Potpourri of races lives at peace, cool on the Equator

March 23, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

This American Indian mother sitting with her daughter on a street in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, looks anxious.

American Indians comprise seven per cent of Ecuador’s population of 16 million.

They and the seven per cent who are African and the seven per cent other indigenous people have lower living standards than the 72 per cent of mixed Spanish and Indian descent and the six per cent white descendants of the Spanish invaders who took Ecuador from the Inca civilisation in 1532.

Incas left strong imprint on Ecuador

The Incas had arrived from Peru only 50 years before but left a strong imprint on Ecuador’s culture.

They had many achievements in science, technology, the arts, architecture and language.

Their royal dynasty was reputed to be descendants of the sun. The Incas left many ruins, which are preserved.

The diseases brought by the Spanish soldiers, especially smallpox, killed more Incas than the soldiers did.

The Spaniards started sugar plantations, using local people as serfs and Africans as slaves, but abolished slavery in 1851, 14 years before the United States did.

Simon Bolivar freed South America

Ecuador, like most of South America, was freed from the Spanish colonists by Simon Bolivar.

He was the son of a Venezuelan aristocrat and used the fact that Spain had been invaded by Napoleon to fight the Spanish troops in the Andes Mountains north of Quito and declared that Ecuador was free on May 25, 1822.

It was in Quito that Bolivar met the great passion of his life, Manuela Saenz, who like him was an ardent revolutionary and who freely admitted she loved him.

Quito is one kilometre from Equator

Quito is the world’s only city directly threatened by an active volcano that has not erupted in recent years.

Its historic centre is the best-preserved in the Americas. Its council runs a bicycle-sharing system called Bici Q.

Parts of Quito are only one kilometre from the Equator but the city of two million people is so high in the Andes Mountains that its average year-round temperature is only 22 degrees Celsius

Ecuadorians aged 16 and over elect Assembly members and the President every four years.

Forty-two per cent of the Assembly members are women, a steep increase on the 13 per cent in 1998 and the eighth highest in the world.

The highest percentages of women parliamentarians are in Rwanda, 64 per cent, followed by Bolivia and Cuba and—much further down–Australia, 32 per cent.

The Ecuador Government has become increasingly stable and the economy, based on coffee, sugar, rice, bananas and palm oil, has improved significantly.

No singles scene in Ecuador

Ecuador’s mixed races live at peace; social life is conservative; people place great emphasis on their families; there is no singles scene; girls live with their parents until married; important days are girls’ 15th birthdays, marriage and funerals.

Education standards have improved and school is free and compulsory for six years.

The overall literacy rate is 94 per cent; the female rate is only one per cent less. Thirty per cent of the people are aged under 15.

The Roman Catholic Church has a strong grip on Ecuador—89 per cent of the people are Catholic.

But Ecuador has a high divorce rate. Many people make pilgrimages or dedicate themselves to a saint.

Life expectancy is 77 years, the 51st best in the world. But child labour is a source of income for some families.

Ecuadorian women love high heels

Each Indian community has a traditional dress; in some locations, both men and women let their hair grow long.

On special occasions, Indian men wear business suits. Indians craft leather and wooden goods.

Ecuadorian women love wearing jeans and high heels. Latin American music plays a big part in Ecuadorian social life.

Easter is a chance to eat Fanesca, a soup that is virtually the national drink, made of onions, peanuts, fish, rice, squash, broad beans, corn, lentils and peas. Chili sauce is part of most meals.

United States failed to buy Galapagos

Ecuador has Latin America’s largest population of refugees from drug crime and political upheaval in neighbouring Colombia.

Ecuador owns the Galapagos Islands, 1,200km off the coast, and has refused repeated United States offers to buy them.

A remarkable array of animals, reptiles and birds live protected lives on the islands and were extensively studied by Charles Darwin on a voyage there in 1835.

He said in his book “The Origin of Species” that they had evolved without the aid of a creator through natural selection, which ensured the survival of the fittest.

Into the Amazon with dancing girls

My visit to Ecuador evolved rapidly because I couldn’t get to my next destination, the mighty Amazon River, from Quito.

So I had to fly to Bogota in Colombia, where I got a ride on a Colombian Air Force plane full of beer, dancing girls and condoms for Colombian soldiers stationed at Leticia, on the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil.

I will describe the trip, and a voyage down the Amazon, in the next chapter.

Four girls in cosmopolitan Ghana, a beacon in Africa and a favourite place

March 9, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

Life in Ghana, where I photographed these girls, is fun and frustrating, scorching heat, crazy hairstyles, warm people, colourful dresses, hot jazz, bad roads, open drains and poor infrastructure.

Ghana was the first African country to gain independence

It is Africa’s most peaceful country; it is a democracy with universal voting; its child care and nutrition are advanced for Africa; so is its school system; it has six universities and its growing prosperity has made it a power in West Africa, where many of its neighbours are poor dictatorships.

It was the first African country to become independent, in 1957.

The girls greeted me in the capital city, Accra, which has a population of four million.

Let’s call them, from left, Abba (meaning born on Thursday), Haniah (happiness and bliss), Morowa (queen) and the girl at the back Felicia (blessed with luck).

Britain made Ghana a colony

Portuguese traders first landed in Ghana in 1470, followed by the English, Dutch and Swedes.

The British grabbed it 1820 and called it Gold Coast because gold was discovered there.

English is still its official language.

Most other West African countries were French colonies.

Typical of British colonial rule, Ghana’s main freedom fighter, Kwame Nkrumah, was arrested for agitating for independence in 1948 and sentenced later to a year in gaol but released when in 1951 he was elected to parliament in the Gold Coast’s first elections and made Prime Minister the next year.

Kwame Nkrumah steered Ghana towards communism

The British made the mistake of jailing him but he made the mistake of steering the new nation of Ghana towards communism.

He became increasingly autocratic, started many nationalised industrial projects that strained the economy, survived several assassination attempts, developed his own personality cult and declared Ghana a one-party state

While he visited Bejing in 1966, the Ghana army and police seized power. He spent the rest of his life in asylum in Guinea and died of cancer in Bucharest in 1972.

Ghana’s legal system is modeled on Britain’s

Eleven years later, in a lesson to other military governments, the Ghana military gave way to a multi-party parliamentary state with a separate legal system similar to Britain’s, with elections every four years.

The media is legally free but is under pressure from some people in the government.

The girls I photographed were in a busy high-school playground.

Education is free and compulsory for children from four to 15; 76 per cent of Ghana’s population of 28 million can read and write and the percentage soars to 90 among people aged 15 to 24.

Next door Burkina Faso’s literacy rate is 50 per cent and nearby Mali’s is 49 per cent, Niger’s is 40 per cent and Guinea’s 46 per cent.

More than half the people in Ghana are Christian

Ghana’s median family income is $U.S.2,050 a year, Burkina Faso’s is $1,530 but at the other end of the scale Luxembourg’s is $52,493.

The life expectancy of people in Ghana is 63; in Australia, it is 82.

More than half the people in Ghana are Christian; one-fifth are Muslim, but they live in peace—another lesson for countries torn by religious strife.

The hustle and bustle of Makola Market

Nightlife in Accra is widespread, hectic and jazz-filled.

The Makola Market in the city centre is one of Africa’s biggest, most intense, most chaotic and is stacked full of food, household goods, clothes and people.

Most stalls are run by women.

Ghana has plenty of lessons for the world

I liked meeting and talking English with Abba, Haniah, Morowa and Felicia.

I like Ghana.

It is one of my favourite places and has many lessons to give a world full of strife, war and poverty.

Four children in the world’s most-bombed country, little Laos

February 27, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

Let’s hope these cute children I photographed in Luang Prang, the second city of landlocked Laos in Asia, are not among the 44 per cent of Laos children aged under five who are stunted, caused by undernourishment during pregnancy.

Planeload of bombs over Laos every eight minutes

Laos, which is squeezed between Thailand and Vietnam, was a French colony until 1953.

In 1975, the communist Pathet Lao overthrew the royalists and started years of isolation violently punctured by the United States dropping more bombs on Laos per head of population than were dropped in the entire Second World War and equal to a planeload every eight minutes, day and night.

U.S. President John Kennedy and his successors tried to justify this mass murder by saying it was to stop North Vietnamese using the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos to attack the rotten South Vietnamese Government.

Laos one of five communist countries

President Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, said most Vietnamese would want to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam, but he was determined to prevent the spread of communism.

He should not have tried.

Laos is now one of only five communist countries in the world, the others being China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam

In Laos, 200,000 people died in the war (one tenth of the population at the time) and nearly a third of the bombs didn’t explode so since the war ended 20,000 people, including 8,000 children, have been killed or injured by exploding bombs.

Terrible ten days in Laos

The United States has spent only $130 million trying to clear up unexploded bombs in Laos in the past 25 years but that is only as much as it spent in one ten-day period bombing Laos.

Eighty per cent of Laos’s 6,700,000 people live on less than $2.50 a day, mostly from growing rice on small farms.

Men and women have different tasks in rice-growing and harvesting. Some men hunt game for food.

Women gather wood for cooking. One advance for women is that they have become a significant minority in the National Assembly.

Laos is steeped in tradition

Like many under-developed countries, Laos is steeped in tradition—the traditions of dominant Buddhism, such as an obligation to give food or money to monks, and ethnic history.

People tie strings around their wrists to preserve good luck, and the Lao ritual of Baci, which is associated with giving birth, getting married, becoming a monk and welcoming foreign guests.

I was welcomed everywhere I went, either in the capital city of Vientiane (only 850,000 people) or Luang Prang where I met the children I photographed, or in the countryside.

Life expectancy in Laos

Eighty per cent of the roads are dirt tracks. Most water comes from wells. Life expectancy is 65 for men and 68 for women.

In the countryside, medical care is given by village medical workers, often using only herbs.

In the past most teaching was done in Buddhist temples and was available only to boys and seventy per cent of the illiterate people are women. Government teachers are paid irregularly and have to work also elsewhere so classes are often held for only a few hours a day.

The National Assembly has little power under the dictator, President Bounnhang Vorachith, and the government controls all the media.

But there is some progress: 2.5 million people use the internet and 2.2million are on Facebook.

More people in Laos have access to electricity

The country has huge hydro resources not developed by the government although the World Bank says the number of people with access to electricity has doubled and the number of homes without a (pan) toilet has halved.

Communist Laos has attracted some foreign investment and ironically opened a stock exchange in Vientiane.

I would like to tie a string around my wrist to wish good luck to the four children I photographed.

Genocide On the Road to Mandalay

February 24, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

Genocide would have been far from Rudyard Kipling’s mind when in 1890 he wrote the poem “On the Road to Mandalay”, about a Cockney soldier’s yearning for his Burmese girlfriend.

But genocide sums up the actions of Buddhist Myanmar military rulers since they forced more than a million Muslim Rohingya refugees to flee, mostly in 2017 and mostly to Muslim Bangladesh.

Buddhism is regarded as the world’s most peaceful religion, but Buddhism is certainly not peaceful in Myanmar.

Buddhism’s huge power in Myanmar

The Buddha I photographed in Yangong, the Myanmar capital, is huge, like the power that Buddhism wields in Myanmar, which in Kipling’s time was called Burma, exploited by the British Government and the East India Company.

Britain ruled it as part of British India from 1824 to 1948, apart from Japanese control in World War 11 from 1940 to ’45.

Mandalay is Myanmar’s second city.

The Rohingya have lived in Myanmar’s poorest province for centuries, with no identity or health or education support.

They are not allowed to become Myanmar citizens.

The Myanmar military killed 24,000 Rohingya people, sexually violated 18,000 women and girls, beat 116,000 people and threw 36,000 into fires as they burned the Rohingya villages.

Like living in a time capsule in Myanmar

After gaining independence in 1948, Myanmar’s military rulers shut the country off from the world for 50 years.

Few people would know that a man walked on the moon.

Village life in thatched-roof bamboo cottages is like living in a time capsule.

Three quarters of the people in 65,000 villages have no electricity, although the country has abundant oil, gas and hydro resources.

Even the capital, Yangon (previously Rangoon) has regular blackouts.

You can still find cars that have to be crank-shafted to start.

The biggest occupation is growing rice, mostly by hand or with oxen-driven ploughs.

The government allocates only 1.2% of its budget to education, but children are taught English as a second language.

More carts than motor vehicles in Myanmar

Thousands of people set up shops on street footpaths offering goods for sale, mostly the same goods at the same prices.

Or they offer to fix umbrellas by hand, repair sewing machines or cut keys. There are more horse-drawn carts than motor vehicles.

Myanmar’s 60 million people have little knowledge of marketing, although they are genuine, relaxed, friendly, humble and respectful.

It is a conservative, traditionalist country; much of life revolves around religion, which dominates the country.

The Buddhist hierarchy expects the people to give food and money to its priests.

If the people were not so passive, they would probably have rebelled against their dictatorial, repressive military government.

Dating a person of the opposite sex means you plan marriage–there is no dating for fun.

Marrying a person from another country is frowned on.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a hero of modern Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, General Aung San, became the internationally-acclaimed hero of modern Myanmar but was later widely attacked for defending the genocide inflicted by the military government on the Rohingya, the world’s most persecuted minority.

She was educated in England and married an English historian but did not dare to leave Myanmar to join him for fear she would not be allowed back because of her campaigns to make the country democratic.

Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest

For 15 years from 1989 to 2102 she was held under house arrest in Yangon. In 1990 she won the Nobel Peace Prize but when she did not try to stop the army persecuting the Muslims, many people around the world wanted her to be stripped of the prize.

Kipling ends his poem, “An the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay,” but the China he referred to in 1890 was nothing like modern China, which is developing projects in Myanmar and showing increasing interest in the country that Kipling wrote about so long ago.

The Queen of Sheba’s country escaped the scramble for Africa

February 12, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

The countries most affected by AIDS are all in Africa and these two men I photographed in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, are performing a play sponsored by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) aimed at counteracting discrimination against AIDS victims.

On this trip I visited MSF missions across Africa and wrote 100 articles about them for Australian newspapers. Of Ethiopia’s 109 million people, 3.3 per cent have AIDS, nothing like the small African kingdom of Swaziland (29 per cent of adults).

Ethiopians have a different look

Ethiopia is unique and Ethiopians have a different look.

Their genes are a mixture of sub-Saharan African, Berber, Jewish, Arabic and Mesopotamian (modern-day Iraq). Ethiopia lies between North and Southern Africa.

Its neighbours are Kenya, Sudan and Somalia.

Visit by the Queen of Sheba

In the 11th Century Before Common Era, its legendary, mythical ruler, the Queen of Sheba, went to visit King Solomon in what is now Israel.

King Solomon successfully answered her riddles and she showered him with gifts.

They must have hit it off because after the Queen returned to Sheba, she had a son from Solomon, Menelik 1, who continued her dynasty.

Motley collection of Ethiopian rulers

In modern times, Ethiopia, which used to be called Abyssinia, has had a motley jumble of rulers.

Haile Selassie, a descendant of Menelik 1, was its progressive, reformist ruler from 1916 to 1974 apart from the five years after the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s army conquered it and Selassie fled to Bath in England.

Selassie regained control after Italian partisans shot Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci and hung their bodies in a picturesque Italian village as World War 11 ended

Selassie tried to break the Ethiopian feudal nobility’s power by increasing the government’s authority until Russian-backed Communists in his army took control and are believed to have strangled him.

Since 1991, Ethiopia has had a fairly democratic government.

One ironic result was that, on my first visit there in 2006, the new government had taken down the Communist street names in the capital Addis Ababa, such as Stalin Street, but not put up any new names, so finding my way around was a matter of guesswork.

The Scramble for Africa and Ethiopia

Ethiopia, Liberia and part of Somalia were the only African countries to escape what has been called The Scramble for Africa.

After Belgium grabbed control of the Congo and Britain grabbed Egypt, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Belgium met in Berlin in 1884 and ‘85 to carve Africa into colonies.

No-one represented Africa or any of its countries.

Quite likely no-one thought that Africa should have a say or that any division should be along tribal or religious lines. The result has been disastrous for Africa.

Between 1885 and 1914, control of the people of Africa was grabbed by Britain (30%), France (15%), Portugal (11%), Germany (9%), Belgium (7%) and Italy (1%).

Life expectancy in Ethiopia is 66 years of age

Ethiopia has fared better than many other African countries. Its life expectancy is 66.2 years, comparted with AIDS-riddled Swaziland, 31.9 years but nowhere near Hong Kong, 84.3 years and Japan, 83.8 years.

It has 230 textile and garment factories and the largest cattle numbers in Africa; it was where the first coffee plant was grown, in the Ninth Century, and today 12 million people work in coffee production and coffee is its biggest export; 15 years ago, only 25% of boys and 20% of girls went to school; now 90% do.

Famine killed a million people

But 15% of Ethiopians live below the poverty line; 61 million of Ethiopia’s 109 million people do not have access to clean water or sanitation; and in Addis Ababa, 80% of the people live in slums and 12,000 children live on the streets.

The 1983-1985 famine killed a million people. I walked along many wide, imposing main streets in Addis Ababa—and into dozens of shanty slums on each side.

Lucy, the oldest human skeleton

Like elsewhere in Africa, most Ethiopians are young, except Lucy, a skeleton 3,200,000 years old, found in 1974 and said to be the oldest known human skeleton.

I looked at her in a glass case in a shabby Addis Ababa museum and thought her current descendants deserved a better life than they have now.

The Women’s Market in ancient Cusco, Peru

January 22, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

In my travels through 59 countries I visited this market where only women trade, in Cusco, a busy town 75 km from Machu Picchu, which is the most famous archaeological site in Peru and all of South America.

Peru has one of the longest histories of civilisation, back to 4000 years Before the Common Era, which used to be known as Before Christ.

The Incas were the largest civilisation in the Americas before Columbus

The Incas were the largest civilisation in pre-Columbian America, or in other words before the adventurous Italian slave-trader Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492 and thought he had arrived in India.

Actually he arrived in the Bahamas and never set foot in America, but when he saw indigenous people he thought they were Indians and forever onwards American Indians have been called just that.

The Incas had no wheeled vehicles, no animals to ride, no knowledge of iron or steel, no written language and traded without money but built one of the greatest imperial states in human history.

Peruvians are skilled at making finely-woven textiles

They had great skill at architecture and built a road network reaching all corners of their South American empire.

They made finely-woven textiles but functioned largely without money and without markets.

Their taxes consisted of an obligation to work for the community.

Hats are a fashion at Cusco market

Now Cusco, where I photographed the Women’s Market, has a population of 428,000. As you can see, hats are a fashion in the market.

Peruvian culture is a mix of Spanish and native cultures.

Peru has delicious food, imposing archaeological complexes, 12 world heritage sites and vast natural resources

It is one of the world’s most varied countries, 60 per cent of it jungle.

Peru has a democratically-elected government headed by a president. School is compulsory from ages six to 16.

Life expectancy is 75 years. The literacy rate of Peru is 93 per cent.

Lima, the capital, has a population of 9,750,000, almost a third of Peru’s total of 32 million.

The Incas of Macu Picchu flee

When the Spanish invaders arrived in 1572, the Incas of Machu Picchu fled.

The invaders destroyed Cusco but Machu Picchu was left alone as the invaders couldn’t find it and it was eventually rediscovered by an American explorer.

Vegetation had helped preserve it and now four million tourists visit it a year as Peru’s main tourist attraction. Machu means “old” and Picchu means “mountain”.

Peru became independent of Spain in 1821 and adopted a liberal constitution in 1828.

In 1864, Spain sent fighting ships to try to regain the country as a colony but the Peruvians put up a strong resistance, the ships withdrew and Spain recognised Peru’s independence.

Potatoes came from Peru

Potatoes originally came from there, and Peru has 3,000 varieties of them.

Guinea pigs are a traditional dish.

Peru grows 55 varieties of corn in many colours, yellow, purple, white and black.

Peru is the world’s sixth largest producer of gold.

Farmers have herds of llamas and alpacas.

No European country has suffered quite like Poland

January 17, 2020 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

My photo of a World War 11 memorial in Warsaw, the Polish capital, is just an indication of how Poland has suffered, first in the war and then for 37 years as a repressed satellite of Communist Russia.

Britain declares war on Germany

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany.

On September 17, the Soviet Army also invaded Poland and the country was split into two zones.

Before the war, Poland had more Jews than any other country but the Germans killed 2.9million of them (90 per cent) and 2.8million other Poles.

Poland suffered the largest number of war casualties as a proportion of the population.

But the Poles are resilient and throughout the war the Home Army conducted guerrilla warfare and staged a mass uprising in Warsaw in 1944.

Auschwitz – One of six Nazi death camps

All six of the Nazis’ death camps were in Poland, including Auschwitz, the biggest.

When I asked the taxi driver who acted as my guide at the camp whether the names carved into the wooden bunks once used by prisoners had been left by the prisoners, he replied, “No, by tourists.”

In post-war talks that divided Europe among the Allies, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin promised the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that he would hold free elections in Poland. He did not.

Soviet-appointed government fixed prices

In Soviet-occupied Poland, every company with more than 50 staff was nationalised… All prices were fixed by the Soviet-appointed government… Everything was controlled.

People were given a limit of what they could buy, so many bought what they were allowed to, then exchanged goods with others

Non-smokers particularly benefitted: they exchanged their cigarette allocation for other goods.

In the Gdansk shipyards in the late 1970s, the workers formed a movement called Solidarity.

The Soviet-controlled government arrested some of its leaders but its newspaper kept publishing.

Solidarity’s leader Lech Walesa, an electrician, organised a non-violent struggle for independence.

Surveillance by secret police

His actions led to him being often laid off and he was constantly under surveillance by the secret police.

His wife Danuta, who was even more anti-communist than he was, taunted the secret police whenever they arrested him.

He was jailed for 11 months until 1982 and the same year Solidarity was outlawed.

But the next year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, although Danuta accepted it on his behalf as he feared he would not be allowed back into Poland if he went to Oslo in Norway to do so.

Poland is now a prosperous country and a member of the EU

The Soviet Union was being broken up by its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Walesa persuaded leaders of Polish parties allied with the Communist Party to form a non-communist government.

In 1990 he was elected Polish President and under his Presidency, Poland joined the European Union.

Poles are friendly people

Poland as a free market economy has recovered from its 50 years of war and harsh dictatorship.

Its people are friendly; life is easier; enterprise is cherished; Poland is the sixth largest member of the European Union and one of the most prosperous.

It is a land of striking beauty, punctuated by great forests and rivers, broad plains and tall mountains.

The Warriors and Wonders of Samarkand on the Old Silk Road

January 6, 2020 — Leave a comment

In Central Asia Australian journalist Philip Luker toured Uzbekistan, one of the 15 countries given their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 by the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Several Uzbek people told me that life was better under Russian control.

My photo shows my guide, Guzal, on the right, with her brother, sister and mother, who brought cakes to give to me and my fellow bus travellers in Samarkand.

Alexander the Great and the history of the Old Silk Road in Samarkand

The 2,750-year-old Uzbekistan city of Samarkand has been conquered at different times by Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Genghis Kahn and Temur, who was born close by in Shahrisabz and became Emperor of China.

Samarkand was one of the main Silk Road trading towns.

All those years ago, Chinese traders brought goods there and traded them with Mediterranean merchants.

By 1920, Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan) were in Soviet Union hands and stayed that way until Gorbachev declared the 15 states independent in 1991, which made him an international hero but vehemently disliked in Russia.

He had tried to reform the Soviet Union with Perestroika (selling government enterprises to private enterprise) and Glasnost (openness and transparency).

Seventy-five per cent of Uzbekistan’s people are Moslems but women dress in Western fashion and Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent has plenty of nightlife.

Gorbachev changed Europe and the world more than anyone else in the last half of the Twentieth Century.

The Registan (open public space) in Samarkand is a dramatic, beautiful square flanked by historic madrasahs (Islamic schools).

Government led by Shavkat Mirziyoyev uses slavery

The dark picture about Uzbekistan is that its government, led by Shavkat Mirziyoyev, is one of the world’s biggest users of slavery.

Every autumn, more than a million government workers are forced to harvest cotton for little or no wages.

Any Uzbekistan government employee who refuses is sacked.

Cotton growing forced by the Soviet Union when it controlled Uzbekistan has increased the country’s air and water pollution.

No freedom of speech in Mirziyoyev’s Uzbekistan

Now Uzbekistan is a dictatorship whose 32 million people have limited rights, opposition is not allowed and there is no freedom of speech, religion or the media.

Corruption is rampant.

Many medical supplies are in short supply.

Torture is endemic in the Uzbekistan criminal system and in 2002, two prisoners were boiled alive

About 10,000 political prisoners, including many journalists, are in jail—more than in all other former Soviet republics combined.

My guide Guzal told us about Uzbekistan’s President and Cabinet.

I asked her whether the President chose his Cabinet. After a long pause, she replied, “Yes.”

Mirziyoyev’s Government controls Uzbekistan’s economy

Uzbekistan is an authoritarian country and the government has no legal opposition.

The government controls the economy but has allowed small businesses to grow.

Homosexuals keep their sexuality quiet because male homosexuality can result in three years’ jail.

Some rural Uzbek women have been forcibly sterilized.

Towns outside the capital Tashkent often suffer electricity blackouts.

Soviet mismanagement of agricultural and irrigation projects to increase cotton production shrank the Aral Sea to less than half its size, leaving ships stranded and fishing communities high and dry.

Nearly four-fifths of the country, the sun-dried western area, looks like a wasteland.

Uzbek mothers run the household

Uzbekistan’s average annual income is $US2,220 per person.

It is a patriarchal society although the mother runs the household.

The tea house is the central gathering place for men.

State-controlled Islam is the dominant religion.

Uzbekistan’s capital city is not Samarkand, it’s Tashkent

On the plus side the capital, Tashkent, has vibrant markets, the crime rate is low and the adult literacy rate is 99 percent.

Like the inhabitants of all dictatorships, my guide Gazal and her family have to put up with keeping their views of the government to themselves.

Two pretty girls in a swampy slum in devastated Cambodia

December 27, 2019 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

Let’s call these two girls Bopha (meaning flowers) and Botum (princess).

Their attractive country of Cambodia has suffered invasion by the French in 1887, a coup backed by the U.S. in 1970, bombing by the Americans in the Vietnam War, a civil war, mass murder by Pol Pot, invasion by North Vietnam.

It is now a harsh dictatorship riddled with corruption, led by the current President Hun Sen and his gang of 12 army officers based in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Who controls Cambodian family finances?

Bopha and Botum, under Cambodian customs, are expected to be modest, soft-spoken, well-mannered and industrious care-givers to their husbands.

But as wives they will control the family purse-strings.

Average Cambodian incomes

Not that most Cambodians have much money.

Their average income in 2017 was $U.S.4,022 and 35 per cent of them live in poverty, especially small farmers in the countryside.

The United Nations says Cambodian poverty is caused by an ineffective and oppressive government, which failed to lift Cambodia out of civil war from 1967 to 1975.

Cambodian Communist Party

The Cambodian Communist Party, backed by North Vietnam, started the civil war by attacking the then-peaceful Cambodia.

Then the Americans turned the coup upside down by installing an anti-Communist government.

Then the Americans dropped half a million tons of bombs on Cambodia, killing tens of thousands of people, to try to stop the North Vietnamese using it to send supplies and troops into South Vietnam

One series of bombing raids directed by U.S. President Richard Nixon was grotesquely codenamed by the U.S. Air Force “Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Supper”.

Pol Pot tried to “purify” Cambodia

After the Vietnam War, Cambodia’s worst misery started when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge Government tried to “purify” Cambodia by making city people do forced labour in the countrywide.

About 1,700,000 people (21 per cent of the population) died.

Cambodian Government corrupt

Vietnam invaded Cambodia to get rid of Pol Pot, who died in 1998 without ever facing justice.

Do murderous dictators ever face justice? Vietnam installed the current government, which is one of the world’s most corrupt.

It has sold vast areas of land to foreign investors in exchange for bribes to government ministers.

Cambodians have to use bribes to get medical help or government permits.

Hun Sen, who has been Prime Minister and dictator since 1985, ignores human rights and suppresses political dissent.

Thousands of Angkor statues

Cambodia’s main industries are textiles and tourism, especially to the Angkor ruins of the Khmer Empire from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries.

Three thousand of the gigantic statues are of beguiling nymphs with (a hair-styling expert has calculated) 37 different hair styles.

Stone lions stand on guard.

Stone-paved streets are flanked on each side by rows of stone figures of people.

Giant trees have, over the succeeding centuries, wrapped themselves around statues like octopus tentacles.

Where Angkor stone came from

The Khmer people cut the stone for Angkor Wat (temple) and Angkor Thom (city) from a mountain 50km away and floated it along the Siem Reap River before raising some, without mechanical help, to the height of a six-storey building. Don’t ask me how.

Siem Reap full of hotels

The first time I walked among these fascinating ruins, there was only one hotel in the local village of Siem Reap; on my most recent visit, Siem Reap was full of hotels and girly bars, so fast has international tourism boomed.

Mekong River an open sewer

Little of it benefits the girls I photographed in the Phnom Penh slums, Bopha and Botum.

Many homes in the slums are built on stilts in the Mekong River, which in Phnom Penh is an open sewer.

Children search rubbish dumps for anything they can sell.

After so much United States manipulation and greedy, corrupt government, little Cambodia and its 16 million people deserve better than their lot in life.

Friendship in murderous Genghis Khan’s country of Mongolia

December 20, 2019 — Leave a comment

By Australian journalist Philip Luker

Sandwiched between the powerful Communist-turned-Capitalist dictatorships of Russia and China, Mongolia has an active parliament that nominates candidates for President, who is chosen by popular vote every four years. But Mongolia ensures its dealings with Russia and China are cordial.

A warm welcome, despite no common words

This family I photographed in its capital, Ulaanbaatar, on my way by train from Beijing to St Petersburg, did their best to welcome me to their city without us having any common words.

Let us call the father Altan (meaning golden), the mother Bayarmaa (mother of joy), their son Batu (loyal) and their daughter Badma (lotus).

Most Mongolians are nomads

Ulaanbaatar’s population of 1,300,000 is almost half of Mongolia’s and most Mongolians living outside the capital are nomads, moving their gers or yurts and herds of horses, sheep and goats from pasture to pasture.

Mongolia is the most sparsely-populated country in the world after Greenland.

It also has one of the world’s widest range of temperatures, from 40deg C in summer to minus 40deg C in winter.

Typical Mongolian family and life in a ger

Each ger contains a sink, electric stove and often a refrigerator, radio and television sets and electric lights using solar power and batteries.

Nomads contact each other by mobile phone.

A typical family comprises parents, two horses, 20 cows, 50 sheep, eight children and 16 grandchildren

A fire in the centre of the ger is for comfort and cooking.

The smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. Beds are around the walls and also a shrine and display of family photos.

Mongolian literacy rate

Nomadic families send their children to school in the cities and towns (Mongolia has a 98 per cent literacy rate) and often the children stay in the city and eventually their parents and grandparents build “granny gers” in their childrens’ gardens.

But the smoke from gers in Ulaanbaatar has made it one of the world’s most polluted cities and some suburbs have become ger slums.

The family I photographed was walking on a Sunday in Genghis Kahn Square, named after Mongolia’s founder and national hero.

Founder of the Silk Road

He united the nomadic tribes of Central Asia and in 25 years conquered more land in what is now China, Korea, Siberia and Central Asia than the Romans conquered in 400 years.

Genghis founded the Silk Road trade route, pioneered a mail service on horseback but was a muirderous dictator and his life from 1162 to 1227 was full of conspiracies and betrayals.

He sounds like many modern dictators. Genghis had 12 wives, 500 “secondary” wives and concubines but one special wife, Borte, whose sons with him were his heirs.

A lesson to religious leaders

One of his abilities that the whole world should copy was religious tolerance.

He followed the ancient Tengrism religion but he was interested in learning philosophical and moral lessons from other religions and consulted with Buddhist monks, Muslims and Christian missionaries.

What a lesson to the leaders of all modern religions! Half of Mongolia’s people are Buddhist but 38 percent have no religion.

Mongolian horse culture

There are 13 horses for every Mongolian and horse culture is the nomads’ passion.

Some of their children learn to ride before they learn to walk. Nomads in winter meet on horseback for traditional eagle hunters’ festivals.

The riders — their faces weather-beaten by the cold — carry pet eagles on their arms and the eagles, with wing spans of up to two and a half metres, swoop on rabbits, foxes and wolves and are rewarded with some of their preys’ flesh.

What happened to Inner Mongolia?

Mongolia before the Second World War was divided between Inner and Outer Mongolia.

Inner Mongolia was taken over by China after the war and Outer Mongolia became plain Mongolia.

First China increased its influence over Russia, then Russia wrote off Mongolia’s state debt and naturally Mongolia now has good relations with the grizzly Russian Bear.