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The Current Transcript for June 1, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Habré did, for the most of the verdict, sit there with his face wrapped in a big white turban with sunglasses on so you can't really see his eyes. When the verdict was finally delivered, he put both fists in the air and then was led out of the court.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: As monstrous dictators go, Hissène Habré is in the big leagues. When he was President of Chad, he was responsible over eight years for the deaths of 40,000 and the torture of an estimated 200,000 people. Monday, the man living in luxurious exile became the first African dictator to be convicted by the courts of another African country; sending a message that men like Habre can no longer hide in plain sight. Today, we'll hear from a Montreal man whose father was one of his victims and from an Amnesty International researcher who has been documenting his crimes over the last 26 years. That story in about an hour. Also today, the story of two guys who thought it would be nice to have a little pig for a pet.

SOUNDCLIP

Like you said, you could hold her in the palm of your hand. She just looked very sad. And we were told that she was six months old, a spayed micropig.

[Sound: Pig squeals]

AMT: The thing is, there's no such thing as a micropig. And so Esther the pig is now rather big; with her own bedroom and serious attitude and an ability to get people to change their lives. The story of Esther the pig in half an hour. But we begin with something once so entrenched in medical care that you can find it in the archives.

SOUNDCLIP

Doctor Evans listens to Jimmy's heart. He hears it going…

[Sound: Beating heart]

Sometimes having a health exam can be lots of fun!

AMT: Well now, yet another province has decided that the annual medical checkup can also add up to lots of money. As Quebec moves to scrap coverage for annual physicals, the fight to keep them has begun. We've got that debate starting now. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

The doctor will not see you: Quebec ends annual check-ups

Guests: Dr. Benjamin Burko, Dr. Michael Howard-Tripp

SOUNDCLIP

If you don't have any symptoms and you're not suffering from any significant diseases or chronic disease, for you at 40, 45, 50 to have an annual visit for an annual checkup is basically useless.

AMT: You heard him right. That was Quebec's Health Minister, Gaetan Barrette, describing annual physical check-ups as "basically useless." His province is doing away with annual physicals for otherwise healthy people over the age of five. As of today, yearly check-ups in Quebec will be replaced by a so-called "periodic exam" for people with chronic illnesses. Quebec joins five other provinces - B-C, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario - in ending coverage for annual physical exams, as a growing body of research questions their usefulness. Here's more of the minister, explaining the shift.

SOUNDCLIP

So many appointment slots today are taken by annual visits, patients who do not need that, while at the end of the day those who need visits, those who need access, they don't have access because those appointments are taken by those who do not need them.

AMT: Despite that rationale, the move away from annual physicals has proven controversial. In Montreal, a group of 25 concerned doctors has penned a letter denouncing the decision. They all work with Doctor Benjamin Burko, the Medical Director of the Tiny Tots Medical Centre and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at McGill University Health Centre. Dr. Benjamin Burko is in Montreal. Hello!

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What concerns you about the changes to coverage of annual medical checkups coming into effect today?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Speaking from a pediatric perspective, although the evidence does point to the fact that the actual physical examination is not particularly useful on a cost effective basis for adults, the opposite is true for children. And that it's been stated and reinstated on several occasions. The hardest worker in the country that speaks to this is the Canadian Pediatric Society, and as recently as February of this year they have reaffirmed the need for the yearly or every two year physical exam or checkup for all children over the age of five until the age of 18.

AMT: So this end coverage for children at the age of five. So they would still be covered up to five.

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: That is correct.

AMT: And that's not good enough in your view.

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Well, because there is so much important preventative care that takes place and the participatory guidance-- you know, these are the formative years: it's a developing child, a developing brain, and there's nobody else really to protect and look out for this child. Some patients or children are neglected; not necessarily through acts of commission, but through acts of omission. And it's often the pediatrician that picks up on subtleties such as a decreased growth velocity. That's not being looked at when some child comes in for a sore throat at the age of eight and you haven't seen them in three years. Those are the types of things that come out through regular visits, getting to know your patients, taking down important data, as I say, such as growth data, school performance, social performance, and reinforcing really important preventative health care issues.

AMT: How much time would a doctor usually spend with a child during an annual checkup?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Well, that's really the crux of this whole conversation. The annual physical checkup is usually in the order of 15 minutes, and very often, especially when it comes to adolescents where there are a lot of preventative health issues to go over and where we actually uncover things and often go into more in-depth conversations, that could easily take 30 minutes, as well. Whereas a sick visit, typically in some type of walk-in situation, is really slotted for the ten-minute mark, thereabouts. And so it's really short changing the visit.

AMT: So you're not arguing against the pulling of blanket coverage for adult physicals, you're arguing for the continuation for children?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: That is correct, and that was really the essence of our letter. And we are a group of physicians that exclusively take care of children, and that's where this law, or new recommendation for billing procedures, is flawed.

AMT: And the doctors who've signed this letter all work with you at your clinic?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: That is correct.

AMT: And how big is your clinic?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: We're the largest pediatric clinic in all of Canada. We are 55 health care practitioners comprised of specialists and family medicine doctors and therapists, and we see 130,000 patients every year.

AMT: And what would you say to those who might think that you then have a vested interest in this?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Well…

AMT: A financial interest.

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: I have a vested interest in so far as I have an interest in taking comprehensive care of children. The actual way in which the clinic is remunerated by the positions is irrespective of how much they're getting paid by Medicare, so in fact, I don't have a vested financial interest whatsoever.

AMT: I'd like to bring someone else into the conversation, then we do have him back with us. Dr. Michael Howard-Tripp is a family physician, he's in Saskatoon. Hello, welcome.

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Yes, good morning.

AMT: You have argued against annual checkups. Why is that?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Well, primarily I argued against them because there's very little evidence to show that they actually serve the purpose that they are purported to do.

AMT: And what, do the studies look at children, as well?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: No, most of the studies are actually applied to adults, but would similarly in many respects apply to children, as well.

AMT: So can you tell us a little bit more of what they tell you, then, why you came to this conclusion?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Well, the annual check-up over the years, in fact, since 1979, the Canadian task force on the preventative health examination actually came out and said that there was very little evidence to show that the annual checkup actually served any valuable purpose. So that far back they were already recommendations that it be abandoned. Shortly thereafter in the early 1980s, the United States came out with a similar statement. European countries, in fact, haven't been doing annual checkups for many, many years. And the evidence has been accumulating over the years to show that in fact the annual checkup does very little in terms of preventing disease at all, and or preventing mortality, that is death of patients.

AMT: Benjamin Burko, what do you think of what Dr. Howard-Tripp is saying?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Well again, I can't ever argue in the face of good evidence. So if that's what the evidence does show it, and does for adult care, I believe that to be true. That being said, the Institute of Medicine did define good primary care, which is what we're talking about, as care that has several attributes including accessibility, comprehensive care, coordinated care, continuous care, and accountable care. And if you don't actually have a regular visit, you know, the same thing we do for our cars or our teeth or a lot of other things where that longitudinal comprehensive look is necessary in order to get the quality we want, I don't see how it could be delivered. You won't have a relationship with your physician when they do give you some type of recommendation. Where is that trust coming from? Where is there any investments, if you will, into the relationship? And we do know that the care relationship is an important one. It's part of healing. Patients do prefer to get information from their physician, that's been shown on several studies, as opposed to from random physicians or from the Internet, which is a very dangerous place to get healthcare information from. So although the evidence does again support the abolishment of the annual physical in adults, I don't see it for children. And again there is a recommendation, February 2016 from the Canadian Pediatric Society, that every child over the age of five and until the age of 18 should have this annual physical every one to two years.

AMT: Michael Howard-Tripp, you're a GP, have you stopped or do you think you should stop doing annual medicals for kids?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Yes, absolutely. So one of the points is that there are very few recommended screening tests for children over the age of five. And the evidence behind those is actually not very good. If you take the pediatric population, they are actually frequent users of medical services. So the majority of children will visit their family physician every-- two to four times a year. There should be adequate time during those visits to actually do the few screening procedures that are recommended. I don't really buy into the relationship building, and the reason for that is that the physician-patient relationship is at the core of the therapeutic relationship. So in other words, if you cannot build those relationships during normal visits, I don't see any reason why there should be a dedicated visit to do that.

AMT: What do you say to that, Benjamin Burko?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: Well, that's really not fair, or I would say, based on assumptions that just don't take place in the real world. These non-checkup visits, by their very nature, are quicker visits and often are a function of a walk-in type of situation where you may not even be seeing your own physician, but some physician in your physician group, if you will. And those visits are really trying to accommodate as many sick individuals in any given day that require the help of that physician as are needed and that are possible. To that end, a physician that's evaluated a patient for an acute care issue just doesn't have the bandwidth to start counseling about missing-- or looking at, even, missing vaccines, every child once a year over the age of 12 should have a depression screening, which is the current recommendation, as well as an eating disorder screening. Those types of efforts are time consuming and aren't in your mindset when you seeing a child for a sore throat or for a cough. It's just a whole different gear that you're in when you're in that visit. And I don't see it, with all due respect to Dr. Tripp, happening on all these acute care visits.

AMT: And what do you say to that, Michael Howard-Tripp, about depression and eating disorder screenings?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Yeah, so while the evidence as to the usefulness of those screening procedures, it's still debatable and there's a fair amount of controversy. So I wouldn't like to say that they are not useful, however if you take a physician, if every physician had a practice of about 2,000 patients and every patient had a 20-minute annual health examination, that would occupy the position full time for 22 weeks of every year. Dr. Burko mentioned that there's very little time for acute care, and one of the reasons is if you just take the figures that I gave to you, that's possibly one of the reasons. So if they stop doing annual physicals, there would be more time to actually dedicate to relationship building during normal visits. Eventually, a patient should be given as much time as they need.

AMT: Dr. Burko? Isn't that the point of actually getting rid of some of these, so that you actually make more time for those who really need your attention for illness?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: So the argument becomes circular [chuckles] and one of the things we do know is that money spent on preventative health care translates and multiplies into decreased cost within the healthcare system. For every dollar that's spent in prevention, or these types of preventative visits, one will ultimately save six dollars in illness-based medicine. We are running right now, give or take, an illness based medical system, which is really getting to things afterwards, and we'd much rather have prevention. The old saying goes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it is all the more true with our precious healthcare system.

AMT: You make a point in your letter, Dr. Burko, by saying that you are a teaching unit for the practice of Pediatrics for the faculties of medicine at McGill University and the Université de Montréal. How much of this is-- should that connection, is that the issue? Should the teaching hospitals find another way to deal with what they need to know?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: It's one of our issues, and I think it's still paramount to practicing good medicine to be comprehensive, to be all encompassing, to build the relationship. It's not going to happen on a 10-minute earache visit. You know, obesity, just to take on another issue, is rising at epidemic proportions in North America. Nobody's going to sit down and start doing obesity counseling on some child that just came in with the fever for the last three days. It's not even the right time, they're not going to be receptive, they're sick and the parents have been up all night. I just don't see it happening.

AMT: But we've had yearly checkups, and obesity has risen through those yearly checkups, has it not?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: It has, I think it's a multi-factorial process, a lot of which has to do with the entire food industry and many other social functions. I would just counter that even if a certain smaller percentage of patients are being helped with that respect than just monitoring their weight being told they're growing too quickly on a weight basis, etcetera, and being advised about the minimum requirements for daily exercise during the well checkup, then it's worthwhile even if we can help a few people.

AMT: Michael Howard-Tripp, what about the argument that if you really want to cut down healthcare costs, you need to look at preventive medicine, and one of the ways to do that is to have regular checkups?

DR. MICHAEL HOWARD-TRIPP: Yes, I would say that there's actually no support for that argument. There isn't any evidence showing that the recommended screening procedures actually save that that much money. The screening for obesity in children should really take two minutes. I mean, the child comes in, child is weighed, depending on the height and the age of the child, you can immediately tell whether the child is overweight or not. And then all you need to do is really provide some advice to the child, and you can do that at any visit; it doesn't have to be a dedicated visit. Just one of the things about screening is that there are a number of specific criteria for screening to be useful. And essentially, there should be a phase during which the treatment can change the course of the disease more successfully than in the symptomatic phase. So if a child is not obese, screening for obesity actually doesn't even fit that criteria. So it's only when the child actually becomes obese that you can intervene.

AMT: Benjamin Burko, what are you and your physicians going to do starting today?

DR. BENJAMIN BURKO: For us it's actually business as usual, because the patient comes first. We will, for all intents and purposes, still be doing checkups the way we used to, the way we were taught, the way that is ingrained in our set of patients and our very fine teachings and the legacy that has been handed down generationally. And I'm sure we will modify certain activities and try to figure out, because on a practical basis, the doctors are being paid, I believe somewhere in the order of 40 or 50 per cent less for each of these check-ups. Something's got to give somewhere. We still are in that phase of shock and disbelief, because it all came quite suddenly in the last few weeks, that we learned the details of the new ways of being remunerated for these visits by Medicare. So we're getting together as a group, in fact, next Tuesday to try to figure out a coordinated way in still delivering care effectively to our patients without necessarily suffering on a personal remunerate basis.

AMT: Well, we have to leave it there, thank you both. Doctor Benjamin Burko is the Medical Director of the Tiny Tots Medical Centre and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the McGill University Health Centre. He's in Montreal. Doctor Michael Howard-Tripp is a family physician. We've reached him in Saskatoon. What do you think? How important is an annual physical for you or your children? Who should pay for it? Let us know. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Post on this story on our Facebook page. Or email us by clicking on contact, cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Sting]

The power of a pig: How Esther the Wonder Pig is changing lives

Guests: Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, a landmark judicial decision this week in Senegal could have big ripple effects throughout the world of international justice. The former ruler of Chad, Hissene Habre, became the first former leader of a country to be successfully tried for human rights abuses by another country's courts. We'll talk about that; but first, a pig's tale.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Hi, Miss Pig.

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Are you having a good day? Okay so far?

[Sound: Pig grunts]

AMT: Say hello to Esther. That's her, yes, grunting; slowly, reluctantly waking up from her nap. It’s a warm day, and even warmer in the barn. And Esther, a truly enormous pig, is sprawled on a bed of hay. This is from Campbellville, Ontario where we're getting this sound; outside the barn, goats and sheep are grazing, piglets are frolicking. Not Esther.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Pig grunts]

VOICE 1: Esther got up from her king bed in the house at around 9:00, came out and had breakfast, mulled around for a bit in the barn demanding more breakfast. [chuckles] And then she's put it down in the barn for a morning nap.

[Sound: Pig grunts]

AMT: Okay, she's really not a person, you may be wondering, but Esther is no ordinary pig. For one, there is the king sized bed in the house. Then, there is her celebrity-sized social media following. When her owners- they prefer to be called parents- Steven Jenkins and Derek Walter, first took Esther in, they didn't see any of this coming. They met Esther when she could fit into the palm of a hand, and they were told that Esther would be a micropig: getting no bigger than the size of a medium-sized dog. Today, she weighs in at nearly 300 kilos, or about 650 pounds. Which brings us back to rousing Esther from her nap.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: wrapper crinkling]

VOICE 1: The magic noise around the farm, you can get anybody's attention. Oreos, yes, secret weapon. What's this? Come see. Oh, come on, let's go! Let's go for a walk, Miss Pig. You want some of this?

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: Oh, she loves her Oreos.

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: You want to get up and go for a walk? Come on, let's go for a walk.

[Sound: Pig crunching loudly]

VOICE 1: Pigs are so smart, like, she's outweighing all of her things now. She's like, well, it's kind of humid out and it's cool here in the barn… and I only saw one row of cookies there in the bag, so it's not as big of a reward. Okay, come on Miss Pig, let's go! They're always thinking.

AMT: Well okay, she's making a pig of herself!

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: Well, you can see Esther, and Esther with all of her charm on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter have written a book about their experience raising Esther, Esther The Wonder Pig is the name of the book: Changing the World one Heart at a Time. And Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter are with me in our Toronto studio, welcome.

STEVE JENKINS: Thank you so much for having us today.

AMT: She loves those Oreos

DEREK WALTER: Sure does. There's not a whole lot she doesn't like, to be honest. [laughs]

AMT: And you call her Miss Pig.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, we have lots of pet names for Esther: Bubba is a popular one…

STEVE JENKINS: Monkey.

DEREK WALTER: Monkey Lips is another one.

[Sound: All laughing]

STEVE JENKINS: She's got these little lips that she pries the food away from you, but yeah, we've got lots of pet names.

AMT: And she's got that cute snout.

DEREK WALTER: Oh, she does, yeah. It's about the size of a tea saucer, it's not that little.

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: We have a lot to talk about, but Steve, you better tell us the story about how Esther came into your lives.

STEVE JENKINS: Yes, it was a message online: Facebook of all places, actually, from a friend I had gone to school with and hadn't spoken to in years and years and years but remembered me as being an animal lover. So she wrote me and said she had this mini pig, and it wasn't getting along with her dogs, and she had just had babies, and needed to find it a new home and asked if I was interested. So I am a bit of a sucker and was immediately intrigued, and then she planted the seed very shortly after that saying somebody else wanted her, so I had to decide right away. And I hadn't had a chance to discuss it with Derek, but panicked and agreed to meet her the following morning. So it was about maybe 12 hours from initial message to picking up Esther at my office, offsite so Derek didn't see her.

DEREK WALTER: [laughs]

AMT: Okay, she had this pig. She had a micropig, right?

STEVE JENKINS: So we were told, yeah.

AMT: What's a micropig?

STEVE JENKINS: Well, they're made up, to be totally honest.

AMT: [laughs]

STEVE JENKINS: They don't exist, so-- But we were told Esther would be about 70 pounds, so this thing that people refer to as micropigs are minipigs is a breed called Juliana pig, which grows to about a hundred pounds or so; and then there's the more common pot-bellied pig, which I think a lot of people associate with pets. They're a little bigger, about 250 pounds. And then there's Esther who's, as you said, 650 pounds. So we got taken for a bit of a ride.

AMT: Regular old farm pig.

STEVE JENKINS: Regular old farm pig is what she turned out to be.

AMT: So Derek, you weren't so sure about this. How did you react to the initial presence of Esther in your home?

DEREK WALTER: Well, he tried to butter me up. He made sure that the stage was set when I got home; he made sure that dinner was made and a glass of wine was going and candles were lit.

STEVE JENKINS: [laughs]

AMT: So right away you knew something was up.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, that was-- yeah, my stink alarm was going off for sure. [laughs] So my initial reaction: my hands were full, I had my rabbit carrier in one hand in my dress clothes in another hand- I'm a professional magician, or I was at one time. Yeah, I immediately recognised the office door was closed and it's never closed. And our two dogs were poised sitting outside the door looking in. And I just immediately flew down the hallway and into the office and there she was. And I remember just painting the house in profanity. You know, like, I was bouncing around because about eight months previous he brought home Delores, a cat.

AMT: And so you already had two dogs and Dolores, already.

STEVE JENKINS: Two cats.

DEREK WALTER: We already had a cat.

AMT: And two cats, right, okay. Two dogs, two cats.

DEREK WALTER: A roommate, and the roommate also had a cat as well, so it was a busy house.

STEVE JENKINS: It was in a small, thousand-square foot bungalow in Georgetown.

AMT: And then he brings home a piglet with nail polish on it.

DEREK WALTER: Yes.

STEVE JENKINS: Oh my god, she looked terrible.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, she-

STEVE JENKINS: She was so sad. When I first saw her, her ears were all sunburned and she was, like you said, you could hold her in the palm of your hand. So I mean, she was-- she just looked very sad. I mean, I felt for her the minute I saw her. And of course I was terrified that if I said no, I was going to take her, what would happen.

DEREK WALTER: And we were told that she was a six months old spayed micropig.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

AMT: What, was it Derek? When did you fall in love with her?

DEREK WALTER: It did not take long. I mean, she's got magnetic energy like that just draws you in real close. She, you know, I'd like to think it was about a week, because I wouldn't allow even entertain the thought of naming her. She didn't have a name.

STEVE JENKINS: It was Kijiji for a few weeks.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, I named her Kijiji, that's what I called her.

[Sound: All laughing]

AMT: As in, that's where you're going.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah, that's where we need to start posting an ad. So I had come up with the idea that we would, you know, transition her out of our house and into another house. But it didn't take very long at all, and I was like, come here, you know, come, come come come.

AMT: So what were the early days of pig ownership like? Pig parenthood like?

STEVE JENKINS: It was kind of weird, right, I mean the first little bit, that whole, I guess they call it the honeymoon phase, right, when you first got her, it was all great, it was all amazing. And it wasn't until we went to the vet, of course, that first seed of, oh no, what have we done kind of got planted, because Esther has a cropped tail. So her tail is only about an inch and a half long, and the vet said to us that's a sign that she was actually a commercial pig and from a commercial farm. And that was the first, you know, we might have a potential issue here, but he immediately said if she is six months old and all this other stuff you're telling me is true, she won't be as big as we think.

AMT: Maybe she's a runt.

STEVE JENKINS: Exactly, right. But he immediately told me there's no way she'll be 70 pounds. He said 250 if you're lucky, probably bigger.

AMT: Derek wasn't in that conversation, was he?

BOTH: No.

AMT: Just checking.

STEVE JENKINS: No, he wasn't. So I censored it a little bit and went home and explained everything to Derek about the new 250 pound maximum weight. [laughs] And went from there. So I mean, we kept holding on to this she'll be smaller than we think thing, and then litter became the biggest problem with training her. So the first few months were okay, we had her pretty good. But she got to a certain size.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, we were living with the fairy tale that she was going to remain smaller than our biggest dog.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: And so yeah, we started litter training her, because pigs are very smart and they'll go to the same place, and so we started to litter train her. And she started growing at a pace that was, you know…

STEVE JENKINS: Like a pound a day.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, she started growing real fast and outgrew our various litter box stages till the very end…

AMT: [laughing]

DEREK WALTER: When the litter box…

STEVE JENKINS: What was the last one, a kiddie pool?

DEREK WALTER: It was like the size of the couch and it was a kiddie pool and she had it all down. She would get down, she would go into the litter box and do her business. But as she got so big, her hind end is, she's working supposed to be, but she's peeing outside of the litter box then. So once we realize that yes, we indeed did have a big girl on our hands, that we took the litter box away and we started to train her outside.

AMT: Where are you living at this point?

DEREK WALTER: So we're--

AMT: You're in a regular place, regular house.

DEREK WALTER: Regular town in the suburbs, I mean, we had a little bungalow in a subdivision. You know, we had a fifty by hundred foot lot. Neighbours on all four sides, you knew what the neighbours were doing.

AMT: And okay, so you had a couple more challenges. What else was going on? Because it wasn't all fun.

AMT: And that's to the farm that we just heard at the beginning, where you've gone to.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah.

AMT: There other animals there, too.

STEVE JENKINS: That's right.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah. So I guess at first, at that point, it wasn't a farm, that was such a farfetched dream. You know, it was just we need to get out of town and into the country. We were just going to carry on doing what we were doing, but right around that time just before Christmas, we'd started the Facebook page. So it was only a few weeks old at that point, but it went crazy and within 80 days of starting that page it hit 100,000 followers. And it was around then that we had started looking at property and came back to the page and said, you know what, you know, we're looking at farms and thinking we might open a sanctuary. What do you guys think? And the page responded unbelievably positively. So we jumped and we started a crowdfunding campaign and went out and found this farm in Campbellville. It was unreal, unbelievable.

AMT: So when we talk about Esther changing lives, she's changed your lives, as well. What is it about this pig? She keeps growing.

BOTH: Yes.

AMT: She's clearly not a micropig.

BOTH: Yes.

AMT: She's snuffling through your house, she's doing all-- and yet, you just, like, you get a new house, you get a farm. Like, you just keep on going. What is it about her?

STEVE JENKINS: She's like a four legged person. I mean, she's got so much character and personality, and she's so clever and so sensitive and funny. I think it's, I think that's the thing I find with Esther the most, I mean, she makes me laugh to this day on a daily basis. She can't talk to you, but you can almost read exactly what she's saying just by her facial expression or the noises that she makes. And she's so, like Derek said, magnetic, I guess, is the right word for her. She just draws you in when you meet her. And she likes certain people but doesn't like others.

AMT: Oh, tell me more about that.

STEVE JENKINS: Hilarious. Well, one of our friends, he'd come to the house all the time. Esther's met him God knows how many times. And it's better now, but there was a while there in Georgetown that anytime this friend of ours came to the house, she would chase him round and round and round. He could have arrived with a group of four people, the other four were totally fine. Him? Nothing to do with. Don't know why, don't know what the reason was for it, but we always thought it was hilarious.

STEVE JENKINS: Well they are, and that's-- say, when you get to know a pig, that's what was so life-changing, I think, for us, you know, was to see these animals that we thought on such a different level. And then to actually get one in our house. And I mean, just so you know where we were at, I mean, even-- when she first arrived home we were meat eaters. You know, big time, and I remember Derek saying to me one of the early days, you know, I don't think I can eat bacon anymore. I'm like, oh Derek, don't be ridiculous, she's a different kind of pig. You know, like I had that kind of mindset. And then all of a sudden to find out that she was that pig, you know, the bacon pig or the pork chop pig, and to see her have so much affection. And like I said, such this larger than life personality, and then to think of where she would have been if she wasn't with us. You know, that was the most devastating thing. And that's the big reason we kept her, you know, because where was she going to go?

DEREK WALTER: We only had one of two possibilities. It was a sanctuary, a farm sanctuary, and all of the farm sanctuaries locally to us are filled beyond belief. You know, there's no more room at the inn. And then the next best thing is, you know, the inevitable, which is slaughter. You know, that's-- anybody would want to buy her for that reason.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: And those are the only two reasons that we were presented, you know, the only two things that we were presented with.

STEVE JENKINS: Those were our options.

AMT: What do you say to those people who go, she's a pig and she's a commercial pig.

DEREK WALTER: You've never met her.

STEVE JENKINS: You've never met a pig, you know, because we thought the same thing until we met her. You know, I was always one of those people that if anybody laid a finger on my dog, you know what I mean, you would have hell to pay. And you know, it's I think a lot of people are like that. They're fiercely protective of their pets and their companion animals. Launching campaigns about the dolphins and the dog meat festival, and all while enjoying their steak and their pork chop. I really think it's only because you don't know them. And if you, the way we learned from Esther and getting to know her, and like I said, at the same time having her in front of us and then having to think in the back of our mind where she would have been if she wasn't with us, was all the motivation that we ever needed to change our lifestyle entirely. And I think that's what's happening online with people, is that she's helping them connect to an animal that we've always discounted. I think we all look the other way when that truck goes by on the highway and we all want to ignore what's happening, and she made it impossible for us to ignore.

AMT: If you missed our conversation in our last half hour you want to find it on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. They've been talking about life with Esther, a pig, which they were told would grow no bigger than a dog. Well, Esther is not a micro-pig, as there’s no such thing. She is now about 650 pounds. Raising Esther changed everything for Steve and Derek. They have quit their jobs. They own a farm now in Campbellville, Ontario, an hour outside of Toronto, and they take in other animals at the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. So I'm going to continue. Steve Jenkins, tell me more about what you do at the farm and the animals you take in.

DEREK WALTER: We have requests daily. I mean, the need is huge.

STEVE JENKINS: And from all over the world, right.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, from all over the world. It's not just—

STEVE JENKINS: It’s a funny situation. Because of social media, yeah, we get inundated with stuff from Asia, Mexico, the United States, Europe, all over the world.

AMT: What do people tell you?

STEVE JENKINS: I’ve got 600 pigs in Mexico that need a home. What can you do? [Laughs]

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah.

STEVE JENKINS: That’s insane.

DEREK WALTER: Or sometimes it's farmers, like, industrialized farmers that are having a change of heart. Like, where they go, I have this runt pig and I can't kill it. I know that—

STEVE JENKINS: I brought it into the house to raise it.

DEREK WALTER: I brought her into the house and I can't keep it anymore. And so we get a lot of people changing that way. So that's where some of the animals come from.

STEVE JENKINS: Which is the most mind-blowing thing too, when you think about it. These farmers that dedicate their lives to raising these animals-- and that's what they know, so, I mean, I'm not saying these farmers are bad people-- but then all of a sudden they bring one into their house that needs extra care and they rear it and raise it and then they see this personality and this character that, even them, somebody who's been working with these animals for so long, because they've never been in such close constant contact with them that they don't see those little flashes. And then when they do see them, like Derek says, they're calling a sanctuary saying, oh my god, I can't possibly do to this pig what I do to the hundreds or thousands of other pigs—

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, you know. Penelope. We can’t do that to Penelope.

AMT: And you've got another pig who lives on the farm called Bear.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah, big Bear.

AMT: Let’s listen to Bear.

SOUNDCLIP

[Bear softly snorting]

STEVE JENKINS: Hey, Bear Bear. Bear sure is a chatty boy.

[Bear softly snorting]

DEREK WALTER: So, Bear has severe arthritis in his hind legs, which means he can no longer walk. And what that means for the sanctuary is we give Bear all of his needs. We clean under him two to three times a day so he's not laying in wet or laying in his filth. He gets fresh straw. He’s got lights. He’s got a fan. He’s got a projector there so we can turn on TV and put something on so to keep his curiosity and interest alive.

[Bear softly snorting]

STEVE JENKINS: Yes. Good boy, good boy. What are you doing today? Hm?

DEREK WALTER: This is his masseuse that’s shown up today to give him his weekly massage.

VOICE: I just massage him because he uses his front end a lot more, right. So then he gets really tight in his shoulders and neck and then get circulation, I guess, more so into his back end. I just kind of do a little reflexion work, so I mobilize it a bit even though he can’t use it. But at least if it’s kind of moving a bit then I get some circulation in there too. Hey, buddy?

[Bear softly snorting]

VOICE: Hm? I know, I know.

[Bear softly snorting]

DEREK WALTER: Good boy, Bear. Enjoy your massage, buddy.

[Bear snorts]

STEVE JENKINS: Enjoy your massage. We’re out of here.

AMT: I love the snorting.

STEVE JENKINS: Their noises are hilarious.

AMT: Yeah.

STEVE JENKINS: And they’ve got so many. Another neat thing, they’ve got, I don’t even know what number it is, of different vocalisations pigs have, but they all mean something different. Like, we can hear Esther, we know which one of our animals, whether she's talking to one of the dogs and which dog she's talking to, based on the noises that she makes.

AMT: That’s incredible. And, you know, a lot of farmers listen to the radio as they do their jobs. If there's a pen of commercial pigs that catch this, they’re going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah, yeah.

AMT: Wait a minute.

STEVE JENKINS: They’re telling a different tune. We want to listen to them.

AMT: Yeah, because you’re telling me how clever they are.

STEVE JENKINS: You won’t hear those noises coming out of a commercial pen, though.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah.

AMT: So how tough is it for these animals to find a sanctuary? Like, you’re taking some in.

STEVE JENKINS: It’s incredibly tough.

AMT: How much is going on like this?

DEREK WALTER: Well, so, we take—We’re in a unique position because of how much online presence Esther has and how much world presence she has, so we get you know a lot of people reaching out from different places that we might not even be in a position to help physically.

AMT: Yeah. But how do you fund it?

DEREK WALTER: We've created a charity called Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary and we just got the charity status just this past August. So it's completely funded, 100 per cent, through online donations.

AMT: It's interesting because you're talking about the people who contact you specifically about this, but you're also getting letters and you're getting contacted from people who are learning more just by watching what's going on with Esther. Tell me a little bit about...

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah. We’ve gotten so many different messages from people about different things. You know, we had one from a mother a little while ago that just said, I wanted to thank you for teaching my four-year-old son that it's okay to have two dads. You know, things like that, that you would never think we would have that type of an impact. Or a lady that wrote to say thank you for making my mom smile. You know, she's in hospital with dementia and I haven't seen her smile in months and we were watching Esther videos and she had a smile from ear to ear.

DEREK WALTER: And people come to Esther with problems too. They feel like it's a safe space to open up and they just pour it out.

STEVE JENKINS: It's interesting. You know, if a message comes through addressed to Derek and I, it's going to be a fairly standard message, but if you get a message that's addressed, you know, Dear Esther, it's where you usually have to sit down and brace yourself for something heavy, that somebody will be, I guess, opening up to Esther in a way that they don't feel they can do other people. It's very hard to explain.

AMT: How do you respond to that?

STEVE JENKINS: I usually sit and cry for a while. [Laughs]

DEREK WALTER: Yeah. We weep a lot.

STEVE JENKINS: And then we get it together and then we come up and formulate an answer. But that's been I think, for me anyway, the hardest part, is I find it incredibly overwhelming sometimes to think of the reach that she has and the level that she's impacting people, you know. It's on such a deeper and more meaningful way than either of us ever anticipated. And it's really scary, to be honest to step outside. You know, we're so busy all the time with the farm and with Esther and everything that's going on that rarely do we have a chance to step back and say, okay, what have we done? And what have we accomplished? When we do, I know for me, when I have those minutes to reflect on things, I scare myself, because so much has happened and so much is happening and I never in a million years thought that I would be controlling a Facebook page that reaches eight million people a week. Like, that just blows my mind that she's seen and known by that many people and that they care for her the way we do. Like, people are fiercely protective of her online and they're fiercely protective of Derek and I.

AMT: Do you consider yourself activists?

DEREK WALTER: Accidentally, yes, for sure.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah, didn't set out to do this or to achieve any of this. And we've done nothing but ride the wave as it's come. I think, to me, it's incredibly satisfying to know every time we get those messages from people that whether it be something about helping a member of their family smile or they've given up pork as a result of Esther or whatever it is, you know, those are huge major life changes for people and to think that we've had any part in influencing that decision is incredible.

AMT: Well, I was reading that some people have criticized you for not being strident enough. How do you…?

STEVE JENKINS: It drives us both crazy.

DEREK WALTER: We applaud small change. We realize that the end result we would love if nobody ever ate animals again. But we know that that's not going to happen overnight. And the same way that we were educated with pigs and finding out on our own and then other animals quickly followed suit. We were on our own journey.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah. Nobody ever told us to go faster.

DEREK WALTER: And to think that we would have snapped our fingers and be this different person, that's balderdash. There are mid-steps in between.

STEVE JENKINS: With Esther, right, it was because of Esther. It wasn't because we had somebody at our back saying you need to hurry up or, what I mean you're giving up pork and not cows? She helped us figure out all of that, right, and our first step for both of us was that's it, no more pork, and it spread so quickly from there to everything else because once you give up or you have that one thought, it’s triggered something in your mind. You're going to want to know more information and you go looking then for information. You go looking for these documentaries and for all the stuff that you would otherwise avoid watching for so, so long and then once you watch and once you actually want to know why people are so passionate about veganism and you see what's going on it, becomes such a no-brainer. I mean, I completely understand and, don't get me wrong, if I thought that me standing on top of your building right now screaming at everybody to go vegan would actually make a difference, I'd be up there every day. But I know it alienates a lot of people and it alienated me for years. I didn't want to watch that. I didn't want to respond to it. I’d cross the road if there was a demonstration. I didn't want to see it. Esther made me want to see it and that's what we're trying to replicate. The people that were like us, that had she not come around chances are very, very good this never would have become our lifestyle. So, that's what we're trying to do, is to get through people like us that are good-- I mean, everybody has good in them.

DEREK WALTER: Yeah. Everybody has the good intentions. They just don’t know.

STEVE JENKINS: Yeah.

DEREK WALTER: Because it’s behind closed doors, all that stuff. And growing up I was taught that farmed animals are mindless creations of man, they’re numb, they’re mindless, they don’t have feelings.

STEVE JENKINS: They don’t feel pain.

DEREK WALTER: And they want to be food. And that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. All those animals are very connected. They experience pain and fear.

STEVE JENKINS: Happiness.

DEREK WALTER: Happiness, love, joy. They have all those emotions and we're taught just to completely disconnect from that. None of these animals have names. They don't have names. They’re food and we only see them inside of a package.

AMT: Thanks for coming in. Thanks for your story.

STEVE JENKINS: Thank you very much for having us.

DEREK WALTER: Thank you so much.

AMT: Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter. They are the owners, the parents they would say, of Esther the Wonder Pig. That's the name of the book about her. Check out our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, for photos and videos of Esther and other animals at the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. Let us know what you think of their transformation and what they're saying, all thanks to a pig. On Twitter we are @thecurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Send us an email through our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: interlude]

What Chad's former dictator guilty verdict means for the African Union

Guests: Sangandem Ndem Ngoidi, Gaetan Mootoo

AMT: You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM And online on cbc.ca/thecurrent. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. The world witnessed a major moment for African justice this week when the former ruler of Chad Hissène Habré was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life in prison in a landmark trial. The trial took place in Senegal and The Guardian's West Africa correspondent Ruth McLean was in the courtroom for the decision.

SOUNDCLIP

It actually started to emerge quite soon on that he was being found guilty. The judge kept talking of his crimes as matters of fact and eventually when he said everything he had to say he got up and left the courtroom and then there was this moment of quiet where I think everyone was waiting to see what would happen next. And then behind me, these women started ululating and it was really quite eerie and it was a courtroom packed full of people. And then the courtroom just totally erupted and clapping and cheers. Everyone was hugging each other and some of the victims around me were throwing their hats in the air and jumping up and down. It was just a moment of incredible relief for them. It was quite incredible.

AMT: Hissène Habré is now 73 years old. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, guilty of rape, forced slavery, kidnapping, and of having ordered the killings of 40,000 people during his rule between 1982 and 1990.

SOUNDCLIP

Habré did, for most of the verdicts, exactly what he's done throughout the trial, which is to sit there with his face wrapped in a big white turban, so you can't really see it, with sunglasses on. Stared straight ahead, not acknowledge anybody else's existence, really. But when the verdict was finally delivered he shouted, down with Françafrique, basically, implying that this is some kind of colonial plot and put both fists in the air and then was let out of the court.

AMT: Ruth MacLean, the US Africa correspondent for The Guardian. The case was heard by a tribunal that was specially appointed by the African Union and it marks the first time that one country has successfully prosecuted the leader of another for crimes against humanity as well as the first time a head of state has been found guilty of rape. Montrealer Sangandem Ndem Ngoidi knows of those abuses only too well. In 1984, when he was 23 years old, his father disappeared. He’s a presumed victim of the Habré regime. Mr. Ndem Ngoidi says they’re nightmare began when his family was at a memorial for an uncle who had just died and officials and officials made an unexpected visit. Here he is in translation:

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] An inspector and government officials came at 2:00 pm and told my father he had to go to a meeting at 3:00 pm. My father went. On his arrival, they took his keys his bag and gave them to the driver and told him to come back at 6:00 pm. When he came back at 6:00, they said no, my father's not ready yet. The next morning, I headed over and the government representative told me that they'd taken my father from where we were in Sarh to N'Djamena, the capital. That's all they told me. The next day, I made my way to an N’Djamena, but I was never able to find any information about my father.

AMT: And why were they even interested in your father? Who was your father?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French]My father was a surgeon, but during the period where the country was divided he was in charge, politically, for that region. So when Hissène Habré came to power, he decided he was going to leave politics. So as of 1982 he was out of politics, but Habré asked him twice to become his Minister of Health, which my father refused both times until, in 1984, they sent those officials to meet my father.

AMT: So you waited all night and then you learned he was in the capital. What were you thinking? Were you afraid for him at that time? Did you think that he would be back? What did you think?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French]When they detained my father, there were rumours that they had executed a number of people around the city of Sarh, but all I knew was that my father was missing. So since they told me he'd gone N’Djamena, I made my way there. But according to information I got later, my father was killed that same night that they executed many other high profile people in Sarh – professors, lawyers, the chief prosecutor. All those people were killed on one night. So he was executed the night of the 14th of September.

AMT: And how did you react to that news?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] Everyone was scared. I was with my brothers all by ourselves. It was a terrible sense of isolation, but my maternal uncles helped us out when we went to N’Djamena, but everyone else - my dad's friends, all the people we were close to - were scared of us. It was like they were hiding from us, like we were a bomb that was going to explode.

AMT: Why was that? Did they think that you too would be victims and if they knew you, they too could be victims?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] Exactly. Because that's how the government operated. When they took one person from the family they'd come back and take the kids and everyone else. When anyone was taken by the government, especially the head of the family, then everyone else for the suspect and people would avoid you.

AMT: Did you ever get an official explanation of what they did to him?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] No, we didn't find anything. Still today, no trace. We know they found mass graves around the city, but we have no idea where they put our father to this day.

AMT: And what did you decide to do after that?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] As my father worked in Chad’s sugar industry, I went to speak to the company directors, who are French, and they went to see government officials who told them it wasn't their problem. That's it. I had no other options. There was nothing else to do. So a year later, I left Chad and headed to Central African Republic.

AMT: And when you left Chad were you in fear of your own life?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French]Exactly, because that's how they operated. They’d kidnap people in all the countries in the region. They did whatever they wanted.

AMT: And when you learned that former president Habré was found guilty and sentenced for crimes against humanity, what did you think?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] In fact, I thought at least the world knows what the people of Chad have lived through, because in the past it was very difficult to relate to people the kind of suffering the people of Chad have known. Now at least international opinion is focused on the situation. Lots of people know what we've lived through. So now I hope the children won't have to suffer like we did. That’s my one hope.

AMT: You know, when I read about this, we're talking about 40,000 people killed, 200,000 tortured all under his command. I don't think we can even imagine that. I don't know how that affects you when you think about your home country.

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] It hurts me too much, but we have no recourse. There's nothing we can do. These days there are organizations that are helping us, which is great. My only hope is that this is over, that a light shines on Chad to show what's happening so we can protect future generations.

AMT: We know that part of this trial saw evidence from 69 victims given against Mr. Habré. Did you or members of your family provide evidence?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] My mother-in-law, my sister. and my brother all submitted accounts that were used in the trial.

AMT: Does it give you any strength or comfort to know that your family contributed to the evidence that was used against him, that was used to find him guilty?

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] Absolutely. It's brought relief to my family and all those who testified, also those who are far away who contributed in the hopes that this story can come to an end.

AMT: But we understand that the man who replaced president Habré, Idriss Déby, has the same kind of track record.

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] We can't deny that he was in charge of the army and also he was a member of the party. So, it's very difficult to believe that he didn't know what was going on.

AMT: That perhaps this sentence and verdict will send a message to him.

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French] It's certain that he's going to have to question his own actions.

AMT: Well, I'm very sorry for your loss, those many years ago. Thank you for speaking with me today.

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: [translated from French]Thank you for hearing my story. It brings me some comfort to be able to talk about it.

AMT: Thank you very, very much for talking to us. Okay. Au revoir.

SANGANDEM NDEM NGOIDI: Merci. Au revoir.

AMT: Sangandem Ndem Ngoidi in Montreal. He has been living in Canada since 1994. We spoke to him in translation. The translation was the voice of our producer Marc Apollonio. For those close to this case, this week's decision was a very long time coming. Gaetan Mootoo is Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa. He and his colleagues have been documenting evidence against Hissène Habré since the 1980s. He’s in Dakar, Senegal. Hello.

GAETAN MOOTOO: Hello.

AMT: Did you ever believe Mr. Habré would be found guilty?

GAETAN MOOTOO: First of all, when there was this move to have Habré tried, many people thought this would be unachievable. But, in fact, it turned out to be true. Considering the amount of testimonies, documents provided it would have been difficult for the court not to find Mr. Habré guilty.

AMT: And how much testimony was there? How many documents were there? How detailed did this trial get?

GAETAN MOOTOO: There were hundreds of documents and also there were dozens of testimonies, including one, which was very moving – a woman who described how she was raped by Mr. Habré. In the court’s decision, the court stressed that as well.

AMT: Now, he was implicated directly in the torture of 200,000 and the killing of 40,000. He was the leader for eight years. What kind of regime did he have?

GAETAN MOOTOO: The sad thing is that hundreds of people disappeared or were killed, others died in detention, and also [indecipherable] all these concerns were raised by Amnesty International at the time. The letters which were sent to the Chad government proved that Amnesty was aware the situation when the issue was raised, but Hissène Habré has some allies outside. Foreign governments supported Mr. Habré, which means that they turned a blind eye to what was happening inside Chad.

AMT: In fact, the United States and France were, for a very long time, supporting him, were they not?

GAETAN MOOTOO: Not only were they aware, they were supporting it through the transfer of military, security, and police equipment, which could have contributed to human rights violations.

AMT: So how important is this decision to the people of Chad?

GAETAN MOOTOO: I think the decision is very important, because I think it is an historic decision. It is not a decision which was reached by the Security Council to establish a court. It was a decision which was reached by an institution, by the African Union. And the African Union made the decision to establish the court after a campaign by a coalition of NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, national NGOs, and Amnesty International. It means a lot for human rights defenders and for ordinary people, who have realized an extraordinary situation, just to have Mr. Habré tried and the court found him guilty.

AMT: For a long time we've seen African dictators, specifically, accuse the West in Europe of being racist in any charges against them. So the fact that he was tried and found guilty by the court of an African country is significant, right.

GAETAN MOOTOO: Yes. It is significant, but also I would like to mention that in the past there were two African leaders who had been tried by their national court. There was Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic and there was also Moussa Traoré of the Republic of Mali. The difference is that Mr. Habré was tried for crimes against humanity by an international court setting in Africa.

AMT: Now, you have been working on this case for 26 long years documenting, taking testimony. You got to know victims of this regime, the families of the victims. Tell me a little bit about the people who are behind those numbers.

GAETAN MOOTOO: I remember very well. There was somebody who later became a friend, Mahamat Sidi Baby. He was arrested and he managed to escape from detention. And when he managed to escape, there were attacks against members of his family. His uncle was arrested and he still disappeared. His daughter was arrested and she was released later, but he never mentioned what happened to his daughter. And I didn’t push to have more details about the circumstances of the arrest and about the conditions of his daughter when she was in detention. When he was in my office, we use to have tea, and he was always doubtful about whether Habré would be tried. And unfortunately, that friend died some time ago. He wanted Mr. Habré to be tried. But there were also joy when I was at the court. There were Souleymane Guengueng, there were Clement Abaifouta , cases on which I've been able to work when they were in detention, and you could see the emotion on their faces. They broke into tears and at the same time the tears were not for the suffering they endured. It was for the joy when the verdict was pronounced.

AMT: Do you think this decision could affect human rights in Chad today and give the current leader President Déby a message?

GAETAN MOOTOO: Not only President Déby will receive a message, but I think that all throughout the world, inside Africa, like Burundi, like Zimbabwe, and also outside the world in Syria, in Yemen, leaders will think twice now, because there’s not a safe place for them now.

AMT: Gaetan Mootoo, thank you for your perspective on all of this.

GAETAN MOOTOO: Thank you very much.

AMT: Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa. We reached him in Dakar, Senegal. That's our program for today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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