead and Derby Line.  And nobody really wanted to see the street closed.  But instead of really having fences and stuff like that, we came to an agreement to implant some private gates, but they were–

WERMAN:  Mayor Yates, let me just jump in here. I thought the gates were a post-9/11 Homeland Security undertaking.  It sounds like what you’re saying is that the citizens of Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont, decided to put this gate up.  But isn’t that kind of thing, a gate between two sovereign nations, a federal jurisdiction thing?

YATES:  It was all enforced by the American government, of course.  But on the other hand, myself, I had to take the responsibility of acknowledging the safety of our people on the border–

WERMAN:  Let’s talk about the scope of that security threat, because according to the US border patrol, criminal smuggling organizations use Stanstead, your town, as a gateway to smuggle people from the US to Canada.  Is that a legitimate threat in your opinion?

YATES:  It’s really alleged [INDISCERNIBLE] statement, okay.  Yes, of course, because of the open streets that were there, the people that they apprehended, some of them came from Arizona, a little bit of all of the states of the United States.  He had maps and everything.

WERMAN:  Now you initially opposed the gates, Mayor Yates.  Why did you change your mind?

YATES:  Yes, I did, just like everybody else.  We didn’t want for them to take away really what belonged to us and what we had been living for years and years.  And I didn’t want the whole world to see a picture that either one of the towns were dividing two nations.  You know, we get along real fine.  It’s not us.  The problem– the people from Stanstead comply with the laws that are required by both lands.

WERMAN:  We’re talking here, Mayor Yates, against the context of the specter of Al Qaida coming across the border of Homeland Security.  But let me ask you the key issue for a lot of your residents, and it will probably be a major test for the new gates: what is the drinking age in Stanstead and what is it in Vermont?

YATES:  I think that here in Canada, it’s 18, and in Vermont, I think it’s 21.

WERMAN:  It’ll be interesting to see how many 19 year old Vermonters manage to make it over that five-foot gate under the influence.

YATES:  You think so?

WERMAN:  Yeah.  Could be interesting to watch.

YATES:  [laughs]  I don’t think really that any Vermonters that come up here drinking has ever used any gates really.  They’ve always come across the border.  I’m not saying they won’t go through Church Street, okay, which is no gates there.

WERMAN:  So there are streets, Mayor Yates, in Stanstead that don’t have gates?

YATES:  There is one that is not going to have gates.

WERMAN:  So what’s the point of putting gates on these other two streets?

YATES:  Well, the other two streets are really streets that they’ve been using a lot more, okay. Ball Street, which is really close to the interstate and the autoroute here, but the thing is, is I think that there was more crossing into Canada by these streets, even on foot, but they won’t be able with a vehicle come through there.

WERMAN:  If I’m a terrorist, I’m going to go down to that other street that doesn’t have a gate.

YATES:  Yeah, but you won’t get far.  There’s no need of them to try, because they won’t get very far.

WERMAN:  Raymond Yates, the mayor of Stanstead, Quebec, thank you very much indeed, sir.

YATES:  My pleasure, sir.  Have a good day.

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• “Dress Codes” exhibition at the ICP in New York City
• More on Miguel Caballero, “the Armani of Armored Clothing”

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is the World.  Here’s some news from the runway, the fashion runway, that is.  Germany’s highest-circulation women’s magazine says that, next year, it will stop working with professional models.  Instead, it’ll favor women with bodies more like those of its readers.  Brigitte magazine says its photos of women will focus more on their identity than on any protruding bones.  Of course, fashion trends come and go, but one thing that’s never going to go out of fashion is protection.  The World’s Alex Gallafent is in New York, and Alex, what do I mean by that?

ALEX GALLAFENT: Marco, there’s a show here I’m going to tell you about.  It features, amongst other things, photos– it’s a photo exhibition–  of high-end clothing, but it’s clothing with a protective secret.

WERMAN: And what is the protective secret?

GALLAFENT: Well, it’s  secret that I’m going to let you in onto immediately, so it’s not much of a secret.  But the secret is that all these clothes are all bulletproof.

WERMAN: So they’re bulletproof clothes, and they’re in photographs.  Where are the photographs being shown?

GALLAFENT: They’re being shown at the International Center of Photography, which is here in New York City. Every three years, it holds a big triennial exhibition, which tends to be a very international affair.  This year, there are 34 artists from 18 different countries exhibiting photos.  One of them is Milagros de la Torre.  She’s Peruvian born.  She’s a photographer that now divides her time between here, New York, and Mexico City.  But the clothes themselves, they come from Colombia.

MILAGROS DE LA TORRE:  Through research, I found out that the producer is a Colombian called Miguel Caballero.  He has been named the Armani of the armored clothing.  He’s having his business expanded, not only in Latin America, but all over, even in Afghanistan.  And, you know, he’s really doing quite well.

WERMAN: Okay, so the clothes come from the Armani of the armored clothing world, but who’s wearing them?  People on the receiving end possibly of bullets?

GALLAFENT: Well, I mean, all sorts of people.  I think one of the ideas behind bulletproof clothing is that you don’t know that someone’s wearing it.  It’s kind of concealed.  But, you know, she says businesspeople, politicians in particular. And it was also reported , not necessarily confirmed, that President Obama wore items from the line during his inauguration. And even if that’s not true, it all adds to the mystique fashion brands like this like to build around themselves, especially if they’ve got armor plating hidden in the middle.

WERMAN: Mm, you’ve whetted my appetite.  I want to see this.  There’s a slideshow online, right?

GALLAFENT: Yes, it’s up at the world.org, and you can see Milagros de la Torre’s photos of the clothes there, and hear my conversation with her too. And you really should see the clothes, some of which kind of defy belief when you remember that this, I don’t know, a light summer shirt is bulletproof.

MILAGROS DE LA TORRE:  They’re not very conspicuous.  They don’t shout out loud what their real purpose is.

WERMAN: Yeah, they’d better not shout out loud.  And you can see the slideshow online, that’s at theworld.org.  The World’s Alex Gallafent in New York.  Thank you so much, Alex.

GALLAFENT: Sure thing Marco.

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MARCO WERMAN:  In Afghanistan today, election officials starting recounting suspect ballots from August’s disputed presidential election.  The results of the recount are expected next week.

The election crisis has called into question the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai, as well as the future of the whole US operation in Afghanistan.  The World’s Jeb Sharp has this update.

JEB SHARP:  Allegations of fraud have been widespread ever since the election was carried out.  Officials are re-examining two main categories of suspect ballot boxes, those from ballot stations reporting 100 percent turnout, and boxes in which 95 percent of the ballots were marked for the same candidate.

ALEXANDER THIER: It’s important to note this recounting process is based not on the entirety of potentially fraudulent votes but on a statistical sample of those votes.

SHARP: Alexander Thier is director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace.

THIER: The reason they decided they could only do a sample is because when they applied this criteria they came up with nearly 4,000 out of 25,000 polling stations that needed to be re-examined, which is an enormous number of polling stations from all over the country.

SHARP: Thier says a full recount would simply be impractical.  It would take months and only add to ongoing uncertainty and instability.  Election official Zekriya Barakzai sounded upbeat today about prospects for the recount:

ZEKRIYA BARAKZAI: It will take three days for us to complete the audit process here and I think that by end of next week most probably we will be able to announce the final results.

SHARP: The partial recount comes against the backdrop of a public row between the UN representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and his American former deputy Peter Galbraith. Galbraith says the evidence of fraud is much larger than the UN mission admits.  President Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, is citing Galbraith’s objections as further evidence of massive fraud.  Karzai’s foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, says Galbraith has no right to interfere in the elections.

RANGIN DADFAR SPANTA: [speaking foreign language]

SHARP: He says anyone, either the special envoy of the UN secretary general or his deputy going to the offices of the institutions of Afghanistan and telling them what to do and not to do is interference and must be prevented.  Alex Thier says the argument between Eide and Galbraith is essentially about the United Nations’ role in Afghanistan and whether it was appropriate for the UN to become involved in the political conflict over the elections.  Thier says UN credibility in Afghanistan may well take a hit:

THIER: It has also made this election story that much more fraught because there is now clear division within leading international actors about the legitimacy of the election which further calls the entire enterprise into question.

SHARP: Thier points out that the whole policy of the US and its allies in Afghanistan is predicated on working with a credible Afghan government to advance collective goals. He says the recount process must take its course but he thinks the ultimate solution to the crisis should be a political one,  whether a run off election or power sharing arrangement or other political deal.  For the World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

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MARCO WERMAN: As we just heard, American Peter Galbraith was the number two official with the UN mission in Afghanistan until last week.  He’s in Bergen, Norway.  Now, Ambassador Galbraith, you were dismissed from your position last week because of differences over how to deal with fraud in the Afghan election.   That dispute has been kind of publically aired over the past five days.  What I’d like to ask you is, where do we go from here?

PETER GALBRAITH:  Well, the problem with the fraud in the Afghanistan elections is that it makes any other part of the international strategy very difficult to execute.  The troop surge that is currently being discussed involves protecting the population and then transitioning to a situation where the Afghan government starts to provide development, essential services, police and army, and that’s very hard to do if you don’t have a credible Afghan government, and that is hard in the circumstances where there’s been an election that’s been characterized by such massive fraud.

WERMAN:  Okay, so according to your logic, in order to deal with Afghanistan at all, you have to deal first with this election fraud.  So how do you deal with it?

GALBRAITH:  Well, if the complaints process produces a run off, then it’s going to be critical to correct the problems that existed in the first round, and that means first closing every polling station where there was fraud, and secondly, it means dismissing the election staff in every place that there was fraud, because the fraud was committed by the election commission staff, or they collaborated in the fraud with the local officials, or they knew about the fraud, and didn’t report it.

WERMAN:  Could any of this happen before the springtime?

GALBRAITH:  It’s going to be extremely difficult.  It’s going to require vigorous, forceful leadership from the head of the UN mission, and from the international community, and so far, that leadership has not been there.

WERMAN:  The UN says it has no mandate to interfere, and the White House has said it’s not interested in nation building, and yet there are these troops on the ground.  Draw for us a connection between this vote, allegedly fraudulent vote, and future mission in Afghanistan.

GALBRAITH:  NATO and its allies will be in Afghanistan for a very long time unless there’s a credible Afghan partner, and that in turn requires a credible government that is seen as legitimate, both by the people who supported the winning candidate, and by the people who did not.  This election was intended to be a milestone on Afghanistan’s path toward democracy and stability.  Instead, it has produced a prolonged political crisis, a great deal of uncertainty.  It’s been the period since the election has represented the biggest strategic gain for the Taliban in eight years of war.  So the political environment has made the military situation much worse for the 100,000 troops.  So I just find it absurd to suggest that the United Nations does not have a mandate to get involved in the election process.  The Security Council in fact has said that the UN should support the Afghan institutions in the holding of free, fair and transparent elections, not fraudulent elections.  And to have sat on the sidelines, to have tried to downplay the fraud, as the head of the UN mission did, has contributed to a crisis that has made it much worse for the United States, Canada and our other allies.

WERMAN:  It does sound like what you’re saying though is that with a partner in Afghanistan whose mandate is dubious, as an elected official, the US and NATO really shouldn’t be there at all.

GALBRAITH:  No, I think that they should be there.  There’s an important counterterrorism mission.  The US and its allies have made an incredible investment, both in terms of money and lives.  It would be a tragedy for that progress to be wiped out.  On the other hand, I don’t believe that much can be accomplished by putting in additional troops at this time for a counter insurgency strategy, which requires a credible Afghan partner, when that partner is not there.

WERMAN:  But people here in the United States, listening to some of the points you’ve raised and some of the issues you’ve raised, I mean, they’ve got to start having quite– they already do have questions presumably about the purpose of the entire American mission in Afghanistan.  I mean, do you think that what you’re saying could be eroding public support here in the US?

GALBRAITH:  I think what happened, I think the fraud, I think the failure of the United Nations and international community to do something about it, is what has eroded support for the mission, not what I am saying about it.  But I understand there’s concern.  When I’m home in Vermont, people would ask me, “Why are we in Afghanistan?” and prior to these events, I could provide an explanation, that begins with the events of 9/11. Now the question that people put to me is, “Why are we in Afghanistan?  Why are we supporting a regime that is blatantly stealing an election?” and it’s very hard to answer that question.

WERMAN:  Peter Galbraith was the UN’s deputy special representative in Afghanistan until last week.  Thank you very much for your time.

GALBRAITH:  Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is the World.  The second in command at France Telecom quit his job today amid mounting criticism of management.  It was a less tragic exit than a couple of dozen other employees of the company have made during the past 18 months.  They killed themselves.  The latest suicide came last week.  That’s when a 51-year-old man jumped off a bridge onto a highway.  He left a note that blamed the atmosphere at his workplace.  Unions have said that atmosphere has been poisoned by the restructuring of France Telecom.   Here’s the World’s Gerry Hadden with details.

GERRY HADDEN:  Workers at France Telecom have been complaining for years about what they call the inhumane transformation of a state-owned company.  Of late they’ve been holding street protests to press their case.

UNION WORKER:   [speaking in French].

HADDEN:  One worker complained he was being forced to learn new computer programs.  “There’s more pressure,” he added.   “You’re constantly having to pick up the pace.”

France Telecom was a public institution until 1997.  Then it began to privatize.  That’s meant adapting to new technologies, trimming the workforce, and relocating employees.  All of this to make the company competitive in an open market.  But then came the suicides, 24 in a year and a half.  One employee jumped from her Telecom office window this summer.  Another stabbed himself in a meeting.  After that, France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard pledged action.

DIDIER LOMBARD:  [speaking in French]

HADDEN:  He said, “I think what is most urgent is to stop the contagion which is now underway, this infernal spiral of suicides.  The French government which owns a minority stake in the company, has also stepped in. French Labor Minister Xavier Darcos has unveiled measures to reduce workers’ stress.

XAVIER DARCOS:  [speaking in French].

HADDEN:  He said, “We will stop all employee transfers until October 31, and set up an anonymous telephone hotline that allows employees to get psychological support.”  France Telecom unions have welcomed the freeze on relocations, but with the resignation today of the head of France Telecom’s operations in France, the question has come up again: how much is the company to blame for these suicides?  Max Colchester has been covering the story for The Wall Street Journal in Paris.  He says the dramatic nature of some of the deaths has made France Telecom front page news.  But he says, statistically speaking, the number of deaths isn’t out of the ordinary.

MAX COLCHESTER: It is an absolutely enormous company. There are over a hundred thousand people working there.  So as callous as it sounds, 24 out of a hundred thousand is about equivalent to the national average.  So I think it’s important not to take this out of context.

HADDEN:  And Colchester points out that compared to workers at other big companies in Europe or the US, it would seem that France Telecom workers have it pretty good, at least on the surface.

COLCHESTER: They have cradle to grave jobs.  The French state system’s very generous.  France Telecom is very generous. If you leave France Telecom, to develop your own company, you can get subsidies from the company, and if that doesn’t work out, the company can then have an obligation to re-hire you back into its midst.  So you’d wonder what sort of pressure these people are under.

HADDEN:  Then again, he says, these people are radically changing the way they work.  Many have gone from repairing old fashioned telephones to selling mobile phone contracts from cut-throat call centers.  But one phone company worker in Spain believes what’s been most demoralizing in France are the relocations.  This employee works at Telefonica, Spain’s largest phone company.  She says the company went through privatization at about the same time as France Telecom, but without the suicides.  The employee would not give her name and asked that her voice be altered for fear of getting fired.

SPANISH WORKER: [speaking Spanish].

HADDEN:  She says, “We had to become more productive too, but in our labor contract there’s one thing that management cannot touch, and that’s our right not to be relocated.  If they try to make us move we can take them to court, so in that sense we’re protected.”  France Telecom’s moratorium on relocations expires at the end of this month.  Top executives say restructuring must continue if they hope to stay competitive.  For the World, I’m Gerry Hadden.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN:  Life will be getting more difficult in West Sumatra for some time to come if history provides a guide.  James Thompson is a specialist in trauma at University College in London.  Now, I mean, it’s incredible, but children and students are actually returning to school to day in Padang, having classes under tents because their school buildings have been destroyed.  It does seem to create a sense of getting back to routine and normalcy, but is it a good idea, Dr. Thompson, to send children back to school so soon after this event?

DR. JAMES THOMPSON:  I think it’s an excellent idea.  It gives them a chance to first of all see the normality of school, which is what they’d normally be doing, and it also reassures them that most of their friends and many of their teachers and so on are still there.  It also gives them a setting to talk about their own experiences, so it seems a good move on the part of the authorities.

WERMAN:  Now yesterday in Samoa, people poured into churches to mourn the victims of the tsunami that killed more than 170 people there.  Generally speaking though, tell us why it’s important to have these mourning ceremonies in helping communities move beyond the trauma.

THOMPSON:  One of the worst things to happen is, if you have a disaster happen to you, and no one really cares about it, indeed, if people even deny that the event occurred, which sometimes happens in holocausts and genocides and so on.  What people want is that their experience should be validated.  They do want the feeling that the rest of the country pauses and understands what they went through.  So a ceremony of this sort which says, “Some of our citizens died.  Many of others of them suffered, they’re bereaved and we’ve got to help them.  We’ve got to recognize this,” is a partial support to people who are dealing with grief.  It’s a helpful thing and when the authorities organize that, it generally has a good result.  So long as it’s done sensitively, it is a good thing to do.

WERMAN:  And Dr. Thompson, how is bereavement different when it’s on a mass scale like this?  I mean, it is the loss, it’s kind of like the accumulation of individual tragedies, but is there a dynamic we don’t consider of the magnitude of the tragedy that one single tragedy doesn’t capture?

THOMPSON:  I think so.  We are social animals.  We certainly think of ourselves in the West as very strongly individualistic, but we are in fact part of a group, a gang, a tribe.  And if you lose people in that massive extent, the way people did in the First World War, when there were massive slaughters and so on, or survivors of the holocaust who lost their entire families, then one begins to understand the extent to which one has lost every single connection and reference point which one normally had in one’s life.  That’s a hard burden to bear.

WERMAN:  And will counseling be available to survivors of these recent natural disasters, for example, in Padang, people who are aware of this dynamic of tragedy at a mass level?

THOMPSON:  First of all, forget the Western idea of counseling, which is you and I go and talk to someone about how we feel.  For most of the poorer world, which in some ways is far more social and community focused than the Western world, what we’re talking about is things happening throughout whole communities.  So we’re thinking about churches, about schools, about institutions of various sorts, doing things for a  whole group of people, rather than for individuals.  So it’s not counseling.  It’s organizing things so that there is an understanding that many people need support.  Here, although the impact was terrible, there will be people who understand communities and the fact that people live in particular places.  It’s a balance.  You do the work with people who were already there in the first place.

WERMAN:  James Thompson, senior lecturer in psychology at University College, London and a specialist in trauma.  Thank you for your thoughts.

THOMPSON:  Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  It’s the first day of business for the new supreme court today.  We’re not talking about the one in Washington.  We’re talking about another court that’s taking a historic step.  Today’s the first day that the newly created supreme court of the United Kingdom is hearing cases, and it’s taken a long, long time to get here.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH: Today in London, across the road from Parliament, centuries of legal history shifted within a matter of seconds.

COURT CLERK:  All rise.

LYNCH:  The start of the first case argued before Britain’s brand new supreme court, sworn in just days before.

NICHOLAS ADDISON: I, Nicholas Addison, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers, do swear by Almighty God that I will well and truly serve our sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth the Second, in the office of president of the supreme court of the United Kingdom…

LYNCH: In case you missed the name and the very British title, that’s Nicholas Addison, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers.  Phillips now has another title:  president of the new court, the rough equivalent of Chief Justice John Roberts.

ADDISON: It’s really the last step in the separation of powers in this country.  We’ve come to that fairly gently and gradually.

LYNCH: That’s one way of saying it.  Up until now, top judges in Britain were appointed to the House of Lords.  Now, they’ve got their very own courthouse.  They are officially independent of Parliament.  Legal historian Peter Hennessy recites a quote from more than a hundred years ago to illustrate just how long the country has been considering the change.

PETER HENNESSY:  “The supreme court of the English people ought to be a great conspicuous tribunal, ought to rule all other courts, ought not to be hidden beneath the robes of a legislative assembly,” i.e. the House of Lords.  It’s come through quite rapidly really.  That was only 1867, and it’s now only 2009.

LYNCH: Okay, they’re out from under the House of Lords.  They’ve even got their own designer robes.  But they’re still doing largely the same job, monitoring the application of laws created by Parliament.  And since Britain doesn’t have a written bill of rights, like the United States, the court doesn’t have the power to strike down laws as unconstitutional.  Still some, like appeals court judge David Neuberger, worry all the new trappings of the court could go to the judges’ heads.

DAVID NEUBERGER: The supreme court in its new building, under its new name, separated from Parliament could start to become more powerful, to start to try to assert itself in a way that is to my mind foreign to the British system, and would lead to a real risk of confrontation between the judiciary and the executive, which would be unfortunate.

LYNCH: That American style assertiveness may invite confrontation between the court and the government.  But one of the new justices, Lawrence Collins isn’t worried about going foreign.  In fact, Collins believes it’s only a matter of time before this supreme court starts to resemble something more like the one sitting in Washington.

LAWRENCE COLLINS: It seems to me that gradually we will evolve into a different type of body, perhaps not as pivotal as the American supreme court, but certainly playing a much more central role in the legal system, and approaching the American ideal of a government of laws and not of men.

LYNCH: This court is going some way toward raising its profile.  Its hearings are televised, though it’s doubtful dry legal arguments will win big ratings.  But it may be important to make the effort.  The justices will take on cases that are far-reaching and divisive, perhaps on such subjects as anti-terror laws or issues surrounding the right to die.  Constitutional expert Robert Halzell of the University College of London, says that will likely bring on another, American style debate.

ROBERT HALZELL: As the new supreme court hears more high profile and more controversial cases, particularly cases about social or ethical issues, then I think people increasingly will begin to ask, “Who are these justices and how did they get to be appointed?”

LYNCH: Those justices sitting now , all white, all male except for one woman,  are appointed by the queen on recommendation from the prime minister.  No one is talking about implementing US. style confirmation hearings, at least not yet.  After all, this first step toward creating the court took hundreds of years.   For the World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.