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The Current Transcript for August 29, 2016

Host: Robyn Bresnahan

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I’m well aware we have an opportunity to set a fresh approach in our relationship right now.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau departs on his first official visit to China today, what does a reset in the relationship look like? China's second most powerful politician says China and Canada are set to enter a new golden era under the Trudeau government—but at what cost? Critics accuse the Chinese president of becoming ever more power-hungry, ruthless and determined to get only what he wants out of bilateral relationships. So how can Prime Minister Trudeau balance the desire for economic investment with values that stay true to Canada? That is first up today. And then—she was a survivor of the terror attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris last year.

SOUNDCLIP

I had my friend get on the other side with me. The other one couldn't talk because she was shot. And then at that point, my head told me now you have to leave or you’re going to die.

RB: Well, she did get out and as one of the voices today on our panel of survivors of terror attacks, they will share their harrowing tales of escape and the difficult experience of coming to terms with what happened months and years afterwards. I'm Robyn Bresnahan sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is the summer edition of The Current.

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Can Canada’s relationship with China be reset when human rights are tied to trade?

Guests: Wenran Jiang, Jonathan Manthorpe, David Mulroney

SOUNDCLIP

Every time I have had an opportunity to meet with any representatives of the Chinese government or of China in general, I have highlighted our concerns around human rights. We will continue to bring up human rights concerns every chance we get while at the same time we work to create economic opportunities, both for Canadians and for Chinese citizens.

RB: Well, that is the balancing act Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ahead of him this week, as his first official visit to China gets underway. He will touch down tomorrow, spending the week visiting Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai before attending the annual G-20 meeting in Hangzhou. And his goal—simply stated—is to reset Canada's relationship with China. He's there to enhance trade and business relations while at the same time addressing human rights concerns. But whether Canada will be able to exert any real influence on China is up for debate. Wenran Jiang is the director of the Canada-China Energy and Environment Forum. He's also a political science professor at the University of Alberta. He's in Beijing helping to facilitate communication between Canadian and Chinese businesses. Hello.

WENRAN JIANG: Hello.

RB: What aspects of the Canada-China relationship need resetting in your view?

WENRAN JIANG: I think the primary goal for resetting the bilateral relationship has to go back to look at the past 10 years of the bilateral relationship under the Harper government, which did not have any clear direction, which did not have much strategy going on, which was going into a rollercoaster from cold to warm to maybe lukewarm or to cold again. I think China is too important for Canada, for such a bilateral relationship, to be on that kind of ground. I think the resetting has to be finding a new strategic and more consistent approach to the bilateral relationship.

RB: When you say China is too important for Canada, are you talking about economically?

WENRAN JIANG: China is the fastest growing economy in the world. It's the largest trading country and is going to take over the United States as the largest economy in the world. No country in this world can actually not deal with China or not deal with China strategically and then can get prosperity or global peace and the environmental issue settled.

RB: But some critics would say that it's an extremely unbalanced relationship. That by far, China is getting the most out of it and that there's a huge trade deficit for Canada. How can that relationship be made more equitable?

WENRAN JIANG: That’s actually how the leadership role should be under the new prime minister, Prime Minister Trudeau. The Chinese is a manufacturing giant. We need to find our advantage, our footing in order to off-balance that. And that's why you cannot use the pure market force or the so-called comparative advantage and just to naturally reach the balance. We need to also have the competitive advantage—that is we do better, compete better than other countries in the China market. I hope the prime minister's trip will achieve that goal to a certain extent.

RB: So that is speaking in pretty broad terms, saying that we have to find our advantage and Canada's footing. But I mean how specifically should Justin Trudeau be doing that?

WENRAN JIANG: I think there are a number of things we need to do—going first beyond the human rights versus trade forced economy, as I called it—we can achieve engaging Chinese on both goals. And when you go beyond that kind of dichotomy every time, there is a [unintelligible] for engagement between Canada and China. The press asked the same question, the public got into it, and then after the visit, nothing happened and then we go resurface on this dichotomy again. I think the first thing is to say we can do both and do both well, number one. Number two: engage China more strategically. We didn't really have a China strategy. We need to have some kind of consistency. And third, for some special deals, relationships in certain sectors, that Canada is recognized globally and especially by the Chinese, that's very good and I don't think we have taken advantage of that in the past. And you know sectors we can actually achieve much better trade balance, if not a total balance, by exporting more of Canadian goods industry products and services to China. And finally, frankly speaking, do this trip promoting Canadian economy and companies on a regular basis, not on a one-off basis.

RB: So are you saying then—that Prime Minister Trudeau—when you say that Canada should go beyond human rights, are you saying that he should not even mention human rights on this trip?

WENRAN JIANG: Actually, just the contrary. Remember this: the idea and the conventional wisdom in our popular discourse in Canada is that somehow the Liberals ignore human rights in dealing with China. Well, the Conservatives under Harper emphasized human rights. That's simply not the case. Under the Harper government, they dismantled every human rights engagement program there was between Canada and China and never implemented a single human rights program. I think Trudeau can talk to the Chinese in a frank manner and engage with them and set up some human rights programs between the two countries that can promote human rights cause. Not just one way street in China but also in Canada. I think we can do that with tangible programs rather than ideological shout-outs and beating our chest and saying we care about this and actually in reality doing nothing.

RB: Do you think that will make a lick of difference?

WENRAN JIANG: Frankly speaking, there will be making differences on our capacity. Nobody, no country in the world can make a difference on human rights records in China, on human rights progress in China other than the Chinese people themselves.

RB: What is at stake finally, if Canada does not reset this relationship with China?

WENRAN JIANG: The stake is extremely high. We will be not in the position to compete with Australia and New Zealand and a bunch of other Asian and European countries who have already signed free trade agreements with China. We will be losing out even to our southern neighbour, the United States, who is courting China heavily. We are actually even losing out against Japan, which is China’s—Japan’s largest trading partner, even they have all the strategic rivalry issues. And Canada simply will not be keeping pace by promoting what the Prime Minister Trudeau want to promote in terms of economy, job growth, trade and a range of other things.

RB: Wenran Jiang, thank you very much for your time today.

WENRAN JIANG: Thank you for having me.

RB: Bye-bye.

WENRAN JIANG: Bye.

RB: That’s Wenran Jiang. He is the director of the Canada-China Energy and Environment Forum and a political science professor at the University of Alberta. And we reached him in Beijing. Well, let's keep this discussion going now with two guests who are both very familiar with Canada-China relations. Jonathan Manthorpe is the international affairs columnist for iPolitics and a former Hong Kong-based Asia correspondent for the Southam newspapers and he is in Victoria. Hello Jonathan.

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Yes I'm here.

RB: And David Mulroney was Canada's ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012. He is also the author of Middle Power, Middle Kingdom: What Canadians Need to Know about China in the 21^st Century. He is now president of the University of St. Michael's College and he is with me in our Toronto studio. Thank you very much for being here.

DAVID MULRONEY: Great to be here, Robyn.

RB: Jonathan, let's start with you. You wrote an article for iPolitics ahead of this visit entitled, “China doesn't give a damn what Canada thinks and our supposed clout in Beijing is a diplomat's fantasy.” Why do you say that?

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Well, that was the headline, although I think it sums up fairly reasonably what I was saying. I think the basis for the column was that there's been a fair bit of cheerleading ahead of this visit and sort of anticipation that it will be very positive in its outcome. I'm not so sure about that. I think that, you know, all the stuff that we read about Canada's historic links with China through Norman Bethune, the doctor who worked with the Chinese Communists during the war with Japan in the 1930s and even of Pierre Trudeau's recognition of China in the early seventies as a diplomatic partner. I think all these things—while they play well on the streets in China—the Chinese leadership is not a panda, it's more a tiger and I don't think that any assumption that we have any special relationship with China goes very far. And from our point of view, on this side of the coin, of course—the Canadian people have very clear and quite negative views about the current regime in China and Justin Trudeau cannot avoid that.

RB: Well, how do you think, Jonathan, that the Trudeau government views the level of power it has to influence China?

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Oh, I'm sure that they are pretty realistic about it in the end and that's why I think that expectations about the outcome of this trip are probably pretty slender. There will undoubtedly be some positive results that haven’t been ballyhooed too much. I suspect we may see some stuff in the environmental area, we will probably see the opening of some new consulates and some basic groundwork. But I would be very surprised if we saw a real advance on anything along free trade and David I’m sure can speak much more authoritatively about that than I can.

RB: Well, David, I did want to get your response to Jonathan's headline. There were a sub headline that says, “Canada's clout in Beijing is a diplomat's fantasy.” As a former ambassador to China, what is your response to that?

DAVID MULRONEY: Well, I'm not going to go into my fantasies per se, they weren't necessarily about that, but I think it's wise to be prudent. You know, China is a big powerful country and certainly Xi Jinping—the president who's at the top of the system—is much more than a first among equals. He's someone who is clearly the boss of the system. So the China that Justin Trudeau will visit is very different from the China that Pierre Trudeau visited and our relative power is different too. They're much, much bigger and much more capable. That said, from a Canadian perspective, we can't afford not to talk to China. Wenran touched on some of these things. China is now our number two trading partner. And increasingly, if you want to talk seriously about the environment, global health, regional security, Beijing has to be one of the stops on your itinerary. So we can't avoid talking to the Chinese. I think the secret from the Canadian perspective is to be really clear about the—not 100, but the three or four key things that we have to get right with the Chinese. When you negotiate with the Chinese, one of their tried and true techniques is to encourage you to spend all your time wondering where they’re at, what you should say to placate them, to win their favour, to influence them. And when you do that, you really lose track of your own objectives. This is a visit that's really about resetting the clock, starting the relationship up again, getting the conversation onto a more regular level. Let's take a deep breath. Let's focus on the few things that we really want, including an expression of Canadian values, including a dialogue with the Chinese about things that really matter to us, including things that affect Canadians in China. And let's go out there and do it.

RB: So if you're not placating the Chinese and you're saying that tone is very important in this visit, what kind of tone should Justin Trudeau have?

DAVID MULRONEY: Well, first of all, it takes more than one visit to set a tone. And we tend to invest in a single visit all kinds of importance and we'll measure the health of the relationship on that visit. That's partly true but not entirely true. This should be the first in a series of exchanges. The way you negotiate with the Chinese, the way you engage them is through regular exchanges at many levels of government, from mayors to provincial premiers to ministers to the prime minister. And the prime minister should be meeting his Chinese counterpart on an annual basis. That's what the Australians do and they're a useful marker for us in our own efforts. We lost that over time. That was the real problem with the Harper era. I'd say we went in the Harper era from a cool relationship to a warmer relationship in 2009. 2009 to 2012, we probably had one of the best relationships in terms of talking about a range of issues from trade to human rights. And then 2012, after the Harper visit early that year, Canada went silent again. The problem is not just one of parties. It's as Jonathan has commented, it's the Canadian people. The conservatives went silent in 2012 because they felt when they consulted across Canada, they were going too far too fast. One of the things that I think Prime Minister Trudeau has to do when he returns from China is to have a conversation with the Canadian people about why this is important. Final thing I'd added is that this is no longer just about the Chinese government. We have in China this incredibly large middle class that is newly prosperous, newly footloose. They're discovering the world when it comes to education that is governing the world when it comes to tourism. They're keenly interested in Canada. So this is an opportunity for the prime minister and for the Government of Canada and Canadians to reach out to them through social media and other creative ways to highlight how we do business in Canada and how we're governed.

RB: Jonathan, with Wenran there, we talked a little bit about the human rights issue and he was saying, you know, far from just ignoring it, that we have to get out of that normal dialogue that comes when a prime minister visits China. But that really it's the Chinese who will change human rights, not another country. But how has China's human rights record been changing in recent years?

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Well, I think there's value in what Wenran said there. But just before I answer that, I think I'd like to make the point that I really wonder how much attention the Justin Trudeau visit is going to get from the Chinese and remember, this is in the context of G-20. So, you know, the place is going to be bustling with government leaders from all over the place. And the Chinese are going to be orchestrating this. How far Trudeau will stand up above the crowd of the other 90 leaders, I really wonder. We will see. We will see but I suspect that this is at the very best—as Wenran and David have indicated—the beginning of a process and I doubt very much whether it's going to loom large in the Chinese agenda. On the human rights issue—

DAVID MULRONEY: Can I just jump in there, Jonathan? Let's not forget this is a bilateral visit that precedes the G-20 so he'll have the stage to himself. 2009, Barack Obama visited China and was basically shut down by the Chinese system. They were disrespectful and cool to the Americans. On his next visit and on Joe Biden's next visit, they used social media in China—which is not completely controlled—in really creative ways. And I think we have an opportunity here.

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Mhm. Good point. We’ll see. On the human rights issue, it is true. I mean in the end, the Chinese have to solve their own human rights problems. But this is also a Canadian issue and it’s a Canadian issue at both ends. Justin Trudeau is going to Hong Kong just in advance of legislative elections there, which will be held in fact on the first day of the G-20 summit. Hong Kong is a major Canadian city. There are 300, 350,000 Canadians living in Hong Kong. What happens in Hong Kong is a Canadian domestic issue and the Beijing government has, for years now, been trying to withdraw and renege on the promises it made about democratic developments in Hong Kong at the time of the handover in 1997. So that is a major domestic Canadian issue. The other thing, of course, is the activities of Chinese diplomats here and we've seen over the last three or four months in Canada repeated stories about attempts by the Chinese diplomats here to restrict and tailor what is said in Canada about China, and this in fact goes back many, many years. I remember the Canadian Security Intelligence Service first put out a report on the workings of the United Front, which is the Chinese ministry that attempts to tailor what is said abroad. That was put out about 15 years ago. So, you know, the activities of the Chinese government on human rights and political issues are very much a Canadian domestic issue as well.

RB: When we talk about resetting the relationship and learning lessons from the past, David, you also say it would be a disaster if Trudeau tried to bring back the “Team Canada” era that we saw under Jean Chrétien. Explain what you mean by that.

DAVID MULRONEY: I think, you know, the “Team Canada” era was, you know, a time when the prime minister would lead gigantic trade missions to China with all the premiers and four or 500 companies and that worked for a time. It got Canada noticed. But that era reached a natural end and the problem is I don't think you can have your prime minister simply in the role of trade promotion, have mayors do that as they say, and premiers and other ministers. The prime minister has to have a broader palette of things to discuss. The danger is that the Chinese see you as a supplicant and that's the way they identify you going forward. Angela Merkel, on behalf of Germany, promotes German companies from time to time but she talks about a range of other things. And I think that's one of the things that actually Prime Minister Harper did quite well. He broadened the range of things that were discussed. But whatever it is, whatever the nature of the engagement, you have to have the permission and support of the Canadian people.

RB: But it's not to say that he shouldn't bring up trade issues. For instance, China has threatened to block Canada's two billion dollars in canola seed exports as of September 1^st if Canadian producers don't make certain changes to shipments. So I mean Justin Trudeau presumably, he should bring that up.

DAVID MULRONEY: The Chinese did exactly the same thing in the fall of 2009. And as we were planning the first Harper visit, they said well, you know, the prime minister isn't going to mention something as technical as canola. And I said he's absolutely going to mention it. That's why prime ministers have these dialogues. This is about cutting off fair and free access to a Canadian product that affects the livelihoods of many, many Canadians across western Canada. So the prime minister did raise it. But what's important—to get to Jonathan's point that we can't influence China—we then got to work with the Canola Council of Canada, with the provinces, with then Minister Ritz, the agriculture minister, the prime minister. We worked on a whole new strategy to reopen the market and within two years, we'd reopen the market and we're selling more canola than we had before. So China is susceptible to our influence. We have to have the confidence and skill. And I think we have both to reach out and try to advance our interests.

RB: Gentlemen, very interesting conversation. Thank you both very much for joining us this morning.

DAVID MULRONEY: Thank you very much.

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: Thank you, Robyn.

RB: Jonathan Manthorpe is the international affairs columnist for iPolitics and he was in Victoria. And David Mulroney is a former Canadian ambassador to China. He is now president of the University of St. Michael's College and he was here in our Toronto studio. Well, the news is coming up next and then—what is it like to be the survivor of a terrorist attack? Three people share their stories, not only of surviving but of living with the experience. I'm Robyn Bresnahan sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you are listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

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ENCORE: “I don’t know why I survived”: Survivors reflect on coping after a terror attack

Guests: Lydia Berkennou Vassallo, Dennis Purifoy, Edwin Orango

RB: Hello, I’m Robyn Bresnahan sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

RB: And coming up next, life after terror.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We start now with some breaking news. Reports are coming in of an attack, or quite possibly several attacks in Paris. A burst of gunfire at a restaurant—

VOICE 2: Masked gunmen from the Somali-based group al-Shabaab attacked the college campus at dawn when most students were asleep. The gunman shot dead security guards before firing at police officers stationed at Garissa University College. Witnesses say there was panic—

VOICE 3: The first bomb that was in the federal building did go off. It did the damage that you see right there. It is just incredible to think that there was that much heavy artillery that was somehow moved into downtown Oklahoma City federal building.

AMT: Paris, Garissa, Kenya and Oklahoma City. Three places that have something grisly and common: they are all cities which have experienced terror attacks and they are all places the world focused on for days after they happened, waves of sympathy going out to the victims. But just as the world inevitably moves on, there are scores of people who cannot. The survivors of such terror attacks continue to live with the memories day in and day out. And their voices are seldom heard. In April, Anna Maria Tremonti brought together three survivors from three attacks. Edwin Orango is a university student. On April 2nd, 2015, his school was attacked by al- Shabaab. The gunman killed 148 people at Kenya’s Garissa University College—most of them students and many of them were his friends. Lydia Berkennou Vassallo was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre in Paris last November. The attacks by ISIS-linked militants killed 130 people in the city and at least 89 of them were at the concert. And Dennis Purifoy is a survivor of the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. One hundred and sixty-eight people died in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, 30 of them in the Social Security office where Dennis worked. Here is their conversation from earlier this year.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: I’m going to start by taking a few moments with each of you so we can understand a little more about what happened to each of you. Lydia Berkennou Vassallo, it's only been five months since the attack at the Bataclan in Paris. Can you tell us what happened?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASALLO: I went to the gate expecting to just see the Eagles of Death Metal and 40 minutes later, people got in with guns and shot at us. After that, it was like everything collapsed and I tried to do everything to get out and I left the venue after five minutes.

AMT: Where were you in the venue when it all began?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASALLO: I was on the barrier at the front, right by the stage.

AMT: And so, did you see them come out?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: My memory is still really bad. I can only remember seeing the bullets.

AMT: And so you were up so close. You were obviously in the line of fire. What did you do?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: I looked around me. Everybody was on the floor. I felt a movement towards the front. At that point, I understood. I tried to jump above the barrier to get on the other side between the barrier and the stage, but I was too slow. My right leg got stuck against it and this is when I looked behind what was up happening. The whole time I was trying to go on the other side, they kept firing and rioting and people were screaming, and then I thought this is it. And I told my friends that we had to leave, that we couldn't stay there because if we did, no way we can survive this. This is when one of my friends helped me get my leg free and I went on the other side, took a deep breath and looked around me again, saw people taking the exit and I helped my friend get on the other side with me. The other one couldn't talk because she was shot and at that point, my head told me now you have to leave or you're going to die here. So I crawled all the way to the door and got out.

AMT: So you got out of the building. Where did you go?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: I ran as far as I could, but the distance seemed so short compared to normal and 500 metres away, I looked around and thought you got to pick a place, you got to choose somewhere. It’s not safe to stay outside. But everywhere seemed dangerous so I just entered a restaurant near me and I hid there for, I think two or three hours.

AMT: Lydia, stay with us. I want to bring Edwin Orango into the conversation. The one year anniversary of the Garissa University College attack has just passed. Edwin, tell us what you saw and heard that day.

EDWIN ORANGA: I woke up. I was woken by gunshots, by the sound of gunshots. Then we gathered outside the hostel and while we were gathered there—we were gathered around for like 5 to 10 minutes—then we saw some three armed men coming towards us. They were not prepared to shoot but when they saw us, they started to raise their firearms up and they started shooting at us. So we had to run. A lot of got injured in the process, others got shot in the process, but luckily we managed to escape. And a few of us of the crowd that gathered outside, we ran to the fence of the school and we jumped over it and ran to the nearby villages and hid there until [unintelligible].

AMT: So these were the al-Shabaab gunmen, they were running right at you shooting?

EDWIN ORANGA: No. In fact, they were not running, they were just walking. They were not prepared. They did not expect to find anyone outside at that time because they were coming very steadily, very slowly. But when they saw us, that’s when they started shooting at us.

AMT: And remind us how that attack unfolded for those who could not escape, Edwin.

EDWIN ORANGA: Okay. There are about, let’s say eight gunmen, eight al-Shabaab gunmen. They came through the gate of the school, they had a map of the school. So four of them went to one hostel then the other ones went to the other hostel. Inside the hostels, they captured the students who had not escaped and were hid in the rooms. They were captured and put in one place where they were later killed. [long pause]

AMT: Many of those people were your friends?

EDWIN ORANGA: Yes, many of them are my friends.

AMT: Is there anyone in particular you'd like to tell us about?

EDWIN ORANGA: I had a cousin. We were very close.

AMT: They asked them their religion, didn't they?

EDWIN ORANGA: When they gathered the students inside, they did not expect to find Muslims among the crowd of students, but when they started [unintelligible] to the students who hid in the rooms, they found some Muslims so that’s when they started now asking if anyone is a Muslim to come out and save himself or herself. So that’s when they started asking some students to recite. I don’t know what they were reciting, but to speak in the Islamic way so they were released. Some of them did that and saved their lives.

AMT: The fact that you got away was just a coincidence though. You happened to see them coming.

EDWIN ORANGA: I think the gunshots that killed the security staff, those are the gunshots that I heard, or other some students, but a small number of the students heard those gunshots, so we went outside. So by the time we were outside is the time they were now coming into the hostel, so they did not find us in the hostel. We just escaped before they entered in the hostel and held the students.

AMT: Edwin, stay with us. I want to bring Dennis Purifoy into this conversation as well. Dennis, the Oklahoma City bombing happened 21 years ago. What happened to you the day that bomb went off?

DENNIS PURIFOY: I was at work. I worked in the Murrah Federal Building and it was a normal day, just like any other day and I was sitting at a computer and then the explosion happened. I saw a yellow flash. I don't know if it was a reflection of the explosion—I was sitting with my back to where the bomb went off—or if it was an electrical flash because I got a small electrical burn on my hand, but anyway, I saw the flash and everything went black. I was on the ground floor and of course the lights went out, but also we didn't have any daylight coming in so everything was just totally black. The building was reinforced concrete mostly and the concrete dust was really thick so it was really, really hard to see. I was knocked out of my chair and I thought that at first that there had been an explosion just right where I was and that I couldn't figure out why somebody wasn’t coming to help me. So I was yelling for help and a co-worker finally heard me and came over and pulled me out from under some debris. After that, that co-worker and I were trying to find a way out and as we did so, we ran across some other employees that needed some help getting up to a safe place so we helped them up. And then I went back through the building as much as I could, what I could still walk through, seeing if anybody was still at their desks that needed help. The bomb happened at 9:02 and it was a little bit after 10, I think, by the time I got out of the building. After that, I was just trying to meet up with coworkers and trying to account for who we knew got out of the building and who we didn't know got out of the building.

AMT: You, at one point, you're covered in debris and you get up. Did you not have any injuries?

DENNIS PURIFOY: Very minor. I had a couple of stitches and bumps and bruises and that kind of thing, but very minor injuries.

AMT: But some of those around you were killed, were they not?

DENNIS PURIFOY: Yes, there were some people pretty close to me that were killed. I think one reason that I survived, I was very close to where the bomb went off, I think 100 to 115 feet in a straight line, but there were several rows of cubicles between me and the bomb and of course, I was seated. So, that's why I think I survived.

AMT: You lost 16 colleagues in that bombing.

DENNIS PURIFOY: Yes, we had 16 coworkers and there were 24 social security customers that we had that died.

AMT: There was a truck parked outside, right? It was full of explosives.

DENNIS PURIFOY: Right. Right. It was a rental truck that had some ammonium nitrate jet fuel bomb.

AMT: Lydia, what has life been like for you over the last five months?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: First few weeks, it was a bit like being on another planet. Really disconnected to the real world, trying to figure out what happened and still today, but I’m slightly back now and time has been really helpful, but sometimes really hard because we start to have to pretend that everything is okay but it’s not.

AMT: Dennis, how has what happened to you evolved in terms of how you process it over time?

DENNIS PURIFOY: Well, time does make a great difference. I certainly hear what Lydia is saying and it reminds me of how I was at that point and it does take a long time to recover from something like that and recovery is not an exact term, either. You make adjustments and nothing ever goes back to the way it was. The society is not the way it was and you're not the same person and you can't get back to the way it was. What you can get to, is to what we call a new normal. Yes, I remember even six months or a year after the bombing, how it affected me and how emotional I was and it seems like my emotions were raw all the time. But time does make a great deal of difference and as more time has gone on, I've gotten more perspective on it and it's less emotional for me and certainly, I have reached a new normal.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about the sort of that inconsistency.

DENNIS PURIFOY: It's not a straight line of recovery. There are lots of ups and downs and it depends on what happens to you and you can get re-traumatized. I'm sure that the events in Brussels have been traumatic for Lydia because it brings all that stuff back and up front. So people can be re-traumatized and kind of go through it again. So in that sense, those things are a setback to a person's recovery. Time is a great healer and it's hard to be patient and to see the long view. And some days, in that first year especially, you feel like I'm never going to get there, but you do.

AMT: Edwin Orango, since the attack, your school has been shut down. You guys were relocated to the other side of the country. What did that mean? Did that help at all or is it still really hard to face what happened?

EDWIN ORANGO: The whole process, the whole event was tragic because it changed the lives of many. The attack happened on students who have very young minds, and so the attack coming at a time that nobody was expecting—it's really destroyed the minds of the students. And then the whole transferring issue, transferring university and going to a new place and meeting new people, you don't know the ways of the place. It's really hard. I think for most of us, that after the attacks, it was the hardest time, the hardest moment in our lives because it was very difficult to adapt. Somebody will be looking at you and think you are a survivor, and even the way he talks to you or she talks to you, it’s like she is looking at you and it’s not like you’re normal. It’s like you’re an angel or something so it has been very difficult for us on the whole. Many things, changing the university, changing the location, you know, it has made even matters worse.

AMT: Are there things that make you worry now, Edwin, that you hadn't thought of before because of what happened?

EDWIN ORANGO: I can’t say that I am back to being where I was, back to normal because it isn’t. Even when I walk in the streets, I’m just cautious, I’m just looking what if anything can happen. What if something happens right now? What should I do? What will I do? I think I’ll never be the way I was before the event, before the attack.

AMT: What did you learn about yourself that you didn't know, Lydia, after this?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: I didn't see me as some pretty brave enough or good enough and I've done things that night that clearly showed me that I'm better than I thought I was.

AMT: That's remarkable. And what has it changed? Are there things you can't do?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: Walking is hard because it has a lot of energy and efforts. People who weren’t there might not be patient enough with us, they might not understand. Actually, most of the people don't get why we look so tired or why we are always somewhere else because our brain is not here. It’s dealing with all those images and is still trying to understand what happened. So it's scary to deal with what those guys did to us. And on top of that, we feel like we have a really important job to do, is to show the world that despite what happened, we are strong.

AMT: Edwin, are you getting the support you need?

EDWIN ORANGO: At first, yes, I got the support that I needed, but [unintelligible] everybody just seemed to forget about the event and moved on with their own life.

AMT: And so when you want to talk about it, Edwin, or when you want to—when you struggle with it, where do you turn?

EDWIN ORANGO: I turn to my friends, those who—we escaped the attacks with together.

AMT: There's a real randomness in these attacks and at the same time they were, you were targets because of where you happened to be that day, but people wanted to make a big statement and make and create carnage because of where you were represented something to them. And I'm just wondering how you think about that as you move in your life now. Dennis?

DENNIS PURIFOY: That is something that you can never escape from and I eventually reached the point where I understood that I was never going to fully understand why I was there, why I survived, why other people were killed. But I got to the point where I could live with that uncertainly or knowing that I would never fully understand.

AMT: Dennis, one of the men convicted in the Oklahoma bombing, Timothy McVeigh, was executed. His co-conspirator Terry Nichols is in prison on multiple life sentences. What role has the issue of justice and the pursuit of justice played in your ability to cope and move forward?

DENNIS PURIFOY: Well, overall, it’s probably, I would say, a small part of it. It was important for our government to catch the guys that did it and to go through all the legal process to make sure that that part of justice was achieved. I did actually kind of feel some kind of relief after McVeigh was executed. Not so much that I was glad that his life was taken, but I was concerned that if he had just got a life sentence, that he would still be spewing out his warped views from prison for the rest of his life. So, yeah, it's very helpful—I think for most people in Oklahoma City—that our justice system has prevailed. In the case of Oklahoma City, it was an attack on our government and because our government responded so well in the investigation and the prosecution of the cases in a very, very fair and open and transparent way, nobody can say that McVeigh and Nichols did not get fair trials. I think that was part of the healing for us in Oklahoma City. It’s not just that they caught the guys and they were prosecuted, but the government did a great job of it and it was the government that McVeigh and Nichols were attacking to start with.

AMT: What do each of you want us to know? Again, there are stories in the news far too often of terror attacks and we see pictures and we hear stories and then they disappear. What do you want us to know the next time one of those stories comes up? What should we be thinking about?

DENNIS PURIFOY: What I want people to realize is it's not just a mass murder. That is technically correct, but it's killing individual people and that means that, like in the case of Oklahoma City, there are 168 families that have been affected. And the ripples that go out from all those people, all their extended families and their friends—how that many people have been affected. And another thing is, most people, unless they know really about post-traumatic stress and what trauma does to people, they don't really know how to fix people, short-term or long-term. Most people have some kind of general idea of post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, but they don't really understand it and the problem is a lot of people think they do. And so that's an issue that comes up, I think.

AMT: Edwin, what do you want us to think about?

EDWIN ORANGO: Many people end up playing the blame game. They blame everybody. First, they blame maybe al-Shabaab then they blame the police officers. Then after that, they blame the Muslims. So, I think, me personally, being there when the attack happened, I think actually, I have no one to blame.

AMT: Lydia, what do you want us to think about?

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASSALLO: I mean I want people to remember this is other human beings. This is a human killing another human and when people see it on the news, because they see it on TV and because it didn't happen to him, they think it's fiction. They believe in conspiracy. But if we want it to happen less often, people—once they see it on the news—I don't want them to look at it and think again? I want them to think what can we do to help and change and bring something that might stop other people joining that stupid cause? Every one of us needs to bring something and if everyone was giving a little altogether, that thing can become something really—I think it could change the problem.

AMT: Well, thank you, all of you.

LYDIA BERKENNOU VASALLO: You’re welcome. Thank you.

DENNIS PURIFOY: Thank you.

RB: You heard Edwin Orango, Lydia Berkennou Vassallo and Dennis Purifoy. All three are survivors of terror attacks and they spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April. Well, that is our program for today. I’m Robyn Bresnahan sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks very much for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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August 29, 2016 full episode transcript

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