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The Current Transcript for January 1, 2021

Host: Catherine Cullen

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Saudi activist Loujain Alhathloul targeted for her work, brother says

Guests: Ketty Nivyabandi, Walid Alhathloul, William Yang

SOUNDCLIP

Human rights cannot be an afterthought in times of crisis, and we now face the biggest international crisis in generations. Against the background of rising ethno nationalism, populism, authoritarianism and the pushback against human rights, in some countries, the crisis can provide the pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic.

CATHERINE CULLEN: A warning there from United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in April. The covid-19 pandemic has dominated the headlines since it burst onto the world early in 2020, overshadowing everything else. So much so that human rights defenders and activists continue to sound alarm bells about abuses they say are taking place in and out of the shadows of the pandemic. Keddie Neviah Bande is Amnesty International, Canada's new secretary general. Good morning and happy New Year to you.

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Good morning, Catherine. Happy New Year to you as well. And thanks for having me.

CC: What kind of a year have we just had in terms of human rights?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Oh, we've had a disastrous year Catherine at all levels. So definitely in terms of health and a pandemic that we're facing. But the other pandemic that we faced as the human rights one. I think I would say that the pandemic has exposed and it's worsened the human rights violations that we were already facing. It's just exacerbated them. It's highlighted the deep, deep inequalities that exist, first of all, across the world. So we know that poor, racialized, gendered, disabled, displaced people are the ones who have borne really the brunt of this pandemic. But as the U.N. secretary general was just saying in the clip you just played, they have -- the pandemic and measures to curb it have actually often been used as a measure to further militarise, to escalate surveillance policing in many areas around the world. They've become indeed a pretext to give more power to security agencies and often with zero oversight. And so we're seeing a management of this pandemic that's focussing only on health and is not looking at the human rights dimension.

CC: I do want to talk about specific examples, but I'd actually like to talk about you for a moment. As I mentioned, you're new in this role of secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. You come to the role as somebody who was a persecuted activist in your home country of Burundi. Can you can you tell me what happened?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: So I arrived in Canada in 2015 after leading the major protests, the women protests in my own country, Burundi, when the president at the time was running for a third and highly contested term in office. And in the midst of that, and there was a brutal repression ongoing against activists and anybody really who would speak up against the regime. So I organised women's protests to, you know, advocate for peace, to call for the end of the violence and to call for the end of that term, which we felt was dangerous. As a result, I was brutalised with many of these women. Many of them have since died. In fact, December 29 was the anniversary of the death of one of the women and I marched with. And so as a result as an organiser of that march, I was very much targeted and at high risk and had to flee my, you know, my home, my life, everything that I knew to be to be mine and to be loved and and arrived on the shores of Canada five years ago.

CC: Having this incredibly profound lived experience, I wonder now working as an advocate here in Canada, how how does it inform the work you do when you're making these calls for for human rights and calls for changes?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Well, first of all, this isn't theory for me, right? These are realities that I have experienced. I have been a refugee as a mother, and I know what it means to wait for it, for you to have it. I know what it's like not to have status, not to have a home. I've been homeless in this country, lived in shelters, so I know what that is like and the impact that it is that personal, intimate impact. And often when I go and meet with policymakers, it's very easy to remain detached from this and to speak about it at a policy level without recognising or seeing or being aware of what impact this has. And so with every meeting that I walk into, I bring that lived experience with me and that knowledge and that expertise. What we often forget is that people with lived experience have incredible expertise on those subject matters. And so I'm able to see right away whether this policy is working, whether it's efficient, whether the response that I'm getting is going to change anything in the life of the person who was impacted. So that's huge. And I think it's very important for people like me to be in decision making positions.

CC: Like I said, we were going to talk about some specific examples. We saw protests breaking out this year in Nigeria, conflicts springing up in Ethiopia and Sudan. In terms of human rights. How are African countries faring right now?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: I just want to start by saying that African countries are faring the same way that the human rights crisis is unfolding around the world. What we're seeing in Africa is not different from what we're seeing elsewhere. But we are seeing a deepening authoritarianism. Just as we speak in Uganda right now, for instance, is a huge crisis ahead of the election that's going to happen in January. There's a huge crackdown on any opposition voices, a leading human rights, one of Africa's leading human rights lawyers, Nicholas Opiyo, was arrested without bail. The lead opposition Bobi Wine, keeps being arrested, harassed, brutalised. We're really seeing a deepening of authoritarianism and repression against voices that are disagreeing, that are dissenting with authorities there, and that are calling for human rights, their respective human rights. What we're also seeing is in many of these African countries, is the same tactics being used. So tactics that we see being used in some countries, such as China, Russia, elsewhere. But the other, the flip side of this is that we were seeing more than ever, I think, a people power in motion. We're seeing people saying, we've had enough and we're not settling for this; protesting despite this violence. We saw that in Nigeria, people being undeterred by the brutality of these regimes. And that's a source of tremendous hope.

CC: I'd like to bring in another guest into our conversation now. One of the human rights cases that's making headlines in the past few days is the trial and sentencing of Loujain Alhathloul, the 31 year old Saudi women's rights activist. She studied here in Canada. She was sentenced to six years in jail. We have her brother, Walid Alhathloul, on the line from Toronto. Hello, Walid.

WALID ALHATHLOUL: Hi. Thanks for having me.

CC: Thank you for being here. What has your sister been charged with?

WALID ALHATHLOUL: So the charge is attempt to basically change the constitution and the system that is governing the country in Saudi Arabia, being in contact with unnamed organisations, but they are mainly the embassies in Saudi Arabia, which is the U.K. embassy, Netherland and the EU, and also being in touch with other Saudi activists abroad. These are the charges that she has been convicted with and they have labelled them as terrorism charges that that could destabilise the country.

CC: When's the last time you spoke with your sister?

WALID ALHATHLOUL: One month after she was detained. And after that, I wasn't being, I was never been in touch with her. And the time she contacted me, it was the time while she was being tortured. We didn't know at that time, but she contacted me from an unknown number. Clearly, that was an attempt by the Saudi regime to try to cover up any evidence of Loujain being tortured.

CC: And just to be crystal clear to our audience, you obviously do not believe that she's involved in any form of terrorism. What is it that she has been doing that's attracted the ire of Saudi authorities?

WALID ALHATHLOUL: Yes, all the evidence that they provided just to tweet that she publicly tweeted. And having contact and chat groups with other human rights activists. And basically all of all of the indictments in the charges were mostly about like human rights activism and being in touch with journalists, with embassies, like any other individual and being in touch with and the human rights organisation, which includes actually Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

CC: I do want to ask you about the push to get Canadian authorities to help with her release. Some of your sister's former classmates and current students at the University of British Columbia have called on the Canadian government to do more to get her released. What would you like the Canadian government to do?

WALID ALHATHLOUL: Yeah, well, it is pushing more for actually dropping all these charges because it basically it wasn't a fair trial and and doing that in a collective way with other allies in Europe and the United States. So that Canada does not get singled out when they would ask for human rights across the world.

CC: OK, listen, thank you for your time today. We wish you and your family the best.

WALID ALHATHLOUL: Thank you.

CC: Walid Alhathloul is the brother of Loujain Alhathloul at Keddie. I want to bring you back in here. You heard Walid say that he wants to see more from the Canadian government. Big picture. How do you think Canada has done this year in terms of holding human rights abusers to account?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Maybe just really quickly reacting on the Saudi Arabia case and just reiterating, again, usually it's just one out of 12 activists who have been advocating for women's right to drive, and four of whom are in detention. The other 12 are still facing charges. So it's really critical for Canada to be able to have the moral courage, I think, to speak publicly and to condemn this act when they happen. Canada is in the process of having a feminist foreign policy, but you can't just be feminist when it's convenient to do so. It's important to be able to do that even when it's difficult. And in cases like this with Saudi Arabia, where there may be other interests at hand and have that moral courage. I think one of the challenges, though, on the international scene for the Canadian government, for the foreign policy in human rights is policy coherence; is being coherent with the fact that Canada is known as, is branded as human rights [unintelligible] country, but not doing so equally. So we're known as a human rights abiding country. But the reality is that there are human rights violations that are happening like in Canada in terms of in fact, the very foundation of Canada is built on human rights violations and violations these continue in many, many of the instances of discrimination against First Nations and not upholding the rights and the treaties of First Nations people. But also, systemic racism against racialized people and black people, in particular in policing and in various other sectors. So if we as long as these discriminations continue to occur, then we have no legitimacy to really be confidently upholding human rights globally. So it's important to be able to walk the values that we that we uphold internationally- locally. That's really crucial.

CC: When we take this global look at what's going on with human rights. Canada was one of the first countries to recognise the plight of the Rohingya, referring to the actions of the Myanmar government as genocide. This month, the government of Bangladesh began to move the Rohingya refugee population to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. Many of them say that they are being forced to go. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Foreign speech]

VOICE 1: To They mercilessly beat my brother and broke two, three teeth. Then they brought him here. My brother didn't want to go to BashanChar.

VOICE 2: t is enforced. My son in law didn't want to go. They literally forced him to board the car. They threatened to kill him otherwise.

CC: What is your assessment of what is happening right now in Bangladesh when it comes to the Rohingya?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: So what you just heard is what we're hearing as well. What our team has been hearing directly from the Rohingya refugees is the fact that they feel very much pressured and very much forced to be moving to this island, which hasn't been assessed, which we think is at risk and and hasn't been assessed by anyone. The UN hasn't been able to access it, the UNHCR itself hasn't been able to access this. We haven't been able to access it. So we're extremely concerned that refugees, Rohingya refugees are being sent to this island, which no one can visit and and will remain there amongst. It will just be talking to refugees. We are not in crisis. The conditions in which they're doing that. And this is a major human rights concern and one that definitely Canada and other countries that have been active on the Rohingya file should be speaking up really powerfully and freely and publicly on rights now. Unfortunately, the relocation we have been sounding the alarm before the relocation. Now we've had, it is in motion. And it's when you think about it in modern day in 2020 that individual refugees are being shipped off to an island that is not assessed and monitored by any human rights organisation or by the United Nations. It is absolutely unthinkable and unacceptable. And so we really need to be able to highlight this issue. Canada has a voice in Bangladesh because it has been one, as you said, it's one of the countries that spoke out very publicly. And that has been supporting financially the refugee crisis. So it has a voice. And it must use it. We cannot let this happen in modern day in front of our eyes in 2020.

CC: I want to turn now to another case, this one in China. Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison earlier this week in Shanghai. She was charged with, quote: "Picking quarrels and provoking trouble for reporting on the initial outbreak of covid in Wuhan". At least three others have disappeared from public view after documenting the outbreak. William Yang is a freelance journalist in Taiwan. He has been covering Zhang's case. We've reached him in Taipei. William Yang, welcome to the programme. Can you tell us a bit about what Jan Zhang was showing in Wuhan?

WILLIAM YANG: She covered everything from going into the hospitals, showing people how gurneys are lining up to the entire hallways of hospitals. And patients were being hooked onto oxygen tanks and people were being turning away even when they're showing symptoms and then to the police station to confront the police about other detained citizens, citizen journalists that disappeared before her. And unfortunately, her last, after her last video uploaded to YouTube on May 13, she disappeared the day after. And was, like you said, sentenced to four years on Monday for the picking quarrels and provoking trouble. This is a very common the charge that the Chinese government has been using, targeting dissidents and also human rights lawyers and journalists, all kinds. And. But for her case, the most outrageous part and special, I think, unprecedented part is that the sentence that she received, four years, that is far beyond the normal sentence that other dissidents would receive under the same charges. And she is by far the only citizen journalist that has been charged so far. The other two leaders of our [unintelligible], so we knew that. Has now been placed under close surveillance by the government, but they are living with their family and the other one sumpin, his whereabouts is still unknown. And these are only four out of maybe hundreds of Chinese citizens who, in fact, receive all kinds of different levels of punishments during the pandemic, especially in the early days when they simply share information related to the pandemic, because the Chinese government did not want this information to, I think, derail the narrative that the government is trying to frame after the disastrous start of the, that the whole world knew that China tried to cover up the outbreak and the extent and the scale of the outbreak in the very beginning by silencing whistleblowers. And now that the WHO is about to send its team to Wuhan to conduct its findings, we will have to see how much the WHO can actually find in the end. And the result of the report that they present will be very crucial about how much the international community can actually learn about the origin of the pandemic. And I think, again, Zhan's case shows that the Chinese government is not very comfortable about scrutiny, about the origin of this outbreak.

CC: OK, thank you for that. Thank you. William Yang is a freelance journalist based in Taiwan. Ketty, I also want to ask you about a particular case in China that, of course, has so much relevance here in Canada, certainly much discussed here in Canada. The case of the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, in what way has Amnesty been involved in trying to get them released?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: On the two Michaels amnesty has, of course, been calling for the release of the two Michaels from the very beginning and continues to do so very actively. But we're also also calling for the release of other Canadians who are detained in China who don't receive as much attention, including Huseyin Celil, who's been detained since 2007. So being able to recognise that, yes, we have this two emblematic cases, but that there are other Canadians and others who are detained there. And the fact that the two Michaels continue to be held despite this mounting pressure, this international pressure speaks so powerfully about the others who are detained, other Chinese or other nationalities who continue to be detained in China.

CC: Just in closing, I do want to ask you what is top of mind for you in terms of human rights as we head into 2021?

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Absolutely. The management of the pandemic. So definitely, given the access to the vaccine, is not being equally distributed equally. That's the top priority for for Amnesty to ensure that is a people's vaccine and that we manage a pandemic in a human rights focussed way. But what really concerns me is the science that so many countries and states are escalating towards human rights globally. And I think it calls specifically on countries that aim and hope to be flagbearers of human rights to act more broadly, to support human rights, more powerful interests, and to uphold them right here at home.

CC: Thank you so much for bringing us your perspective today.

KETTY NIVYABANDI: Thank you. Catherine, thanks for having me.

CC: Kerry, Nevada is the new secretary general of Amnesty International, Canada. She is in Ottawa.

The year's biggest U.S. politics stories

Guests: Lyndsa Duncombe, Susan Ormistron, Paul Hunter

SOUNDCLIP

That's all I hear about now, that's all I hear. Turn on television. Covid covid covid covid covid covid covid covid.

[Crowds chanting] Vote. Vote. Vote.

I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify, who doesn't see red states and blue states only sees the United States.

CC: 2020 was a year for the history books everywhere. But for our neighbours south of the border, this has been an epic of Shakespearian quality, soaring covid cases and deaths, protests for racial justice. And of course, that election. Through it all, CBC listeners were guided through the weeds or, if you prefer, the swamp, by our Washington colleagues. This morning, we've gathered some of them to look back on the year that was, but mainly to look ahead at what 2021 could hold. Paul Hunter and Susan Ormiston, our CBC's senior Washington correspondent, and Lyndsa Duncombe is senior Washington editor. Good morning, everybody.

LYNDSA DUNCOMBE: Good morning.

PAUL HUNTER: Hi, Catherine.

SUSAN ORMISTRON: Good morning, Catherine.

CC: Now, Susan, I'm going to start with you. We don't want to dwell too much on the year that was. But I do want to talk about certainly one of the big stories, obviously, which is covid. And Susan, you were in New York City in the early days of covid-19. Tell us what you saw there and how it shaped your understanding of the pandemic.

SUSAN ORMISTRON: Yeah, I mean, we were a month into the lock down just and the city that noisy, big, chaotic metropolis was it was snuffed out. I mean, the soundtrack, the only one where the sirens that was real and the seven o'clock banging of the pots in honour of the front line workers from people on their balconies. And there was so much then if you think back about the virus, we didn't know it felt, as it were, in the air, like people were petrified. They were walking around, hunkered down. I mean, at that point, more than 800 people a day were dying in New York City. And, you know, you think today we've got, you know, far greater numbers across the country. But at that point, it was so concentrated. So it was just a dark time. It was a scary, very scary time. You talked about the fear that was the election. It feels kind of like still on the soaring are worse in America right now going into January than they were back in April. So we're still in 2020.

CC: Yeah, very much so. And Susan makes the point so much has changed even in the year 2020. I wonder if you can cast ahead a bit about what you think the ongoing impact of covid is going to be on American politics?

PAUL HUNTER: You know, it's funny to think. I mean, think back a year ago and, you know, effectively, no one had even heard the word covid. And we were all looking ahead to a campaign this year, you know, in 2020 on which, you know, would be all about the economy, let's say, you know, obviously didn't work out that way. Look, I think I think campaigns will return to normal eventually once we get through the vaccine and things kind of normalise a little bit. I think one of the lessons of covid and American politics is that the U.S. needs to improve the mechanism for voting. You know, that kind of stuff I think was really illuminated. But really, I think covid underlines the challenge every American politician will have for the foreseeable future. And that is how to get important messages across to millions of people who don't believe politicians, I mean, even when it's a matter of life and death. Right. Like I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during one of those open up America rallies and no one was wearing masks. It was freaky. Right? And I interviewed a woman who had a sign that said Down with tyranny. And I said, you're not wearing a mask. And she said, I know. I said there's a pandemic going on. She says, yeah, I know I don't need a mask. The whole notion that this was a hoax and that so many people don't want to believe scientists, experts, politicians is a real problem.

CC: Yeah. And Lyndsa, I mean, we are coming up to this point, right? A shift, a new administration, vaccines, a lot of hope around the world for 2021. But what do you think it means for the United States? Is this a potential pivot point in the coming year, do you think?

LYNDSA DUNCOMBE: Well, certainly the incoming administration and the president elect wanted to be talking about how this is a down payment in terms of the covid relief that is in the works right now finally coming to fruition and after weeks and months of back and forth. But the question is, when it comes to American politics, even if we do move away, however slowly, from the the Trump factor, people still are going to have a very hard time meeting in the middle. And that's something that Joe Biden pitched as his reason for getting Americans to vote for him. This is someone who has had all of that. Aryan's decades of experience on on Capitol Hill, he said he was someone who could reach out and have bipartisan compromise, but it's just so hard to get your head around bipartisan compromise happening in the United States right now. I mean, even if we get rid of the insanity of the Trump factor, the intensity of the Trump factor, and that is far, far from certain. We still have a country that is deadlocked, unable to get anything done. And even if, you know, a lot of what happens in Georgia will determine legislative priorities for the administration and how they can get done, this is still dysfunctional politics.

CC: Paul, I want to talk about sort of the first moment where we're going to see this shift, riffing off what Lindsey was just saying, Inauguration Day. This will be your fourth, if I understand correctly. Talk to me a bit about how Joe Biden's Inauguration Day is going to be a different experience than the ones you've covered in the past.

PAUL HUNTER: Sure. Well, I mean, normally these things are, as we've all seen giant grand mega spectacles. Like a celebration of democracy. I mean, my first one was, I guess, 2009, and it was Obama's first. It was insane, right? I mean, you know, for those haven't been to Washington, the National Mall is a couple of kilometres long to get to the Mall at 3:00 a.m. to get to my spot for 11:59 am, 30 seconds ceremony. And I was about a third of the way down the mall was where our position was and it was already a 3:00 a.m. It was shoulder to shoulder and packed. Like Yo-Yo Ma was performing and Aretha Franklin and and, and there just these incredible spectacles. As I said, for Trump, it was different. The crowd was smaller, he said.

CC: Enormous, I understood.

PAUL HUNTER: It is a very big crowd, but it was not the size of Obama's. OK, let's move on. But the tone was different. Normally, these things are aspirational. Trump's was American carnage. So what is what are we going see with Biden? Well, scaled down, the crowd will be smaller, smaller than Trump's. It'll sort of be normal but minimalistic. If tickets are being given to people. People are being asked to socially distance. I mean, it's hard to predict how many will actually want to go down to the mall on January 20th. It may depend on who's got access to masks. Meanwhile, goes the rumour anyway, you know, I mean, well, it's a fact that the physical transition will be happening at the same time at the White House where it is, they're literally going to be disinfecting the place. I mean, I'm not sure if that means people in hazmat suits going in, but when you think about it in the White House, I mean, there's a reason for that.

CC: Yeah, well, I mean, when we talk about normalcy in the midst of this incredibly abnormal situation, Lyndsa, there's the question of Donald Trump's participation in Inauguration Day. What do we know about that?

LYNDSA DUNCOMBE: Well, we don't know. And this has been a reality show presidency. So perhaps it's no surprise that there's some build up and drama here around whether or not Donald Trump will actually participate. There was some reporting a few weeks ago that said Donald Trump would actually stage a counter rally in Florida, potentially even announcing that he will run for 2024 at the same time. Certainly what we've seen from Donald Trump over the past couple of weeks, even over the holidays, will he sign the coronavirus legislation? Will you not sign the coronavirus legislation? I think said you can see someone who is trying to remain relevant in an increasingly irrelevant situation. So what Donald Trump will do on Inauguration Day, I can't really see him sitting up there with Melania and previous president smiling.

CC: Susan, I mean, it is tempting to focus on those reality TV moments, but of course, the substance is what matters here. And you covered the Biden campaign. You've seen him up close to talk about the importance of that moment for him, Inauguration Day and perhaps more importantly, the message, right, being a present for president for all Americans.

SUSAN ORMISTRON: Yeah, it's a great message. And we've heard it lots from Joe Biden. But actually executing it is going to be incredibly difficult. And he's facing huge headwinds. I mean, Trump, as we've said, has managed to convince millions, tens of millions Americans that the election was a fraud, that Joe Biden is illegitimate. So here you have a guy on Inauguration Day with a competitor who won't leave and won't give up reins even if he has to physically leave. The White House is incredibly difficult. He has to do really two things. I think he's got to undo the policies in the direction of the Trump government in areas like climate change, like immigration, like America's role in the wider world, racial inequality. But he also has to dig. The country out of an economic crisis, you know, he has to get those vaccines into the arms of Americans, we know it's the rollout is going much slower than expected already. And he has to do all that in the face of what I call resistance. And the resistance is huge. It's tens of millions of Americans who think that he's an illegitimate president. But I think even Democrats and Republicans would agree post-election, Catherine, the divisions are deeper than they were pre-election. Hard to believe.

CC: Paul, Susan does a great job of illustrating those headwinds that Biden's message faces. Let's actually just take a moment and listen to a bit of what he has been telling Americans about being that bridge for the country.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm proud of the coalition. We put together the broadest and most diverse coalition in history Democrats, Republicans, independents, progressives, moderates, conservatives, young, urban, suburban, rural, gay, straight, transgender, white, Latino, Asian, Native American.

[Crowd cheering]

I mean, especially those moments and especially those moments when this campaign was at his lowest in the African-American community, stood up again for [unintelligible].

[Crowd cheering]

You always have my back and I have yours.

CC: Paul, when it comes to the issue of racial justice in particular, so front and centre this year, how do you see Biden working to try to heal some of the divisions that have been exposed?

PAUL HUNTER: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it's the forever question in this country, right? Biden, they're talking about his campaign's lowest ebb. You know, forgive me on this, but let me tell you a story. I was in New Hampshire during the primary earlier in 2020. And as it turns out, we were staying at the same hotel as Joe Biden. And like there's a bit of a foofaraw at the main door. We look around, there's Joe Biden. And he's Joe Biden and he's got his Biden smile on. He didn't have his Raybans because it was in the middle of the night, but he worked the lobby and it was kind of just a kind of a fascinating spectacle. So he's at our hotel. And the night of the primary, a couple of days later, we were getting ready to go out to the convention centre to do our live hits and stuff. And we noticed that the room across the lobby, which was supposed to be the big ballroom for the Biden celebration that night, was completely empty because he was gone. He'd left the state and it's like his bus was gone. He'd gone off to save the furniture in South Carolina. Like he knew he was going to lose. And then along comes Jim Clyburn, the most senior black Democratic congressman on Capitol Hill. And he endorsed Joe Biden and he said, I'll get the black vote out for you. And then Biden won big in South Carolina and he was back in it. Then he wins Super Tuesday. And here we are. And so now it's showtime, right? The rubber hits the road. I mean, it's one thing to campaign on, you know, systemic change for black America and all the promises that Biden has made. But for black America that helped put Joe Biden in the White House. It's not good enough to have Symbol's. It's time for systemic real change, better housing, better access to health care and education. Better jobs, better lives. And so Biden has to do that. Now, people say symbolism doesn't count. Do it. But the midterms are coming up basically tomorrow. Like, all right. And, you know, when you push too quickly in America for real strong systemic change, when it comes to the racial divide, you get pushback. But black America is watching Joe Biden and wants real action.

CC: Yeah. So, Lyndsa, I mean, Paul illustrates one of the issues on this mammoth To-Do list that Joe Biden has addressing all these divisions in the country. But there are also divisions in the Democratic Party, a real splinter in that party. And I wonder if you could just paint a picture for us of where Joe Biden fits in?

LYNDSA DUNCOMBE: Well, Joe Biden pitched himself, as I mentioned, to someone who could kind of be a meet in the middle, reach out to the moderate Republicans. And he cannot afford to alienate those Americans who voted for him because they didn't like Donald Trump but wouldn't normally vote for a Democrat, however. Yes, this is a split party. Look at some of the new people who were elected to Congress. These are progressive people who really want to see the kind of dramatic change that Paul was talking about, not just about racial inequality and systemic racism in the United States, but on the issue of climate change. I mean, talk about the new green deal, right. As something that is really talking about investing billions upon billions of dollars, really fundamentally changing the United States relationship to energy. There are many young progressive Democrats who want to see that kind of radical change and they see the whole shifting economy as a result of coming out of coronavirus as a real opportunity to make that kind of change. Biden has to strike a balance here and we're seeing it in his climate policy, like really how he is trying to make climate a top of mind in every department, whether it be transportation and not just something that exists in the realm of the EPA. He's appointed John Kerry to be this special cabinet position at the National Security Council level, elevating the issue of climate change. But will that be enough when you have many of these progressive Democrats who see this as an existential issue and and the stakes are really high on all of these fronts.

CC: Susan, I think I just want to sort of bring this to a close by. Asking you about Donald Trump might may be on the way out. Trump ism is still real. There have been some serious. Changes to the Republican Party over the past four years, what do you expect on that front in terms of not I don't know, that legacy is quite the right word, but the more fundamental shifts that he seems to have contributed to, the big question is what will Trump do next?

SUSAN ORMISTRON: Because that will determine what his so-called legacy or what his influence, that's a better word, will be forward into the next three years. If there's really two two ways, I think that we will see Donald Trump either as a candidate in twenty twenty four. Personally, I think that's less likely, but I could be totally wrong on that. But certainly as a kingmaker or a primary influencer, I mean, he's raised hundreds of millions of dollars since the election. His team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to finance Donald Trump in whatever he decides to do next. And it's clear this moment that the Republicans have decided to stay with Donald Trump for as long as it's viable for them that he is still the the prime mover of the Republican Party. I mean listening to Joe Biden in that clip you ran say he has the perfect coalition. It sounds very impressive. But there you know, I can't underscore enough for Canadians in particular that there were more than 70, 74 million voters who voted for Donald Trump. So what that means is, yeah, Biden may have a great coalition, but there's a huge group of people who aren't part of that who are on the other side.

CC: I want to close by asking each of you what one story is that you're going to be watching in twenty, twenty one. And Paul, I'd like to start with you.

PAUL HUNTER: I just want a beach vacation if I can.

CC: You and me, man.

PAUL HUNTER: No more Zoom meetings. I want live music. That's just me.

CC: I don't think that counts as a news story, though. Paul, I'm sorry.

PAUL HUNTER: We'll be watching. We won't be watching a looming impeachment process. We won't be watching a million woman march on day two of the Biden presidency protesting the new president. You know, you know, that's a good question because it's like it's still all bets are off because, you know, having said what you heard what Susan was talking about, it's still true that, like Trump remains the wild card part of me. What I'm looking for is, you know, what Trump did was he wasn't the first to prove it, but he proved again that populism works. Right. And so if Trump doesn't run again, well, who's the next Trump? Right. And what if the next Trump is, you know, to put it this way, a smarter president? Right. I mean, even Trump critics would say that if he'd handled the covid crisis more smartly, we could well be looking at a second term for Trump and everything that would be involved in that. So who rises now in the Republicans? Who, you know, do they have to kiss the ring? Will Trump give the nod, whatever the mechanism to get that person forward? Who will it be? And where will Republicans go?

CC: Lyndsa, what will you be watching?

LYNDSA DUNCOMBE: Well, I'm actually looking forward to talking about a little bit of policy and really how things might begin to get done. I want to know if Joe Biden is really able to live up to his ambitious green plan, not just in terms of rejoining the Paris accord, which we're expecting him to do on the first day of inauguration. But specifically, if he is able to have this green transformation, an economy that would see projects that are making the environment better, such as building more infrastructure, more public transit that create unionised middle class jobs in the heartland of America, that's what Biden promised. So I think that's something to really watch closely.

CC: And Susan.

SUSAN ORMISTRON: Oh, I'm just stuck on the question. What's one story will be paying attention to? I'd love to pay attention to one story in a week, so I'll answer with a couple. I agree on the environment. I also think we're going to have to continue to watch the racial justice. The trial of the Minneapolis police who killed George Floyds starts in March. How will people react who are threatened by this idea of tipping the balance towards more equality in America? How will they react? And I guess lastly, as I've been saying, Catherine, is the resisters, the resisters who follow Donald Trump. How will they react and in what way will they influence the decisions really and the politics in the country?

CC: Listen, this conversation has been enjoyable. It has been insightful. And we thank all three of you for for a lot of hard work this year covering such an incredible story. Thank you so much for making time for us today. Thank you. Happy New Year. Paul Hunter and Susan Ormiston are CBC's senior Washington correspondent. And Lyndsa Duncombe is our senior Washington editor.

How the pandemic changed Paul Salopek's quest to travel the world on foot

Guest: Paul Salopek

CC: A lot of things were put on pause in 2020 because of the pandemic, many of us were in the middle of something or had big plans that were derailed. But only one man was in the middle of a walk from Ethiopia to Argentina when covid-19 arrived. Journalist Paul Salopek has been on the Out of Eden walk since 2013. His goal is to retrace the steps of human migration. That's a 34000 kilometre trek. He hoped to learn something about humanity and our history along the way. Now he's just hoping 2021 will be the year he can get moving again. We've checked in with Paul Salopek several times in the years since he began his journey. He last spoke with Matt Galloway in April. And we've reached Paul, this time in Myanmar. Hello.

PAUL SALOPEK: Hi, Catherine. Happy to check back in the trail.

CC: Yeah. Nice to meet you over the radio. How has the pandemic changed your plans? Paul.

PAUL SALOPEK: Like everybody else, it's put my object, my life on pause to some degree, so I am taking a break from the physical walk to catch up on a lot of writing and waiting, waiting for borders to reopen here in Southeast Asia.

CC: How has it been after being on the move for so long to suddenly find yourself stuck in one place? What's it been like for you?

PAUL SALOPEK: Well, you know, it's not that bad, actually. I've got to step back and remind you and remind my readers and listeners that that I've paused before for periods of time, never this long. But I paused for several months in Israel. I paused for, gosh, eight or nine months, the caucuses in Central Asia. I pause for the winter. And generally it's climate or whether that walking through winter snows is a time to stop or time to wait for visas to clear. This is the first kind of health reason for stopping. And it's not that bad. It's allowed me to catch up on on a lot of backed-up work.

CC: Remind us what you're hoping to learn from this project.

PAUL SALOPEK: The Aravindan Walk is is a slow storytelling, a slow journalism project. So I'm interested in seeing the world at a much slower pace than than most of my colleagues who are in the media. So I was a foreign correspondent for American newspaper for a long time, based in Africa, and I decided about almost eight years now. Gosh, it's a while to kind of step off the accelerating cycle of of digital news and go in the opposite direction. Slow down, slow down my storytelling, slow down the pace of my own life to kind of see if I can extract a bit more meaning from my reporting process.

CC: So given that that quest for perspective, let's talk a little bit about the perspective from where you are right now in rural Myanmar, tell us what the pandemic looks like from there.

PAUL SALOPEK: You know, it's been interesting. The the covid-19 crisis initially didn't have much of an impact in Southeast Asia. It wasn't registering the infection rates that that you were seeing in like Europe or North America. And it was a source of puzzlement to public health officials and scientists about why that is. But now this winter, it is. It is it has gone up again. So, you know, there are many thousands of people infected. The the morbidity, the mortality rates, rather, the number of deaths is quite a bit lower than than Europe or the Americas. And there's still some questions about why that is. And this interesting questions that I'm actually kind of looking into to write about going forward.

CC: Do you have any insight at this point?

PAUL SALOPEK: Well, the experts I've talked to have have a bunch of theories about why this is happening. It could be everything from some cultural factors. The fact that some societies in Asia don't shake hands. They don't make physical contact is is a lot of other cultures do it could be something to do with the weather, the climate, the novel coronavirus doesn't appear to do as well in kind of tropical, hot, steamy environments. But one of the most intriguing hypotheses that I'm picking up on is that there might be some genetic herd immunity to some level. These are these are human populations that have been exposed to coronaviruses, the kind of the family of viruses that the current pandemic is causing, for many, many years. For centuries, millennia. In fact, I read one scientific paper hypothesising even 25,000 years where they may not have total immunity or total resistance to this particular bug. They might have caught similar flus in the past that gave them a little bit of an advantage. And this is still being investigated.

CC: That's really interesting. I'm also curious about how the pandemic has changed the way that you reflect on your own trip so far, the path you've already walked from Ethiopia to Myanmar.

PAUL SALOPEK: I had paused- just to be clear, I paused the walk already before just slightly before the pandemic struck. So I was settled down to to finish a book. So what's happened since, though, with these barriers? Coming up, borders closing, domestic quarantine rules prohibiting travel. It's brought to mind sort of how, as humans have moved across the earth for tens of thousands of years, the ancestors that I'm following left Africa anywhere between 60 to 120,000 years ago. We both brought disease with us and it were exposed to environments where there were these spill-over effects right where we were. We picked up bugs from the natural environment due to close contact. So it's brought to mind questions about, you know, for the last three and a half or so years, I've been walking the Silk Roads through Central Asia eastward from Turkey. And we know that a lot of goods travelled on those thousand year old trade routes, but so to disease. Right. You know, the bubonic plague moved into Western Europe. And so this is a recurring theme. And as I did some homework, I was pretty amazed to discover that something like contagious tuberculosis has been found hitching a ride in human lungs for almost half a million years. Or prehuman logs in that case. So this is part of you of old human story.

CC: You are supposed to head to China next. How have those plants been affected by the pandemic?

PAUL SALOPEK: Well, it's been difficult to to move forward to inch forward at five kilometres an hour because of the pandemic. So I have had to kind of wait until new health regimes are in place, until kind of humankind in general gathers enough knowledge, scientific and medical knowledge about this particular virus to know how it can be treated and how it could be controlled. And that's taken months and months and it's taken a long time to develop vaccines. Actually, it's been very fast, but in a relative span, it seems like a long time, almost a year. So right now, I'm hoping that in the spring, as the vaccine regimes kind of start to have their effect, as public health policy kind of gets to grip on how to control the pandemic at border crossings, I'm, of course, limited to land borders. I don't fly. My hope is, say, by March, April to be resumed the walk towards Yunan, towards southern China for what's going to be a very long traverse of China about a year and a half.

CC: I can still- I mean, we can hear your your passion and your enthusiasm for. This project, but I do wonder, given the length of the delay, did you think about giving up on the walk at any point?

PAUL SALOPEK: No, that's a natural question to ask. No, not yet. I've told my readers that I reserve the right if the walk stops being interesting, if it stops being kind of a challenge to the imagination, I reserved the right to pause and permanently and stop and walk off the trail. But so far, one of the great joys and one of the kind of humbling privileges of doing this project is that I've not reached that stage yet, despite all the obstacles, you know, whether they're landscape or whether or closed borders, because I have this great advantage of waking up every day when I'm on the move to some new challenge that is not like the one from yesterday or the day before. It's just this continuing problem solving learning process. I mean, the best way I can describe it, it's like an adult education course that goes on from horizon to horizon. And the subject matter one day, maybe ancient history or it may be navigating a swamp or maybe learning the names for dogs and the local language that are yapping at you as you walk along a country road.

CC: Well, listen, it just sounds so compelling. Really amazing. We wish you good luck in getting going again and and safe travels when you do racing them. Thank you, Paul.

PAUL SALOPEK: Thank you, Catherine. It's always a privilege.

CC: Paul Salopek is a journalist in the middle of the Out of Eden Walk for National Geographic.

Friday January 1, 2021 Full Transcript

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