Spain's prime minister under pressure over migrant crisis

0:00Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in Central London, I'm Tim Franks. It was at the end of July that tens of thousands of migrants poured across Africa's only land border with the European Union, crossing from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of C.U.T.A. You may remember the remarkable chaotic pictures, more than 140 people died as they swam or tried to swim around the barriers. Although most of the migrants returned to Morocco, thousands stayed and a sense of political crisis appears only to be growing for the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchef. Today he made an appearance in Parliament to answer questions about how it could have happened, who might have been behind it, and how his government has handled the whole affair. Mr Sánchef, the address of the accusation led by the opposition that Morocco had orchestrated the influx. No one has provided the Spanish government with any solid evidence that this mass influx

1:06into the Spanish city of C.U.T.A. was planned or carried out by the Moroccan authorities. But the Prime Minister did indicate that Morocco itself did have questions to answer. From day one, our talk shows and social media were flooded with voices pointing the finger at Morocco. And I accept that. It is clear that Morocco is our southern border and then it plays a key role in managing migration flows into our country. And incidentally over the course of this month, we have heard two of their ministers make unacceptable statements about Saeulta and Melilla. Nonetheless, it is the Spanish government which is under pressure not just about its shortcomings to this point, but also about how it is going to handle thousands of asylum applications and look after the many hundreds of migrant children who have now arrived in Saeulta. Dominic Ruf, de Vesar is a recent member of the European Parliament. With Spain's governing socialist party, what does he make of the government's

2:08performance? I think it is clear to anyone that the level of anticipation of this crisis has not been good or sufficient that the government or the administration, border management and so on was not sufficiently warned and prepared for what happened. And once it happened, it seems that has been a serious underestimation of the remaining challenge. One thing is to say, okay, 80,000 people entered, which is massive for a city of basically the same population in a very limited geographic space. And then 70,000 within a day come back, it could look like the problem is solved. But okay, 10,000 people still remaining, including miners that cannot be automatically sent back, including possibly asylum climbers that have to be looked at and their cases processed. Well, 10,000 people is still too much for a city of this population and I mentioned clearly this was underestimated as a humanitarian challenge. So can I ask you

3:13who you think is at fault for that? Well, the Ministry of Interior obviously. Right. Right. And there's significant that you're saying that because obviously you're your member of the governing party, the socialist party, you were a representative for them in the European Parliament until a couple of years ago. So I mean, you're saying, look, we need to be honest about this and realize that for whatever reason we have we have failed to meet the moment. That doesn't mean that efforts have not been undertaken and the challenge is very difficult to handle in the first place. So I don't want to underestimate the seriousness of the challenge and the sincerity of the efforts. But it is clear that we have fallen short on both counts. In terms of who was behind all this, I mean, the Prime Minister has made all sorts of claims about Russia and Israel being behind a campaign to drive people across the border.

4:14There have been comments from the police that suggest that they think that Morocco was perhaps behind it and that's certainly what opposition politicians feel. What are your thoughts on that? Well, according to the evidence we have on the role of Russia and Israel, by the government's own ambition, it looks like the role will have been secondary in the sense that it refers not to the instigation of the events of the massive crossing, but amplification in social media of the crisis itself in order to portray it in the most negative, yeah, fashion possible, obviously, to undermine the Spanish reputation and so on. But it has not been at least clearly or explicitly indicated, including by the government, the Spanish government, that they are accusing these two countries of being in the instigation phase of the events. And this is a very important

5:15difference. And we have more available evidence from different sources, the New York Times reporting on testimonies of migrants that said yes, we were guided, even encouraged by Moroccan guards. We have Spanish police reports that indicate that level of involvement. So probably the two possibilities are compatible that there has been involvement by the Moroccan authorities and that there has been this information campaign by countries hostile to the current government in Spain or to the country to amplify a negative reporting of the events themselves. What you make of the support that you've had elsewhere from within the European Union, the European Commission, so the officials which help run the European Union have said that they're considering the request for help that Spain has made. They're saying we still have some important open questions that need to be answered by the Spanish authorities before we can

6:17commit to providing any support. Do you think that's fair enough or do you worry that there isn't enough support being granted by the European Union? Not really. In a situation like that, you cannot have a bureaucratic approach. So this is an emergency. They help from front-ex and from the EU has to arrive as soon as possible. And there was Dominic Rief de Vessa, a recent member of the European Parliament with Spain's governing socialist party. With that warnings that the arriving natural weather phenomenon known as El Nino could be particularly strong. Today though the UN has given us a sense of just how strong and certainly how the world meteorological organisation has said that it could last until at least February and be the most forceful for 70 years. El Nino causes surface temperatures to rise in the Pacific Ocean,

7:17increasing the risk of droughts and floods in different parts of the world. And the effect it seems is already being felt with this El Nino being blamed for exacerbating massive wildfires in Indonesia. So big that they've produced a toxic haze which is spreading across borders. Here's our Indonesia correspondent, Lisa Tambunan, in Jakarta. Fires are occurring on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan. There are thousands of hot spots missing a lot of fire and haze. The air quality has become extremely hazardous to human health. Over there readings can reach up to 600 and sometimes at several points during the day even over 800 and air quality above 100 is already unhealthy. And this is also affecting flights due to very low visibility. It's also affecting daily activities for schools, Westerns are now resorting to online classes. And because of this toxic haze,

8:22there have been a rising number of respiratory infections with the health ministry reporting over 50,000 cases between July and August. And over 12,000 of these cases are of children under the age of five. Lisa Tambunan, correspondent in Jakarta. Will Fran Mufumu Orkia is chief of climate prediction at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. The fact that this El Nino is going to be seen as so big and so protracted is that, in part, because of the way in which it's exacerbating the already existing effects of manmade climate change. There is no direct relationship between El Nino and the change. But what if sure that El Nino is not happening in a warming world. And the event we have forecasted will be standing in the eyehand of our historical perspective. So we've never seen something that big

9:22in terms of the magnitude. And therefore we need to be prepared for the impact. Will you talk about be prepared? It's going to be tough though, isn't it? For those regions that are going to be hit by perhaps particularly intense droughts or particularly intense floods. I mean, what sorts of things should governments or maybe even individuals be thinking about? I suspect government will try to work collectively with a different part of the government. I mean national med-servicies on one side sector to try to better assess what will be the likely impact of El Nino on a given sector or on the community. So I think there will be more a kind of coordination within a government, within a country, to make sure the intelligence is provided to anticipate the impact. Yeah, well, I suppose you can anticipate and indeed you've already as part of your prediction services. I mean, you've said these are the regions that could

10:25be affected in these sorts of ways. They're obviously fairly wide sway. So it's difficult to see too far in too much detail into the future. But again, I guess the question is, you know, if you're a relatively poor country in East Africa and you'll tell that, you know, steal yourself what could be ruinous floods, what they can do at this stage? Yes, I think that's boiled down to the need of having early warning system, in essence, because again, we need to be cautious here. El Nino is not a forecast of storm. It changes the odds, the probability of the climate condition, but the detail will be defined or clarified by the national med-servicies who have more insight into what is happening on the ground. So we are providing a global teacher, but the detail will need to be refined by the special authority in a country. Right. But just to be clear about this, in terms of the scale you're saying, the figures

11:31you've been looking at are more extreme than anybody pretty much has seen who's around today. Yes, what we are saying is that if we were to look back through the observation, we have dated back to the 1950s, and if we trust our forecast, our forecast will stand out compared to the past El Nino event, whether they are the West strong or very strong, it will be something new. Now, the magnitude of the event doesn't imply the severity of the impact, because it depends on maybe the vulnerability of the country or the location, maybe the time of the year, there are many other factors, but again, it provides some lead time to act, because we don't need to wait until the impact occurs to react. So I think we are providing that information to community. And that was Wilfran Mufumu-Okia, Chief of Climate Protection at the World Meteorological

12:32Organization, the UN agency based in Geneva on the latest data on the natural weather phenomenon, known as El Nino showing it could be the strongest for more than 70 years and last, until at least February next year. Listen to News Air. And coming up on the programme, one of the survivors of the 1960s, Sharpville, massacre in apartheid, South Africa, on the hunt for justice more than 60 years. We heard gunshots coming from behind us. We hit inside the store, peeping to see what was happening outside, people were lying on the ground. When we looked out again, we saw that some were trying to get up, but the police were just shooting at them. That report from South Africa coming up in just a moment. Our main headlines this afternoon are from the BBC Newsroom, the UN Weather

13:36Agency has warned that the current El Nino could have a huge impact on communities and economies around the world. And the trailblazing American feminist, Gloria Steinem, has died at the age of 92, will be looking back on her life in 15 minutes. This is the BBC World Service and Life from London, you listening to News Air with me, Tim Franks. In South Africa, the Sharpville massacre was one of the darkest moments in the long fight against the apartheid government. Dozens were killed when police opened fire on black people protesting against racist past laws, as they were known, back in 1960. Now more than six decades later, survivors and relatives of those killed are challenging an apartheid era law which they say has breathed fentered them so far from seeking justice. Pums of Philani has this report.

14:38Heaps of rubbish are piling up around the township, and many young people of university going age are sitting idle on street corners. It scarcely looks like the home of a historic fight against apartheid laws. We're in Sharpville, south of Johannesburg. It's a township slowly crumbling. Here on the 21st of March in 1960, at least 69 people were killed by state police while demonstrating against the racist apartheid regime. A moe. You do the most part, you do the most part. Abraham Mufugan was only 20 years old at the time and still bears the scars of that day. A bullet is still lodged in his spine and he has a gentle limp from a gunshot to the leg. The life we were living under apartheid was a life of oppression. If you were from Sharpville, you could not go outside its vicinity without a pass. We ended up planning too much to the police station in the morning. Then there was some friction between us and the police,

15:40and we saw a stone being thrown into the police station. All hell broke loose. That is when they started shooting. He and more than 200 people were injured and recent estimates by South African researchers say the number of those who died from that incident could be as much as 91. Another survivor, Lazarus Mahutzi, now 90 years old, takes me to the cemetery where most of those who died are buried. They graves form one long row, there's even a 12-year-old. He tells me he needs time to compose himself, his eyes filling with tears. We heard gunshots coming from behind us. We hid inside the stone, peeping to see what was happening outside. People were lying on the ground. When we looked out again, we saw that some were trying to get up, but the police were just shooting at them. Others were using machetes to strike the heads of people who were still moving.

16:46The Indemnity Act 61 passed by the apartheid government in the aftermath of the shooting, protected the police from having any criminal charges, or civil claims, male against them by victims or their relatives. That law remains in the country's statute books. Now, South Africa's lawyers for human rights, a local NGO, alongside UK-based firm Li Day, are bringing a court action to have that law repealed. What the community is looking for is basically reparations that could enable their healing. One of the lawyers on the case, Shane Tracey, explains. The community has also expressed that Shuffle is a forgotten community. They feel that South Africa and the government are quick to celebrate what happened on the day and the aftermath of all of that, but nothing really has been done to assist their healing. Part of the court application includes getting a class action certified. If approved, this means that for the first

17:47time, dozens of victims could collectively sue the state and possibly even have criminal charges brought against the perpetrators. The government told the BBC it has supported apartheid victims over the years and will continue to do so, but does not oppose survivors and families pursuing legal remedies. For many in the community of Shuffle, the scars of the past remain, and so people here hope that restitution will help heal decades of lingering trauma. Abraham Muhotzi again. It would make us very happy. At the end of the day, apartheid is dead and buried. A women would bring complete healing, not just for us, but for future generations as well. It may be months, even years before the case is finalised, but for the first time in a long time, many of the survivors say they have something to look forward to.

18:50And that was Pumzer Filani reporting from South Africa. A long, long journey has just come. Well, not quite to its close, but close to its close. As two probes sent to explore the planet Mercury have, within the last hour, detached from the spacecraft, which has carried them from Earth, carried them since liftoff in 2018, almost eight years ago. Professor Susie Imba is Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Lester in the United Kingdom. She's been part of the university team that built an instrument on board one of the two spacecraft. And I spoke to her in the last hour just before we knew that the detachment had been successful and asked her what the latest news was. No, we don't know if it's been successful. So we do know that the command has been sent to the spacecraft. And that happened over an hour ago, but it's going to take you a bit of time before

19:51we get confirmation that everything was successful. Okay, well, I mean, I don't want to sort of add to the tension, but have you got it? I mean, how how likely is it? What sort of peril is there at this moment? Well, there's lots of different types of peril actually. We were talking about this earlier. There's all sorts of things that could go wrong, but the team, the main ease of team have been training so hard over the last few months trying to figure out what could go wrong and how to to work around it in real time. They've come up with lots of different solutions for lots of different disasters, but to give you a sense of it, we're disconnecting our spacecraft from this transfer module, which itself is a fairly stressful thing. And then our instruments actually finally, some of them will see first lights. And they've been on their journey for eight years. We haven't been able to test some of these systems at all. So we'll have the first opportunity just to see whether everything's working as it should be. Oh my goodness. Well, I want to hear about what sorts of things you're hoping to to measure and to detect, but I mean, just in terms of the journey, I mean, I was reading 18 loops of the Sun, eight and a half billion kilometers.

20:57It's the most remarkable journey just to get to this point. It's unimaginable, isn't it? The distance is that we've had to travel. And that's really because Mercury is incredibly difficult to get to much harder to get to Mercury than the outer solar system, actually. And that's because you're sort of falling towards the Sun and you want to end up in the same place moving in the same direction as Mercury. So you can be captured by its very weak gravitational field. And that means that you have to do these laps of the solar system, sort of gradually spiraling towards where Mercury is until this moment, really, over the next few months, we detach from this transfer module. And then gradually, we end up in our final orbits around the planets itself. Right. Well, that explains why I was also reading that Mercury, I mean, it seemed odd, given that it wasn't in relative terms, sort of that far away as far away as some other planets, but why it had been our least explored planet. But given that, what are you with the instruments that you've been part of creating? What are you hoping to look at? Was partly the journey, but of

22:01course, it's also the incredible radiation environment and the thermal stress on your spacecraft as Mercury is incredibly hot. So yeah, those challenges are quite difficult to overcome. But we've built one of the 11 instruments on board, the European Space Agency spacecraft, and our X-ray spectrometer is going to show us what the surface is made of. So for the first time, we'll get incredible resolution data back as to what Mercury's made of itself. And we'll also be looking at Mercury as a rawer, which we see in X-rays. So we're hoping to get some data back over the next few months that will allow us to begin both of those scientific investigations. For normally exciting, all the expertise and all the patience beginning, it's hope to pay off Suzy and the Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Leicester. You're listening to Newsr from the BBC.

23:01Welcome back to Newsr. In Britain, King Charles has hailed the unprecedented loan of the buyer tapestry to the British Museum, calling it the best possible symbol of the close relationship between the UK and France. He was being given a private viewing of the Medieval artwork alongside the French President Emmanuel Macron. The tapestry goes on public display next week from the British Museum, the BBC's culture editor Katie Razzle has this report. It is an astonishing sight, nearly 70 metres long and I'm standing, looking down over the tapestry with the King and Queen, the President, the Prime Minister and all sorts of other dignitaries standing and being led along it. The lighting is incredibly low, that's to protect this fragile artwork, but there is enough light to see the drama of it, this epic story of

24:05Angleter French Relations back in 1066. The arrow is quite thin. The arrow is sort of very pale yellow, as they toured the buyer tapestry nearly a thousand years after the death of the English King and the Norman Conquest, the message was that the loan of the work to the UK is a sign of Anglo-French reconciliation, not enmity. This is the French President Emmanuel Macron. A thousand years ago, this work depicted across things that changed history and today it crosses the channel through tunnel that we build together, a reminder of what our two countries can achieve when they join forces. If anyone remembers what we did here today decades or even centuries from now, I would like to believe that they will remember not only the story told by a biotepistry, but also the tale of two countries, which after centuries of shared history, choose to forge a bond as cloth at the threads of the thousand year old embroidery.

25:11A loan to Britain was first requested back in 1931. Nearly a hundred years on, it was pushed through to the opposition of some by the French President who is believed to have wanted a reset in Anglo-French relations after Brexit. King Charles reminded guests that Windsor Castle was built by William the Conqueror and echoed the warm words about the two countries shared history, adding a joke about the tapestries heritage. Commissioned in Normandy, yet most likely, to have been embroidered in Canterbury by English-Crowse people. The biotapistry or the Canterbury embroidery, as it might just have been called, recounts say conflict, yet here it is today, nearly a thousand years later, as a precious symbol of trust, at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations. The 58 scenes embroidered on linen are a medieval blockbuster about the buildup to 1066, at a finding moment in English history.

26:15And that was Katie Ranzel reporting from the British Museum. The biotapistry are lucky enough to see him by her and it is one of the wonders. You're with the BBC World Service and coming to you live from London, this is NewsHour with me, Tim Franks. One of the great feminist figures of our time has died. Gloria Steinem was 92, and she died at her home in New York. Steinem was to quote the headlines and two major obitories of her today, the load star, the personification of the modern women's movement. She was an award-winning journalist and writer and publisher, and an activist and campaigner who helped women demand and get greater reproductive rights, economic parity, and protection against sexual harassment. Speaking to the BBC in 2015, Steinem talked about what had first inspired her activism, including the moment in the 1960s when she as a reporter went to an event where women were

27:18talking about abortion, then an illegal procedure in the United States. For the first time in my life ever, I heard women stand up and tell the truth, tragic, funny, personal about being one of every three American women who has needed an abortion at some time in her lifetime, and it revolutionized me, setting their listening to women tell the truth about the humiliation, the danger, the surrealism, the funny, terrible things that happened to women who were made to seek out an illegal procedure in order to get what should have been a legal one. And that's what made me start to ask questions. If this has happened, if this is necessary for so many of us, why is it illegal? Why is it criminal? Why is it dangerous? Steinem also said, however, a accomplice she may have appeared later on in life. She said that she used to be afraid of public speaking when she first started out. A speech teacher once told me that

28:23since I had first been a dancer and then been a writer, I had chosen my professions because I didn't want to talk. And some of that may be genderized because women sometimes tend to feel an open mouthed flight of fear before audiences even more than men, but I certainly devoted much of my life to avoiding it. It was only my inability to publish what I wanted to about the explosion and excitement of the women's movement and my profoundly disinterested editors that I'd been freelancing for that made me desperate enough to think, all right, the only way I can report on this is to speak to the campuses who are inviting me. But I absolutely could not do it by myself. So I asked a friend who I thought would fill in knowledge I didn't have in vice versa because she was running a childcare center, had children herself. She is black, I am white, but most importantly,

29:28she was fearless. So we began to speak together. There's a saying, you know, follow your fear, fear is a sign of growth. In my case, it definitely turned out to be true because what I discovered is that what happens in a room when we are in the same space when we can see, touch, feel, use all our five senses to understand each other, to empathize with each other. Absolutely cannot happen on a printed page, much as I love the printed page and cannot happen on a screen either. So it caused me to discover something I never otherwise would have known. Gloria Steinem also addressed the criticism that people only listened to her because she was such an attractive presence. I feel as if I've worked hard all my life at something I love and really, really devoted my life to it. And then suddenly anything I may have done is attributed

30:33to something external. I'm not alone in experiencing this, but it is kind of annoying, especially now that I'm 81 years old. It seems to me should have ended by now. Indeed it should have, but what looking back on her decades, campaigning and organizing did she think that she had achieved? You know, I can't know that. I think it's really for for other people to say where I might have said something or been something or written something or organized something that they found changeful. It's my job to do my best. You know, I think it's all of our jobs to do our best. I think we worry too much about what we should do and we don't think enough about doing everything we can do. And that was Gloria Steinem, sweet to the BBC back in 2015. V, formerly known as Eve Enzler, is a playwright, performer and activist and the author of the play The Vagina Monologues for

31:36which Gloria Steinem wrote the forward. What should we know? What should we remember about Gloria Steinem? Well, I think that I just want to say that it's a very sad day for many of us in the women's movement because I think at a time when we're seeing kind of the worst backlash, we have seen towards women's rights in America for sure, but definitely around the world, you know, whether it's you know, bands on abortion or rape academies emerging or the Epstein files not being prosecuted. Like we need, we need Gloria now more than ever. And I think this backlash is kind of an indication of the power of the movement that Gloria was part of building. We had definitely moved forward in many ways. And I think, you know, the thing I think that people should know about Gloria is that she really, truly supported women. And I can share from my own experience that when

32:36I was performing the Vagina Monologues way downtown in New York. And it was really way off, far away. She came, she wrote the forward to my book. She came to every major V-Day event that we did at the beginning. She bought her wisdom and her energy and her, you know, and all of the ways of wisdom and to lift up the movement we were building. And I think she did that with many, many, many women. And I think that is an exemplary thing. And I think she helped. And I think she would be the first to say like it was not just about Gloria. It was about all the women, the Audrey Lords and the Bellhooks and Robin Morgan, you know, who were around her. Going back to the 1960s, I know you say that things had been sliding backwards. But I mean, it was a time, it's almost difficult to countenance now. But I mean, it was a time when women had so few legal rights. I mean, either sort of financially or even over the sort of control of their body over, you know, whether

33:38husbands, husbands can be convicted of rape. I mean, it was, it was a time where she needed to affect, she and others needed to affect huge change. Absolutely right. And I think we can't even imagine in some ways what those times were like. I think the birth of Miss magazine and the idea that women could have a voice in determining their jobs in determining like who they were in the world that they had control over their body and could have like Gloria was at the core of that. And with a lot, of course, with a lot of other women in the movement. And I think, I think, what I think all of us have to really think about now is how do we take that inspiration and take what Gloria, what into this world was, which was so significant for so many women and move that forward, you know, in her name, in her legacy. Because we can see that pushback happening where they're on the right or talking about no more vote for women and women becoming tradwise. And we

34:41see the kind of backlash to women really coming into their power. And just briefly and finally, Vee, I mean, she was a, she was a sort of hugely magnetic presence as well, wasn't she? It wasn't just the sort of causes that she was fighting for, but she did so with a real, I mean, both as, what I remember, just a sense of grace, but also a real edge to her. I think that's so true. I think the things I really admired about Gloria, she had a calm about her, a centered-ish, she was so witty, she could come up with one line in the middle of everything, kind of summed everything up, you know, and I think her grace, her stamina. I mean, she went on for how many decades, just continuing on and continuing on and never seemed to get flabbergasted, like she had a commitment to women's liberation, which was so solid and so

35:43undeniable that it was contagious. Vee Ensela, paying tribute to Gloria Steinem, who's died at the age of 92. The sound of young voices chanting at a funeral procession for two Palestinian teenagers in the occupied West Bank, whom local officials say were killed, in an attack on their village by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The deaths come amid a recent surge in settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli army says it's investigating the killings after its troops open fire. The BBC's Katie Watson is in our Jerusalem bureau. Katie, what do we know about the circumstances around the deaths of these teenagers? Well, so these teenagers, the funeral's worth Omar Al-Nassan, who was 19 and Khalil Abu Aliya, who was 16 and according to the village council in Al-Muhayyad-Ir, they were killed trying to stop Israeli settlers stealing sheep and there were

36:44confrontations that broke out. Now, Israel's military say that their forces entered the village to provide security for an Israeli citizen and police who were trying to remove livestock. They fired on these instigators of violent disturbance. The Palestinians then threw stones at troops. Now, we do know that this is a village that seemed repeated attacks. In fact, the attacks seems to focus on the village's only access road, according to the UN, where vehicles are targeted. But of course, this is one isolated incident of violence and we have seen it increasing, especially since 2023. On Wednesday, there was a separate attack, the village of Hirbet, Al-Taban, which is in the South Hebron Hills, that was demolished and according to an Israeli human rights organisation, 70 residents were displaced. We're not given any warning. Now, Israel's military say that it's a restricted military zone and Palestinian homes are illegally built there. The residents say

37:47that that demolition violates international law because they've been living there since before the State of Israel was established. So you can see this kind of the growing tension, certainly in the occupied West Bank right now. And in terms of the role of the Israeli army in all this, I mean, it says that it's open an investigation of the deaths of these teenagers. But I mean, the accusation from Palestinians and from Israeli human rights groups is that the IDF, I mean, what? That it's, I mean, if it stands by, if it's not actually complicit in some of this violence and some of these expulsions that you're talking about. Yeah, absolutely. And certainly there's criticism of the government for, you know, whether it's participation standing by, certainly not prosecuting as much as it could. There has been, though, a rare arrest today, a 19-year-old settler was arrested on suspicion of participating in an attack in the village of Kustra. And now that's been the kind of focus of settler attacks in recent weeks. And at the weekend, there were masked settlers who came into the village. They surrounded a house with Palestinians

38:50trapped inside. And so the fact that there has been somebody arrested on suspicion of participating in an attack is perhaps, you know, a rare. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen very much, certainly, you know, given that settlements are illegal under international law. The feeling is that there is not enough, perhaps, kind of opposition to this, certainly. What we did see at the weekend, though, was Benjamin Netanyahu criticizing what happened in Kustra, so did the president, so did the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. So there was that kind of rare condemnation of the violence that we've seen and that violence, of course, has been increasing. Katie Watson, thank you very much. This is News Air from the BBC World Service with me, Tim Franks. There were so many unanswered questions from the catastrophic flash floods which ripped through Tibet and Nepal last week, not least how many people are still missing and whether the hundreds believed still trapped in Nepalese hydroelectric stations can be reached and rescued. But in Chinese control to

39:54bet, the questions are particularly hard to answer because of the extremely tight control by the authorities in Beijing on the flow of information. What we do know is that rescuers in Tibet have now cleared the debris blocking the route to the Giron border crossing with Nepal, you may well have seen the horrific video which has been blocked from distribution inside China at the floods tearing through, tearing apart that crossing point as people try to flee. So far we do know that no survivors have been found on the Chinese side of the border, but state media say that the search for the more than 500 missing can at least now be accelerated. What then can we ascertain about what's going on in Tibet right now? We've received a voice note from a Tibetan living in Nepal but one who has relatives just over the border, he asks that we not share any more details than that about him or his family because of safety concerns. So his comments have been voiced up by one of my colleagues.

40:54And immediately after the floods we tried to contact Tibet as we have relatives and business officers in the Giron area. My relatives who tried to go to Giron told me that they were stopped in Shigatsu, they said that nobody has been allowed through. They were told to leave any information about family, relatives, business contacts there and to write down their phone numbers and then the authorities would get in touch with them if they had any updates. Nobody was been allowed past Shigatsu so they're all being told to leave whatever they want to leave there at the office they had set up, whether it's items or money to donate. There is no option but to turn back. One thing is very clear is they bluntly gave instructions that no photos and videos can be shared online. They are warned that there will be consequences if they do. That's the situation, it's impossible to get any information from the Giron area. We are still trying but we haven't been able to find out anything about our officers or colleagues there. Those who were unharmed in

41:55the region have all been taken to Shigatsu and they're all in one facility there. They are not being allowed to meet people freely. I'm not sure if they are even allowed to meet their own relatives or not. I don't know about that but it seems like they can't meet anyone they want. Chinese state media is reporting on them and in the coverage they're saying they're being well taken care of the food they're being given is good. Aside from that there's no other coverage. One thing I thought I'd add, last time when the dinghary earthquake occurred there were so many posts, voicemesters and photos of social media about the earthquake but this time nobody's posting about it. The ordinary people or public figures, there's nothing about it at all. There are a handful of people posting about donations they've been given but there are no photos of voicemotes being shared. It seems that the Chinese government has punished those who have shared very severely so this time around nobody's saying anything. That testimony that we've gathered from a Tibetan man living in Nepal who still has friends and family across the border.

42:56Tony Han is with the BBC World Services Global China Unit. He's been monitoring Chinese state media and social media. What exactly are the Chinese authorities worried about in terms of the release of information given that this is essentially a natural disaster? So this has basically the kind of reaction from the Chinese government that you'd expect to see in any sort of fast moving unpredictable situation, particularly a situation where kind of emotions are running very high and what they tend to do in situations such as this is to keep a very tight grip on the on the information environment. So we heard in that piece of testimony for instance that people were being warned against posting photos and videos of the area next to the border and as you noted earlier the kind of most striking piece of footage to emerge from this whole

43:56disaster which was the kind of inundation of the border post by this wave, this wall of water and mud that hasn't really been visible on Chinese social media. But what do you think it is that the Chinese authorities are fearing? I mean is it that they think that people may be critical of either the the forewarning, the early warning systems or the sort of the way in which they have responded subsequently? Is that what it is? I think it's to do with kind of narratives running out of their control essentially. So in this kind of situation where there's a lot of speculation over whether or not the casualty figures are accuracy or not people will start to come up with people could start to come up with their own narratives as do how serious the the number of deaths and missing persons are and and that's something that the Chinese government wants to want to control quite tightly. So we've seen for instance that Chinese law enforcement have released a list of

44:5710 cases where people have been given administrative punishments as a result of what they call rumour mongering about this disaster and most of those concern the number of deaths and missing persons. Right and this is I mean again that chat that we we managed to get in contact with living now in Nepal but still has friends and family and Tibet. He said he drew a contrast with the Tingri earthquake in Tibet last year which I think a few hundred people died in that. Was that was there more information flowing around that? That isn't actually something that I had followed so closely. I mean one thing that that isn't extremely striking though in in this particular case is the sort of the lack of organic content that's been uploaded by people living in the region. So what you see mostly on social media is is state media content and reposted state media content.

45:58Right and and just in terms of Tibet itself I mean obviously controlled with information for an authoritarian government such as China is very important wherever you are in Chinese territory but is it particularly tight and particularly repressive in Tibet? Tibet is subject to a kind of especially tight regime of control. So Tibet is one of the regions for instance that falls under a kind permitting system that allows the controls flows of people into the region and one of the things that the authorities have done off in the wake of this latest disaster is to essentially close off inbound travel to this region not just for foreigners but for Chinese nationals as well. And that was Tony Ann from the BBC World Service's global China unit looking into what if any the Chinese authorities are allowing to be said to be shared about the disaster of the

46:59catastrophic flash floods that tore across the Tibetan Nepali's border last week and just with them the last hour or so the Nepalese authorities themselves have said that there are flood death toll this is according to the AFP news agency the flood death toll has risen to 1259 with more than 5,000 still missing. From all of us on news app thank you very much for listening.