Correspondent Europe: Our Poison Tx Date: 20th May 2000 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Opening Music 00.00.10 Edward Stourton It’s source lies at the heart of the European Union but from here the Danube flows through the lands of the ‘wannabes’ – the nations aspiring to membership of the rich club where the river begins. 00.00.23 Aston EDWARD STOURTON We may try to divide Europe with political boundaries but rivers don’t respect them and nor do the poisons we’ve allowed to contaminate the continent we all share. That’s the lesson of the stories we’ve found on our journey down the Danube. 00.00.35 Edward Stourton For the people we’ve met, the environment isn’t some abstract concept – it decides the way they live and in some cases die. 00.00.43 Edward Stourton Remember that cyanide spill in Romania we heard so much about earlier in the year. It’s only now becoming clear who the real victims are. 00.00.51 Edward Stourton On the Bulgarian side they call it undeclared chemical war. Across the river in Romania that’s dismissed as national rivalry. 00.01.00 Ion Ban Voice over It’s our bad luck to have the Bulgarians as neighbours. 00.01.05 Edward Stourton In the Black sea the warfare is real and people are being killed. 00.01.11 Title Page our POISON 00.01.16 Edward Stourton Budapest makes the point in most spectacular style but it’s true from Vienna to the Black Sea – in this part of Europe the Danube dominates everything from the culture to the economy. 00.01.26 Edward Stourton But these days we hear rather less about its bridges and barges or the music it inspires and rather more about its pollution. 00.01.33 Edward Stourton The first group of people on our journey downstream could, with some justice, complain that they’ve had the worst of the both the revolutions of the past half century. First impoverished and oppressed by communism then poisoned by global capitalism. 00.01.46 Edward Stourton In January a cyanide spill in the Tisza tributary sent thousands of gallons of polluted water into the Danube. 00.01.53 Edward Stourton But as the environmental campaigner George Monbiot has been finding out the real victims were the people of Bozinta Mare, a small village close to the source of the leak. 00.02.01 Music 00.02.10 George Monbiot It could scarcely be more beautiful but this quiet corner of Transylvania is the scene of one of Europe’s most devastating environmental disasters. 00.02.19 Music 00.02.24 George Monbiot I travelled to the village of Bozinta Mare to meet Gavril Matra, a seventy-six year old farmer who was one of the first to find out that something had gone badly wrong. 00.02.34 George Monbiot At the end of January he heard rumours of a dam burst at the toxic lake just a few hundred metres up stream of his village. 00.02.48 Gavril Matra Voice over I came out here and realised the polluted water was spilling into the River Lapus. This water was full of cyanide, which killed everything in its path. We are lucky that nobody died. 00.03.13 George Monbiot Between fifty and one hundred tonnes of cyanide and loads of heavy metals poured into the river. It flowed through Romania, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia, killing most of the life that lay in its path. 00.03.25 George Monbiot Millions of people were left without drinking water. The toxic sludge flowed across the villagers’ fields and into their gardens, poisoning their wells. 00.03.35 George Monbiot When the dam broke the company which built it told the government but no one bothered to tell the villagers. They were drinking the contaminated water for days. 00.03.44 Singing 00.03.57 George Monbiot Every Sunday the whole village gathers for the service in the orthodox church. Many of the people used to work in the region’s mines, which are some of the richest in the world. But after massive redundancies most now rely on farming to keep themselves alive. 00.04.19 George Monbiot Outside the church, while the villagers take their nip of plum brandy, an environmental group has arrived to hand out leaflets. This is the first information the villagers have received about the possible hazards to their health. 00.04.34 Environmentalist Voice over Has anyone before us told you exactly how heavy metals inside your soil affect your health? 00.04.43 Man Voice over No, no we were not told. 00.04.51 Woman Voice over No one has told us anything. They took samples but they didn’t tell us if the water was drinkable. 00.05.00 George Monbiot The company whose dam burst denied that it was responsible for killing the river. Villagers who worked on the dam say they were instructed not to tell their friends what had happened. 00.05.12 Man Voice over I was worried about my land because it’s all I’ve got. We were told not to say a word and to pretend nothing happened so this is what we did. 00.05.26 George Monbiot A few kilometres across the fields from Bozinta Mare, is the town of Baia Mare where Aurul, the half Australian company which built the dam, is based. 00.05.36 George Monbiot Ironically Aurul came there to clean up a huge dump, composed of pulverised rock left behind when gold had been extracted. It’s saturated with poisonous heavy metals which blow straight into the flats built just fifty yards away. 00.05.54 George Monbiot The firm would pay for the clean up by extracting the residual gold left in the dump, capturing it by mixing it with concentrated cyanide. 00.06.03 Children playing 00.06.08 George Monbiot But it’s not hard to see that things have gone badly wrong. Aurul has left its toxic dump unfenced so the children from the neighbouring houses use it as a giant sandpit. 00.06.24 George Monbiot Do you think it’s dangerous to live so near to it? 00.06.26 Child It’s dangerous but we don’t know what to do. We hope someday that won’t be here anymore and we can be safe. 00.06.37 George Monbiot When Aurul has extracted the gold it pumps a cyanide contaminated sludge out to a lake it has built near Bozinta Mare. 00.06.45 George Monbiot A report by the United Nations suggests that Aurul’s dam was so badly constructed that a disaster was almost inevitable. The lake was lined with a plastic sheet just half a millimetre thick. The materials the dam was built from weren’t strong enough to cope with the wet winter weather. 00.07.06 George Monbiot The cyanide and heavy metals rushed over Mr Matra’s land. The authorities tested the soil but weeks later had still not released the results. 00.07.18 George Monbiot In Gavril Matra’s fields the agriculture department was taking a new set of soil samples. 00.07.26 Expert Voice over If people ate the crops they would be poisoned with large quantities of heavy metals and other pollutants. 00.07.32 George Monbiot So why haven’t you cordoned this area off and said to people stop ploughing? 00.07.40 Expert Voice over Yes we should but this is not our area of responsibility. This is a large problem and we cannot make a decision that easily. 00.07.50 George Monbiot I took my own samples and sent them to a British lab. They were deadly poisonous, exceeding the safe limit for arsenic by twenty times. 00.08.00 George Monbiot Near the fields I found workers from the Romanian state mining company in a spot of bother. 00.08.06 George Monbiot Just a couple of hundred yards from the site of the first spill I’ve come across another one – much smaller this time but still pouring out toxic sludge out of this great reservoir here. I can feel it in my eyes, in my nose, in my throat and its going straight down into the nearest river. 00.08.25 Mining company worker Voice over Go away with your camera. Please leave or I’ll throw the camera away. 00.08.34 George Monbiot Aurul hosts an open meeting in Baia Mare. It’s the first opportunity the villagers have had to put their concerns to the company. To their astonishment they discover that without having cleaned up the mess it has made, Aurul’s intending to resume production, pumping even more cyanide into its lake. This is, it ensures the villagers, perfectly safe. 00.08.59 Gavril Matra Voice over It’s been four months since our land and well were polluted. No one from Aurul has come to talk with us. They’re treating us like fools because we don’t have any money and can’t sue Aurul. They’re billionaires and we can’t sue them. We’ll make an appeal to the world and find someone to pay for our lawyers because we can’t give up. 00.09.32 Aurul worker Voice over I’m telling you this Mr Matra. As with other accidents before there was need to go to international courts, not even to local courts. We should negotiate between the people who are affected and Aurul. 00.09.55 George Monbiot This company has just presented this dam as being inherently safe. This report from the United Nations shows that it’s inherently dangerous. 00.10.10 George Monbiot Why have you tried to mislead the people here? 00.10.13 Aurul Executive We’ve had an opportunity to review the UN report and your conclusions are certainly not the conclusions that we have drawn from this report. We’ve not tried to deceive anybody; we have been providing information, as it’s been required. We will not start up this operation until we have all the relevant approvals from the authorities in this country. 00.10.44 George Monbiot The material of the dam is too fine to resist the water here, the wet weather here. It’s simply inherently unsafe because it’s not made of strong enough materials. 00.10.54 Aurul Executive The dam material has been looked at in detail and analysed by the relevant authorities in this country and they say that it’s fine. I think this meeting here is for the local people to, to raise their issues. I don’t think the point is for you to make …. 00.11.11 George Monbiot …which the local people are also raising, I’ve just one more question for you. Why have you not paid, why have you not paid compensation to the people affected by the spill in January? 00.11.20 Aurul Executive In terms of compensation we’re in the process of acquiring all the necessary documentation and reports at which time we will be in a position to then sit down and negotiate with the people of Bozinta Mare for compensation. 00.11.36 George Monbiot You are trying to restart the process in the meantime while they have no means of making a living, their land has been destroyed, you’re still making money from this process, they can’t make money from their own land. 00.11.47 Aurul Executive I think you’ll find that once the new survey is completed, the pedological survey, you’ll find that the cyanide levels are below acceptable limits. 00.11.59 George Monbiot But what about the heavy metals I asked. No reply. 00.12.04 George Monbiot There was lots more I would have liked to discover: like why Aurul wasn’t stopping children from playing on its dump. Why its web site was still insisting that the dam hadn’t burst and why the company was intending to decant some of its toxic sludge into other ponds which had no protective lining at all. After the meeting I thought I might get the chance. 00.12.25 George Monbiot George Monbiot from the BBC, could I do a quick interview with you please? We’ve asked, we’ve made several requests for an interview and you haven’t yet returned those calls. Could you tell us why we can’t talk to you? 00.12.34 Aurul Executive No you can talk to us but right now we have a meeting. 00.12.36 George Monbiot When can we talk to you? Could you tell us? 00.12.38 Aurul Executive I will have a chat with you tomorrow. 00.12.39 George Monbiot What time? 00.12.40 Aurul Executive Any time that suits you. 00.12.42 George Monbiot Ok, shall we say nine o’clock? Can we say nine o’clock tomorrow morning? 00.12.444 Aurul Executive Nine o’clock, that’s fine. 00.12.45 George Monbiot Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, where will we meet you? At Aurul? 00.12.48 Aurul Executive You can meet at the office there, that’s fine. 00.12.49 George Monbiot We’ll meet you there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, thank you very much. 00.13.02 George Monbiot I’ve come to see Martin Churchouse, he promised that he’d see me this morning. 00.13.06 Aurul worker Yes, we sent a fax to your office yesterday, so he won’t be able to speak with you today. Haven’t you been given a copy of the fax? 00.13.15 George Monbiot No, we haven’t seen any fax. He told me yesterday that he’d see me at nine o’clock this morning. 00.13.19 Aurul worker Yeah but then there are some new things that have come up. So.. 00.13.24 George Monbiot What are the things that have come up? 00.13.26 Aurul worker Oh, company things. 00.13.27 George Monbiot Thank you for your fax I regret that we are unable to participate in the programme… 00.13.31 Aurul worker I’ve got to go now. 00.13.32 George Monbiot No wait, just a moment. I was promised by Mr Churchouse that he would meet us here and talk to us at nine o’clock this morning. It seems to me that Aurul breaks its promises. 00.13.41 Aurul worker I’ve got to go. 00.13.43 George Monbiot Well that’s not much good at all because there’s some major questions need to asked. 00.13.49 George Monbiot Well so much for this company’s accountability. And so much for its promises. 00.14.00 Music 00.14.05 George Monbiot Aurul has been operating here for only one year but pollution in Baia Mare has been unregulated for decades. 00.14.12 Music 00.14.14 George Monbiot Some of the town’s children have several times the safe levels of lead in their blood. The result is brain damage, genital cancer, heart and lung disease. Baia Mare is possibly the most polluted place in Europe. 00.14.29 George Monbiot And the toxic waste is also creeping up on the villagers of Bozinta Mare. Overhanging their fields are great dunes of powdered rock and heavy metals. These are the dams which the state mining company and Aurul have built to contain their sludge. 00.14.44 George Monbiot The wind lifts the dust into the village. As Aurul builds up its dam the problem will get worse and worse. The villagers fear that the dams could burst at any time. 00.14.58 Gavril Matra Voice over What they have done is evil, it can’t be worse than this. We would ask them to pack their bags and go away, to leave us alone because they are destroying us. We cannot live here anymore. We expected a happier future but with the dam, things have got worse instead. There is no future for this land. This is a dead land, which will never flourish. 00.15.41 George Monbiot With its massive deposits of valuable metals this should be one of the richest regions on earth. 00.15.49 George Monbiot But thanks to the deadly legacy of state communism, compounded by unregulated capitalism, this great wealth has not enriched the people’s lives - but ruined them. 00.16.05 Edward Stourton The search for standards, for regulations, which everyone can sign up to, is one of the factors driving the people of this region towards the European Union. 00.16.13 Edward Stourton Coming from northern Europe where the issue of national sovereignty is so sensitive, I’ve been struck by the way many people here are positively enthusiastic about giving away power to a super national authority because it’s the only way they can see to resolve ancient and intractable disputes. 00.16.28 Edward Stourton When it flows between Bulgaria and Romania the Danube itself becomes a border. The towns of Turnu Magurele and Nikopol are less than a mile apart but they’re separated by a chasm of suspicion. 00.16.52 Edward Stourton A man caught at a turning point in history. Valentin Popov is a figure of consequence in a community dreaming of a brighter future. 00.17.00 Edward Stourton But the Civil Defence Committee’s chairman is struggling with dangers that belong in the past. 00.17.08 Valentin Popov Subtitles In disaster situations, most fatalities happen not because of the event… but because people don’t know how to react. It’s our duty to prepare them to face the worst case scenario. It’s terrible that opposite our town… we have an old and outdated factory…. so we have to be ready for calamity. 00.17.36 Edward Stourton Just a few hundred yards of water but it’s the front line of this environmental battleground. 00.17.50 Valentin Popov Subtitles This is part of Nikopol. Once it was a beautiful place, but now things are very tough. The quality of the air and water has deteriorated. Things are getting worse by the day. 00.18.07 Edward Stourton Once this was Bulgaria’s capital. And a century ago it was home to a hundred thousand people. 00.18.14 Edward Stourton They still fish the Danube when pollution levels allow but there’s not much by way of jobs to keep people here. Today, Valentin Popov has the care of just over five thousand souls. 00.18.32 Edward Stourton And this is the Balkans where the past weighs heavily on the present. Old enmities have a habit of resurfacing under new guises. 00.18.43 Valentin Popov Subtitles This is a gas mask. What is a gas mask used for? Does anyone know? 00.18.56 Boy Subtitle It’s used against pollution…and in war. 00.19.06 Valentin Popov Subtitle What threatens us, our air and our lungs? 00.19.12 Boy 2 Subtitle The Romanians. 00.19.14 Valentin Popov Subtitles Yes, the Romanian factory. 00.19.24 Edward Stourton Gas mask training for school children. Scarcely the kind of upbringing that twenty-first century Europeans should have. 00.19.33 Edward Stourton Bulgaria’s dreams for the future depend on joining the wider European family in the EU. 00.19.40 Edward Stourton And this is the generation, which should take them there. 00.19.50 Edward Stourton Vladislav is four and has bronchial asthma. 00.19.58 Edward Stourton His brother Ivailo is eight, he suffers from inflammations of the respiratory system 00.20.03 Valentin Popov Subtitle How are the kids? 00.20.04 Mother Subtitles When they run they’re short of breath. They can’t breathe. It may be because of the air. 00.20.12 Edward Stourton Young lungs are the most vulnerable to any threat from across the water. 00.20.23 Edward Stourton Nikopol’s medical facilities aren’t much to boast about and hard facts are difficult to come by. 00.20.30 Edward Stourton But the staff say the level of respiratory diseases among children is two and a half times what it should be. 00.20.43 Ivailo Subtitle Hello. 00.20.48 Dr Milko Iliev Subtitles How’s our little man? You lie down and I’ll give you a check up. 00.20.57 Edward Stourton Doctor Milko Iliev has vivid memories of the day last Autumn that still haunts everyone here. One morning the air blown across the Danube seemed so thick with pollution that the town’s children were kept behind closed doors at school and Doctor Iliev donned his gas mask before venturing on to the streets. 00.21.16 Dr Milko Iliev Subtitles On 2nd November 1999…. we were subjected to the worst gas attack so far. It lasted for 4 hours. The concentration of ammonia was 20.4 times above the permitted level. 00.21.31 Dr Milko Iliev Subtitles Hydrogen sulphite was 2.5 times above the level. People locked themselves in… that’s how we managed to avoid fatalities. The lives of our people are in great danger. Nobody knows… whether the next big gas attack…. will wipe out all life in Nikopol. 00.21.57 Edward Stourton Nikopol’s air monitoring system looks as antiquated as its hospital. And over on the other side of the Danube they say that pollution levels like those quoted by Doctor Iliev are just plain wrong. 00.22.09 Edward Stourton Without clear answers from science the worst fears grow unchecked. 00.22.16 Dr Milko Iliev Subtitles I think this is an undeclared chemical war… conducted against our town by neighbouring Romania. 00.22.23 Music 00.22.28 Edward Stourton The citizens of Nikopol present themselves as a people under siege. It’s an image that’s bitterly contested in Romania. 00.22.35 Music 00.22.46 Edward Stourton It covers three hundred hectares and its main product these days is chemical fertiliser. 00.22.51 Edward Stourton A botched privatisation has left the question of who owns it rather up in the air but the technical director, Ion Ban, has worked here since the days of communism. 00.23.03 Ion Ban Subtitles Since this factory started 30 years ago… no one has ever died because of high levels of pollution. We’ve never had any work-related diseases. We’ve never had any problems at all. 00.23.19 Edward Stourton Like their neighbours the Romanians have their dreams of a European future but those are dreams and this is reality. 00.23.29 Edward Stourton Old technology it may be, the dogs control the cats, which catch the mice, which gnaw at the cables but it employs two thousand three hundred workers. 00.23.40 Ion Ban Subtitles Our company, Turnu SA, is our lifeblood…. the soul of our town Turnu Magurele. Once, we were in the sad situation… where production was stopped for 9 months… and all economic and social activity ground to a halt. It became like a ghost town. 00.24.14 Ion Ban Subtitles I think our bad luck is that we have Bulgarian neighbours… who take advantage of this situation to attract public attention. 00.24.27 Edward Stourton Peeping from the old customs house the Romanian’s latest weapon in the battle of science. Mr Ban is determined the Bulgarians are exaggerating pollution levels. 00.24.36 Ion Ban Subtitles It’s precisely because we want to defend ourselves… against Bulgarian accusations… that we decided to buy a device which monitors the environment at all times. 00.24.50 Music 00.24.53 Edward Stourton Word of the spectacular spectrometer has spread. 00.24.56 Music 00.25.00 Edward Stourton It’s enough to prompt Nikopol’s mayor to make his first visit to his counterpart across the Danube. 00.25.06 Edward Stourton The versatile Mr Popov counts a mastery of Romanian among his skills and has come along to translate. 00.25.11 Music 00.25.15 Ion Ban Subtitle Welcome. 00.25.18 Valentin Popov Subtitle Delighted to meet you. 00.25.20 Edward Stourton It was a meeting of the sceptic and the salesman. 00.25.25 Ion Ban Subtitles We’re talking about a spectrometer with optical absorption that costs $150,000. It’s imported from the West. It’s the latest technology. Very expensive. Very accurate. 00.25.55 Edward Stourton The time is ripe for rapprochement. This spring a joint commission of Bulgarian and Romanian experts toured the plant. 00.26.03 Music 00.26.09 Edward Stourton The hope was that they could reach a consensus about the problem if not the solution. 00.26.12 Music 00.26.16 Edward Stourton At least everyone agreed on one thing – they all want the European Union to come up with some money. 00.26.21 Music 00.26.25 Expert 1 Subtitles Let’s say an investment of 100 million dollars. With $100 million we can solve more than just our technical problems. 00.26.35 Edward Stourton But the suspicion of hidden agendas hung heavily in the air. 00.26.39 Expert 2 Subtitles We’ve got every confidence in the management… but the chemical plant could be tempted to cover things up in certain circumstances. 00.26.45 Music 00.26.48 Ion Ban Subtitles I’ve noticed that the Bulgarian complaints… have become stronger and stronger… since Romania and Bulgaria were invited… into negotiations to join the EU. 00.27.09 Music 00.27.15 Ion Ban Subtitles That could be their motive. They may believe that if they put the blame on us… they’ll get to join the EU first. 00.27.26 Music 00.27.34 Edward Stourton They have at least now agreed to adopt the same standards for measuring air quality and the EU is giving both sides a grant to buy matching equipment to monitor it. 00.27.43 Music 00.27.48 Edward Stourton But there’s more to this than science and money. This is a race to see who can reach the future first. 00.28.01 Edward Stourton Our final story is about a test case for what the future may hold. Everything that goes down here winds up in the Black Sea. 00.28.08 Edward Stourton Since the collapse of communism factories like the one we’ve just seen haven’t been pushing quite so much waste out into the water but the ecology of the sea has been terribly damaged by the pollution that’s poured into it and its fish stocks have been devastated. 00.28.20 Edward Stourton Neal Ascherson, the author of a book called The Black Sea, has been to the Turkish coast to find out what happens when too many boats are chasing too few fish. 00.28.29 Singing 00.28.51 Neal Ascherson The Black Sea – it’s obsessed me, flowed through my life for more than ten years. I came to grasp how much began here; the first colonies, the notions of civilisation and barbarism, the first export trade in food three thousand years ago. 00.29.08 Neal Ascherson But so much could end here too. One reason I keep coming back is that this may be the first sea we lose – the first to be killed lifeless by human greed. 00.29.21 Neal Ascherson Seven years ago the Black Sea was on the brink of disaster, it’s marine life being wiped out by a combination of pollution and over fishing. 00.29.30 Neal Ascherson Back then I watched six Black Sea states sign the Odessa Convention – a vow to save the sea. But what happened to that vow? Murderous competition for vanishing fish stocks is still going on. 00.29.46 Neal Ascherson Over fishing destroys human beings as well as turbot and anchovies. Ahmed Ertik owes sixteen thousand pounds this month. His crews say we can’t afford to stop fishing but we can’t afford to fish either. 00.30.00 Neal Ascherson The fewer the fish the more expensive the high tech gear needed to find them and that means still fewer fish and bigger debts. 00.30.09 Neal Ascherson It’s a fatal downward spiral. 00.30.17 Ahmed Ertik Voice over Our reckless fishing is damaging the sea. Sometimes we’re so desperate financially that we fish even during the spawning period. We’ve got all this technology - radars, sonars and no restrictions on our nets. Now we are facing the consequences. 00.30.41 Neal Ascherson Increasingly, the scramble for fish takes Turkish boats into waters claimed by Ukraine as an exclusion zone. 00.30.51 Neal Ascherson They use nets but its an open secret that some fishermen take wads of dollars with them to buy black market turbot or to pay off the patrols. 00.31.03 Neal Ascherson Turkish waters are almost cleaned out of turbot and there are five times too many boats for a sustainable fishery. 00.31.17 Aston UGUR YALÇIN Voice over The sonars had a range of a hundred metres at first but as the fish get fewer the sonar range gets bigger. Tomorrow it will be fifty thousand metres and will wipe out the fish in the Black Sea, Marmara and the Aegean. 00.31.37 Aston CUMHUR YALÇIN Voice over The more we lag behind our friends the bigger the risk of going bankrupt. If you want to succeed you have to have the latest technology. 00.31.57 Neal Ascherson So severe was the over fishing that catches of some fish fell by eighty-five percent. Fifteen years ago there was commercial fishing for twenty-six different species in the Black Sea. Now it’s down to six. 00.32.21 Neal Ascherson Desperate, the fishermen began to take risks. On March the twenty first the boats set out from the Turkish fishing village of Rumeli Feneri. 00.32.30 Neal Ascherson It was a trip they’d often done before. The Ukrainians claim they crossed their sea frontier and refused to stop when challenged. 00.32.41 Neal Ascherson What followed is shown in horrifying footage filmed from a Ukrainian warship. 00.32.46 Gunfire 00.32.59 Ugur Yalçin Voice over For forty-five minutes we were under fire. First they used machine guns then they fired rockets. The first rocket hit the gangway, the second hit the starboard side and then the stern was hit. As the rockets holed the boat she started to take in water. 00.33.16 Gunfire 00.33.32 Ahmed Ertik Voice over I heard them on this radio. The sound was down low so I ran to turn it up. Cumhur sounded very upset, he shouted; ‘we’ve been hit badly, I think we’re sinking’. And we said; ‘surrender, don’t do anything else just surrender’. 00.33.59 Ugur Yalçin Voice over There was nothing to think about when the boat was sinking. We were only thinking about one thing – would they rescue us or let us drown when the boat sinks. I was saying they’ll take us off and my friends were saying no, they won’t save us. 00.34.22 Ahmed Ertik Voice over The Ukrainians fired a big torpedo into the back of the boat and they were badly hit. We called again to Cumhur to surrender and we couldn’t hear anything. 00.34.36 Ugur Yalçin Voice over In the end they did take us off. They don’t usually treat people as human beings. Forty years of work vanished in five minutes. There was nothing to do. Nothing to think. 00.34.52 Neal Ascherson A hundred and seventy Turkish boats had already ventured into the area so far this year. Nothing happened to them but this time the Ukrainian government suddenly decided to make a show of force. 00.35.09 Ugur Yalçin Voice over It was like the fall of a nation. For us, it was like the rise and fall of a state. Forty years of hard work went down in a moment. 00.35.24 Music 00.35.30 Neal Ascherson Durmus Cinar, on another boat, was killed by Ukrainian bullets. 00.35.35 Music 00.35.38 Neal Ascherson The survivors from the sunken trawler were taken ashore and fined. The skipper was held in Ukrainian custody. 00.35.45 Music 00.35.50 Neal Ascherson The others were flown back to Turkey. 00.36.06 Neal Ascherson Pressure to compete is splitting what was once a close community. Secretly some families were glad when the Ukrainians sank a rival family’s boat. 00.36.19 Neal Ascherson The small operators can’t afford sonar for fish location. But they are being ruined by the big boats whose technology hoovers up the remaining shoals. 00.36.37 Sabahattin Güney Voice over Eighty percent of the smaller boats can’t afford to fish anymore and the remaining twenty percent are forcing themselves to continue. 00.36.51 Aston SABAHATTIN GÜNEY Voice over We’re not doing at all well. It’s very difficult to make enough to cover our expenses but what can you do, we have to eat. We’re trying to do something but we’re stuck. 00.37.05 Neal Ascherson It seemed to me that he was scarcely catching enough for his own supper. But unless the Turkish government pays him to keep his boat out of the water he can’t afford to give up. 00.37.19 Sabahattin Güney Voice over The big trawlers have all the latest technology and they keep fishing too close in shore. We see them as the main cause of the collapse in fish stocks. The fish only exist in our dreams now. 00.37.43 Sabahattin Güney Voice over You can’t find the species that used to exist when I was a child. Like mackerel, wherever you looked you saw whole shoals of them covering an area as big as a valley. Tonnes of them. We could get them with lines, nets, anything we wanted. Now we are fishing and you’ll see we won’t find any of these fish in our nets. 00.38.20 Sabahattin Güney Voice over Look at this goddamn barrel – as if that’s what we wanted to catch. 00.38.38 Neal Ascherson Look at this catch. It’s rubbish really – skimpy, undersized, wriggling in polluted muck. 00.38.45 Neal Ascherson This is what’s happening all over the Black Sea. 00.38.52 Sabahattin Güney Voice over The big trawlers must fish in the open seas – why don’t they do it? They have to do it. What isn’t enough for us to live on today certainly won’t be enough for them tomorrow. 00.39.05 Music 00.39.32 Neal Ascherson The fishing village was bad enough but to get more glaring evidence of the disaster you have to come here to the Istanbul fish market. And the market is twitchy. 00.39.47 Neal Ascherson This salesman shows me undersized fish on sale with the tap of his toe. 00.39.53 Neal Ascherson Most of what’s sold here is illegal - too young, too small or caught out of season. 00.40.01 Neal Ascherson Turbot, below the legal minimum size. 00.40.09 Neal Ascherson A kilo of these baby horse mackerel goes for three pounds. But if the fishermen could afford to let them grow up he could sell the box for twenty times as much. 00.40.20 Neal Ascherson It’s economic suicide and ecological murder. 00.40.31 Neal Ascherson Pollution in the northern Black Sea is down because industries in the post communist countries have collapsed. 00.40.38 Neal Ascherson So the Turkish government has one last chance to get its fisheries under control before those countries revive and spew out more toxic waste. 00.40.50 Neal Ascherson One retired fisherman has already given up hope that governments will act in time. For Haydar Deniz, fish life in the Black Sea is already history. Threatened species like turbot go into his pickle jar museum along with fish, which are known to be extinct. 00.41.12 Haydar Deniz Voice over Turbot is a very famous Black Sea fish. Today you can only find it off the Ukrainian coast. There are very few left, this one weighs one kilo. After a couple of years it will leave the Black Sea forever. 00.41.29 Neal Ascherson When a sea is plundered to death and the balance of its marine life is destroyed then people suffer too. 00.41.38 Neal Ascherson In Rumeli Feneri the family waits for Mehmet, skipper of the sunken boat. 00.41.45 Mehmet’s wife Subtitles Dear God, please give him back to us soon and save him from trouble. 00.41.51 Neal Ascherson The Ukrainians want payment not just for lost fish but for the ammunition they fired. In Turkey there is a campaign for Mehmet’s release but with no date set for his appeal it could be a long time before he comes home. 00.42.11 Neal Ascherson The neighbours still have their boats but the village knows that the writing is on the wall for everyone. 00.42.25 Cumhur Yalçin Voice over It’s been terrible for us. We have nothing left, we’ve even lost the will to work. It’s been a huge loss both financially and spiritually. We don’t want the next generation to think there are lots of fish in our seas and we can work as fishermen like our fathers. It’s not true. The next generation will curse us saying: ‘why did you do this to us, why are there no fish in our seas?’ 00.42.58 Music 00.43.03 Neal Ascherson Talking to the victims I can see a wider crisis. 00.43.08 Neal Ascherson Like it or not here comes the global test of whether we’re prepared to rescue a body of water, its living creatures and the humans who depend on them. 00.43.16 Music 00.43.18 Neal Ascherson The bottom line is this; if we lose the Black Sea then sooner or later we lose the oceans too. 00.43.31 Edward Stourton Neal Ascherson. Next week Our Rights or in some cases the lack of them. 00.43.36 Edward Stourton We report on the French women who’ve lost what many Europeans would regard as their most basic rights in law because of an accident of birth and a convention signed twenty years ago. 00.43.46 Edward Stourton In Latvia, children have so few rights that orphanages are becoming targets for paedophiles and the producers of sex films. 00.43.54 Edward Stourton Sue Lloyd Roberts went undercover to investigate and she’s turned up some disturbing evidence of what’s happening. 00.44.00 Edward Stourton And I’ve been to Holland to talk to the cancer specialist who believes that children as young as seven should have a right to euthanasia. 00.44.07 Edward Stourton Until then, goodbye. 00.44.47 Credits www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent Production Team MARTHA ESTCOURT FIONA LAWSON-BAKER NICK DODD DAVID LINES VANESSA VARTANIAN Co-ordinator DIANE MILLWARD VT Editor ROD HUTSON Graphic Designer NICOLA OWEN Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager IRENE OZGA Cameras GREGORY BARBERA ION STAPLETON Researchers VIRGINIA MUCCHI HELENA POZNIAK Picture Editors JURIS EKSTS DAVID HOWELL JANET SPILLER Producers ROBIN BARNWELL JANE GAVRIL JOHN THYNNE DANIELA VÖLKER Series Producer LUCY HETHERINGTON 00.44.09 End Music 00.44.13 Editor FIONA MURCH ©BBC MM 00.44.15 End Correspondent 21 6