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The Current Transcript for June 4, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: This is genocide.

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ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It is a politically charged word and the people who chose to use it make no apologies. If it makes you uncomfortable they say it should. They chose to characterize the crimes and the treatment of those crimes around missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls as a Canadian genocide. But if the word genocide is controversial, it is also a legal term with consequences. What there is not as a consensus on whether the word is appropriate. We've got that discussion in just a moment. And then when Melinda Gates began meeting with women who were marginalized and impoverished they told her they knew what they needed for a better life: contraceptives.

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VOICE: We're not delivering contraceptives to the over 200 million women that are asking us for that. That is a crisis. It is our greatest anti-poverty tool we have on this earth.

AMT: As the co-chair of the largest private charitable foundation in the world, she says she has asked herself what gives her the right to get involved and she's answered that by taking the advice of the people who need her help. Melinda Gates is my guest in half an hour. And then he was a teen confronting the teacher who abused him.

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VOICE: So I went downstairs and I got my dad's 12 gauge shotgun and I brought it upstairs. He was sitting on the couch and I pointed the gun at his head.

AMT: Peter Hamer put the gun down and decades later he turned to the courts. Julie Ireton brings us the story of how the choice of a few adults to speak up about abuse as teenagers has prompted so many others to come forward. Hear her in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Call what happened to Indigenous women a genocide so we can move forward, says MMIWG inquiry's lead counsel

Guests: Christa Big Canoe, Adam Muller, Frank Chalk

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VOICE 1: Many people, non-Indigenous and Indigenous, many institutions will find this day, this report, these truths difficult, challenging and uncomfortable.

VOICE 2: GENOCIDE.

VOICE 1: This is an uncomfortable day for Canada.

AMT: And an uncomfortable moment perhaps for the prime minister as he spoke at a ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec marking the release of a discomforting report. The audience member we heard there shouted the word genocide. It is a word the prime minister chose not to use in his remarks yesterday morning, but something changed as the day wore on. Here he is later yesterday while at a Vancouver conference on health rights and wellness policy for women and girls.

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VOICE: Earlier this morning the national inquiry formally presented their final report in which they found that the tragic violence that Indigenous women and girls have experienced amounts to genocide.

AMT: The Prime Minister's vacillation over the use of the word underlines the controversy that has accompanied the report since it first surfaced on Friday, perhaps to the point of overshadowing the inquiry's findings. I am joined by three guests who have thought a lot about the situation of Indigenous women in this country and the meaning of genocide. Christa Big Canoe is lead counsel for the National Inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. She is in our Ottawa studio. Frank Chalk is the co-founder of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies and a professor of history at Concordia University. We've reached him at home. Adam Muller is a professor and director of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and he is in our Winnipeg studio. Good morning and welcome to all of you.

ADAM MULLER: Good morning Anna Maria.

CHRISTA BIG CANOE: Good morning.

FRANK CHALK: Good Morning Anna Maria.

AMT: Christa Big Canoe I want to start with you. Why did the inquiry decide to call the disappearance and murder of Indigenous women and girls a Canadian genocide?

CBC: It's a really good question. I think that you've already addressed it in terms of the unapologetic approach to naming or stating what we believe. Having heard an abundance of evidence from coast to coast to coast literally hundreds of stories taking into account the evidence the research work and quite frankly you know this is not a surprise to a lot of indigenous or academic people that we would want to name it the way we have colonial genocide is a slow moving and insidious phenomenon that actually results in ongoing harm naming it allows us to move forward and that's where the focus really needs to start. If we can name and situate what it is we're dealing with then we can start to actually implement calls to action.

AMT: And Christa what evidence did the inquiry point to?c

CBC: Well first of all there is a supplemental report that accompanies our report. And as you had in your introduction stated there's legal definitions and implications as well. So there is a couple things we're not just an investigative inquiry we were also research and so looking at research looking mostly at the stories that we heard in our part one community hearing is from families and the types of experiences they had. Of course it all comes together looking at it from a systemic approach not just one by one case but the types of evidence we point to in our supplement actually demonstrate you know looking at Colonial genocide and the acts emissions in terms of the human rights infringements that have occurred towards indigenous women girls and two spirited LGBTQ AQIM individuals. It all comes together. We have a very large public record. We have a very good and strong research record and you know in addition to the supplement a lot of that evidence is available online.

AMT: Adam Muller do you think it is appropriate to call the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of victims of a Canadian genocide?

AM: I think it does make sense to to use that language in this particular context, but I think it's really important to understand, well I think two things are important understand. One is that we're still in the process of working to reframe the genocide concept particularly insofar as it exists in law the legal definition legal understanding of genocide is one particular way of thinking about what genocide is and how it works and it'sa troubled way of thinking about what genocide is, partly because the law, the international law, was written and endorsed by amongst others colonial powers that were anxious to insulate themselves from indictment as perpetrators of genocide. So when we look at the law when we think about the law when we think about the genocide concept the genocide convention in particular what we're seeing is something that's more like a kind of boardroom compromise than it is a kind of objective you know Parisian meter that we can use to decide absolutely whether or not something is genocidal. So I think you know given a certain circumspection about what the law is and what the law says genocide is. And given also that the national increase is quite clear in its supplemental report on genocide that it's not intending in its work to fully demonstrate that's their language. All of the elements of a genocidal policy they're going to leave that I think at some level to the courts. Nevertheless what they're saying is that the information and testimony that they have collected provides serious reasons to believe that you know what's been experienced by missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is part of a broader pattern of settler colonial violence in this country that is legitimately identifiable as genocide.

AMT: Frank Chalk I'm wondering what you think. What do you think of using the word genocide in the context of the MMIW inquiry?

FC: I think it's a risky strategy. I strongly support the recommendations of the inquiry. I think they've done great research and great work and the author of the supplemental report that looks at the legal side, Professor Fanny La Fontaine at Laval University is an outstanding scholar and she makes the best case possible for this argument. But she also recognizes that although she's basing some of her argument on the work of the founder of the concept of genocide Rafael Lemkin it's a very neglected side of his thinking which has only lately been tested in the international trade so when we come to the public here in Canada and we say this is a slow genocide you won't recognize what we're talking about right away. If you think of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and Rwanda. This is different. This is a colonial genocide. And now you have to understand Canada is a colonial society and this is something we're calling slow genocide. And on the basis of this we want you to please pay attention to the larger picture of systemic genocide stretching over many centuries. Well that's a lot to educate people about. In one go. Not only in Canada but also in the courts overseas in various venues and also at the United Nations. And at a time when some of us have reason to think that if we submitted a draft Genocide Convention to the United Nations today we'd have a very hard time getting many of the governments that used to support it to support it. Now this seems to me risky and maybe even unnecessary because of the recommendations and the research behind them are so well founded that we may not need this cannon to get the appropriations and the changes in Canadian public policy that we all want.

AMT: So as we look at this, Christa Big Canoe we heard that clip of the prime minister saying that many people would find the conclusions difficult, challenging and uncomfortable. He doesn't acknowledge the use of the word genocide in the morning. Later in the day he puts in the context of the report's usage and then later we also got a clip, got a statement from David Lametti is quoted, the justice minister, as saying that we're going to leave the actual use of the term genocide to academics and experts. What do you make of that?

CBC: Well there's a couple points and you know I think Professor Chalk just hit on one of them. I think unfortunately we cling to the view of genocide that the fact that genocide can only be committed by a totalitarian or authoritarian regime. We look at it and we identify the genocide for example that Canada has identified and it's a very time limited view. So I would respectfully disagree with Professor Chalk on it being a risky strategy and maybe a canon is required, given the bleak statistics and the treatment of Indigenous woman in this country until we actually are willing to address. And so quite frankly you know Prime Minister Trudeau yesterday didn't address it. And when he did address it the clip we hear he's recognizing what the national inquiry and the commissioners and so that the I think the failure to name it is something that we've seen. And interestingly you know Dr. Muller pointed out earlier the conventions were written by colonizers. I don't think we would get a number of countries particularly countries where indigenous rights are at the forefront actually agree to you know a perspective that includes Indigenous voice that includes a gendered perspective that recognizes two spirited and gender diverse and trans positions because it would be too large of a risk for them. But there is a risk and we have a changing culture particularly in our youth and children that are recognizing the need to actually named things because it's not till we name things when you look at the other Holocaust and when you see redress and remediation is when it's been identified that there's actually some action taken there's some remediation redress it's honest conversations we have to have and you know sort of put that off into a corner and say well let the academics deal with that. It's the same kind of polite cleanness that fails to recognize and has failed to recognize things like racism that impact colonial legacy has had on Indigenous people continues to be harmful.

AMT: And now Christa the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission used the phrase "cultural genocide," did it not?

CBC: Yes it did.

AMT: And you disagree with that phrase as well, do you not?

CBC: Generally like I obviously have a world of respect for the commissioners and the findings that come out of the TRC. It definitely has moved the conversation forward. But for example I would suggest even if you look at the convention itself from a legal perspective that components of what that commission heard actually fits squarely within a genocide when you remove children you physically remove children from their homes and put them in another culture to completely erase a culture that fits squarely within the definition of genocide. I can't speak to why that was the finding. I think that was an uncomfortable term when it was released. For most Canadians and that it was somewhat controversial because we tend to look at ourselves as Canadians and in this country without recognizing so I think we meet as Canadians we we want to look at something that's like a mass murderer or a short time frame or something we fail to recognize, but that gives us permission not to address the issue and we need to start addressing the issue.

Frank Chalk what do you think of what Christa Big Canoe is saying there?

FC: Well first all I think David MacDonald and Andrew Woolford who are social scientists have made a compelling argument that we don't need the word cultural in front of genocide to say that the residential schools were part of a genocide and I support that view. But the reason the Truth and Reconciliation Commission used the term cultural genocide was that it was constrained by instructions evidently that it not accuse the governments of Canada provincial and federal of committing crimes that existed and cultural genocide wasn't quite as evident a crime as genocide without a modifier. So I think that solves that mystery. The real problem I think is that when we speak about a genocide extending over many centuries as the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg has suggested and as the reports coming from the inquiry suggest and ask people in Canada to try to get their heads around the notion that we are a colonial society and also get them to think that laws coming from colonial states are not as valid as other laws. I think we run into serious trouble. I mean all laws are a result of a compromise and negotiations obviously and there are very few countries which don't act in pragmatic practical ways to realize what they consider their national interests. So yes it's absolutely correct that colonial states had a massive influence on the wording of the Genocide Convention and that those colonial states included the Soviet Union. And today in which we think about what's going on in Tibet and happening to the figures and others China and the People's Republic of China could be characterized that way too. So I think that isn't really the point. The point is practically speaking at a time when the soil that Native people live on is toxic because it's laden with cadmium mercury and arsenic and needs to be cleaned up and the schools need to be improved and I won't give you the whole list. The inquiry did a great job of listing all of this and it's on the Internet. Is this the best strategy to emphasize that we are colonial societies and there's that we have to acknowledge the slow genocide. David MacDonald argues it's very important for parliament to pass a resolution acknowledging genocide impacted the Indigenous people of Canada for conciliation to go forward.

AMT: OK so let me just get Adam Muller in here. Before you respond to that just, if a country recognizes genocide or when the word starts being used, are there not obligations, legal, international obligations that kick in?

FC: I'm sorry I didn't interrupt.

AM: No, no go ahead Frank. Go ahead.

FC: Well you have to stop it. You have to cease doing it. That's your obligation and I mean with a slow genocide it raises the question is it ongoing? If it is ongoing then who's in charge? How would we stop it? Who would stop it? Certainly we know that we must appropriate serious funds and change public policies in Canada to help empower the Indigenous people of Canada beyond where they are now. They're not in a good position even after the Truth and Reconciliation commission report and the government of Canada goes court and fights against larger appropriations for the health care of children in Indigenous communities etc and with one hand or one side of its mouth and with the other side of its mouth it says its in full support of more rights and better health etc. for Indigenous people. So that's what we've got to correct.

AMT: So we're almost out of time here. Frank Chalk so I want to let Adam Muller get in here. Go ahead Adam.

AM: Well I mean I think what Frank is saying is important. I mean I think that obviously there's an obligation to act to prevent and the failure to act to prevent we know from legal decisions have been made in the wake of the Serb genocide and the Rwandan genocide, there's now a body of case law that shows that the failure to act to prevent it is itself a perpetuation and perpetration of genocide. So I think we have to as Canadians decide what kind of nation we are. I think there's a very real sense that the national inquiry brings to our attention that we are still a genocide on nation in so far as our relationship to Indigenous people is concerned. And I think that places an enormous burden on all of the institutions of the state and each citizen of the state to act in ways to redress and repair the damage that continues to be done. I think the language of genocide is important in this context both because it requires a kind of unlearning project. We have to actually forget a little bit about what we think genocide is and take on board a more nuanced and more contemporary understanding of genocide so that we can actually see its victims and reports like this obviously helped to make those victims visible to us, but we can see the victims of genocide and then begin to do things to ameliorate their suffering.

AMT: And we are almost out of time, but Christa Big Canoe that's the point. You want us to think differently.

CBC: It's true. We want to think differently. What Canada doesn't want to, what Canadian wealth to live in a country where their government doesn't make accountable and has requirements to make changes, the necessary changes, whether it's through legislation like the Indian Act being a perfect example of its discriminatory nature towards women as an ongoing means of not just colonization, but of genocide.

AMT: Okay. I'm sorry we have to leave it there, but thank you all of you for what you're saying today. Adam Muller professor and director of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba, vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Christa Big Canoe, lead counsel for the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Frank Chalk, co-founder of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Stay with us. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Why global access to female contraceptives is critical to Melinda Gates' philanthropy

Guests: Melinda Gates

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, The Band Played On is the name of a new CBC podcast investigating what happened inside one suburban Ottawa high school over the course of decades. There was sexual abuse of students, violation of trust, warnings to authorities that fell on deaf ears, which meant that year after year the unthinkable kept on happening. Emotions around what happened there are still running high. In half an hour the CBC. Julie Ireton joins me to talk about her investigation and to share some highlights from that podcast. But first, achieving lift-off.

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AMT: With an endowment of $50 billion US, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn't just a major force for charitable giving, it is the world's largest private charitable foundation. When it comes to giving away wealth on that scale you need a philosophy to help guide you and the foundation's co-chair, Melinda Gates, sums up that philosophy in a new book, writing "that when you lift up women, you lift up humanity." Her book is called, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. Melinda Gates joins me from our Vancouver studio. Hello.

MELINDA GATES: Thanks for having me.

AMT: You've met a lot of women who have challenged the way you think and one of them is a woman named Meena. Can you tell us about her?

MELINDA GATES: Sure, Meena lived in northern India and I met her and her husband just outside of her home. She'd recently delivered her second baby boy in the local health clinic that we had worked with the government to support. She'd had a fabulous birth; it had all gone well. But when I was visiting her and at the very end of the discussion I asked her what her hopes and dreams were for this beautiful baby boy that she was holding in her arms and her son who was standing next to her and she broke my heart. She said you know the truth is after she looked down for a long time she said, the truth is I have no hope for these two boys. None. And in fact would you, would you take them home with you? And all she knew was that I was a Western woman there in a pair of khaki pants and a T-shirt learning about how to help with poverty and make people's lives better and that is just a heartbreaking thing, to know that because of poverty a woman would ask a stranger to take her children home because she knew they would be better off.

AMT: You ended up talking to her about contraceptives because she knew about them and she couldn't get her hands on them.

MELINDA GATES: Correct and I was really there to talk to her about this birth and contraceptives and what she said was you know I have access now I now know about them because of the health clinic, but again it's going be difficult for me because my in-laws want me to have far more children than just two.

AMT: I was really struck the need for contraception is a recurring message that you have received when you meet women as you travel in these countries and look at the ways that your foundation can help them. How much did that surprise you?

MELINDA GATES: Well it surprised me when it kept coming up over and over and over again, quite honestly. And then I came back and started to look at the global statistics and that's when I learned that you know as a world we're not delivering contraceptives to the over 200 million women that are asking us for them and to me that is a crisis. And that just shouldn't be. It is our greatest anti-poverty tool we have on this earth and we know that we know that no low income country has ever made it to middle income without first allowing voluntary access to contraceptives. And so to me it was actually abhorrent that we're not actually delivering those tools at scale for women what lengths would women go to to try to get contraceptives. I've met women who have walked twelve miles in the heat with two children to get to a clinic where they've learned that contraceptives are available. That's the lengths they will go to.

AMT: It's interesting because often the narrative coming out of North America for those opposed to supplying women in developing countries with contraceptives is that we're brainwashing them, but in fact they were asking you for them.

MELINDA GATES: Absolutely. And so what I know to be true is that we have to educate women about their bodies and then allow them voluntary access to contraceptives. But what I'm learning is that this is a cry for help. Women are asking us for this tool and they're saying why is it I could get contraceptives maybe a year ago at this clinic and now they're out of stock why can't I get the type of tool that I used before that I want or that I know works for my family to time and space the births of my children.

AMT: You wrestled with this issue because of your own Catholic faith.

MELINDA GATES: I did. I'm a practicing Catholic. And I know what I was taught in school and in church but at the end of the day I both use contraceptives as do over 90 percent of American women and I know what I counsel my older children to do in terms of contraceptives my son and my two daughters and I believe that we should value life and keep moms and babies alive and so why would we not allow access to a tool that is a lifesaving tool for women.

AMT: As you look at that experience, I'm wonder what you're thinking as you watch several American states drastically restrict or virtually ban abortion right now.

MELINDA GATES: I think that any time we roll back health care for women it is a crisis and we all need to use our voices to say not okay. Women deserve to make decisions themselves about contraceptives and about their children's health and their own health.

AMT: And we're talking about women, but too often they're still children, aren't they?

MELINDA GATES: Yes I've met young girls who have talked to me about being married very young and that is a tragic situation for a girl because if she's in school she's often pulled out of school and she's often put into a life of servitude for her husband or his family and again that just shouldn't be.

AMT: You talk about a girl you meet who is the age of your youngest daughter at the time when you meet her.

MELINDA GATES: Right.

AMT: And she was getting ready for a party. What happened?

MELINDA GATES: She was, her family had sent her out to the well. Girls often collect water. In the family that's their role. They'd sent her off to get water and to get some other supplies and they told her it was to prepare for a party and when she came home she learned that actually what they had been planning was to marry her off and the celebration was a celebration of her marriage, which for that young girl was one of the most tragic days of her life.

AMT: And she tried to run away right away. She knew even at that young age that this was not what she wanted for her future.

MELINDA GATES: Absolutely not and young girls will tell you that. They know. They want to stay in school. They see the difference that schooling makes for their older sisters or their sisters in their township or in their village and their friends. And so they want to stay in school. And yet they know if they're married off young and early there's no chance for them to continue going to school.

AMT: How different fundamentally is the fight for North American women's rights from the fight in the developing world?

MELINDA GATES: Well I think the fight is similar honestly all over the world. And the problem is is that these are systematic issues these are societal issues that have existed for a very long time and so there is no silver bullet. But it's why over time I've become determined to really look at equality in every an every type of society. Low middle or high income and in the United States the systemic bias that we have means that less than 25 percent of our Congress are women less than 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by a female CEO. Less than 2 percent of women in my country have access to venture capital funding to start a new business. Those are systemic issues that we have to face and change even in my own country.

AMT: In Canada we're being reminded how some women are in the margins with our inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. A report just out this week officially. Do you see women in North America doing enough for women around them?

MELINDA GATES: I think we have much more to do for women in North America and I think it takes men and women together standing up and demanding transparency demanding that we look at all of these issues and then that we make decisions to change society. And so to me that says that we have to look all of us in our homes in our workplaces and our communities and we have to say do women have their full voice in all those places and their full decision making authority home work and community and if not then we all still have a role to play.

AMT: When you talk about empowering women, you make the point that we need to consider women in all areas of development and you talk about agriculture. What did you learn?

MELINDA GATES: I learned that the decisions we were making as a foundation for instance to get a new seed out that was say drought resistant for certain countries in Africa or pest resistant. That's a great goal and we were actually delivering these new seeds but we were making false assumptions when we put those seeds into the seed delivery system. They use these agro dealers they're called in Africa we assume they equally got in the hands of female and male farmers we know 50 percent of farmers in the developing world are females but that was a false assumption when you get the seed out through the normal system of distribution. They were reaching the men with the seeds but that seed system basically does not reach women and we weren't taking women's needs into account. If you offer a new seeds for instance that maybe is drought resistant so you get more yield but it takes woman longer to cook that type of meal. She'll tell you I'm not going to grow it. I don't have any more hours than the eight I'm already spending cooking meals in my little kitchen hut.

AMT: How did your understanding of this change the way your foundation works in agriculture?

MELINDA GATES: Yeah it changed substantially. We now put gender at the centre of our strategy and say OK if we want to reach all farmers which is our goal men and women equally what is the extra programming we have to do? What's the extra input? What's the extra mile we have to go to make sure that women are even represented in the survey data that we have? We've learned that data is actually sexist. We think of data as being objective, but it's not. It's actually bias, sometimes inadvertently. So we put women at the centre of that strategy so that we can now reach all farmers equally.

AMT: Have you always been comfortable with the term women's empowerment?

MELINDA GATES: No. And that's the honest truth. I wish I could say that you know from a very young age I've always been comfortable with that term, but no I was actually faced with that term shortly after I had made the decision to leave Microsoft to raise our three young children. I knew I would eventually go back into the workforce but I was actually asked that question for a speech I was doing for an all girls Catholic school and I was actually asked Was I a feminist. And I really struggled at the time with the term because I realized I needed to wrestle with it and think about it. And after 20 years of travel quite honestly after a decade of decade of travel in the developing world I realized I am an ardent feminist. And to me feminism means and women's empowerment means making sure that a woman has her full voice and her full decision making authority everywhere that she lives and breathes and acts.

AMT: What about women in tech?

MELINDA GATES: Women in tech is a problem and the reason I'm passionate about that issue is that you know tech has become pervasive in our lives and it's only going to become more so. And yet if you don't have females at the table and people of colour at the table making decision about which products to move forward which products to create how to create them we are basically baking bias into our system. And if you take just one area which is artificial intelligence into 2025 it's going to be a 400 billion dollar industry. When I already think of how A.I. is working on our behalf or not as a society and you start to say hey less than 12 percent of researchers are females and I to me that's a problem because I don't want a big bias into the system. I want to know that the system is there available working for all of us because I know that society has lots of different genders and faces and all of those should have a seat at the table.

AMT: You credit a woman at IBM for sending you to Microsoft. What happened?

MELINDA GATES: Yes. So I'm a computer scientist by background and then I got my MBA right after that. I had had summer jobs for IBM two summers running, so I had planned that I would go to work for IBM when I was finished business school and when I went to meet with my hiring manager she said, are you ready to accept our offer? And I said well as you know I'm interviewing several other places, I've turned them all down, but I have one last place I'm going to go interview. And I said well it's a little company in Seattle named Microsoft. And she said well do you want a piece of advice? And she said if you get an offer from Microsoft you should take it. And she floored me and I said why? And she said because a company like that, if you are as talented as I think you are as a young woman, your rise there would be meteoric. She said because your chance to do so many different things in a short period of time with a company that's growing like that is just different. And so I certainly had that in mind when I went to Microsoft then for my final set of interviews, which I then accepted the offer and it did change my life. Honestly I had a nine year career there that I absolutely loved.

AMT: What's the lesson in that for women looking at a career in tech?

MELINDA GATES: It's that these are fabulous jobs. Tech is changing society. They're creating the society of the future and these are jobs that if you accept one of them you will be put in some uncomfortable situations but uncomfortable situations are what helps you grow. And so I think you know embracing that growth and embracing risk and they teach you a certain amount of risk tolerance early. These are fabulous jobs that I hope lots and lots of women look at and take and they honestly the more women we get into tech the more they will change those tech companies too.

AMT: Where you ended up is not the trajectory you thought you'd have though, is it?

MELINDA GATES: No that's true because I also met my husband not too long into the job. Obviously when I first met him, not ever thinking that would be my husband, but yes that changed my life course as well.

AMT: Well we know you met and fell in love with Bill Gates, but I don't think we all know that you bonded over maths puzzles in the early days in your early dating days.

MELINDA GATES: Yes. Well with Bill, so I both saw this amazingly kind and warm side that he wasn't showing quite often in the rest of the world. So I learned that side and I also knew that he was competitive. I am highly competitive myself so yes on one of our early vacations I took a little math game and I know when I whipped it out he was quite certain he was going to win and I beat him on that one. That was a nice sense of pride. And you know what it ended up showing him was you know I'm not afraid to try things. I can take some risk. I can have some fun. I can laugh at myself. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but we both love games and we love the challenge and we challenge each other quite honestly in life and I enjoy that about Bill.

AMT: How has becoming so wealthy changed you?

MELINDA GATES: Well I think one thing about great wealth is it can be confusing and one of the things the way I have had to learn to navigate this life of great wealth because I did not grow up in a wealthy family, I grew up in a very middle income family. So when Bill and I got married I knew very early on, I honestly I write in the book, I went through a crisis of self when I first had to move into this house that he was building behind a gate. I'd never lived behind a gate in my life, but what I came to learn very quickly is that you have to know who you are and know what your values are and if you stayed true to your values, the wealth won't actually change you.

AMT: Are there things you miss that you can't do anymore because of your wealth?

MELINDA GATES: Yes of course. There are some downsides, you bet. There are far more upsides than there are downsides, but yes I miss having full anonymously at times. But even with this book right, I finally decided you know what I have things I want to say in the world. I have things that I have learned over 20 years of travelling extensively to the developing world and if these women have been vulnerable enough to share their stories with me and in their circumstances and I can give voice to those issues on the world stage and bring attention to them and resources to them then guess what, it's worth me giving up some anonymity to do that.

AMT: I'm wondering how you respond to critics of billionaire philanthropy who say you let governments off the hook for programs and policies that would see wealth shared more equally.

MELINDA GATES: Well what I know about philanthropy is that it is part of an eco system and I think sometimes people misunderstand philanthropy. So philanthropy is less than 2 percent of all the foreign aid that goes out in the world. Less than 2 percent, but that 2 percent can take risks. It can try things. It can fail, a lot like venture capital funding, but by taking that risk then when government goes to scale up its programs, it's scaling its programs up with proven things that work and that have been measured and quite honestly I don't think most taxpayers want their government to take that much risk with their taxpayer money. But to move the world forward it's going to take philanthropy, it's going to take government funding, it's going to take civil societies voice, it's going to take the private sector and business and it's going to take nonprofits who are doing the actual work on the ground.

AMT: You're right about a friend Hans Rosling who initially told you he worried that billionaires giving away money would mess everything up.

MELINDA GATES: Yes and he had good reason to worry. What I learned from Hans was that being out in the developing world with people and really really listening to them about their needs helps you move forward in the right way. Hans was an epidemiologist who did his first work, he and his wife Agneta who's also in the health care field. They did their most early work out in Mozambique. He spent years and years out in what I call the field before he came in and really started to change the global conversation about global health. And between all the families and women that I have met with over these 20 years of travel between them and Hans Rosling and a couple of other mentors I have from the global health space I have learned a tremendous amount about how to think about global health and how to change the conversation to make sure that we really change the world on behalf of everybody.

AMT: You talk about your struggle with that though. At one point you ask what gives me the right to get involved? What gives me the right to try to support efforts to change the culture of countries I'm not part of? You've really turned this over in your head.

MELINDA GATES: I have cause I think we have to ask ourselves that question. If you look at the history of what happened in country after country after country in Africa when the Europeans went in or where the when the Americans went in those approaches were not cut did not come from the right place the right approach is to say what is it that people are asking us for. How is it they want to change their own country? What tools do we have maybe from high income countries or middle income countries that we can offer and educate them aboutm but see which ones they're interested in for their own development. So you absolutely have to work with partners on the ground who are from the community who had been working on these issues sometimes for 30 or 40 years and take their viewpoints into account and make sure that what you're delivering is what the government of the country actually wants and what the citizenry wants.

AMT: I wanted to ask you about MacKenzie Bezos, the ex-wife of the Amazon founder who is currently, well she made headlines when she announced that she was going to give half of her fortune to charity. Was she talking to you?

MELINDA GATES: So MacKenzie I've actually known for quite some time and MacKenzie is going to be an amazing philanthropist and I cannot wait to see what she does with half her wealth.

AMT: But she's part of the giving pledge that you're part of as well.

MELINDA GATES: Yes. So Bill, Warren Buffett and I founded something called the Giving Pledge nine years ago and we have over 204 billionaires in 23 countries who've pledged to give away half their wealth. If you have a billion dollars, you can afford to give away half of it. Yes, you have found something to apply your talents to, you've probably worked incredibly hard for whatever business, but you were lucky to grow up in the country that you grew up in and you need to give something back.

AMT: I'm wondering what you think of the proposal from the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who proposes a 70 percent tax on earnings above 10 million dollars.

MELINDA GATES: Yes. So Bill and I have been very outspoken that we think it's time that the tax system in the United States get looked at and get changed. We believe that high income people in our country should give far more than somebody who's middle or low income. And so our tax system is not working very well today on behalf of everybody. We should not have these great inequities that exist today in society. So we think that tax proposal, we think that the tax system overall needs to be looked at.

AMT: Have you considered becoming even more vocal politically as you approach the 2020 presidential election?

MELINDA GATES: Well Bill and I are both using our voices where we think it can make the most change and do the most good on behalf of people all over the world. So for us that means that we do lots of meetings with you know people in Congress. It means that we meet with governments all over the world, but I don't think we'll actually put our voice into this election. We're going to work with whatever government comes in in the United States and that will be true for the whole life of the foundation. So I don't think you'll hear us with our voices more politically minded, but certainly saying what we think is important on behalf of the world. We'll just continue to do that.

AMT: Melinda Gates thank you for your time.

MELINDA GATES: Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Melinda Gates co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is also the founder of the investment firm Pivotal Ventures. Her new book is called The Moment of Lift. And she joined me from our Vancouver studio. Let us know what you think of that conversation. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. In our next half hour, how could the unthinkable happen again and again, year after year? The CBC's Julie Ireton brings us the investigation behind her new podcast from inside one Ottawa area school. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'Warnings were ignored': New CBC podcast explores pervasive past of sexual abuse at Ottawa high school

Guest: Julie Ireton

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Just a note before we start this segment, this story includes some explicit and coarse language which some listeners may find disturbing. We are going to hear from victims of sexual abuse and they will be sharing some painful details and what may be most troubling about these stories is that they happened in a place that's meant to be safe and nurturing -- schools. The very places where we send our children daily to learn and to grow. Some of these stories date back decades. But just last week a teacher was sentenced to 16 years in prison for sexually abusing 26 children over an eight year period in Calgary. And in Ottawa a teacher was sent to jail for the sexual assault of two high school students. CBC senior reporter Julie Ireton has been digging into what happened in one high school in an Ottawa suburb between the 1970s and the early 2000s. She found a succession of teens, dozens of them were preyed upon over those decades by two music teachers and a basketball coach. And she learned that students teachers and parents had warned authorities, but little was done to protect the students. She's also learned that this problem persists across Canada. It is a story with many layers and Julie is telling it in a new CBC podcast called The Band Played On. Julie Ireton joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hi Julie.

JULIE IRETON: Hi there.

AMT: After we talked about your initial investigation into this last fall, you were in inundated. What happened?

JI: Well after the investigation went to air and online I started to hear from survivors of sexual abuse from across the country. Hundreds of people got in touch with me. Men and women sharing stories of similar experiences, unwanted sexual encounters with teachers, at their own schools in their own communities from British Columbia to Nova Scotia to the Yukon. And some said I was actually the first person they'd ever told about the abuse and I realized the victims stories that I'd published were motivating others to come forward. The issue was really striking a chord with people. And then I also heard from more victims of the same teachers that I'd focussed on in my investigation and what were they telling you. Well in one case a man came forward who'd been abused by one of the teachers back in 1968 in Northern Ontario which took these historical cases I'd been researching even further back in time than I'd realized. And I also heard from two men victims who I wasn't aware of who decided to go to the police after they heard my stories. And the result was new charges were laid and in March one of the music teachers pleaded guilty to more crimes of abuse and he remains in prison. But I also got notes and calls from more former students retired teachers as well as parents people who provided more information more evidence and helped me really fill in the blanks of my ongoing investigation.

AMT: Wow. So it's all of those stories and that investigation that we're going to learn more about in the podcast.

JI: Exactly. I really set out in the podcast to find answers to the victim's questions about how the abuse of three teachers was allowed to continue for decades in this community. And the series explores institutional failure the practice of moving problematic teachers from school to school. And it looks at the impact that sexual abuse can have over decades. Abuse that took place in locker rooms on banned trips and in music rooms. Warnings were ignored, authorities failed to act, the Band Played On. But it actually all starts out with Peter Hamer, the first man who came to me with his story.

AMT: Tell us about him.

JI: Well he got in touch with me about a year ago and after he told me his story, it raised so many questions for me and I realized I had to do some digging. Peter has an important role in this podcast and I think it's really best to hear his story in his own words and voice. So this is an excerpt of Episode 1, The Gun.

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PETER HAMER: It was towards the end of the summer I was having a party for the staff that I'd worked with. It was a nice summer night. We had enough booze and nobody was doing any kind of drugs back then, but it was always beer and coolers and it was fun.

JULIE IRETON: It's 1985. Peter Hamer is 17.

PETER HAMER: And my parents were in England.

JULIE IRETON: So naturally he's having a party. Peter's a cute kid with his wavy mullet and the dimple on his chin. He's wearing what he always wore.

PETER HAMER: Desert boots, wool work socks, jeans and either a white or a black T-shirt. If it was anything other than a white or black T-shirt, it was a T-shirt with the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd on it. That's what I wore.

JULIE IRETON: So he's the kind of guy that prefers Pink Floyd over Corey Hart. He has some good friends, but he's not exactly part of the popular crowd. Not a jock, not a brain, a band geek. On this summer night at his parents suburban split level home Peter's drunk and so are most of friends. I had this friend who lived across the street and Tom was a significant shit disturber. That friend you have that tries to get you to do all of the bad things you ever did when you were in high school. So he had suggested you know we should get Bob over here.

JULIE IRETON: Bob Clarke, his high school music teacher.

PETER HAMER: So we'd phoned his house and if I remember correctly, Tom, my neighbour had said you know it's party. Why don't you come to the party? There's boys. There's all sorts of people here. It's a good opportunity and he showed up.

JULIE IRETON: So it's the middle of the night. Teenagers are drinking and a teacher shows up at the party.

PETER HAMER: Some people laughed when they saw Bob Clarke show up and they're like this is weird, I don't know why your teacher is here.

JULIE IRETON: Clarke comes in the front door and into the living room.

PETER HAMER: He came in and he's like alright you know like where's the action kind of stuff.

JULIE IRETON: Years of confusion and anger come to a head. Drunk and now in a rage, something inside Peter snaps.

PETER HAMER: So I went downstairs and I got my dad's 12 gauge shotgun and I brought it upstairs. He was sitting on the couch and I pointed the gun at his head. When you dredge this stuff up it's emotional and it'll always be emotional. You're never going to get away from that.

JULIE IRETON: Peter Hamer is a fit 51. He runs marathons and teaches martial arts. He's married with two kids and he's the executive director of a health centre. His black T-shirts and the tattoos up both arms give Peter a hipster vibe. His grain beard hides his teenage dimples. He looks confident, but sometimes Peter feels like he's dying inside.

PETER HAMER: I still get upset when I talk about it and I'm great every day, but.

JULIE IRETON: We're outside Peter's old high school, Bell High. It sits at the top of a hill. There's a sprawling lawn in front of the school and a forest out back. There are no sidewalks on the street and no convenience stores to even walk to. It really feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. The music room is off to one end, away from the main part of the school. How long since you were here?

PETER HAMER: 33 years. It's been 33 years since I've been inside this school.

JULIE IRETON: When I had mentioned the idea of coming here popping into the school's back door while the band was practicing, Peter was up for it. Now, I'm not so sure.

[Band playing]

PETER HAMER: I'm sorry, it's just strange being here.

JULIE IRETON: We won't stay long.

PETER HAMER: Yeah. No I mean it's okay.

JULIE IRETON: I'm wondering if it was a bad idea to come here to stir up these memories. I suggest we step back outside for some fresh air. Big step.

PETER HAMER: It is.

JULIE IRETON: Do you regret?

PETER HAMER: No not at all. I needed to. I really really needed to come back here. I dream about this place probably weekly.

JULIE IRETON: Really?

PETER HAMER: Yeah. I. Sorry. It's in my dreams. You know there's nothing. I have no good memories of high school. There's nothing that I could pinpoint and say yeah that was fun. That was great. Everything that was supposed to be good was tainted by you know by Bob Clarke's behaviour. And so you know maybe there were good good times, but I don't remember them. I remember all the crappy things that happened.

JULIE IRETON: Those crappy things started as far back as the early 1980s, when Peter was in Grade 9.

PETER HAMER: I was one of those sort of mediocre high school students. You know your quintessential middle child. You know I had what I thought was an overachieving older sister and a really smart younger brother and I sort of found that I sat in the middle.

JULIE IRETON: At first Peter enjoyed music. He learned to play the clarinet. Bob Clarke had already been teaching for 15 years by the time Peter met him.

PETER HAMER: And he was that popular teacher. He was the guy that everybody liked if you were in music.

[Sounds from band]

PETER HAMER: He identified with the kids. You know so you're awkward, uncomfortable 15-year-old kid who doesn't know what they're doing. You know doesn't know much about themselves, the body and you know how they're developing and he was on the same level, you know. And you know because he had a coolness to him. He would ask for a hug like in class after band. You know my back hurts, I could really use a hug. He would talk about you know I'm really tired and I'm tired, I'm horny. Those kind of things were constant conversations. He'd make comments about your body and he'd go oh look you know I can see your nipples through your shirt, you must be horny and he would always make jokes that in today's society would be considered inappropriate.

JULIE IRETON: So do you remember like what exactly to give me an example.

PETER HAMER: So I don't remember what grade it is, but I specifically remember it because I remember thinking this is insane, why he's saying this. So he was up in front of a class and he was talking about playing the guitar and he said to everybody, guitars are very phallic. And he says one hand is going up and down the frets as if he's stroking somebody's penis and the other hand is you know like playing with the person's balls. That was the stuff that came out of his mouth.

JULIE IRETON: Bob Clarke's sexually charged vulgar comments became unrelenting in music class, at band practice, on band trips.

PETER HAMER: Constant, every day and then he wants to you know grab you, which always made it like just that one step more.

JULIE IRETON: And sometimes he did grab. Peter remembers countless sexual comeons and when Peter was just 16, Clarke took him to a pawnshop then groped him on the way home.

PETER HAMER: Put his hand on my leg and he would say you know what would you do if I went a little higher? And what would you do if you know.

JULIE IRETON: And then there was the time Clarke asked Peter to come over to help fix his bathroom floor.

PETER HAMER: I came in and he was talking to me and he sat down on the floor. His back was leaning against the counter and his pants were at his knees and he was playing with himself. A couple days later in school he called me into the back room and he asked me if I was going to keep a secret and I said I'm not saying anything to anybody. It was such a horrible place for me in my head.

JULIE IRETON: And then there was the music room, Bob Clarke's domain. Behind that room, here at Bell High, there's a small back office.

PETER HAMER: The little room is where he would take people to do their music tests.

JULIE IRETON: We walk past the music stands and chairs. Peter is back in grade 10.

PETER HAMER: It wasn't you know right now there's an organ and a desk in here, but it used to be just a table. So he'd sit on one side of the table, you'd be on the other side of the table and or he'd stand with the music stand and then you'd have to play. Everybody's in the classroom and you had to go into the back with your musical instrument and you'd have to play a solo for him. And I'd ask him, I was such a mediocre clarinet player, I said like can't there be a better way of getting a mark?Isn't there any way that you can grade me instead of having me play a solo because I'm like you know my hands are shaking. This is terrifying. And he said yes if you would let me take pictures of you naked, you don't have to play and you'll get a good mark. Take your clothes off and let me have pictures. And I said no.

JULIE IRETON: And then in 1985 Peter made a decision. He would deal with the situation himself. That's when he stared at Bob Clarke down the barrel of a gun.

PETER HAMER: I was livid because he came in and he's like alright you know. Like where's the action kind of stuff.

JULIE IRETON: Bob Clarke was at Peter's house. That summer party with a bunch of teens.

PETER HAMER: So I went downstairs and I got my dad's 12 gauge shotgun.

JULIE IRETON: Peter had that mullet and a desperate secret. He'd put up with two and a half years of abuse from his music teacher.

PETER HAMER: He was sitting on the couch and I pointed the gun at his head. Clearly he was scared. He was just sitting there, he wasn't saying much. He just stared at me. So my sister and her boyfriend at the time had come home and she saw me.

NICOLA HAMER: So he was holding one of the shotguns on Clarke and Clarke was standing there, which struck me as so odd on so many levels.

JULIE IRETON: Nicola Hamer is Peter's older sister. She also remembers that night.

PETER HAMER: She just comes up to me just like Peter, you're being an idiot. She took the gun away from me.

NICOLA HAMER: And so I just literally yanked the gun out of his hands, like you're so stupid. Why are you doing this? You know and he ran off.

PETER HAMER: And I thought I'll just go get the next gun. So I went downstairs to the basement and it was a 22 calibre rifle and I brought that back up and continued to threaten them and don't ask me why he didn't leave at that point, but he didn't leave it.

NICOLA HAMER: And was threatening him. Yeah. He was threatening him with the gun and Clarke was standing there going look I don't want any trouble, this is you know don't be crazy kind of thing.

PETER HAMER: I don't have any real recollection of what he had to say. The only thing that stuck in my mind is I don't know what you're talking about, which I thought was strange because I'm like you know what I'm talking about.

NICOLA HAMER: And I turned to Clarke and I yelled why are you still here? You know I couldn't cause what are you doing here? Go away. And then he did. He turned around he left.

JULIE IRETON: At the time Nicola didn't know what was going on between Peter and his teacher.

NICOLA HAMER: I knew Clarke was a sleaze. I had no idea the extent of it and I didn't even ask because.

JULIE IRETON: Peter was desperately worried about their younger brother Alex. He was about to head to Bell High.

NICOLA HAMER: My brother was going to start grade 9 after I finished Grade 12 and I was worried that he would be a victim.

JULIE IRETON: That's why he had grabbed the guns.

PETER HAMER: And I said you know my brother is going to school in a year and if you touch him, I'll kill you.

NICOLA HAMER: Like if you ever touch my brother I'll kill you. You know this kind of thing.

JULIE IRETON: Peter had threatened to kill his teacher. He had held a gun, two guns to Bob Clarke's head.

PETER HAMER: My absolute fear at the time was that it was going to be me that would be arrested and that carried with me for years. There's no way I can say anything because what I've done is worse. You know I threatened somebody. It was an unloaded gun, but I still made him very afraid and I couldn't tell anybody.

AMT: We have been listening to an excerpt from the first episode of The Band Played On. Julie Ireton is with me. She is the host of this new investigative podcast. Julie, Peter Hamer such a victim of his music teacher and and didn't feel he could tell anyone. He eventually does, but you can hear even now how he talks about.

JI: Oh the impact it had reverberated over the years. It actually took him more than 30 years to work up the courage to tell police. And we find out in the podcast it was actually another victim of a different teacher in the same school who prompted Peter Hamer to come forward in 2016. We also find out the connections between the man who preyed on Peter and the two other teachers who were victimizing students at the same time. As I mentioned Peter Hamer was the first victim to come to me, but in the end I was able to identify 44 victims of these three teachers and I spoke to many of these men and women and several are in the podcast. Each of them decided to lift a publication ban so they could speak to me publicly.

AMT: Wow. So they finally get their voices. This happened decades ago, but we're still surrounded with news even last week about the sexual abuse of students in Calgary and Ottawa. It's clear this is an ongoing issue across the country.

JI: Unfortunately abuse of kids in schools by people of authority continues and this is very much on the radar of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in Winnipeg. That centre keeps track of ongoing reports of abuse in schools across Canada and in the past year and a half the centre has found one hundred and eight new reported cases of abuse. Some recent some historical and many of these cases involve new charges. But there have also been 36 convictions or teachers disciplined in the past 17 months alone. Last summer the Centre for Child Protection published a comprehensive study and it found reports of almost 13 hundred kids preyed on by staff in Canadian schools between 1997 and 2017 Noni Classen is the director of education with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Sometimes I think people get repelled by it because the thought is terrifying. This is where our children go. We know that one in ten children in Canada will experience child sexual abuse before they turn 18 and that's a contact offence. That's an epidemic, if we looked at that as a disease. So the more that people can understand that when they think something or they see something that they should get in and disrupt and question out without relying on the child to do it or the child to say something that that's our responsibility as adults to be doing that, that it's critical for people to start being more aware.

JI: That's Noni Classen, the director of education with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

AMT: So Julie what does it take to get that message out there?

JI: Well for her part, Noni Classen is now travelling around the country visiting school boards, talking to teachers, administrators and unions about prevention and intervention. She's talking to them about the signs to look for when a school employee. In most cases a teacher is crossing the boundaries and she wants adults to be able to notice and correct behaviour before it veers into illegal territory.

AMT: So adults need to speak up for the students and it's clearly important for the victims to use their voice. Why do you think so many people who had been silent for so long wanted to tell you the details of what happened to them?

JI: Well you know I think that they just didn't want to keep holding on to someone else's secret. It was the teacher's secret, it wasn't theirs. I also think that the MeToo movement is helping create a feeling of a a safer environment for men and women to come forward to share stories of sexual abuse and assault and to know that these stories are going to be believed. These survivors they want to heal shed this guilt and shame that they've held on to for so many years. And they also want to create awareness and advocate for others who might not be able to come forward themselves. I'm going to leave you with the voices of some of the people who spoke to me for the podcast.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You know 64-years-old, you're going I dealt with that a long time ago. Forget it. But you can't. You never will.

VOICE 2: This was someone that I was supposed to trust and who's supposed to take care of me and be responsible.

VOICE 3: It's heartbreaking that kids in their innocence are preyed upon.

VOICE 4: And I might have been hungry for attention too, you know. Like what kid is not hungry for you know affection?

VOICE 5: He was a predator and it wasn't my fault and I was a child and he abused my vulnerability and my trust.

VOICE 6: This guy stole my soul. He stole my soul and I had you know I couldn't figure it out throughout life nad being silent so long it's been you know I talk about it now because I should have been talking about it back then.

VOICE 7: Nobody knew about it. Do you just think well this is only happened to me, it hasn't happened to anyone else. So you know you don't want to be the odd bird, so you don't say anything.

VOICE 8: And make it safe for people who've kept their mouths shut for 20 or 30 years to step forward and say yep that happened to me too.

AMT: Voices of victims from a new investigative podcast from CBC senior reporter Julie Ireton. Julie that's just the tip of the iceberg and even those little excerpts are so powerful.

JI: So powerful and so personal and intimate and I'm so lucky they shared them with me.

AMT: Thank you for your work, Julie Ireton.

JI: You're very welcome.

AMT: Julie Ireton is a senior reporter with CBC. The series is called The Band Played On. It was produced by the current's Kristin Nelson. You can subscribe to the entire seven part podcast wherever you get your podcast. It's available right now. That is our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Dexter Fletcher who directed Rocket Man, a new film about Elton John, joins Tom today. And finally, today marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. It has been three decades since a pro-democracy protest in that square ended in bloodshed. It was the spring of 1989, as hundreds and thousands of Chinese took to the streets of Beijing demanding reforms and an opening up of the communist country. The move was spearheaded by students who occupied the square for months. At one point the crowds swelled to more than a million people. We're going to leave you with reports from the time and the memories of Teng Biao a high school student at the time. Now, a Chinese dissident and human rights lawyer who lives in exile. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The city is in shock. The military is in control, but it is control wanted a terrifying price. Their merciless storming of Tiananmen Square has cost many lives. There is no official count of the dead and wounded, but hospital sources in Beijing say at least 1400 people were killed. They say 10,000 were hurt and the worst of it may not be over yet.

[Reports of Tiananmen Square in 1989]

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June 4, 2019 Episode Transcript

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