Under the previous authoritarian regime, religious expressions in public were illegal. Women faced arrest if they wore a veil on the street. Men with beards faced harassment.

Now, Tunisia’s practicing Muslims have begun asserting themselves on the streets, in politics and in the media. After Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime fell earlier this year, the new government took over a religious radio station previously owned by a relative of Ben Ali’s. The government selected Iqbal Gharbi to manage the station – called Zeitouna Radio. She hoped to inject a bit more professionalism into the place.

“Zeitouna Radio is in a transitional moment,” she said. “It was a private radio and now it became governmental. And the govt has the right to watch over it and to see what’s going on in there.”

The appointment did not go over well at the station.

Now, Gharbi is no stranger to controversy. As a professor of anthropology with a Phd from the Sorbonne, she’s penned provocative essaid on the role of women in Muslim societies, and on feminism and Islam. But even by those standards, what happened at Zeitouna was unique for her.

The staff went on strike. And for days, a recording of the Koran played in place of the usual programming. There are three on-air preachers who usually have programs during the day, talking morality, ethics, and other religious matters. Ahmed Seelie is one of them.

“We are having a protest because this manager was appointed,” he said. “She’s a woman, and she’s a professor of psychology, but not of religion. So she cannot be the manager of this radio station. Zeitouna radio is focused only on the Koran and religion.”

Sheikh Mohammad (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

“It was humiliating,” Meshfer said. “This is not normal for someone who graduated from the Sorbonne. I’ve been here these past ten months working to try to fix the radio station, trying to get people to work together as a team. And she comes in here and humiliates me.”

Gharbi admits she could have handled some things better, but she maintains the real reason the staff rejects her is her gender. Zeitouna staffers dispute this, and have said the real disagreement is religious versus secular ideology. Gharbi said, “it’s the same thing.”

“Now we’re in a fight between two kinds of people,” Gharbi said, “those who are reading and looking to Koran in a modern way, analyzing it with modern eyes, and those who are more conservative. And they’re against women in general.”

The staff at Zeitouna have never been raging extremists. The fact that they were allowed on the air at all under Ben Ali is testimony to their moderation. But Manouba University Professor Amel Grami said the dispute at Zeitouna radio is an indication of how Tunisia’s Islamists are using the current weakness of the central government to assert their power in the streets, and at the universities.

“In some universities nowadays we have this type of aspect of conflict, because many students from Salafist groups or Islamist groups they refuse to have unveiled woman teaching Islam, or methodology of works, or comparative religion,” Grami said. “They refuse to know even some religious texts from Judaism or Christianity. So they are trying to impose a new subject. So this is the big challenge for our educational institution.”

“Challenge” is putting it mildly. On exam day, Islamist students shut Manouba University down. They demanded the right for women to wear the “Niqab,” a type of dress that covers the entire body, including the face, and also to have a prayer room in the university.

A YouTube video allegedly from the protest shows Islamist students chanting FROM behind the locked gates of the university, as other students look on from outside. Gharbi said her situation at the radio station is indicative of the Islamists asserting power after years of being stifled. She said the Islamist’s aggression, and sensitivity, is a result of Ben Ali’s repressive policies.

“This is the result of the oppression in the period under Ben Ali,” she said. “Because we used to marginalize these Islamists. Now, we need to accept them, and we need to know how to deal with everyone in society. Otherwise this will be a dictatorship again, and we don’t want that.”

Gharbi said she won’t back down. She’s still locked in the battle with the Zeitouna radio station staff over her management position. Zeitouna staffers would still like the newly elected government to appoint another boss.

“And did you see Mohammed Ali, above my desk?” Rudatsimburwa says, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair as he enters his cluttered office. The poster is of a young, weaving Mohammed Ali, with the line, “I’m so fast, last night I switched out the lights and was in bed before the room was dark.”

Not a bad slogan for a radio station that started out, in the last days of 2004, to bring something fresh to the Rwandan radio scene.

“When we started, there was only the state radio,” says Rudatsimburwa, who had just returned from Belgium, where he grew up. “That was the model. So we wanted to show what it could be, having entertaining morning shows, nice news. There had been a kind of post-genocide trauma, self-censorship culture. So we were trying to tell people that things could be different.”

Radio has had a dark side in Rwanda. The station Radio Mille Collines helped incite the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 people. Even now, radio remains Rwanda’s most popular media source – not surprising, given that a quarter of the population is illiterate, and many people are too poor to buy a television.

The morning editorial meeting at Contact FM's office in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“Bonjour!” Rudatsimburwa calls out cheerily, as he enters the newsroom for the morning editorial meeting. The dozen or so young reporters swivel their chairs to face him, or get up and sit on the edges of desks. They talk through the stories in play – switching between English, French and Kinyarwanda – the local language.

One story in the works on this morning is about an illegal government detention center, for street kids and vagrants.

“So who decides when you can walk out? Based on what?” asks Rudatsimburwa.

“They decide every two weeks whom to release,” replies reporter Richard Ndayambaje, who has been assigned to the story. “Maybe they let you go for the weekend,” another one jokes.

Rudatsimburwa laughs with everyone else, makes his own joke in Kinyarwandan, and then pulls attention back to the story. “If this center is illegal, someone has to explain how come it’s there. It might be a positive thing, but if it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

Contact FM reporter Richard Ndayambaje(right). (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“You never know what happens to you,” he says. “But all you have to do as a journalist, I think, is report the truth, and wait to see what happens, whether the story has an impact. But I think the more the media develop in Rwanda, the more those incidents are becoming less.”

Ndayambaje, 25, says things are already better than when he started out in professional journalism four years ago. There are now dozens of Rwandan news media outlets, and the government is getting more used to being questioned. It’s even considering passing freedom of information legislation.

But critics of the government say press freedom in Rwanda remains seriously limited.

“Everyone now knows the very negative role the media played in the run-up to the genocide, and I think any responsible government would take measures to avoid that.” says Carina Tersakian, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch who was kicked out of Rwanda last year, and now lives in London. “But what has been happening is that this vaguely defined offense of genocide ideology has been used to target government critics, not only journalists but also opposition politicians and ordinary Rwandans.”

According to a Rwandan Senate report, about 200 people were convicted on the charge of genocide ideology from 2001 to 2006. Some were sentenced to years in prison. Rights groups have expressed concern about how many journalists have been convicted on this charge.

Shyaka Kamura, editor of the newspaper Rwanda Focus, says such rights groups should take a closer look at what some of the convicted journalists have been writing.

“You’ll find someone writing that Hutus, actually it’s their time to rise up,” he says. “We are talking just 17 years after the genocide. And they’ll be publishing stuff that includes incitement.”

Rwandan President Paul Kagame at a news conference. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“We live in this world where some people think they are more right, even more righteous, than others,” he said at a recent news conference. “They set the standard; they want others to do what they are doing, and so on and so forth.” And here, he paused and chuckled softly to himself. “But then, down the road, the very people who claim this position really start messing up, and it undermines their credibility.”

Kagame’s supporters say he has helped bring Rwanda back from the dead, that his government has restored social stability, built up the economy, and encouraged reconciliation – mostly. Others say he rules with too heavy a hand. Some ask why Kagame suspended two newspapers critical of him in the run-up to last year’s national elections, why several journalists say they received threats or had been roughed up, and had to flee the country.

Vocal critic Charles Ingabire fled the country – and was living in Uganda when he was shot dead on November 30, coming out of a bar. He had edited the online Inyenyeri News, which was known for being critical of the government. Another journalist, Jean Leonard Rugambage, deputy editor of Umuvugizi newspaper, was killed in Rwanda last year. His colleagues say he had, at the time, been investigating the shooting in South Africa of a Rwandan general, Kayumba Nyamwasa, who’d fallen out with Kagame. The government has denied involvement in both cases. Rights groups have called for independent investigations.

“The climate for independent journalists in Rwanda right now is pretty bleak,” says Carina Tersakian of Human Rights Watch.

By “‘independent,’ she means those who criticize the government. Rwanda Focus editor Shyaka Kanuma argues that there is room for criticism – not for lies.

“I wouldn’t mind if it were legitimate criticism. But here I am, a Rwandan. I know my country very well. I know the problems we have. I know that Paul Kagame is not a perfect president. He is not a perfect person. But when I see the terrible lies people tell. I know the kinds of challenges we face as journalists in this country. I know the kind of challenges we get accessing information. But does that amount to abuse of human rights? Far from the case!”

The Contact FM office in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“I think that is still – that will take some time. You need the material to brew a political satire,” he says. “You need to see what politicians are doing. And most of the time, it’s not public enough, what they do.”

Then again, he says there’s a funny video on Youtube of a Rwandan comedian at a soiree, imitating President Kagame, while Kagame listened at a nearby table.

“Same voice, same everything, you know? And you could see, some guys in the room were wondering, ‘is this correct?’ And even the president was there. But because he had a big laugh, so everyone relaxed. But before that, I could see that some of them were stressed.”

What Rwandans need, even more than satire, Rudatsimburwa says, is to lose their submissive attitude toward power.

“People need to understand that in a society like this, people are citizens,” he says. And in a society where you have citizens, we’re not supposed to be treated as subjects. There’s not a king there.”

The call-in programs at Contact FM try to encourage people to speak up. And never are there more calls, Rudatsimburwa says, than in the week each April when the station opens up the lines to commemorate the genocide. Survivors call in. A couple of perpetrators have called in to tell their side of the story, and to apologize.

“We also had a call – a guy said, ‘you know what we did in ’94, we’ll do it again.’

The caller’s phone number was traced, and he was arrested.

Contact FM founder and owner Albert Rudatsimburwa. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

But a recent survey by the Prosperity Index in London found that most Rwandans adults feel they have adequate personal freedoms, and trust their government; less than a third trust each other.

Behind the scenes at Contact FM



Mary Kay Magistad’s reports from Rwanda

• Rwanda Aspires to Become the ‘Singapore of Africa’
• Chinese in Rwanda
• Confucius in Kigali: China’s Cultural Outreach in Rwanda

The cuts: five BBC language services will close (Serbian, Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and English for the Caribbean). Seven more language services, including Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, will be cut back from radio to internet only. A further six services will stop transmitting on short wave.

It means an estimated 30 million fewer BBC listeners worldwide. Will people migrate to the web and to English language news, or will the BBC – and its news values – become less influential?

There was a huge amount of coverage of this story. Most people were critical of the cuts with the British government — rather than the BBC — receiving the blame (here and here for example). But in Britain there is a BBC-despising minority which offered its own spin.

For the pod, I picked some of the best pieces of the BBC’s own coverage: interviews with the director of BBC global news Peter Horrocks, former World Service director John Tusa, and British foreign minister William Hague. Hague heads the Foreign Office, which has presided over the BBC World Service.

I also interviewed Debbie Ransome, head of the axed Caribbean Service. The Caribbean Service could be seen as some broadcast throwback to the days when the World Service was known as the BBC Empire Service. But Ransome says the service is unique in that it is regional, and so rises above the interests of any single country. She says the other broadcast media in the region either take political sides, or play a lot of music and not much else.

So which global radio services will move in to replace the BBC? The pod’s last interview is with journalism professor George Brock. He says that services run by the Chinese and Russian governments are likely to benefit, especially in Africa and Asia. And they don’t have the same news values as the BBC. Where the Beeb is remarkably successful at maintaining its editorial independence, Brock says the Russian and Chinese operations are mainly mouthpieces of their respective governments.

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This city’s home to the national headquarters of the CBC — Canada’s public broadcaster. This is in a densely populated region called the Golden Horseshoe. And its home to hundreds of thousands of households with electricity guzzling appliances.

Washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers for example. Too often these appliances are running when power grids are already overloaded. So a company has come up with a way to encourage consumers to use less electricity at times of peak demand.

We’ll find out more about where this plan is being tested out…and whether the dishes are coming out clean…

We speak to Gaelle Lussiaa-Berdou, a reporter for Radio Canada:

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• Palau Shark Sanctuary
• Palau Shark Sanctuary’s blog
• http://www.cites.org
• http://www.sharkalliance.org
• http://www.iucnredlist.org

Palau Taiwanese Tourists. Photo Mary Kay Magistad

Shark Announcement. Photo Mary Kay Magistad

Palau Divers. Photo Mary Kay Magistad

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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:  What do sharks have in common with Atlantic blue fin tuna and polar bears?  Well all have recently been denied protection by the U.N.’s Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.  The vote on sharks was bad news for the Pacific Island Nation of Palau.  It has declared a shark sanctuary within its territorial waters.  But the sanctuary is routinely violated by fishing vessels out to collect shark fins.  The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  Mornings at Sam’s Dive Shop in Palau are always busy.  Divers from around the world come to experience some of the best diving on the planet, and sharks are a big draw.  But Sam’s tours manager, Dermott Keane, says their numbers have been falling dramatically.

DERMOTT KEANE:  If you talk to any of the diver guides who have been here for the past 10 or 15 years, they’ll tell you that a lot of the shark species that we would see sometimes closer to the reef we don’t tend to see anymore.

MAGISTAD: Global numbers bear this out.  It’s estimated that some shark species have dropped in number by 80% or more over the past two decades.  As China has boosted its appetite for shark fin soup, which can go for $60.00 or more per small bowl, and is a favorite at Chinese business lunches and official dinners.  The fins are usually cut from live sharks, which are then thrown back into the water to die.  Since sharks take ten years to mature, and have few pups, they can’t reproduce fast enough to keep up with the rate at which they’re being killed.  Noah Idechong, a long time environmentalist who is now Palau’s House Speaker, says Taiwanese and other fishing vessels in Palau’s waters used to claim the shark they caught was a by-catch, unintentionally snared when fishing for other species.

NOAH IDECHONG:  I said no, no, no, we’re not targeting shark.  It’s a by-catch.  Okay then you won’t have any problem if you make a law that says you don’t, no, no, no, then you don’t have any problem if we cut the wire leader.  No, no, no, okay, so we had the law.

MAGISTAD: Palau bans fishing vessels in its waters from having any parts of a shark onboard.  The law was actually passed a few years ago.  But what really drew international attention was a rebranding of the law when Palau’s President, Johnson Toribiong, announced to the United Nations General Assembly last September that he was declaring Palau’s waters a shark sanctuary.

JOHNSON TORIBIONG:  It was kind of an unknown law.  Even the local people didn’t really understand that.  But when I said I now declare Palau as the first shark sanctuary in the world, that got a lot of attention, even locally.  So now, people are beginning to feel like sharks are not menacing, threatening species, but are part of the ecosystem.  Because Palau used to think of the shark as some kind of beasts.

MAGISTAD: Oh, we know.  But actually, tens of thousands of divers come to Palau every year, many to watch sharks, and none have been reported eaten, or even nibbled.  Palau’s main industry is tourism and it’s been estimated that a live shark is worth 100 times to Palau what it is to a fisherman dead.  But shark activist Dermott Keane says the ban on shark fishing has been hard to enforce because Palau’s territorial waters are nearly the size of Texas, and Palau has just one patrol boat.

KEANE:  I mean, the technology exists out there for us to monitor our fisheries.  The question then becomes at what price?  And then what price can we afford?

MAGISTAD: That allows illegal fishing vessels to dip in and out of Palau’s waters, catching what they can and leaving before anyone spots them.  International protection of endangered species would help, but just yesterday the U.N.’s endangered species organization rejected a motion to ban the trade in hammerhead and white fin sharks, whose fins are used in Asia for soup, and reversed an earlier decision to protect Porbeagle sharks, which are used in Europe for meat.  Those protections would have made it easier for Palau to protect its sharks.  China and Japan spoke out against the measures saying they would hurt poor fishing nations.  Of course, they might also have forced Chinese consumers to find a better way of showing off wealth than ordering up a $60.00 bowl of endangered species soup.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Palau.

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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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.

KATY CLARK:  If you’re going for a haircut in northeast Spain any time soon, you might want to bring your own music.  Hundreds of salons in the autonomous region of Catalonia are threatening to switch off their radios.  They’re up in arms about a requirement that they pay royalties.  Sarah Rainsford reports from Barcelona.

SARAH RAINSFORD:  The familiar sounds of a barbershop.  The hum of the razor.  The snip of scissors.  The swish of soapy water in the sink.  And, of course, there’s this.  But soon, that could be silence.  Salons in Spain have just been informed that they have to pay royalties to play the radio.  It’s an existing rule that was rarely enforced before and it has hairdressers up in arms.  It all started when an inspector called here at Esteban’s salon and he refused to pay.  They threatened legal action, Esteban tells me, so I had to agree, but it’s not fair.  It’s just a radio.  Esteban now pays around $9.00 a month for the privilege of playing his radio.  It’s hardly a fortune, but the hairdressers resent any fee when radio stations already pay royalties to musicians.  So hundred of salons have declared that when the inspector comes to call on them, they’ll switch the music off.  They won’t pay a cent.  Albert Swanky’s salon hasn’t been inspected yet, so the mood music is still on here.  But a sign on the counter warns clients they’ll have to bring their MP3 players soon to create their own ambiance.  Albert says one of his customers has already offered to sing during his haircut.  Original music only of course.  The organization that protects music copyright in Spain isn’t impressed with the hairdresser’s rebellion.  Sky, as its known, says artists here already lose out because so many people download their music illegally.  They shouldn’t have to give up their public performance rights.  Javier Trujillo is the commercial director of Sky.

INTERPRETER:   All public spaces have to pay to play music.  Supermarkets, hotels, and hairdressers.  If they use a piece of work, they need the artist’s permission.  We’re here to enforce that law and protect the artists, so they can continue to create.

RAINSFORD: But there’s not much sympathy for that back at the salons where talk of a tax on the radio is creating a buzz.  This is Carlos, who’s in for a quick trim.

CARLOS:  What is the next step?  You might be paying a tax because you have music in your car, or your home, whatever.

RAINSFORD: The salon revolt started in Catalonia, but the angry hairdressers are threatening to take it country-wide, adamant that this unpopular music tax should get the chop.  For The World, I’m Sarah Rainsford in Barcelona.

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.

Another busy week at the tech desk. We lead off the podcast with two items on Haiti. The first is on efforts to create good, interactive maps of the country. Here are relevant links:

• Haiti: Open Street Map
• Ushahidi’s Haiti page
• FrontlineSMS
• Gaia GPS iPhone app for Haiti

Then, we spoke with Professor Leysia Palen of the University of Colorado at Boulder about Project EPIC’s “Tweak the Tweet” campaign. Here’s a short video:

We then had a report from Cyrus Farivar on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech. You can read the full text of the speech here, or watch the video from the speech here.

Following that, we dug a bit deeper into Google’s recent announcement that it might leave China. We feature two interviews, one with Rebecca McKinnon, and another with blogger Isaac Mao.

And we return to Haiti to finish the podcast. Amid all the coverage we’re doing about the efforts to get telecommunications up and running, it pays to remember the power of the good old-fashioned wireless: the radio. Our short segment is on SignalFM in Port-au-Prince.

A rectangular structure sits on the mountaintop, where a Mongolian team believes Genghis Khan is buried. (Photo by Zagd Batsaikhan, courtesy EurasiaNet.org)

It spanned large parts of Central Asia and China. As for Genghis himself… he’s kind of a mixed bag:

He’s remembered both as a brutal tyrant and an enlightened ruler. And strangely enough, no one seems to know for sure where he was buried. So we’re putting the question to you.

What’s the name of the mountain range that’s believed to be Genghis Khan’s final resting place?

“The area where he’s most likely buried is about 100 miles from Ulan Batar the capital of Mongolia near the Russian border. I got about 50 miles away which is the farthest the road goes.”

Stick around for the answer…

Josuha Kucera has written about the search for Genghis Kahn in the Khentii Mountains in Mongolia, the answer to our Geo Quiz.

The Search for Genghis Khan

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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: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  The World Health Organization today gave a mixed assessment of where things stand with the global swine flu pandemic.  On the positive side, agency officials said there’s no evidence that the virus has mutated.  That means the H1N1 vaccines slowly making their way to the public should confer good protection.  On the negative side, the virus is spreading quickly in the northern hemisphere and that spread could accelerate as winter approaches.  WHO flu expert, Keiji Fukuda.

KEIJI FUKUDA:  We remain quite concerned about the patterns that we are seeing, particularly again because a sizeable number of people do develop serious complications and death.

WERMAN:  Nations continue to take new measures to deal with the pandemic.  Today, Norway made the flu medicines, Tamiflu and Relenza available without a prescription.  Russia has ordered its border guards to wear face masks and rubber gloves.  In a few minutes, we’ll hear how Venezuela is trying to protect a remote Amazonian tribe, but first we go to Ukraine.  The Eastern European country has responded aggressively to swine flu but as Brigid McCarthy reports, that response may say more about Ukraine’s politics and culture than about the nature of the epidemic there.

BRIGID MCCARTHY:  The government of Ukraine has imposed some of the Draconian measures of any country in response to the swine flu.  Prime Minster Yulia Tymoshenko has closed all schools for three weeks and banned public gatherings.  This after the country’s health minister announced an unusual spike in acute respiratory illnesses in Western Ukraine. People across the country have emptied pharmacies of pills, vitamins and surgical masks.  When the country ran out of masks, Prime Minister Tymoshenko urged people to make their own out of gauze bandages.  Ukranians have also been stocking up on garlic and vodka.  Sergei Lyemets, a reporter for Ukrainska Pravda, says people are panicking.

SERGEI LYEMETS:  Fear, fear, fear.

MCCARTHY:  And their fear is being stoked by saturation media coverage.

LYEMETS:  From the TV, from newspapers, from internet.

MCCARTHY:  Especially the internet.  Rumors have been spreading faster than the virus.  Some bloggers worn people to keep their windows shut because government helicopters were spraying disinfectants.  Others warned that this was in fact something even more terrifying and lethal, pneumonic plague.  In fact, the World Health Organization said there’s no evidence Ukraine’s swine flu outbreak is especially severe so why the extreme response?  Prime Minster Tymoshenko launched her presidential campaign less than two weeks ago.  Reporter Sergei Lyemets says swine flu gave her the perfect opportunity to look decisive.  He says it’s unfortunate but if he were in her position, he too, would make every effort to portray the flu outbreak as especially dangerous.

LYEMETS:  So I could tell that I was the person who took the challenge of this horrible disease and I was the one who won the disease, won the fight.

MCCARTHY:  Even so, you might think working parents would be up in arms after the Prime Minister cancelled all schools for three weeks but not in Ukraine.  Khrystyna Pavaroznyk is a teacher at public school 92 in downtown Kiev.

KHRYSTYNA PAVAROZYNK:  We have no problems with it because the flu is very dangerous.

MCCARTHY:  And because closing schools is nothing new for Ukraine.  Almost every year government officials close schools for a week or two when there’s an outbreak of flu or other contagious diseases but three teenage girls wandering around Kiev’s mostly empty Dream Town Shopping Mall said they’ve never had school cancelled for three weeks.

SPEAKER: [RUSSIAN] they say they’re kind of afraid because you know, they think it’s a serious illness if they do catch it.  But so far, they don’t know anyone in their class or in their school who has been sick.

MCCARTHY:  Two teenage boys walked by.  One of them was clutching his three year old sister’s hand and looking morose.

SPEAKER:  [RUSSIAN] he said he’d rather be in school than have to babysit his little sister for three weeks.

MCCARTHY:  This boy wasn’t worried about the swine flu.  Neither was a college student killing time at the mall.  She was furious that her university was closed and blamed it on politics.

SPEAKER:  [RUSSIAN] because in Russia, even though there are more cases, confirmed cases of swine flu, nobody’s closing down schools everywhere because they don’t have an election coming up.

MCCARTHY:  Ukrainska Pravda reporter Sergei Lyemets says shutting down schools and offices is a sure fire way for politicians to win voters’ hearts.  He says half the population works for the government and Ukranians are, in their soul, still more Soviet than European.

LYEMETS:  They have a deep, deep memory from the times of USSR.  People here like not to work.

MCCARTHY:  But they love their soccer, which is probably why the government’s ban on all public gatherings didn’t extent to last night’s European champion’s league showdown between Kiev’s top professional team and a team from Milan.  Swine flu or no swine flu epidemic.  By the way, Milan won.  For The World, I’m Brigid McCarthy in Kiev.

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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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: I’m Marco Werman.  This is the World.  If you live in Berlin and like stadium rock, well today could be your lucky day.  That’s Irish supergroup, U2.  The band is performing a free concert in Berlin tonight to mark twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The anniversary is Monday.  Ten thousand Berliners and tourists snapped up free tickets for the concert, organized by MTV.  U2 will play in front of the Brandenburg Gate.  It’s a famous landmark visible from different parts of the city, only it won’t be so visible tonight.  The concert organizers are blocking off the view for those without tickets and their method is time tested.  They put up a temporary twelve foot high wall.  I know, weird.  I wish I were kidding.  There will be plenty of other parties in Berlin this weekend, presumably with greater access than that one at the Brandenburg Gate.  But for many living in what was once the Eastern Bloc, this anniversary isn’t much cause for celebration.  The last twenty years brought some welcomed freedoms, but they’ve also brought hardship and uncertainty, especially for young people growing up after Communism.  The World’s Laura Lynch begins our story in a high school in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

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: One other piece of news out of Pakistan. It’s currently Pakistan Fashion Week.  Surprising right?  Well the four day event is billed as a chance for Pakistan’s top fashion designers to show off their wares.  It’s also an opportunity for the country to promote an image that doesn’t include violence and militant extremism.  You can see that alternative image of Pakistan on the runway in Karachi.  Models strutted in short or backless dresses.  Others showed bare midriffs.  Ayesha Tammy Haq is Chief Executive of the fashion week.  She says that the event is necessary to boost business.

AYESHA TAMMY HAQ:  These people who are here, all of them employ hundreds and thousands of people so we need jobs to continue, we need that job market to grow.  You know, we kick start this economy.  Fashion is a big thing, let’s make it bigger.

WERMAN:  Pakistan’s fashion week was twice delayed over security concerns and one of the models taking part, Nadia Hussain, says she was a little scared as she got ready to take to the runway.  But Hussain says life has to go on.

NADIA HUSSAIN:  I think fashion has also made it a point that fashion will continue as well.

WERMAN:  Still, not everyone feels that way it seems. Journalists from major international fashion magazines were expected to attend, but in the end, few showed up.

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.