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The Current Transcript for September 8, 2017

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Get out of Miami Beach. This is a very serious incredibly powerful storm. I called it nuclear hurricane and aggressively going out there telling him to get out of Miami Beach.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That is the mayor of Miami Beach. His city is square in the path of Hurricane Irma. A nuclear hurricane as he calls it. At once, the fiercest such storm ever recorded in the Atlantic. So far has left more than a dozen people dead and the destruction she is leaving behind is remarkable. Overnight Irma pummeled Turks and Caicos. She has her sights set next on parts of the Bahamas Cuba and then Florida. And while people on Atlantic Coast are dealing with a hurricane, an 8.2 magnitude earthquake has shaken Mexico's Pacific coast. After that:

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Happy news from London today. Another royal baby on its way. As with her previous pregnancy, though, he's suffering from acute morning sickness. She's not going to be able to be out and about.

PC: He calls it acute morning sickness. The medical term however is hyperemesis gravidarum. And women who have suffered from it say it is almost unbearable. Many doctors however don't understand it. But now that it's affecting a future queen of England that may be changing. We'll hear from some non-royal sufferers coming up. Also on The Current today, for years much of the world lauded her but Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar is now facing some tough question over what's happening to the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in her country.

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INTERVIEWER: Do you ever worry that you will be remembered as the Nobel laureate who failed to stand up to ethnic cleansing?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: No. Because I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what's happening.

PC: We'll hear what two Rohingya, who now live in Canada, have to say about that in an hour's time. But we begin with the biggest earthquake to hit Mexico in a century. Hi. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Mexico quake kills at least 32 while Irma leaves trail of destruction in Caribbean

Guests: James Blear, Angela Morra, Anders Levermann

PC: Mexico is taking stock of the damage and possibly preparing for more after it was hit by a massive earthquake early Friday. As I just mentioned it measured 8.2 in intensity. At least 25 people are dead. The epicenter was off Mexico's Pacific southern coast and a tsunami warning has been issued. James Blear is a freelance journalist and we have reached him in Mexico City, hello. Hello.

JAMES BLEAR: Hello there. Hi.

PC: James, the earthquake hit early in the morning. What is the latest you can tell us about the damage the destruction it has cost?

JAMES BLEAR: The epicenter of the damage is in Oaxaca state which borders on to Chiapas, which actually was - the location of the quake was off the coast of Chiapas. The governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, has said that so far 23 people have died although the death toll will rise. And so this is this is the situation. The problem in the south of Mexico is that the building regulations which were timed out many years ago after the huge earthquake in 1985, 19th September, which killed more than 10000 people in and around Mexico City. That area, Mexico City in the state of Mexico, the Federal District Building Regulations are times but not in the south of Mexico. And this is where most of the devastation the damage is occurred. Buildings are just crumbled and crumpled. And so the death toll is going to rise. The other thing to say about it is that there are some very remote areas, remote villages. We're not going to know for some time what the situation is there. Most of them are being cut off. And also the power is gone so we don't know what the extent of the devastation there. But this, as President Enrique Pena Nieto said, is the biggest earthquake in more than a hundred years. The big one in 85 was a 8.1. This is 8.2. This has not been as devastating but it certainly has caused enormous damage.

PC: As you said, Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican president spoke about the earthquake this morning what more did he have to say?

JAMES BLEAR: Well he mentioned there's been something like 60 aftershock, the most part of which was 5.7, but he mentioned some of it was very disturbing. Quite [unintelligible] he said that people should be bracing themselves to the possibility of another earthquake in the next 24 hours. And when he said that he didn't mean aftershocks. So obviously people are very nervous on tenterhooks. In these situations lightning doesn't tend to strike twice very often but sometimes it does. And so people are very alert to this particular fact. Mexico City was nearly a thousand kilometers away from the epicenter , yet Mexico City where I am was shook up badly. The symbol of Mexico City, the famous symbol, is the monument to the revolution, the Angel of Independence, and that wobbled for about 30 seconds. It looked very much as if it was going to come down. It didn't. It stayed out. What structural damage to that and also other areas in Mexico remains to be seen? They need to be examined because these buildings can still fall down or many have already. There are a lot that could still fall down.

PC: And James as you said, the president saying you know there could be more to come, so to speak. There's also a tsunami warning that has been issued. Meanwhile Hurricane Katia, which is behind Irma and Jose, is heading towards Mexico from the Atlantic as well.

JAMES BLEAR: Well basically what happens is between August and by the end of October we get the hurricane season here. And so this is another obvious great danger. A while ago, some days ago, I was speaking to a woman in Quintana Roo and she said that when she was a child that used to be a three to four week period. But now because of climate change it's gone over three or four months. And so the water system has gone haywire, concerning hurricanes, but Mexico suffers from these a great deal. Mexico and the Caribbean obviously, are under the thrall of these hurricanes at the moment. It couldn't really come at a worse time after this earthquake.

PC: James Blear, appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Do take care. James Blears is a freelance journalist and we've reached him in Mexico City.

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PC: I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. While there is concern in Mexico, people who are in the path of Hurricane Irma are worried. Angela Morra, of Whitby, Ontario is vacationing at Club Med in Turks and Caicos with her son. They had hoped to leave the islands when they learned about Irma but it was too late. So instead they hunker down to wait out the storm. And we reached Angela Mora in Turks and Caicos. Hello.

ANGELA MORRA: Hi.

PC: How are you?

ANGELA MORRA: We're all safe. Yes. And we got some sleep. So we're good. Everybody is in one piece. I can't complain.

PC: Where are you?

ANGELA MORRA: Right now we are in our hotel room and Club Med.

PC: And that's where you rode out Hurricane Earl as it came past you in Turks and Caicos?

ANGELA MORRA: That's right. Yes.

PC: And what was that like? Tell me what happened overnight.

ANGELA MORRA: Well it's started off you know like a storm would, just back home that we would be accustomed to with some winds and some heavy rain, and then it very quickly escalated. It started to get very loud and we could hear things, you know, basically swirling around out there. And at one point something has hit our window and it started to leak water in here. So we all sort of came together, took our box spring apart from the bed, put that up against the window, took the doors off of the closet, put that up behind the box spring, put another mattress up against the window, barricade it with some chairs and a table. And here we are.

PC: And you said you slept through of that [chuckles].

ANGELA MORRA: [Chuckles] Yes. It started to come down about two o'clock in the morning. And once we put everything up against the window and you know really sort of climatize yourself to the sounds that are happening outside.

PC: What does that sound like?

ANGELA MORRA: It's it's a little scary and you know, there's a couple of times we jumped out of our skin because we just didn't know where the sounds were coming from. And you know you'd get used to the winds and then all of a sudden something would crash, and we can't see anything and hear. So…

PC: Because the windows are boarded up?

ANGELA MORRA: Yes. Oh, yes, yes. The windows are boarded up. That's right now. Like I said we've got everything. The windows were boarded up even before we got in here. But because the glass had crashed outside we were afraid that the wood that was put up by the resort was going to break.

PC: And that Irma has passed, have you had a chance to look outside, go outside?

ANGELA MORRA: No, no. We can't. We cannot leave here until somebody comes to our door and lets us know that it's safe to leave here.

PC: And the worst has passed now as I understand it. How are you feeling?

ANGELA MORRA: Relieved very very very relieved. Yes, that's the only word I can think of right now.

PC: I imagine you're looking forward to getting home as soon as possible.

ANGELA MORRA: Yes. Like right now would be great.

PC: [Laughs] You have no idea what happened to the airports in the area, the roads. I mean anything, right now you're really lacking information.

ANGELA MORRA: No. We know nothing. I mean even going online, we are just seeing videos of what's happened through the night to the actual town of Turks. But other than that I don't know. We don't know what's going on. So it's a little scary to you know open this door, even though we know it's safe, when they come by, the devastation that… I'm quite frankly I'm afraid to see what it's going to look like out there.

PC: You're there with your son. How old is he?

ANGELA MORRA: He's 26.

PC: How's he doing? Still your kid.

ANGELA MORRA: He is still my baby. He just gave me a thumbs up actually. Yes. I'm very very thankful that he is me.

PC: And within the resort you have food and water thus far?

ANGELA MORRA: Yes. They gave us food supplies for last night's dinner. We had breakfast this morning, we have lunch. We have water and now we have running water again. So we might just all grab a quick shower [laughs] while we can.

PC: Angela I'm glad to hear that you and your family are safe. Do take care.

ANGELA MORRA: Yes we will. Thank you so much for being in touch.

PC: Bye.

ANGELA MORRA: Bye.

PC: Well that is Angela morrow, of Whitby, Ontario from her room at Club Med in Turks and Caicos. As Irma makes its way across the Caribbean and toward Florida - just days after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, and on its heels, two more hurricanes: Jose and Katia - Let’s not even mention the massive earthquake that rocked Mexico, late last night. The frightening question on many people's minds is: “Is this the new normal?” Anders Levermann is a professor of dynamics at the climate system at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and adjunct scientist at Columbia University in New York. Today he is in Potsdam, Germany. Hello.

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Hello. Good morning.

PC: Have we ever seen a hurricane like Irma?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: No we haven't actually. It's just too almost hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic. And it actually has been a strong hurricane for a long time, so that the overall energy that Irma took out of the ocean is really tremendous. It's bigger than you know many seasons added together, where you take all the hurricanes and the seasons together. It's a huge monster.

PC: And it has now been downgraded. She has now been downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane, as she continues to make her way towards the Bahamas and Cuba and Florida. Is there any sense that that Irma might die down further before it hits the United States?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Well it might become a bit less powerful but that actually doesn't matter too much. It matters a bit. You don't want - you know that the weaker it gets the better it gets. But hurricane Harvey actually did most of its damage when it was only a tropical storm, simply because it lingered very long at the coast and drew all this energy and all the moisture and dumped it on to Houston. So we can see a lot of damage also with hurricane three. Like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy they were all weaker than Irma was now.

PC: As you say you've never seen anything like Irma before, and you mentioned Hervey. What is going on here? Why is this happening now? Is there a clear reason?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Well you know climate scientists are saying for a long long time, I say for 10 years other colleagues say it even longer, that weather extremes are going to intensify in the future. There are different reasons for different weather extremes and obviously an earthquake in Mexico is not a weather extreme, but hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Katrina and Irma now and also the monsoon that just devastated India. They are all weather extremes and for different reasons they become more intense under warming climate. We are warming the climate for almost a hundred years now. And we can we if we continue to warm it, we'll see more intense hurricanes and more intense weather extremes.

PC: So connect the dots for me. What is it about climate change that makes Irma, or other hurricanes, more powerful? What kind of scientifically is going here?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: That's actually quite simple. The hurricanes themselves are very complicated. It is very difficult to predict their path. It's also difficult to predict where they will develop and where they will be initiated. But once they have become tropical storms they draw their energy from the surface of the ocean from the temperature of the ocean. And the warmer and the temperature of the ocean is the more energy there is provided to the hurricane. So it's actually quite simple. We warm the planet, we warm the ocean, and then we intensify the hurricanes.

PC: You, Anders Levermann, recently tweeted at, or to, President Donald Trump saying - This is what you tweeted: The world is shifting and leaving behind those who do not want to change for the better. What did you mean by that in that tweet?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Well in the Paris climate agreement the world agreed, and also the United States, definitely Canada, they agreed that we want to stay below two degrees of global warming. And to this end we would have to really shift the energy production around from fossil fuels - That's coal predominately, also oil and gas belong to it, but it's predominantly coal - to renewable energies. That’s wind, solar and so on. So the world is now really shifting. We see an economic revolution in the solar panels that is similar to the one that we've seen for the computer chips. So people, things are moving. And this particular treat was a response to the fact that Finland has now outlawed coal power plants in 2025. So the world is actually shifting. And for example, China is supporting their renewal energies’ industry quite strongly. If the U.S., as the federal government and the U.S., does not support the renewal energy sector in the future, they will simply be left behind.

PC: We talked about Houston, India, Bangladesh, other parts in Southeast Asia are experiencing horrific floods, Fires raging California, not to mention in British Columbia earlier this season, active hurricanes right now in the Atlantic. And we still hear we are dependent on oil and gas around the world. Is this the new normal at least for now?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Well the next 10 - 20 years already locked in. The fossil fuels that we have burned in the past decades will determine how the temperature evolves in the next 10 to 20 years. But what's happening after that will be decided now. So it is decided now, when if we if we continue on the path that we're that we're currently on we end up at five degrees Celsius of global warming, by the end of the century. If we turn the ship around we will stay below two degrees, and that will be much more easy to handle than the 5 degrees. The 5 degrees might be simply unmanageable. But what's very important, let me just do this very small thing, people focus on oil and gas all the time and that is very close to people's heart because it means mobility. But it's actually the coal that's the most important issue here. We have so much coal on the planet. We have to stop electrifying coal. Producing electricity with coal is a stupid thing and we should stop that.

PC: There are people who say, you know, of course we should get from 5 percent to 2 percent. But their question then it's easier but that doesn't mean we're done with these things. I guess what I'm asking is: How do we prepare ourselves? Are we ready to cope with the impacts of climate change?

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Well we will better be ready. We have to be ready because there is as I said a two degrees warming is already locked in. We're deciding now whether it's continuing after that or not. So we have seen one degree of warming in the last 100 years, and the next twenty five will see another degree. And what do we do now and will determine whether this is the end of it, and we'll stay at two degrees or whether we go further. So we have to deal with the climate change that we already caused, and that is actually one degree now. It will be two degrees eventually. We'll have to you know become more resilient in a sense because we cannot predict anymore what will happen. You know we see hurricanes that are stronger than we saw them before. So we have to protect against the stuff that we can protect against. But then we also have to build resilience and that means we have to recover quicker from devastating natural disasters than we have done in the past.

PC: Anders Levermann, thank you very much.

ANDERS LEVERMANN: Thank you.

PC: Anders Levermann is a professor of dynamics of the climate system at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and he's also adjunct scientist at Columbia University in Germany. He was in Potsdam, Germany today. All right with Irma now having her sights set on the Bahamas, Cuba, Florida, perhaps you were there, or you have loved ones who are please do let us know how they're doing and how they are making preparations. You can tweet us @theCurrentCBC. You can post on Facebook. Our Facebook address is Facebook.com/CBCthe current. You can e-mail us by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and once you're there click on Contact Us link. Or if you happen to be in Mexico or we have loved ones there which has had an earthquake overnight on the Pacific Coast. please let us know. Well the CBC News is next. And after that:

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Moments ago a very happy Duke and Duchess of Cambridge left the hospital here behind me. One of the reporters asked if she was feeling any better. Kate nodded and smiled and replied “Yes.”

PC: Well that was 2012 when Kate Middleton was early in her pregnancy with her first born, Prince George. There is another royal baby on its way and Kate once again is suffering from an acute form of pregnancy nausea. We'll talk about that when The Current returns.

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Why women battling acute pregnancy nausea suffer in silence

Guests: Stephanie Nolen, Caitlin Dean, Ellen Giesbrecht

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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PC: Still to come:

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I've covered refugee crises before and this was by far the worst thing that I've ever seen. What I saw were thousands of Rohingya refugees.

PC: That is the New York Times reporter Hannah Beech in Bangladesh just across the border from Myanmar. In the words of some observers of that refugee crisis is an ethnic cleansing. We'll hear from Canadian Rohingya who are calling for action as families face devastation in Myanmar, in a half an hour. But first, a royal pain.

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[Music]

ANNOUNCER 1:This family of four will soon become a party of five. Kensington Palace announced Monday that Prince William and Kate are expecting their third child.

ANNOUNCER 2: The overnight announcement revealed that she faces a familiar health problem with her newest pregnancy.

ANNOUNCER 3: The duchess is suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Her royal highness will no longer carry out her planned engagement at the Hornsey Road Children's Centre in London today. The Duchess is being cared for at Kensington Palace.

ANNOUNCER 4: That is also a discussion of that very acute morning sickness with a fellow sufferer, television presenter Kerstie Olson, telling the mail that Kate is so brave.

PC: Well it is a form of nausea that has always quietly plagued some pregnant women. But the high profile sufferer Kate Middleton has made Hyperemesis Gravidarum front page news. The condition the Duchess of Cambridge is battling, which is also known as HG, can be total misery for women who have it. And news that the duchess third pregnancy has once again been marked by severe symptoms has moved women across the world to share their own personal stories because Hyperemesis Gravidarum is an often misunderstood illness, even by doctors. Stephanie Nolan has traveled the world covering some of our times most difficult stories as a journalist for The Globe and Mail. Her own battle with HG during two pregnancies left her wanting to lie down, even on the grocery store floor. We have reached Stephanie Nolen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where she lives. Stephanie hello.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Good morning.

PC: How sick were you during your pregnancies?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: I was so sick that the only thing that anyone ever said to me made sense was that I should lie on the floor and yell I want to die, for the whole 40 weeks, and that might bring me some relief.

PC: Well tell me more about what you were going during 40 week.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: So I mean… I was… I should say that I was sick enough to write something in defense of Kate Middleton which I have to say it was not something I had ever anticipated doing. I think the thing that's really difficult is that many many women are sick to some degree in pregnancy. And so when you say “I'm pregnant and I'm nauseated” people say “oh yes I had that too. That's awful. You should try ginger ale and a cracker.” And the problem is that you are so profoundly nauseated all the time. I had to be in a dark room. I had to be completely still I couldn't eat. I lost five or six kilos in the first month to my pregnancy both times. The world is just this pinching heaving place and other people who've had some morning sickness think they know what you have. And as you said includes medical professionals often. And they just don't really understand that this is a whole other thing, which I get because until it happens to me I didn't get it either.

PC: And so, like people say you take your pills have a ginger ale and have a saltine, whatever they say, but when you go to tell your medical team saying like this is beyond what you kind of see in Hollywood movies or my friends say they've experience during their pregnancies. What? What about from your medical team, what did they say to you?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Well so some women who get this, and it sounds like maybe this is what happens to Kate Middleton, but you actually vomit. And so when you run the very severe risk of dehydration and all kinds of really severe medical complications - I'm in that category which sounds like it's about half of the women who get this who don't actually vomit who just are about to vomit who are seconds away from vomiting for 40 weeks. But we don't actually vomit. And so I didn't run the risk of dehydration. I just I lost weight. I couldn't eat. But it's not nearly as severe a thing. But if you think if you get to the point of needing to be hospitalized because of dehydration then people you know perversely grimly take you a bit more seriously. But, from most doctors, I got this “Oh yeah. That's kind of awful. Try this drug”. And in fact the drug that I was given was the same drug my own mother was given when she was pregnant with me. So that tells you how much of a priority this is for the pharmaceutical research world. And it doesn't work. It didn't work for me. It doesn't work for most women; I've subsequently talked to, who take it. In my second pregnancy, finally I found a somewhat more sympathetic doctor who prescribed me an anti-nausea and that's given to chemotherapy patients. That did help although obviously you worry about taking a drug that's wrong when you're pregnant. I had lovely sympathetic midwives and they were big on the ginger pills and lots of other things. I only had one midwife who had ever run into this before and she certainly did understand that this wasn't just about I was a little bit Puky. But there is not an ultimately very much anybody can do.

PC: So many women say that they didn't get the medical help they felt that they needed for HG, even here in Canada. We spoke to a woman in Edmonton. Her name is Haley Shewciw. And she says the medical community had trouble understanding her condition. I just want you to listen to a bit of what she had to say.

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I had to be ambulanced to the hospital because I could not make myself go from the bed to the car, without throwing up the entire time. I think at the time, they never had a case so severe as mine. So for them you know it was just like “okay, you can just you know, it's just morning sickness. It will pass. You will be fine”. You know I was it was scary. I felt very isolated and everyone wanted to try to help but nobody truly you how I was feeling.

PC: So Stephanie Nolen, when you hear Haley Shewciw say things like that and you've heard the comments, some of them unkind on Kate Middleton who is suffering this same type of nausea, HG. What do you think?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Well Haley ,I know how you were feeling and you have my sympathy. I think that part of what makes it so difficult is that you're getting messages and you're even sort of - I certainly was telling myself this, that you know “oh this happens to everyone and just suck it up”. There is sometimes from other people this overt expression of the idea that you're kind of just whining or that you're just a very windy pregnant woman. And you even put that on yourself. Right like millions of other women since the dawn of time I have done this. You know why am I having such a hard time? And then you know, as you're lying motionless in the dark on the bathroom floor, you have a lot of time to think things like that about yourself

PC: You're lying motionless like just in a bathroom for a couple of hours a day. So this was basically mobilized you for your entire pregnancy.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Yes my whole first trimester both times I had to be completely still. And one of the things they tell you is “oh it's going to pass”. And it really doesn't pass. I just got eventually, certainly by my second pregnancy when I was working in South Asia and I had a war to cover, I just really normalized traveling everywhere with Ziploc bags and dry heaving all over the place, all the time, politely excusing myself from interviewers, going out into the hall, retching coming back in. And you just live that way.

PC: Okay. So you wrote about this during Kate Middleton's first pregnancy. I think was about five years ago. She's pregnant with her third child on the way with HG. I'm wondering if as you look at this, as a journalist, and look at the attitudes towards HG, have you seen things change over these past years, given that the future queen of England has really brought this into the forefront?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Well I mean I think certainly you hear a lot more about it since it happened to Kate. And also one of the things I was told in my first pregnancy is “Oh it's very rare for this to happen you know in subsequent pregnancies” which I subsequently discovered was completely false. Although I guess, you know, none of us would ever have more children if we were told that. I was moved to write about my own experience. It's not the kind of journalism I normally do obviously, but so many people were being so mocking of Kate Middleton. The first time like you know oh it must be nice to be a princess and then you know you feel a little squiffy and you get to take to your bed for nine months. And I sort of thought, no actually this is something else and if we sort of talked a bit more honestly about what this is, that might make things better for people who actually have it. I think it brought a lot of us who lived through it. I got more mail about that piece that I wrote than I have on I think almost anything I ever wrote. This really moving, emotional, confessional mail, including a letter from a woman who confided that she had terminated a pregnancy, her second pregnancy, because it was so bad the first time when she got sick again. The second time she realized she couldn't live through it. She said she never told anybody that other than her partner. I think when people still feel like they have to be that secretive then I don't think that Keith's case has done a whole lot to change people's understanding of the fact that this isn't just a particularly bad bout of morning sickness.

PC: Stephanie Nolen, thank you for sharing your personal story with us today, appreciate it.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: It's a pleasure, Piya.

PC: Stephanie Nolen is the mother of two school aged children. She is also the Globe and Mails Latin America bureau chief and she lives in Rio de Janeiro. Well as Stephanie just mentioned, and our next guest says, Hyperemesis Gravidarum can be so severe that some women will even terminate pregnancies if they don't get the help they need. Caitlin Dean is the chair of the UK Charity Pregnancy Sickness Support which offers support to women with HG. She has also battled the condition herself through three pregnancies and is now researching HG as a Ph.D. student at the University of Plymouth. Caitlin Dean is in our London England studio. Hello.

CAITLIN DEAN: Hello.

PC: So when you hear stories from Stephanie and the tape we played, how do they compare those HG stories from other women who are part of your work with pregnancy sickness support?

CAITLIN DEAN: Well sadly they are very common stories and that the being dismissed, part of it, is incredibly common. Things are improving in recent years but certainly it's the experience of most of the women that I come in touch with that you know they're told things like well you know “I was sick but I just had to get on with it. I couldn't afford to take time off work”. You know it's not as simple as that. If you if you're being admitted to hospital then you don't really have much choice about work

PC: People had this, women have had this for centuries, HG. It seems to me that there should be more, over time, there would be more support out there, why isn't there?

CAITLIN DEAN: Yes, he history is quite interesting. There's documented evidence of hyperemesis in pregnancy going back sort of 4000 years. Certainly, before the last century, it was taken very seriously because most women with it just died. Because if they couldn't keep food and fluid down you know very rapidly within a couple of weeks you die from that. And so the only treatment really was therapeutic abortion. And in those days it was a bit of a death sentence anyway. And so you know it was taken very very seriously. What happened in the early part of the last century is that I.V. fluids were invented and modern anti-emetics and that coincided with the development of sort of Freudian Cyclades and dynamic theories. And suddenly women weren't dying so much of it because of medication and treatment. They were suddenly being accused of bringing it on themselves, of mentally rejecting the foetus, of having problems at home, that this was a sort of a mental escape from – and all this kind of really offensive stuff. That's prevailed until really quite recently. And it's not an uncommon attitude to come across even now.

PC: And so what kind of support does your group offer women suffering from HD?

CAITLIN DEAN: So we have a helpline where women can contact us and we'll give immediate information about how to advocate for yourself, about good doctors that we know in that area, about services like [unintelligible] Day units where you can get rehydrated one day and go home and you know look after your children in the evening. Then for women who want ongoing support, we provide one to one peer support from women who have been through it themselves and they can text or email or phone or however the sufferer would most like support. They get in touch with them every day to offer emotional ongoing support for the condition.

PC: It seems to me that you offer you know emotional, mental support, in the absence of having real practical ways to treat this thing.

CAITLIN DEAN: Yes we don't have a cure unfortunately. There are medications and there are guidelines now for treating it but for some women the treatments can be quite effective. But certainly for the most severe cases they just don't even touch it really. It's just a matter of managing it and preventing her from dying from it. It does too occasionally still occur. So what we can do is provide support which reduces the overall trauma of the condition.

PC: And so when the women talk to you, in the support group, about the kind of medical care the medical support that they get what kinds of stories you hear there?

CAITLIN DEAN: Well first of all that there are some really fantastic doctors out there that are treating this condition brilliantly and there are increasing services in the UK and internationally like in say day units and things like that. But sadly it's not uncommon at all for women to still be meeting major barriers to treatment of being dismissed and told it's normal and that they just need to put up with it and that nothing is safe. And you know they just need to battle through on their own, to try ginger and all these kind of nonsense things. And that's not uncommon. I mean we get six to 10 calls per day to our helpline. And the vast majority of them are receiving poor care.

PC: They basically get “suck it up sunshine”.

CAITLIN DEAN: Yeah.

PC: And so this affects a very small number of pregnant women. I think it's about 1 percent HG does. You are studying. Now what stage is the research at for the condition from what you're seeing?

CAITLIN DEAN: So internationally there's a definite increase in research. There's interesting things going on in Europe looking at and feeding and things like that, because they've recognized the impact of malnutrition in early pregnancy and what damage that can do to the fetus. In America, there's research going on about the genetic causes of it. And my research is looking at the recurrence of hyperemesis and what can be done, when you know that you're going to get it again in a subsequent pregnancy or that you're very likely to. What you can do to try and mitigate some of the impacts of the condition. So planning financially, emotionally, practically, child care and then medically with preemptive medication to try and reduce the overall impact of the condition and allow women to have the children that they want to have.

PC: So given what you've just said what specific changes would you like to see in how women with each GI are treated? I suppose both medically and socially.

CAITLIN DEAN: I'd like them to be taken seriously. Women with morning sickness generally don't complain about it. It's an expected part of pregnancy. A lot of women actually kind of look forward to it. It's a bit of a rite of passage. It's a secret sort of sign that they are actually pregnant and the pregnancy is progressing. So when a woman is saying to a doctor or her friend or her relation “Oh my gosh I'm so sick I can't eat. I can't drink.” That needs to be taken seriously. It needs to be empathized with and treated. So that's what I'd really like. And for women who are going to doctors having had it in one pregnancy say “I really want another pregnancy but I'm terrified of this condition. And what can we do in advance”. I want them to take that seriously and to make a pre-emptive plan. It's very hard to advocate for yourself once you're so sick you can barely speak. So the benefit of making a plan in advance is that you can agree what treatments you're going to try, in what order, and what the threshold will be for moving on to the next level of treatment and so on. So once you are actually pregnant you're not then faced with a battle of trying to convince people how sick you are.

PC: Caitlin Dean, thank you for your time today. Caitlin Dean is the chair of the UK Charity Pregnancy Sickness Support. She was in our London, England studio. So why has it been so difficult for the medical community to diagnose Hyperemesis Gravidarum and help women who suffer from it. We've reached Dr. Ellen Giesbrecht for some answers. She's an obstetrician and gynecologist as well as senior medical director of maternal newborn care at the British Columbia Women's Hospital. She's also co-chair for the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada’s Clinical Obstetrics Committee. Dr. Ellen Giesbrecht joins us from Vancouver. Hello to you.

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: Good morning. We just heard about women with hyperemesis gravidarum who have had trouble getting early diagnosis and treatment. Why is that?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: There's a couple of factors that contribute to that. Both Caitlin and Stephanie clearly capture the story of most women which is that there is a concern that this is a normal part. The nausea and vomiting which is so common through pregnancy is normal. Women often don't realize that their own form, when they have hyperemesis, is the severe for them. And so first of all, it has been normalized in the community. It's normalized by their friends. So they don't speak up and I'm not blaming women in any sense, by any stretch. But they are afraid to speak up I think sometimes. And the second thing is that there has been a fear, in the physician community or in the medical community, to treat pregnancy to treat with any medication unless the patient is very ill.

PC: And that makes me think of the of Thalidomide tragedy. How do the echoes of that? This drug that lead to birth defects in babies, that was used to treat morning sickness, play out in how HG is treated today?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: I was having a conversation with someone just the other day. Actually one of your researchers yesterday, Thalidomide, unfortunately was in an era when medications were used before they were tested in pregnancy. And we are well aware of that impact that definitely had a hangover effect or a left over effect in to creating a fear for any medication that is not extremely well tested in pregnancy. Unless the patient is severely ill or hospitalized patients or physicians are often reluctant to treat even though we have many medications that are now well-studied and are very effective.

PC: Was Thalidomide ever specifically used to treat HIV in the 50s and 60s?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: It is Caitlin was mentioning it. It was initially when people first thought it was something that was more of a psychological component or a relaxant. It was actually treated for women who are felt to be that the hyperemesis was related to anxiety and thalidomide was given to help calm and to hopefully help them through the hyperemesis. But one of the things that we know now is that a combined approach for hyperemesis, which includes medications but includes support both through the family, their physician, their support groups, diet modifications and a combination, is what helps. So addressing their anxiety addressing the emotional needs not with medications at this point but addressing all of those components are key to having women feel supported and have success in their pregnancy.

PCC: You know Stephanie you talked about the response she got to writing about this in the newspaper and Kate mentioned they get about six to 10 calls per day on their support network. How prevalent is this in Canada? How many pregnant women in Canada suffer from HG?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: The severe form is probably one to 2 percent, of which the majority are actually the ones who presume that we see present hostile because of the severe dehydration associated with their pregnancy. The and the most of those actually get it get better by about halfway through a small percentage of that half of those patients do have the nausea you're right through their pregnancies.

PC: And what do we do we know why some women? 1 to 2 percentage in severe form get this. What an underlying cause or condition maybe?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: I wish we did but unfortunately we don't know exactly why some women have it?

PC: And what are the long term impacts? I mean a woman potentially you know being immobilized basically for 40 weeks, is a long term enough. But what are the long term impacts on a woman who has HG in a pregnancy?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: The long term impacts are predominantly within that pregnancy as the effect on her emotionally, financially with respect to how she's able to work, within the family, her desire to have future pregnancies. The impact though, to her body otherwise is limited to, usually, to the actual pregnancy. But it is the impact on her family, on her support systems and her herself personally to first of all fear another pregnancy, but also those concerns going forward are the predominant effect. And unfortunately what Stephanie said which is I think that she was told it would likely not come back. We do know that actually has a fairly high incidence of recurrence in the next pregnancy. And it really does impact women's choice to become pregnant again.

PC: Are there any impacts on the baby?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: Not normally. One of the reasons that women get so sick is that they have the nausea and the feeling unwell, that [unintelligible] them from their pregnancy. But then the body and the way that the placenta functions will preferentially take all the nutrients, the glucose to the fetus to protect the fetus and so then you have a secondary compounding on the mother. So her body will preferentially send the nutrients to the baby and that makes her even more nauseous and more dehydrated. So the babies are often are very well protected by the placenta, but that increases the impact on the mother.

PC: And as you said, there are some drugs out there that you say are quite effective in coming up with an effective treatment plan, and other things, can work. But do you expect to see better treatments or better drugs for the condition coming along in the near future?

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: I'm not sure. Do I think that there's going to be a new medication, No. I think that really the way that we have several medications to treat the vast majority of patients, but I think in the condition of hyperemesis the key parts are very early identification. So allowing for women to present early, educating community that this is not a benign disease that we need to treat them early before they become too sick, supporting them through their pregnancy. Do I think that pharmaceutical companies are going to be actively testing medications in the first trimester? I don't know of any that are on the market and I'm not sure anyone would try to do that. We would love to see new medications but there's so much fear in the first trimester of pregnancy when the baby is developing.

PC: Dr. Ellen Giesbrecht, thank you.

ELLEN GIESBRECHT: You're welcome.

PC: Dr. Ellen Giesbrecht is an obstetrician and a gynecologist, as well as, the senior medical director of maternal newborn care at the B.C. women's hospital. She is also co-chair for the society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada's Clinical Obstetrics Committee. And we reached her in Vancouver. If you have anything you want to tell us about what you hear on The Current please do get in touch with us. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC find us on Facebook or e-mail us by going through our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and you can click on the Contact Us link. Coming up in our next half hour a refugee crisis half a world away but I'll speak with two Canadian Rohingya for whom it's all hitting very very close to home. I'm here to Pat. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. We're back in just a bit.

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'We have the right to exist': Rohingya refugees call for intervention in Myanmar

Guests: Anwar Arkani, Ahmed Ullah, Kevin Malseed

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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It's taken seven days of walking to the mountains to get here. My brother was killed. They shot him in the chest. I couldn't even dig him a proper grave. I somehow managed to bury him just outside our house and then I left.

PC: That was a Rohingya refugee speaking with CBC News in Bangladesh this past week. The United Nations has described the Rohingya as the world's most persecuted minority. And in the past two weeks an estimated 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their native Myanmar for refugee camps in Bangladesh according to the UN refugee agency. Violence began two weeks ago when Rohingya militants attacked police and military bases. The military responded with a crackdown that has killed at least 400 people and many Rohingya villages had been burned down. There are about 1 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar but they're not allowed to become citizens there. For decades recurring bouts of violence have forced new waves of refugees over the border into Bangladesh. Some of those refugees have made it to Canada. And I'm about to speak with two of them right now. I also want to give you a warning that some of what we're about to talk about and what you will hear could be disturbing to some listeners. Anwar Arkani first fled Myanmar in the 1970s. He now lives in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. He is with me in our Toronto studio. Ahmed Ullah was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh to Rohingya parents and they came to Canada in 2009. He's in our Kitchener, Ontario studio. Hello to you both.

ANWAR ARKANI: Hello.

AHMED ULLAH: Hello.

PC: Anwar let me begin with you. Back in the 70s what made your family leave Myanmar in the first place.

ANWAR ARKANI: In the 70s, actually it was 77-78. My mother is a survivor of 1942 massacre. In that particular year half of the entire total population was killed. My mother's side, it was 95 to 98 percent of them completely kill only my grandma grandpa and my mother and her sister. My mother was four years old. So when these things started in 77-78, my father was in the Arakan state capital and then authorities took his IDs. “Do you have IDs?” and he said yes and then they tore it apart and then again said: “Show me your ideas”. My father asked said “Are you crazy. What is it?” And then they arrest him and put him into jail. We don't know what they did to him. He died there. My mother says there is no room for us to stay here anymore because of the haunting memory of the 1942 massacre, that this is time to go. And then she grab all the siblings, except of one of my sisters, and all of them escaped to Bangladesh.

PC: And so you went to Bangladesh, your family. You returned to Myanmar formerly known as Burma, after that. How long were you able to stay when you and your family returned?

ANWAR ARKANI: A little over a year. There was some sort of agreement, we do not know I was very young. We came back and a year later my mother died. I stayed there until 83-84. That year I was in the final year of my middle school grade 8, you know in our country. Just a year before that in 1982, there was an Citizenship Act called 1982 Citizenship Act would pass.

PC: Yes hat Myanmar stripped the Rohingya people of their right of citizenship, yes.

ANWAR ARKANI: Automatically, overnight, we became stateless. So in order for me to go to high school, I needed a proper documentation or national identity card to be eligible even to apply for the high school. And then there was no future. So I left again. Second time, it was just myself at the time.

PC: You were 13.

ANWAR ARKANI: Yes yes.

PC: Yeah that must have been…

ANWAR ARKANI: It was... It was horrible. I was in Bangladesh as a street boy, or homeless boy, survive until 1989. In 89 and there was a short period of democracy, or some sort of a democratic free movement in Burma, after 1988 nationwide uprising, and I sneak in again. But I could not go to my village. I could not meet my sisters and my siblings, and I had to somehow - I managed to go to Thailand through all the way through Burma. I went to Thailand and I spent there nearly 10 years before I came to Canada. I came to Canada in 1998. September 20th. So this one is very soon to be 23 years [chuckels].

PC: [Chuckles] And Ahmed share your story with us, why did your family leave Myanmar back in 2009?

AHMED ULLAH: Back in 2009 actually we came to Canada. We were in Bangladesh before that. So part of my family story is my grandparents moved, as Anwar was saying, when they passed the 1982 citizenship law. So after, that driven my family to move to Bangladesh. My great grandparents, they were killed by the Buddhists, after that was passed on. So my mother's father and mother they moved to Bangladesh. My grandfather he thought everything is going to settled back, after a year later he moved back to Burma. And none of my mom's siblings they didn't want to move. They were like it's not safe to go back. So my grandfather got killed after that. So, my mom, a few years after my mom got married. She got married as a child. She was 12 years old, soon as she had her first period she got married and they had me. After having me two and a half years later, I had a sister. My mom was pregnant with my sister and they killed my father, at the refugee camp. They put him in jail. They made up a story which wasn't true. They just didn't want him to pass freely. So they killed him. So my mom was diagnosed with mental health. So the Canadian government's response from my family to come to Canada so they can treat my mom.

PC: Let me ask you about the current situation in Myanmar, Anwar. You still have family who were living there until recently. What have they told you about this latest violence?

ANWAR ARKANI: I cannot do anything to my sister. When I call them, they are say, can you please… You know, my uncle is dead. My nephew is dead. He was killed. This was kidnaped. My niece, two of them were rape and one of them were killed and another one is paralyzed and there is no medication to cure.

PC: These are the stories you're hearing for the few weeks.

ANWAR ARKANI: Not last few weeks. It is since 2012. The momentum is up and down. Sometimes it really is skyrocketed and sometimes a little bit down.

PC: And right now it's…

ANWAR ARKANI: Right now my siblings are – They are just sitting there, traumatized.

PC: In Myanmar.

ANWAR ARKANI: In Myanmar. We're actually a little bit deep inside Burma. So only people can escape who are very close to Bangladesh border. I'm not saying all of them, just a portion of it, only a small portion.

PC: And what is your family telling you, from where they are, deep in Myanmar right now? What are they seeing?

ANWAR ARKANI: Yes. Villages are being burnt. People are getting shot, getting shot right there, right, you know, life and people can see. And mostly beheaded, like in slaughtered. Kids, running away kids they grab them throw them into the fire, burning fire. There are a lot of dead corpses. Incredibly hard for me to explain to somebody that how can you absorb that information. Are you telling the truth?

PC: And who is committing the violence, according to your relatives who are who were in Myanmar right now and witnessing the things you just talked about?

ANWAR ARKANI: Everything, absolutely, is the government. But they have caterer's. They have the local Buddhists. They patronize them, or by hook or by crook, they [unintelligible] them or they willingly join the government. I don't know. So all these men armed with mercedes and small guns, it is the government policy openly. Security forces cordon the entire village, they set fire. Anybody goes out, adults, they shoot. If the kids, grab them and throw them into the fire.

PC: This has been described as both ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ahmed, I'm wondering, with your contacting your families contacts with any relatives in Myanmar, do you think that description is accurate, in what you're just hearing from Anwar?

AHMED ULLAH: It is. It is very accurate and there is actually more going on. I don't think he had enough time to describe that. Actually two weeks ago I lost my uncle, my mom's oldest brother, and three of his kids. They were killed by the Buddhists, while trying to cross to the Bangladesh. And this is very very accurate. The government, Buddhist regime, they just want to wipe us off and they don't want to let us escape and they don't want us to stay there.

PC: What is it like, for you Anwar, and for you Ahmed, to see all this happening?

ANWAR ARKANI: Some time ago, absolutely numb. And my brain, I feel that my brain freezes up and doesn't function. I still have siblings, most of them are killed. When my sister talked to me: “Can you please pray? Pray so that you know there's a big bomb drop on us and we die.” And there is nothing that I can do. I can to save. I cannot send money. And even if, some of them, only some of them, are not killed by the bodies, or the security forces, they will die of starvation. There is nothing to eat. They cannot go out, they cannot move around, do anything to find food.

PC: Ahmed what is what is it like for you?

AHMED ULLAH: For me, it is actually, it's been very very very tough. I cannot sleep at night knowing that all these people, hundreds of thousands of people being driven out of their home, and women are being raped, and child are being killed, and the men being slaughtered in front of their whole family and I'm being here. I'm having a nice life in Canada. I'm being. Constantly being reminded of what is happening back home and seeing all this media. I got friends and family calling me. Sometime it's very hard to even listen to them because I can do anything, all I could do is just listen.

PC: I want to bring something up with both of you, or someone and that is Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's leader, Nobel Prize winner, honorary Canadian citizen. And I want you to listen to this tape. This is the BBC's Fergal Keane asking her about her own human rights record. This conversation took place in April.

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FERGAL KEANE: Do you ever worry that you will be remembered as the champion of human rights. The Nobel Laureate who failed to stand up to ethnic cleansing in her own country?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: No, because I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong of an expression to use so what's happening.

FERGAL KEANE: That is what I think, also, there. I have to say.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Fergal, I think there's a lot of hostility there. And as I pointed out just now, it's Muslims killing Muslims as well. If they think that they are collaborating with authorities. So it's not just a matter of ethnic cleansing as you put it. It's a matter of people on different sides of a divide and this divide, we are trying to close up as best as possible and not to widen it further.

PC: Ahmed Ullah, what do you think of how Aung San Suu Kyi has responded to this most recent violence?

AHMED ULLAH: If there's no ethnic cleansing going on, why is hundreds of thousand people are fleeing from their country to somewhere where they don't even - they're not even wanted and losing their siblings, mother and daughter and father? Why would people do that if there was no ethnic cleansing going on? Why would I want to leave my perfect home? Why would I cry to the world for help when I have everything?

PC: And she was lauded by this country, by Canada, the Canadian government who gave her honorary Canadian citizenship. And you know, in recent days the government has criticized Aung San Suu Kyi for not doing more to stop the violence. They have committed to sending $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees. Is the Canadian government doing enough?

AHMED ULLAH: Not enough.

ANWAR ARKANI: In my sense no. In my sense, no. I think, really, Canadian government should do more. First, strip her citizenship, honorable citizenship. She is not honorable. And then the Canadian government should stop all the aids that go into Burma, to her government as well as to any other things.

PC: Ahmed what do you think about what the Canadian government has offered so far, and what do you think it should be doing?

AHMED ULLAH: Foe me, I am very disappointed the way Justin Trudeau is running that. He should be doing more. He made a tweet actually yesterday and about the concern and things like that. And after how long? Two three weeks later. Anyway if something happens in the world, this guy will tweet right away and send prayers. And also he could have pressured her. When it came to Canada, he could have pressured her. That was the only chance you have of grabbing her and telling her that “You are a honorary citizen of this country. This is not how you should run your country.” He should have given her that advice as being a leader of one of the powerful countries in the world.

PC: Before I let you both go, as you look to Myanmar right now and see what's going on, what do you see as, I don't know, the endgame? What do you think is going to happen to you, your people, the Rohingya.

ANWAR ARKANI: It will be an absolutely haunting memory, not only for us because we have siblings and parents and all the families in country, it is for the rest of the world. Because they're so nonchalant about this issue and there are two things to need to do right away. One, is immediately, right now, put some sort of intervention. Number two, we need a safe zone within Arakan state. This is our planet. We were born here. We have the right to exist. We need a safe zone. U.N., or international community, big brothers need to find a mechanism, to write it way, to find a safe zone and put peacekeeping force, right away, to save lives. From their own, they should walk out their long term plan.

PC: Ahmed?

AHMED ULLAH: I believe people should be contacting their government system so they can do something for the Rohingya people, because if we're if we're just not doing anything then we become ignorant. And someday we'll find out - we'll realize that we let a whole culture get out of existence. That's going to be a regret that people are going to have for not standing up to doing the right thing.

PC: I want to thank both of you for talking to us today and helping us understand the situation. Thank you.

AHMED ULLAH: Thank you.

ANWAR ARKANI: Thank you.

PC: Anwar Arkani is a Rohingya Muslim who first fled Myanmar in the 1970s. He was with me here in our Toronto studio. And Ahmed Ullah was born in a refugee camp to Rohingya parents. He and his family arrived in Canada in 2009. Ahmed Ullah was in our Kitchener, Ontario studio. Well, when it comes to the situation in Myanmar, the Canadian government has shifted its tone in recent days. On Tuesday, prime minister Justin Trudeau expressed concern about the “flow of refugees from Myanmar and reports of serious abuse against the Rohingya”. The statement we received yesterday from the office of Chrystia Freeland the Minister of Foreign Affairs was more pointed. In part it reads “The violence must end now. The Rohingya should be respected and recognized in the country. To deny their rightful place in Myanmar only weakens the Democratic vision. Aung San Suu Kyi has fought so hard for throughout her life. Canadians expect that human rights for the Rohingya, and all other ethnic groups, will be protected. Canada continues to call for the full unimpeded resumption of humanitarian assistance activities.” Kevin Malseed is a program manager with Inter Perez an Ottawa based international social justice organization that has been working in Myanmar for over two decades, often with significant support from the government of Canada. Kevin Malseed is in our Ottawa studio. Hello to you.

KEVIN MALSEED: Hello.

PC: What do you make of the shift in tone from the Trudeau government?

KEVIN MALSEED: Well it'll be interesting to see if the shift in tone is reflected in actual pressure placed on the government to put a stop to these abuses. I think one thing that they could do very visibly is try to build up a sort of coalition with other like minded countries, at the U.N. level, to try to put more direct pressure as a group because of course Canada's influence is limited if it's only speaking for itself.

PC: And one of the things that some people, including Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy, where they have been calling for us to strip her off her honorary Canadian citizenship, at least as a symbolic move.

KEVIN MALSEED: Yes we, Inter Perez, put out a statement yesterday and that was one thing we proposed was that the Canadian government should look at that possibility. Because you know you, you have to first of all it's an honorary citizenship, but it was given on a certain basis to do with human rights and everything. And it's clear that her approach on these issues has changed since then is she.

PC: You know, you mentioned that, and the Liberal government has mentioned that Aung San Suu Kyi needs to work with international partners to achieve peace. Is she up to that task? Can she actually do that?

KEVIN MALSEED: Well all the indications we've heard so far is that she's not willing to do it. Instead she's trying to build up international allies who will back her up in what she's saying, and say that this is a campaign against terror and not a campaign against civilians. But if you look historically, the Burmese military has always acted this way. This has been their tactic for the last several decades. When they're faced with any kind of resistance, they do not attack any armed opposition. Their strategy is to launch a scorched campaign against civilians. They've been doing that against ethnic groups throughout the country for decades. And apart from the Rohingya, they're using the same tactics, even now, against the Kachin people, the Ta’ang people, the Kokang, and the Shan in Kachin and Shan States and these are not Muslim populations. So in a sense when we hear the reports of how they're abusing Rohingyas, the tactics themselves do not come as a surprise at all to us.

PC: And when we put Aung San Suu Kyi in that context, held you know various kinds of detention for 15 years out of 21, by the military junta, what is her relationship with the military now?

KEVIN MALSEED: Well yes. She has an interesting background with that. I mean she was critical in the past. However, since she became a politician and in power, she has publicly stated that she views the military as “her father's army” and she feels a strong affinity for it and because she sees this as a continuation of the Burmese Independence Army that was formed by her father, a long time ago. At the same time, people are pointing out that under the Constitution the military is not under the control of the civil government. And well that's true in Burma. She is the one person in Burma who has the kind of podium where she could really influence this situation, if she spoke up. And instead of speaking up against the human rights abuses and trying to put an end to this, she's spoken up more as a cheerleader for the military. When they're employing these tactics in other parts of the country, she has commended them for their bravery. All of this talk, you know, she's labeled the reports from Arakan state as fake rape and fake news and a mountain of misinformation. It's just quite shocking the position that she has taken. And also she has accused international humanitarian organizations and the World Food Program of supporting terrorism, and even taking part in military actions of so-called terrorists, without any basis. And this on the ground in Burma is extremely dangerous because what this means is that the armed forces, the police forces and the radical mobs, who are attacking Rohingyas, will take that as a green light from her to also attack humanitarian workers. And that's why U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations had to evacuate most of their staff pre-emptively, in fear of potential attack.

PC: So let me ask you more about this allegation, that this is a reaction to terrorism that is going on in Rakhine, state close to Bangladesh. Just why I mentioned that we requested a comment from the embassy of Myanmar in Ottawa and they wouldn't give us an interview, but they did send us a statement. And in that statement they talk about this attack that really spurred this latest round of violence on August 25th by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Agroup the embassy calls an extremist terrorist group and it says that the attack was a clear indication of an effort to undermine the Myanmar government's attempt to achieve peace, stability and development in Rakhine state. Given your knowledge of Rakhine state, is that a fair assessment?

KEVIN MALSEED: No it's not. The government has actually fueled the violence and the hatred in this state for decades and her government has even raised that to a higher level. The government has used hatred between groups as a nation building tool for a long time, and this is what's coming back out of it. And so, when you get them supporting this kind of violence ,you know, they're trying to use it to consolidate their political power. What's happening is this is actually building hatred among the population and that's why you get a backlash when you support Rodin's rights. You even get a backlash from some so-called democracy activists in Burma who are also anti Rohingya. That's because, for a lot of democracy activists in the country, their activism is also based in a sort of hyper nationalism and the nationalism tends to trump their pro-democracy stance.

PC: Okay. I want to play a little clip for you. This is a Tin Maung Htoo who is part of the Myanmar advocacy group here. He is a board member of the Canadian friends of Burma. He says that the plight of the Rohingya people does need to be addressed but attacks, like the one that we saw in August, take away from the issue.

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Even like the Burmese myself. I'm sympathetic to their cause for sure. And so are many of my colleagues in Canada, around the world, even in Burma. But when we see these kind of attacks taking place, like the recent one, and even before there was also coordinated attacks taking place. It is really helpful for their cause.

PC: So Kevin Malseed, what do you say to that?

KEVIN MALSEED: Well I know Tin Maung Htoo. And you know Canadian friends of Burma was actually dissolved in 2012 after a big conflict between Tin Maung Htoo and the board. Now the thing is, this is an example of exactly what I just said, is this sort of ultra nationalism. But also, yes you can look at the attacks on the military installations by the ruins of salvation army. But the ARSA is not what you would call a terrorist army it's a group of people who've taken up arms in desperation after years of abuse. And when you look at the military and police response, as I said earlier, there they are not trying to fight the ARSA. They are systematically going through villages and doing scorched-earth against the entire civilian population.

PC: Kevin also did just have about under a minute left with you, but I do want to ask you; 270,000 people have fled in the last number of weeks, their villages being burned down. You are headed back to Myanmar in October. What do you see in the coming weeks?

KEVIN MALSEED: Well it's hard to see it going anywhere in a positive direction. You know the government position does not bode well. They're not budging on this. I think what's crucial is to build an international consensus and apply consolidated pressure, across the outside world, that will force them to finally do something positive about this.

PC: Kevin Malseed thank you for helping us understand what's going on in Myanmar right now. I appreciate your time.

KEVIN MALSEED: Thank you.

PC: Kevin Malseed is a program manager with Inter Perez. It is an Ottawa based international social justice organization. Kevin Malseed was in our Ottawa's studio. Well that is The Current for today. Coming your way next on Radio 1. It is Q and Tom Powell will be speaking with actor Carl McLaughlin of Twin Peaks fame. And remember, you can always take The Current with you on the go on the CBC Radio app and the Radio Player Canada app. They are both free and you can get them from the App Store or Google Play. Well it has certainly been another week of destruction from hurricanes and storms and now an earthquake in Mexico. Before we even have a full sense of the damage left in Harvey's wake, Irma is on the march. By the way, hurricanes Jose and Katia are right behind her. So we're going to close out this week with a little sad but soulful music. This is John Lee Hooker and Rainy Day. Piya Chattopadhyay. Thank you for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

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[Song: Rainy Day by John Lee Hooker]

Rainy day rainy day in my heart

Rain rain rain rain

In my heart my heart

Ain’s got rain rain more rain no more in my heart

Rain rain no more no more in my heart my heart

You know what

It’s all over baby

Yeah It’s all over

It’s all over all over all over

I gonna cry no more

I gonna cry no more

You see rain rain all the time

Tear drops for my eyes

Rainy days rainy days rainy days

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September 8, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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