Transcripts For WHUT Worldfocus 20091222 : vimarsana.com

tonight on worldfocus. the death of the leading dissident religious leader inspires a huge new anti-government rally in iran. we will have the latest from afghanistan and dan rather who recently returned from his 11th assignment there. from germany. emotional testimony against john demjanjuk by holocaustúxsurviv. you hope also they would say something like i m sorry. should such an elderly man even be tried? soaring food prices in india. we look at what it means for many of the 1 billion people. from the different perspectives of reporters and analysts around the globe, this is worldfocus. major support has been provided by rosalind p. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. mutual of america. designing customized and individual group retirement. that s why we re yourretirementcompany.com. and additional funding is provided by the following supporters good evening. welcome to worldfocus. i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. he was one of the leaders of the iranian revolution three decades ago. was once an heir apparent to the re ayatollah khomenei. then grand ayatollah hossein ali montazeri became a fierce critic of the regime. that is why today s funeral for the 87-year-old dissident cleric turned into a massive protest against the iranian authorities. tens of thousands of mourners marched in the holy city of qom. some of them shouting death to the dictators. and other slogans. security forces reportedly fought with protesters throwing stones outside montazeri s home. in our lead focus tonight, we look at ayatollah montazeri s influence in life and death beginning with al jazeera english. reporter: mourners gather en masse from across iran to attend funeral proceed session of the revered scholar and one of the most influential figures in the islamic republic. as a revolutionary turned dissident, grand ayatollah hossein ali montazeri was an outspoken critic. of the country s leadership. he frequently issued religious fatwas. they recently commented on the leaders crackdown. they called on the leaders to mark his death as a today of national mourning. eyewitnesses say anti-government slogans were chanted inside the shrine where the funeral prayers were being held. posters bearing the pictures of those killed in the election violence were among the green banners held up by some people in the crowd. and in a rare public appearance, defeated presidential candidate mir hossein mousavi was among the senior figures paying his respects at the funeral. anxious that the funeral could turn into a polical rally, authorities increased the presence of security forces around qom and in the capital. tehran. in a demonstration of his popularity, supporters from all sides came onto the streets of cities across the country. montazeri has long been a controversial figure but used his revolutionary credentials to question the actions of those in power. that put him at odds, both with his old ally and the revolution s founding father ayatollah khomenei as well as theurrent supreme leader. despite being under house arrest for six years, montazeri was never completely silenced, remaining the critical voice. his role as a religious authority calling for greater democracy and human rights in his country was a voice many in iran s opposition counted on. his burial in one of the most important shrines in shiit islam will help ensure his legacy lives on. for more on ayatollah hossein ali montazeri s influence, we re á(rá he has written several books on iran under the distinguished professor of history at the city university of new york. thank you very much for coming on the program. what is the significance of this death? well, he himself used to be very important under khomeini. he was the designated heir. but ever since he s moved into the opposition he s been more a thorne in the side of the regime. and for 20 years, he has criticized the regime without being able to bring down the regime. so in some ways, the regime is probably a sigh of relief that he has died. but i don t ere that concerned about him alive. but the problem right now will be the commemorations for his seventh day from his death because that s the seventh day is the mourning period for shia islam. that s a very significant day. that marks the shura, which is a politically charged religious commemoration. can you talk a little about that? it coincides on the ashura, the very holiest of the holiest days in shia islam, which falls next sunday. so the concern of the government wi be the people coming to sa mourn, commemorate montazeri s death. at the same time, you have the nationwide commemorations. for ashura. the government can t exactly ban demonstrations for it. it would be like a western administration banning easter or holy mass in easter. that has to be held. so the opposition can take advantage of that and have the commemorations for montazeri. so the concern will be what will happen in the streets. it puts the authorities in a very difficult spot then. is that what you re saying? how worried are they? i think they ll be worried. if they can overcome that problem of crowd control in a week s time, then i think montazeri s death will be soon forgotten. but if those demonstrations get out of hand, then of course there will be a massive clampdown. do you think the death will further galvanize the opposition movement? hard to say. because of course he was important. the new opposition is actually much more secular, talking much more about human rights and individual rights. montazeri really belonged to the past. his language, even though he embraced issues of human rights, he came pretty late in the field and still his language was much more about shia islam and islam. thank you for joining us. thank you.- a stand-off bd iraq over a disputed oil field has ended. the field is near the border with iran and s occupied for three days by soldiers from iran which claims that part of the field is in its territory. the troops withdrew yesterday and officials from the two s killed more than 100 people in baghdad. one of them was an iraqi exile from london returning for the first time since he fled saddam hussein s regime in 1995. his story lets us put a human face on iraq s continuing violence. it comes from itn. reporter: since american troops handed over control of baghdad to iraqi forces over the summer, there have been three huge car bomb attacks on the iraqi capital. the latest, just last week, saw five separate explosions kill up to 112 people. one was this man, visiting with his wife from london. a retired businessman, he left baghdad 14 years ago and has put off going back until he felt it was safe to visit. he was driving with his brother-in-law in southern baghdad when the car bomb exploded just 50 meters away. my brother-in-law managed to get out of the car at the right time. my father couldn t. they were stopped at a junction. they were turning left and it was a junction on top of a subway. and that shere the elosion happened. and after the explosion, that junction collapsed into the subway so it killed ople above and people below. two of his sons flew out immediately. but before they could begin to arrange the funeral, they had to find the body. there s not a physical case. you couldn t know him. another family was claiming this body was their relative. the only thing left on him that was visible was that ring. which was yellow before but now during the fire, it has been damaged. what struck them when they came out to claim their father was how everyday life in&xr was dominated by fear of explosions. obviously, we live in secure environments. we don think twice about what s going on next to us. in iraq when you re in a car, you re always looking around at people. you re looking around at the cars. what they re carrying. you re looking around at what people are wearing. how thick their clothes are. could they be carrying any sort of explosions under their clothes? it s just it s frightening. it s tiger. tiring. you no longer feel like a human. i mean, i told my brother when we landed back in turkey, i said to him only now do i feel like a human. because when you re inside baghdad, it is like you re constantly under attack. you ve always got that thought in the back of your mind. who do you think is to bla for your father s death? really, we didn t have any picture of someone like in mind to say like this guy or that guy. i know if it s extremist people i don t know. if politicians stuff, we really don t know. we don t have an answer because we don t know who did this. we don t know who did this. people in iraq know they are not secure. but i can tell you, they are more afraid than before. so before, there is no freedom. now at least there is freedom.h and for every freedom there is price to pay. and that s a price, actually, we re paying to buy the freedom. at least if we didn t get it, our kids will have one day. one day. rorter: just a few months ago, he was reflecting on his iraqi past and his british future. he visited holy sites. his old office in baghdad. back in the summer, he saw the son grad wait graduate from university. now his sons are back home trying to comfort their mother. she can t find anything to put the blame on. you know, she doesn t know who it is. sometimes she goes back and blames herself for going there. and we do try to calm her. we re there for her. but there isn t an answer that we can give her. there is nothing we can say to her to say, at least justice has been done because it hasn t. reporter: that report from itn. in afghanistan, the army and police fought a three-hour gun battle today with taliban insurgents in an eastern province almost completely controlled by the taliban. gunfire was heard during the battle in a market the militants had stormed. officials say two militants were heard although there were differing reports over how many attackers were involved. when it was over, officials kq recovered what may have been an unexploded suicide vest. that brings us to an update on the situation in afghanistan from a journalist who has been covering that country and its conflicts for decades. he is dan rather, the long-time cbs news anchorman and now anchor and managing editor of dan rather reports on hd net. he has just got back from his most recent trip to afghanistan, and we talked about it on friday. great to see you. thank you very much for joining us again. always a pleasure to be here. you just returned from afghanistan. give us a sense of where you went and share some of your observations with us. well, the previous trip, we spent most of our time in lmand province around kandahar, which as you know is a desert part of the country, some mountains. this time we were primarily in the province near the pakistan border to the east. say, the middle-east of the country. it is one of the two or three most active combat regions in afghanistan. and how did you frame your reporting? was there something specifically that you were trying to sort of get at? you ve been to afghanistan 11 times. two times in the past year. give us an idea of some of the trend lines that you ve observed. both negative and positive. well, number one, the united states has dramatically changed, and its allies, we ve dramatically changed strategies in afghanistan. we went from a strategy of we will fight the taliban and their al qaeda allies, wherever they are. to beginning last summer, a strategy of this spreads us too thin. it is not the best use of resources. we re now going to try to protect population centers. that doesn t necessarily mean only large cities because population center of 2,500 to 5,000, for example. and we re going to go with that strategy. that s number one. we sought to explain the strategy. what it was. how dramatic it was, changed from the previous strategy, and how is it working. because it is working literally hand in glove in an effort to build governance from the village level up. i attended meetings with elders, talked to the state department, the civilian workers who are trying to build a sense of you, mr. or miss villager, you are involved in the government. on the military side, protect the populations. on the soft power side, build governance from the ground up. together we re trying to build the economy with such things as retaining walls, catfi ponds, that sort of thing. you were saying that in the time you ve been going to afghanistan, especially recently, that you have seen some improvements. in terms of the picture. i think there has been some those of us in this country. this is number one odds against, the president probably chose the best of some very bad options. number two, it is going to take time. what do you think that we ve missed in afghanistan? well, my personal opinion is what we ve missed, it s a fairly long list. it begins with not understanding that al qaeda is not physically centered somewhere. right now, i think al qaeda is much more centered in afghanistan pakistan than afghanistan, but al qaeda as it now exists is internet centered. i don t think we understand. we say if we really hammer down on afghanistan, that will eliminate the al qaeda. it may eliminate al qaeda on the ground or reduce them, but al qaeda is worldwide, it s internet based. that s one thing i don t understand. the second thing i don t tnk we understand is the fulcrum of the war in the region of afghanistan is now in pakistan, not in afghanistan. because most of the al qaeda is there. i would say those two things. the number three thing is to realize, the government that éw we re supporting in kabul, it is corrupt. it s dysfunctional it reeks of mismanagement and cronyism. and that s a huge barrier to what we re trying to accomplish. all right. dan rather, thank you very much for joining us. always a pleasure to be with you. we turn to europe now. and the war crimes trial of john demjanjuk taking place in germany. the 89-year-old former ohio resident is charged as an accessory to the murder of almost 28,000 jews for his alleged activities as a gud at a nazi concentration camp in poland. today relatives of those killed in the camp testified, including paul hellman who lost his father. we have a picture of what happened there of the re facts, you know. it should be also told by him and what was his role. and you hope also that he would say something like i m sorry. for once. not many people have ever done that. with that in mind, we want to hear what you think about john demjanjuk. tonight s question, what do you think is to be gained at this point by trying an apparently ailing 89-year-old accused nazi guard? you can give us your thoughts by going to the how you see it section of our website. worldfocus.org. in tonight s signature story, we look beyond the headlines with an update on the story that we ve been following for more than a year now. it s about soaring food prices in india, with its population of more than 1 billion. the government says food prices have increased almost 20% over the last year. reaching a ten-year high. and that is affecting indians from all walks of life. as you re about to see in a story that we first aired here late last year. i m really shocked at some of the prices. it s hitting me so hard. reporter: she hadn t been to the market for years before she retired a few months ago. all these years, i just depended on what was bought. reporter:ought by her maids who go to market every day. nera lives with her family in a gated community outside delhi, india. she has maids, one who lives in, one who comes and goes. she lives with her family just outside the gate in a slum surrounding the luxury high rises. and like her boss, she is feeling the squeeze of rising food prices. i buy whatever is cheap. i want to buy good vegetables for the family but i cannot. reporter: separated by a quarter of a mile, they might as well live in different worlds. as better. now everything is double the price. lentils, vegetables. reporter: the 50% increase for food for a wife and mother who makes about $2 a day. typically, a poor family, a poor household spends half or more than half of the total income of the household on food. therefore, when food prices go up, it s like a very sharp reduction in the real income of that household. reporter: it s hard to believe that there s a od crisis when you visit the delhi wholesale market where farmers come from all over india. onions are a staple of the indian diet and there is a saying here. that if the price of onions go up, the government needs to worry. and the government is worried about onions and other commodities. worried enough to put a ban on wheat and rice exports last spring. you know, india in agriculture is an exporter. the very fact that you put export breaks and export controls, that does put a price on the global price. reporter: at the market, the middlemen who bion ons mark them up a few rupees. by the time the vegetables the local market, she ll pay 18 rupees, up 25% from last year. but today, she has no onions to bring home as she makes the short walk from her boss s house through a garbage dump to her husband and daughter. they moved here from rural india after their baby was born. in my town we get food but not money. so we came here to earn some money.g]]ís8 reporter: they live here barracks style with 12 other families who share one toilet and running water for just one hour a day. their room is seven by nine feet. about the size of her boss kitchen. not an inch of space is wasted. with no refrigerator, she keeps tomatoes on the wall, potatoes under the bed. tomatoes. i used to get one kilo for 15 rupees. now it is 18. reporter: for her, that difference of a few cents means making excruciating choices. tonight she chooses rice. it s cheaper so her family is eating more of it and less of other important foods making malnutrition a real risk. india s children are highly malnourished. even adults are highly malnourished. in fact, the number of children malnourished in india is even higher than the subsaharan africa which is a national shame. reporter: she said all the maids in her neighborhood are suffering from rising food prices. we need a raise. we need a raise. for the first time, we really feel we do need a raise because we are realizing how expensive everything is. reporter: and she did give her a small raise, but it may not be enough. i don t think i should have come here. i want to go back home. i can t live here for long because it is too expensive. if i go back, at least i will live happily. our signature report from india. finally tonight, a couple of stories that caught our attention from russia. this was the 130th anniversary of the birth of the soviet dictator joseph stalin. there were tributes by there were tributes by communist sympathizers at stalin s grave in red square. a few poll found that more than half of russia have a high opinion of his leadership, despite the purges and the repression that killed millions under his rule. q the current russian prime minister vladimir putin showing his prowess as a strongman and a black belt in martial arts at the judo school where he practiced when he was young. keeping up his image as a man of action.ñ÷ñh49 that is worldfocus this monday. thank you for joining us. captions by vitac www.vitac.com major support has be beenprovided by rosalind p. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that s why we re yourretirementcompany.com. and additional funding is provided by the following supporters