i'm barbara starr in london with the top stories on al-jazeera at least 3 people have been killed in the iraqi capital baghdad after security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters the killings take the total number of deaths since the demonstrations began in october 26th $329.00 that mistresses are angry at what they say is widespread corruption and mass unemployment the government has responded by promising political economic and social reforms but the country's top shia cleric says only quick electoral reforms will calm the unrest samina felt in his one hour from baghdad. it's been another violent day in about square i spoke to

several eyewitnesses both protesters as well as volunteer magic who say they last passed near one of the major just here in baghdad near our bridge where security forces the board both tear gas as well as live ammunition to discourse to disperse protesters around and i also spoke to one of the volunteer medics in one of those makeshift clinics that read me that he had treated several injured protesters have received live ammunition now it's important to say that some of the violence also coming from the protesters they're probing molotov cocktails in the direction of the security forces and also spoke to one protester was a key part of a group who had actually tried to capture and beat one of the members of the of the the riot forces you know we're also seeing a lot of funeral processions today a lot of caskets being carried through to here where people company building a final farewell to those who have passed away yesterday in the marshes and of

course these funerals for to galvanize the crowd for anger and as the crowd surged here into here square we're likely to see more confrontations military parades have given way to protest marches as lebanon marks its 76 the independence day demonstrators have gathered in downtown beirut keeping up their calls for political and economic change the protests began last month over new taxes and the failing economy the prime minister saad hariri has resigned but that's not satisfied protestors who want a complete overhaul of the sectarian political system. u.s. president donald trump says he wants a trial in the republican controlled senate if he is impeached by the house in an interview with fox news after days of public impeachment hearings he insisted he's done nothing wrong and he defended using his private lawyer rudy giuliani to work on ukraine policy because of his reputation quote is a great crime fighter the house intelligence committee has been holding hearings. as looking into accusations that trump pressured ukraine to investigate his

political rivals there was no due process as you can have lawyers we can have any witnesses we want to call the whistleblower but you know i want is the 1st witness because frankly i want to trial you know i could get could have it you want to try out every one 0 i would look number one they should never ever impeach just not in the i watch i watch 5 people in your network yesterday say there is nothing me here israel's prime minister says he will not step down after being charged with corruption offenses benjamin netanyahu has criticized investigators calling his indictment an attempted coup and launching an attack on law enforcement the judicial system and what he sees as hostile left wing media the attorney general charged neta now with bribery fraud and breach of trust in sri cases. at least 8 pro-democracy protesters who had been holding out had

a standoff with riot police at hong kong's polytechnic university have surrendered the campus has been the scene of some of the worst violence and 6 months of protests commissioner point quaintness says he wants a peaceful resolution to the occupation and the peel to others to surrender. colombia's the fence ministry says at least 3 people were killed the in-service these protests more than 250000 people marched in the capital book with cash and other cities to show growing discontent with president even dukas government the defense minister says the circumstances surrounding the deaths are under investigation while the conduct of the security forces is also being examined those are the headlines are going to have more news for you in half an hour coming up next studio b. unscripted.

sometimes we're right as i think we're really close that most of this. entire relationship with the past is full of. what are my guide in my interest is the let's make friends die you my me to mr bike. i once through trial for allegedly holding all a radio station at gunpoint in defense of democracy i believe was a human problem and human being and you're quite right to say i got myself involved my name is wallace. i'm a turkish british novelist and like every storyteller i'm drawn to stories but also silence is the things we cannot talk about i have multiple attachments just like all of us to on multiple attachments means multiple stories i am in

a shock. i felt i knew a live suffolk even before i met or like when i juror she's often of loggerheads with her country's government through her works to give a voice to those who are often on her i knew about as the 1st african author to win the nobel prize for literature see it really was the recognition. of creativity which goes back centuries but also in his role as a defender of feeling rights and freedom of speech i was looking forward to having an open conversation on the scuzzy should start out both timely and. still as close to. what unites us makes us human.

well it's such an honor to share the same stage with him you and i have been talking about the art of storytelling and what it means since they spall arise to worlds and i always thought especially for authors for storytellers who come from wounded the moccasins such as turkey nigeria egypt pakistan venice or the brazil the list is so long and it's getting longer i don't think as a writer from such mother lance we have the luxury of being nonpolitical. we can say i'm only going to write my stories and not really think about what's happening outside the window but one thing that draws my attention is especially after the

year 2016 i think more and more western authors to be done to feel maybe the urgency to speak up because we've seen how country after country democracy can die that history can go backwards it doesn't always necessarily go forward and you of course spoken so powerful in eloquently about the need to be vocal in our crude cism on what happens to the human souls if we do not criticize tyranny i'm very glad i was starting with the very language of the storyteller let me use this appropriately to say that. nora it is just a story to have a storyteller as a historian is a psychologist is a philosopher is a builder is a creative person so i'm very happy identifying ourselves here it's about our storytellers you started off on a very difficult soul searching subject which is what is my

responsibility as a writer what is yours i don't see any special responsibility for a writer be you on the expounding behold. of is or community of humanity in general i know that i agree with you that some of us do don't have that luxury and i resent it i resent the fact that we burdened by that weight of history i resent that because there is something which existed before but also the colonial experience it's kind of a defining as 2nd class humanity and yet we know you and i know that yes we do feel that we have to transcend a set. wrong positioning which has been given us by external

forces and then after that after we chase them out what happens. we've got our internal colonisers and then you have to fight these new orders all over again to distort the history of our society our past in order to and from themselves permanently with our boots or the next i think sometimes we writers especially from the quote unquote developing world 3rd wall africa i think were really closet miser priests though we love to take on this burden i see no other explanation for it. it is quite irrational i agree but also perhaps of course as storytellers we chase stories we chase words but i equally believe we are drawn to silence the things we can not talk about easily in a society at a given time and that includes taboos political to was helpful to. us

just to be able to ask why is it that we can talk about this issue is important for writers to ask questions not try to guide the answers i was intrigued by what you said and it did resonate with me because i often think turkey has collective uneasy our entire relationship with the past is full of ruptures and because of the vacuum now it's being filled with either alter nationalistic interpretations of history or religious interpretations of history where you can't talk about the complexity of history and if you want to draw attention to that you can easily be labeled as a traitor as a betrayer in just just a cognitive flexibility to ask how would i feel had i been a minority member in that period for instance just to focus on individuals is very difficult because the official history has no human beings in it being a novelist in a country like turkey is

a bit like being slapped on the one cheek and being kissed on the other cheek at the same time. and i'm saying this because clearly these are lonsway i would sigh heavy so every rights in this to anyone who deals with words knows that because of something you rights you might use that gets into trouble but on the other hand perhaps politics sickly in countries where i would son not that easily written pronounced maybe that maybe they must even more i watched a film or decades ago as we speak and he just flashed across my mind it had to do with the colonization of the americas it depicted in it of indian village and in the village there was a no obviously gay individual who lived. in a hot and who related more with women when it was accepted like

that in the community and that it was an hour in that same on that same continent probably in that same part of the world you have those who are. who are saying that if i this is a saying you know nothing about biology of human and not to me you know nothing about hormones nothing at all about the exploration of the human tendencies are there they are now stigmatizing and this is where the writer i believe yeah especially in the so-called subtle societies the writer has a special responsibility likely as a tourist to rewrite the story conception just like that filmmaker obviously deliberately inserted this kind of domestic scene back contrasts come to a country like nigeria and within this decade the legislators who are all the

problems are sailing by jury has the power but did not get cetera et cetera took time off the postle law. which included phrases like the expression of affection between 2 people of the same sex is going to and i asked myself when i wrote other time what your business or what happens with consenting adults you do not in a problems of your own already and so you have the politicians for their own purposes of the over rewriting and or. imposing their own newly acquired prejudices deliberate distortions of humanity in the name of progress they do they do rewrites so many things they rewrite history religion and also law and they they pass the laws when

i when i look at turkey in particular of course there are so many women who are very vocal and strong in all areas of life from academy up to medicine to the business world but in one does one field in which women have a few in numbers and that's politics mostly dominated by very conservative very religious. men one of the laws that they've recently tried to pass actually involves reducing the sentence of rapists if they agree to may their underage victims because from their according to their mentality in a way the rapist is doing a favor to the family and all they care about is this other concept of honor and of course there was a huge backlash from from the society and then they took it back but there is no way i'm mentioning is this we need we need women to support each other we need

a very strong women small and that goes hand in hand with minorities without g.b.t. rights we need a strong civil society when society is divided when women are. right and especially i think the only thing that benefits from that is patriarchy itself and i am concerned because earlier we talked about have country after country we've seen a decline of democracy an erosion of democracy and i think whenever there's more nationalists and there's more religious fundamentalism there's also an increase in sexism there's also an increase in homophobia all of these things are related we've touched the national in all the use your bar. i would writers do with fiction with history and so on you know what. politicians more afraid of history of fiction and the really relevant are the reason why i ask this because i

come from a society where we discovered quote. i think not too long ago that history had been taken off the curriculum yeah and that it is a shock for me. and so i asked myself well i haven't been able to destroy fiction but we had history of the disposal to go read the history so i asked was a what really free book yeah and i think it's precise there were stories and there's a story telling can can make a difference as i was listening to i was thinking one of the books that i read very early on in life left a big impact on me it was the works of iran which. from the balkans when i was reading his work for the 1st time as a high school student it occurred to me they were like 2 peasants talking the talk about the genesis system which was the heart of the ottoman empire in

a way that the military and so at school what i had learned was who were a great empire wherever we went we brought civilisation but then there were these 2 balkan peasants talking about that institution and one of them was saying thanks to the system our poor children were able to get education and go all the way up and become to sears and the other one was saying are you sure because of the system and they forgot their identity they were converted to islam without their will you know and they never saw their families again so yes they did get education but at the expense of what as a reader of lover of storytelling fiction i understood what the writer was trying to do you know can you shift your angle it's a bit stuck you know flexibility and try to see the same story through the eyes of another person and then another and keep doing this until we realise there's no

such thing as history with a capital hage imposed on us but there are all these realities and complexities that we honestly need to talk about if you want to be truthful in the northern people should we share with europe. have the most one or 2 questions you're both storytellers which you've spoken about but you're also activists in role models and change makers and i wanted to ask you both if there was a specific moment or period in your lives when you came to embrace the next step to your role as as change makers and if so what gave you the courage to step into those shoes you 1st if you feel. i don't see myself as a courageous person at all honestly i'm just a curious person and i don't want to lose that curiosity about life details the

connectivity with fellow human beings maybe i would maybe cause all the way back to my childhood because i realize when i look back there were so many times when i felt like the other myself you know a bit like inside or outside kind of clinging to their heads trying to be long so to me it comes very naturally to give more voice to people who have been other night sed and i think in my work i always want to give more voice to the silenced and try to bring the periphery to the center. that matters to me but also maybe part of the reason is the way i was brought up i grew up without seeing my father and i was raised by 2 completely different women my mom is very westernized very modern urban their action well educated and my grandmother probably would take all the other books as you know more eastern very spiritual less educated i mean it's

very wise and she's a woman who had been denied a proper education but she firmly believed in the education of girls so to me so watching those sisterhoods their solidarity the way they supported each other had a huge impact on me you know they didn't agree on everything but they supported each other so i think observing people despite the circumstances how we need to empower each other how we need to connect with each other and how we can all learn from those songs that left a huge huge impact on me as i was growing up. i told the hosts. the smorgon a little more i know her i know already story will have a good conversation i know her. and reading about her i just saw myself

also the ability the temperament of being affected by one's environment you know while we have the other for good or evil in a few days is i'm going back to niger and believe me right up to the time i get on the plane i ask myself what on earth are you going back to my blasted country for is neat little life more peaceful here what form that is pushing you i just don't know but i'll give you an example of something which is affected me tremendously. and thank goodness this example comes from a child a girl child a name is lee or cherie but she was one of the school pupils who were kidnapped by boko haram in nigeria. and they were as armed but when they were leaving the fundamentalist terrorists insisted that they must

renounce their religion before they were released all of them did except one. shaariibuu and i ask myself what was it that imperiled the child to say no like nelson mandela did when he was given a conditional release she was between 14 and 15 said about taiji no longing for freedom longing for environment from an error meant what was in the pushed or go to know. and stayed behind i she was kept behind she's still a prisoner to attribute i think it's the same impulse that drives us as writers and activists something intolerable on our backs up the ball in our environment i would just have to know it's something we just i just had to miss so much well written a long poem to her.

when you were put on trial french insulting turkishness sent in 2006 i wonder if you could you sort of say a little more about that and also i'm particularly interested in what you wrote when you were acquitted you felt that the trial was an uprising against authoritarianism so you had some hope for turkey at that point and i just wondered whether you had you know whether you still felt hopeful in the the circumstances that you explained to us earlier turkey is such a complex country doesn't. i can't i don't think it can be simplified no country can of course but it it harbors so many conflicts this government has been in power for such a long time and when they came to power a bit like in hungary they came to power with lots of promises of reform including supporting turkey's e.u. membership peace process with minorities with kurds with armenians making

a new constitution that would be more liberal more political stake so the 1st years were shaped by that narrative and today only sug to say this but turkey has become the world's leading jailer of journalists surpassing even china's records now do we do i have hope about my country of course and i also know that the government and the people are not the same thing when we talk about swarms of democracies i think it's always very important to bear in mind the sobs the tragedy of land such as ours is that oftentimes the people are ahead of their governments and yet we don't hear their voices we don't hear the complexity of the civil society that's why i think it's very important to be very vocal and clear when it comes to criticizing also terry and governments and bringing up issues on human rights and freedom speech especially these are not negotiable issues postpone the issues we need to be

very loyal to defending human rights but at the same time connect with the people you know connect with minorities in our society the women in that society the youth in the society and never to isolate the people of high this is a question for mr. i read that in the 1960 s. you hailed a radio station at a gun point for electoral fraud i was wondering where do you draw the line in terms of political protest 1st of all. are you saying you don't believe in nigerian justice i was acquitted in court and here you are accusing me again after i've been acquitted by that i mean one of my supposed to do next just to satisfy everybody i'm innocent. i think all of

us whether we like it or not we develop especially in circumstances like ours we develop a philosophy of violence it's always a very personal one it's in a conviction in a restlessness the desire to be a peace with yourself you cannot sit down and say you're writing a poem when next door somebody's been raped or violet in some way you put down that path and you can write about it afterwards but you know you're compelled to take action at that point or you cease to be a human being. and one of the issues that i was hoping we could talk about is also where to draw the line between freedom of speech and hate speech i find it particularly difficult because

all my adult life i have fought for and believes in freedom of speech and one of the things that worries me on both sides of the atlantic particularly among young people this need for safe spaces and vetoing speakers was very different to yours. is becoming a bigger and bigger issue and i am worried that if we're only surrounded by people who think like us. like us dress up like us that's a very narcissistic existence so i think the point where i draw a line is the kind of hate speech that incites violence that targets minorities people who are in a vulnerable position that is something else but although i want to have multiple opinions discussions open spaces and especially to hear the voices of people whose voices have been denied so far.

people like to think that their nationalism is not as ugly as someone else's nationalising one of the major few. when i was an ex or was or got me produced or been deterred wanted to marburg the opposite of kindness is not necessarily evil is the moment we become numb desensitized and indifferent. stranded at 8 long years on the su is kind of. creating their own community and the economy it was you know president bush used to go and do it al-jazeera world tells the tale of 14 cargo vessels accidentally caught up in the arab israeli conflict it was quite a surprise found myself in russia in the middle of a war through the sailors whose ships survived the desert sun it's the yellow fleet

on al-jazeera. hello i'm barbara starr in london with the top stories on al-jazeera the iraqi government is the 9 reports that at least 3 people were killed when security forces opened fire on protesters earlier back that demonstrators are angry over mass unemployment and widespread corruption military parades have given way to protest marches as lebanon marks its 76th independence day as demonstrated continue their call for political and economic change the government was forced to downsize official celebrations u.s. president donald trump says he wants a trial in the republican controlled senate if he is impeached by the house he

insists he's done nothing wrong and defended getting his private lawyer rudy giuliani to work on ukraine policy. there was no due process as you can have lawyers we can have any witnesses we want to call the whistleblower but you know i want is the 1st witness because frankly i want to trial you know i could get could have it you want to try out every one 0 i would look number one they should never ever impeach just not in the i watch i watch by people on your network yesterday say there's nothing me here. and even as of now is refusing to step down as israeli prime minister after being indicted on corruption charges he's described it as an attempted coup and launched an attack on law enforcement the judicial system and what he sees as hostile left wing media. sauza and civil jiri and have marched through the capital years calling for the nation's the same but 12 election to be canceled protesters say the election cannot be free or fair while the military and

senior officials from the old guard retain power all 5 presidential candidates who are senior officials of the former president of the lizzie's beautifully. at least 8 pro-democracy protesters who had been holding out at a standoff with riot police at hong kong's polytechnic university have surrendered the campus has been the scene of some of the worst violence and 6 months of protests many students have been injured in confrontations with police commissioner ping quinn says he wants a peaceful resolution to the occupation and the peel to others to surrender. going to be back with a full news hour in just under half an hour right now though the 2nd half of studio b. unscripted continues thanks for watching stay with us. being a novelist like country like turkey is a bit like being slapped on the once again being kissed on the other cheek at the

same time nora is just a star to have a storyteller as a historian is a psychologist is a philosopher when science is. polarize people the benefit from that other purpose demagogues. the issue of identity is one which. must admit it applies not just to write as a cause. in fact it's out there hot. of the sort of dialect nationalist di lemma which plagues europe for this of identity has become seems to become a critical issue. generally in the world and yet there are human beings who transcend not always in a positive way the nation for instance certain religions certain religionists feel that they're all moral and that their identity should be seized. related to

through their religion ultimately a writer like myself especially who draws a so much from this society and of course who's a global wonder i ask myself pretty articulate well i know high seas by sell my subsidies or i know what that is but what really a my 2 to the other and i defined by mission a walk. what's your response i was i think i'm a bit more peripatetic her writer there are marshes but a whole season i did it or you see it in your book you know it's it's it's a question that matters a lot to me because i do not think that we have to have a monolithic identity despite what they say to us there's a lot of pressure on so many of us to belong into one single box and stay in that

box you know you're muslim just be a muslim i you this just be that and stay there forever but i think as human beings we have multiple belongings and it's worth fighting for that multiplicity when i look at myself i realize very clearly of course on the attached to stumble and i carry it with me wherever i go but i'm also very attached to the age in the balkans i carry in my soul so many elements from the middle east european by birth by choice the values that i share over the years i became a londoner a british citizen and despite what our politicians say today i think i would like to think of myself as a world citizen and the global soul why can't i be multiple things people like to think that there nationalism is not as ugly as someone else's nationalism that there nationalism is actually the right type of nationals and that is

a civilized nationalism and i don't i don't believe in that i think the core of nationalism is quite ugly it is divisive it is based on a distinction between us versus them and their assumption that us is somehow better than them and it takes one financial crisis or takes one political crisis for that core to surface so when i say that i do make a distinction between loving your country loving your culture you know being attached emotionally these are. youthful feelings as an author every time you know i have written a book in turkey people said oh short of a couple armenians that she must be sick that i mean that i wrote another book let's say another story they say oh she must be a secret jew initial must be a secret code because all these conspiracy theories in places where there is no democracy but underlying is the assumption that if it's not your story why should

you even care you know if it's not your identity why would you even try to write about someone else's story and i think we need to be very aware of that and very critical of that. in west africa some years ago. the nigerian government decided to expel all gummy hams from nigeria. in fact as an expression in nigeria today called god i must go. and i phone by solve. personally violated i felt that if alison i'd taken place on my behalf in my name yeah and i found it very repugnant in fact in my university my department became a kind of a refuge and i defied anyone to go and touch them or was it because i could not understand why there should be such

a distinction amounting to the right of expulsion between them and me. and we've had that experience all over the continent and as soon as there's a slight problem created by ms government mismanagement of economy the immediate impulse is to look for scapegoats of course the 1st line scapegoats are those who are quote unquote foreign as well and of course see what's very happening in south africa the amounting even to the link chain the pursuit of the lynching of a foreigner as people who are mozambique or affected at one time zimbabwe nigerians of course see this leaves one in such a weak position when one now house to decry the ultra nationalism

and the waves are which. for the taking over europe effect in politics immigration policy. even the internal governance in which the the machinery of the government is arranged primarily against. foreigners what are my sort of guide in mantras is a let nations die that humanity may survive it. problem i have is i don't know what will take its place missions will become surely long in the tooth to me. explode bent to strew but never really know what but they all seriousness is a safe we have no memory as if we have forgotten and i'm not talking about history that took place long time ago and that effects everything there is a complacency as well. service a lot as if some parts of the world were more solid lance more safe and steady you

really didn't have to worry about the more chrissy in those countries most of the western world was seen in this way you really didn't have to worry about human rights or freedom of speech or women's rights or minority rights you would have to foot think about these issues in liquid plants outside the western world and i think after the year 2016 that perception has been shattered to pieces but still there is this assumption that some countries are inoculated against the far the rise of far right germany was thought to be one of those countries because people thought after experiencing the horrors of fascism people would never make the same mistake ever again and now for the 1st time since the 2nd world war we have a far right group within the german parliament and of course sweden was regarded as another inoculated country because it's the welfare states and the bustin of social democracy now we have the rise of the far right in sweden and the u.k.

was thought to be inoculated against the rise of the far right why because it's of it has very different traditions it doesn't even have a written constitution a very strong hold of you know liberal democracy and so many other historical reasons but again we can't say it why it will never happen again and we are seeing the rise of. hate speech hate attacks particularly targeting minorities immigrants suddenly this toxic language in politics made it ok for people to say things were that were unsaleable until recently. and yet i sense this contradiction in me you do so does for instance on the african continent. i feel closer. to africans in the diaspora and i

feel to be my grab region in north africa. i feel closer affinity definitely and i find myself far more interested in the fortunes cultural of course retentions in brazil for instance where you have the eureka people in cuba etc i know i have a kind of visceral connection even in sports i must confess i'm a racist when it comes to sport i'm interested i'm interested internist only wants or very much or because williams playing. golf i don't care for golf but any time i hear tiger woods name i want to know has got to go on. so that is that and i wonder whether we should be thinking more in terms of cultural blocks but definitely a converse to the contradiction in me that this is a quantum contradiction i think it's feasible to feel that kind of attachment

emotional belongings and i don't associate that with you know nationalistic way of thinking or any more reductionist way way of thinking so the opposite i find find it important that we feel those emotional attachments that's why i insist on making a maybe distinction between patches and nationalism i think the truth is way too important to leave to the nationalists i also think faith for instance is way too important to leave to the religious i think politics is way to important to leave to career politicians and i'm curious about your views on the language tour how does it feel to write in english and did you get any reaction because i did get a lot of reaction for i do write in both english and turkish but more and more i write in english and it's difficult to explain this to people sometimes only think in nationalistic terms because for. so is an either or choice so if you writes in

english it means you have abandoned your essence your mother tongue and yes i think this is the in which so many of us dream in what more than one language and so when i look at my writing i realize if i'm writing about melancholy sadness longing i find of these it's expressed as things i'm talking but humor irony in particular and much is in english. but there's no question at all for me language is both a vehicle it's it's a technicality for use at the same time it has this extension and to be a repository of ideas of history of philosophy so the pope for me i'd seen a reason why he wanted to come out have its cake and eat it. and that's why i talk about being multi-lingual for me this is ideal if you walk the streets of nigeria

for instance the start of english and up in europe switching to broken english for me is an expression of. of the complexity of the thinking process but it's instinct if you don't find the expression. in one language you switch naturally to the language from which the idea derived originally of course i got this flack also why do you write in english lesson i told him english is in fact the language doku makers in nigeria when they want to take over and take over you know control of our lives they speak in english so you can't get anything more basic than the sudden transformation of yourself from even a partial democracy to outright dictatorship but anyway you know i think it's about time we brought in many of us go for their audiences. i was wondering if you have

ever felt the states particularly frustrating 8 about the lack of impact given the rising. erosion of democracy and shrinking civic space so do you think that the language and narrative of human rights defenders including yourselves somewhat should try and change to reach out more effectively to the people that currently seems to be lured more by the body language of the far right national the simple priests in this age we all need to become more engaged citizens to me that's incredibly important and there's one thing that worries me when i read the memoirs of writers some points who have survived the worst calamities in human history including the holocaust almost all of them are saying something similar they're saying bad things happen not because people are bob's well some people but relatively speaking their numbers are small and so

they're saying the opposite of goodness is not necessarily the bobbins the opposite of kindness is not necessarily evil. the opposite of goodness is in fact moments is the moment we become numb desensitized and indifferent that is a very dangerous turning point because upon that ground you can sow the seeds of all kinds of racism all kinds of sexism and xenophobia once enough people become numb so it matters to speak about human rights and each other's stories but you're so right some things to change in our style as well sometimes populist demagogues are better in terms of addressing people's emotions than their liberal counterparts it's so dualistic they talk about the people versus the elite but i think more and more of us deliberately need to start using the words the words in the break them into pieces so i deliberately use populist elite because populist don't have

a problem with elitism as long as they are the elites well they're not really criticizing if the man many of them are the elite in fact when we take a closer look and the 2nd thing is they think of the people as a homogenously whole but they feel they divide people into real people versus on real people people who really matter 1st as people who don't matter that months much so all i'm trying to say is the problems are real but populism is the wrong answer to those real problems and we need to do a better job in terms of addressing those real problems and remind each other and ourselves that human rights must. thank you i did ask you both about your periods of exile when you've been unable to return to nigeria or to turkey for your own safety but yet you continued to write about these places what is it like being so intimately connected

to a place so absorbed emotionally intellectually in a place but physically separated and how has that influenced your writing i found it very difficult to accept that i was in exile very very difficult especially the major one the 2nd one which was forced on me and it was actually a life and death scape for escapade if you like i think carried. that but sense of belonging with me so deeply that one of the major fears i had when i was in exile was that they might get me you know exile because i've been declared wanted to live by bad the dictator are was actually setting up consulates to hunt down the opposition but. from peace this is a self revolution was that i began looking for a place where i would be buried if i was got outside

my fear was not so much being killed outside but husbands and my family or some well meaning friends take my body back while the dictator was there now that's how you know after not one would come by the way i was at peace with myself so good don't take my body back if that. is still in charge i don't want him trampling all over my corpse. i still laugh at myself so look at you and sort of buy more weeks for disguising yourself you're paying the money to go but that's exactly what i did that's part and parcel of. but once composition rather. does the sociable to cool changes in your countries in turkey for example still affect your writing style as much as it used to when you started writing it's so so

connected with the previous question isn't it exile sometimes self-imposed exile can we have multiple homes multiple homelands can make complete they ever this connect from our homelands which i think i don't think it's possible. just the opposite perhaps you even follow it more closely when you're abroad few you care about every single detail so it's a very very fragmented existence in a way you're always a bit of an insider outsider. which could be a good position for arts or the art of storytelling because you're enough of an insider to feel attached to places many places but maybe a little bit of codes of distance just a little bit of distance maybe to see things from a different perspective but if it's a good situation position for art i think it's a very long the place for the artist you know you're always in between them and i and i carry that feeling with me to be honest the number of people from all over

the world who have started to feel as if they were in some kind of exile you know that number is increasing more and more people have started to get worried about their mother lance you know they can't recognize the changes that are happening even when they live in those countries so it happens to me a lot when i give talks there are people you know in the audience they say i come from minnesota and i come from brazil i can't recognize my country either nor can i you know we're all asking what happened to my sweet country i was wondering how you think that colonia mindset has had an impact within our culture and ball possible changes you think that we could bring to ourselves us people from different countries who leave you know in europe or in countries that are not our countries. to better society in the future. the culture is

a powerful weapon i know but at the same time cultural come through very very feeble. interests or some really intractable situations in nigeria or use the expression or and those descent into. of inhumanity. and i was speaking of. an astronomical arises in kidnapping for ransom in. in rape in. that ophelia ritual killing sex trafficking and we ask ourselves what what's happened to our humanity and what's the. solution solve these girls who are sold into prostitution. truly put under some kind of supposed to show us. chained

with their terrified that if the remarriage on the terms of the of enslavement that terrible things will happen to them and to their family. and they believe it because they come from a superstitious goat but the same culture is being used now to remove that fear from them you have somebody like the above been in for instance and sort of pronounced 1st a curse you know with his entire family of priests in chiefs rather curves on all. who traffic who continue to traffic you know their own people into sex slavery but one should not depend to a belief on the part of culture cultural enlightens relieves entertains strains but at the same

time the negative aspects of culture which just becomes an extra burden even outside on the berm and just just to follow up on the i i think today it's the major clashes that we're experiencing are taking place in the field of culture we are so obsessed with data you know measurable quantities of data but there are things that matter so much that can't be measured that easily and yet they're extremely important so as you know there are all these for the actions about a question of civilization small space between the western world and islam that's not what we're experiencing but i think what we're experiencing rather than a clash between civilizations within the nation states within our societies we're experiencing cultural. fractures you know cultural battles almost and so there's a lot of tension going in that in the field about identity belonging who are we how

do we raise our children but at the same time of course as writers we also believe in the transformative power of culture when societies are deeply polarized the only people who benefit from that are the populist demagogues so how do we find a way to go beyond our records beyond our comfort zones and i think that's possible. since such such a pleasure to talk to. i was sure i knew you. i hope this kind of communication can continue why discovered. thank you so much thank. you can really make a record ration for something as monumentally horrific as slavery. natural

and we connect on our collective. what it what it poetry do for you it's just. hello again welcome back to international weather forecasts well in terms of the bushfire conditions things are looking a little bit better over the next few days in terms of the winds we do expect them to be coming down from what they were when the big front push through now going to

see temperatures into the mid twenty's we don't expect to see any more rain over the next few days so that doesn't help things in that particular area down towards the south or melbourne is going to be seeing a tempter there as we go towards sunday of $23.00 degrees now for adelaide you are into the forty's the low forty's just several days ago were to be seen about $24.00 degrees here as we go toward saturday overnight lows of 9 but by the time we get towards monday those temp just come right back up $33.00 degrees normally this time of year your average high would be into the mid twenty's well for the north in the south island of new zealand not looking too bad for the north but down here towards the south it is going to be a lot of clouds those will stick around for the rest of the weekend we do expect to see christchurch as 16 degrees auckland at about 21 by the time we go towards sunday and then very quickly up here towards japan we are going to be seeing more weather coming into play by the time we end the weekend but here on saturday it is going to be a rainy day for tokyo at about 14 degrees and as we go towards sunday we're going to be seeing more rain as well as snow up towards flood of all stuck with

a temperature of 7. i'm counting the pulses russia uses less in areas in college places from syria to libya for the future of all of them go even for a 2 trillion dollars but is a saudi state owned oil on the ballot process google takes on the big guns in the gaming industry counting the cost on al-jazeera. i. think stories generate fountains of headlines these protests are saying down with the system and down with all of the park. with different angles from different perspectives just because we came to prison days a me right stopped at the gate separate the spin from the facts the western media jumps on stories we don't taking time to misinformation from the journalism it's

about telling the stories of those human beings on the ground with the listening post on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. hello i'm barbara starr and this is the al-jazeera news hour live from london thank you for joining us coming up in the next 60 minutes. for more protesters are killed in clashes in iraq and made warnings only speedy electoral reforms will end the unrest. rare positive news from yemen the u.n. envoy says the number of coalition airstrikes has dropped almost 80 percent in the past.