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Amanpour
One Year Since Taking of Mosul; Confronting Mass Killers on Camera; Imagine a World. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired June 12, 2015 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNNI: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to a special weekend of the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
And it's been one horrible and brutal year since Mosul fell to ISIS and the international community seems at a loss for how to stop its relentless
rise. This week, the United States promised hundreds more troops to train Iraqi forces. Now that the ISIS caliphate covers more territory than it
did a year ago, which is about a third of Iraq and half of Syria.
And my guest warns against ignoring Syria in the battle to stabilize Iraq. David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary and now president of
the International Rescue Committee, joined me from New York. I asked him about international inaction, helped along by his own brother, Ed, who is
leader of the Labour Party, stop British intervention in Syria.
I also asked him about the future of that Labour Party after Ed's historic election defeat.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: David Miliband, welcome back to the program.
MILIBAND: Thanks very much. It's good to be with you.
AMANPOUR: Except this is a horrible day, it's a horrible anniversary and it certainly is important and appropriate to ask the question many are
asking and that is why is ISIS succeeding?
MILIBAND: I think there are really two key reasons that one has to understand for the present situation. First, there is not a clear
political leadership of the Sunni community inside Iraq. And there is a terrible choice being offered to Sunnis at the moment, almost between
Ba'athists on the one hand and -- ex-Ba'athists on the one hand and ISIS on the other. And so the void of Sunni political leadership came through loud
and clear.
Secondly, obviously, the vacuum in Central and Eastern Syria, you'll have noted on your program the fall of Palmyra on the Syrian side of the border,
that void, that security void on the Syrian side of the border has been an immense source of strength for ISIS as well.
AMANPOUR: And this is something that the world is wrestling with, seemingly every day, and with no clear strategy.
[14:05:01]
What about what you've written and that is political inertia by the Western-led coalition or by the international community, that simply let
Syria roll on well into a fifth year of war. And as we know, more than 200,000 people dead and millions of refugees inside and outside the
country.
MILIBAND: Well, I wish, Christiane, that there was daily wrestling with the Syrian crisis. My fear is that the crisis in Syria, over 4 million
refugees, 12 million people inside the country in humanitarian need, my fear is that Syria has become like background music to modern international
politics. It's seen as a disaster but that no one can do anything about it.
AMANPOUR: But also as a former foreign secretary, what do you say should be done?
You say people act as if nothing can be done.
What should be done to stop the war in Syria?
MILIBAND: I think there are really three elements to this. First is to support the neighbors of Syria, countries like Lebanon and Jordan, creaking
under the weight of refugees, Jordan, a very close ally of the United States. Those countries need support.
Secondly, inside the country, the Shia abdication of responsibility by the Assad regime for the welfare of citizens in rebel-held areas, I mean, seven
of our beneficiaries, the beneficiaries of International Rescue Committee programs, were killed in Idlib just two weeks ago. These are ordinary
civilians.
The fact that there's no accountability for the conduct of the war inside the country is more than a screaming shame. It's actually a crime.
And thirdly and obviously most importantly and most elusive is to put far more effort into the political drive to find a resolution of this dispute.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Miliband, let's be very frank. It was your own party, the Labour Party, led by your own brother, Ed Miliband, who stepped back and
refused a parliamentary backing for some kind of action in Syria back in 2013. And that's when real crimes were committed, more than the average
crime. In other words, the use of weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons.
Do you think it was a mistake in retrospect to stop that action and therefore to stop the Americans doing any action?
And did it make Assad just sit there and say, hey, I can do anything because the world is not going to do anything to stop me?
MILIBAND: I mean, my judgment is that the weakest point for the Assad regime was really in the summer of 2012. That's when it seemed to be
creaking. What's absolutely clear is that the stalemate at the international level between the U.S. and Russia, broadly speaking, and the
U.N. Security Council, has allowed conditions to be created inside the country of a vacuum in the middle and east of the country, that has been
exploited by ISIS and by other jihadist groups.
The tragedy is if Syria is put into the too difficult box because in fact the options are only going to get worse, each time I come on this program,
you are totally at liberty to say, but things are worse than the last time you came on.
They're even worse on the humanitarian side, despite the passage of three U.N. resolutions. And so my warning, if you like, to the politicians is
that, of course, the options are bad at the moment. But they're only going to get worse for the absence of engagement.
AMANPOUR: You skillfully dodged the actual heart of my question. But I still want to know whether you think that not doing something when it was
screamingly obvious that something had to be done in 2013, created this inertia that you're talking about right now.
And as a secondary question, now that there is air power over Syria, do you think that there should be air cover for those very people who need
humanitarian help, some kind of safe area?
MILIBAND: Let me take the two questions, Christiane.
The first is that the real issue in respect to the chemical weapons is whether the peaceful commitment to the renunciation of chemical weapons,
which the Assad regime agreed to under Russian pressure in 2013, is being followed through, because there are well-founded reports of the use of
chemical weapons since 2013, including this year, including the use of chlorine gas. So that is the issue in respect to the chemical weapons.
In respect of the humanitarian so-called "safe zone," it has to be my position as someone leading a humanitarian organization that all options
should be on the table, but the key from all of our experience around the world as a humanitarian organization is it's the details that matter when
it comes to saving the lives of civilians.
And so the question is, what kind of safe zone, over what area, enforced by whom with what kind of follow-up?
And I think those kinds of detailed discussions do need to be on the table. It is coming through in the U.S. now with some senators raising these
issues.
And I think the only sensible answer for humanitarian organizations confronting the kind of implosion that exists at the moment is to say that
the detailed discussion about how civilians are to be protected is an urgent priority now.
AMANPOUR: Can I make a hard switch to domestic British politics?
Your brother, Ed Miliband, led your party to its worst defeat in around 30 years. And now, as you know, there's a full-scale leadership contest
underway to replace him.
[14:10:03]
Where do you stand in this contest? I assume you're not going to give me names but should this be more of the left-leaning socialist, unionist kind
of candidate?
Or should it be more in the Blair right modernizing centrist candidate?
MILIBAND: Well, I think it's important for all the candidates is to reflect on the very clear lessons of two devastating electoral defeats for
the Labour Party in the last five years, which have come for a very clear reason. And the reason is that that public have concluded that instead of
building on the strengths and remedying the weaknesses of the Blair years, the party has turned the page backwards rather than turning the page
forwards.
And so I think it's the responsibility of all the candidates to find again that combination of economic dynamism and social justice that define the
success of the Labour Party in the 1990s and the early 2000s but also the success of democratic parties in the U.S., of center left parties in Europe
as well.
And the responsibilities on those in politics those in the Labour Party are very real because the details of the election defeat that Labour suffered
are very sobering indeed.
AMANPOUR: Always good to get your perspective. Thanks so much for joining me tonight.
MILIBAND: Great to speak to you. Thanks a lot, Christiane.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And after a break, we turn to the Islamic world's biggest democracy, which is still struggling with its military past. Indonesia and
the 1 million so-called Communists who were massacred in the 1960s. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer shows us "The Look of Silence," next.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
Imagine confronting the men responsible for your brother's death. Imagine doing it over and over. And imagine doing it to the very people who
celebrate what they did. That's the subject of my next guest, Joshua Oppenheimer's, new documentary. It's called "The Look of Silence."
(VIDEO CLIP, "THE LOOK OF SILENCE")
AMANPOUR: This is an accounting of what did happen under Indonesia's military dictatorship in the 1960s. We see the extremes of human behavior
and the courage it takes to confront coldblooded killers. The film is a companion to Oppenheimer's earlier award-winning "The Act of Killing."
[14:10:05]
He and his main protagonist, Adi Rukun, tell me they did this to force the truth into the light.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome to you both.
Let me ask you, Joshua, first, why "The Look of Silence"?
What did that mean?
JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER, DOCUMENTARIAN: The film tends to make the viewer feel and see and understand in your body and your heart what does it do to human
beings to have to live for 50 years in terror, in the aftermath of a genocide, where the perpetrators remain in power and keep everybody afraid.
AMANPOUR: Well, on that note, Adi, the fear of these perpetrators, who you went to talk to, to try to get answers about Ramli, your brother's death,
the one who said that you don't even want to know what would happen if you'd asked me these questions back during the military dictatorship, were
you ever afraid when you talked to these perpetrators, these killers?
RUKUN (through translator): I was afraid because I'm not a courageous person. But I want them -- I want them -- I want it to stop. That's why I
forced myself to go and see them.
AMANPOUR: It was extraordinarily, for instance, to see some of these people laughing as they described to you what they had done to your brother
and other people.
Can you believe, all these years later, that that happened and that these people are still there, they're still in positions of power?
RUKUN (through translator): At the beginning I couldn't believe it. I know that my brother was killed by them. In truth, I can't believe what
they said. But the fact is they killed my brother.
AMANPOUR: Joshua, why did they talk to you? I mean, they just spilled their guts as if either they didn't care who was listening or they were
still OK with it.
OPPENHEIMER: They would have spoken to you as well. When I -- it was actually Adi who, back in 2003, first encouraged me to film the
perpetrators. We'd spent three weeks; Adi had spent a few weeks starting a process, where I was working with survivors, with Adi's family and the
people around them.
And after three weeks, the army threatened the survivors and Adi not to participate in the film, at which point Adi suggested, please don't give up
and go home. Try to film the perpetrators. I was afraid to do so. But when I got over my fear and approached them, I found that immediately,
every single one of them was open. It took nothing to build trust. I would simply say, you know, I'm interested in the history of this region.
And within seconds, they would talk about the worst details of what they'd done because they've never been removed from power. The rest of the world
celebrated the genocide while it happened.
AMANPOUR: Celebrated?
OPPENHEIMER: Yes. There's an NBC documentary that we see in "The Look of Silence," where an executioner in Bali tells the anchor person, Ted -- or
tells the journalist, Ted Yates (ph), "Bali is now more beautiful without the Communists."
And the journalist, instead of challenging him, nods as though, yes, perhaps that's so.
AMANPOUR: Can I play the clip -- or at least a clip -- from your movie about this very reporting that you're talking about?
(VIDEO CLIP, "THE LOOK OF SILENCE")
AMANPOUR: That's the reality of the '60s. Everybody took Communists as the bogeyman.
So they got away with murder -- literally.
OPPENHEIMER: I had this -- when I encountered the boasting of the perpetrators, I had this awful feeling as I filmed more and more of these
people boasting, sometimes in front of their grandchildren, that I'd wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis
still in power if the rest of the world had condoned or even celebrated the Holocaust while it took place.
And it was that sense that not only is this moral nightmare possible but that it may not be the exception to the rule. It may be the rule across
much of the global south.
It was that sense that led me to stop everything I was doing and spend as many years as it would take to address this situation. Present-day
impunity, which is really what both of my films, "The Act of Killing" and its companion piece -- or vice versa -- "The Look of Silence" and its
companion piece, "The Act of Killing," address. They're about impunity today.
AMANPOUR: And yet there are war crimes tribunals.
Have these people never heard of that?
Were they never afraid that they might be indicted and taken to be prosecuted?
OPPENHEIMER: To create a new tribunal, a special tribunal for the crimes of 1965 in Indonesia, would likely take an act of the Security Council of
the United Nations.
[14:15:03]
We must remember that two of the permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and the United Kingdom, were enthusiastic supporters of
the genocide when it took place.
It's clear --
AMANPOUR: They would obviously -- they would -- they would object to calling themselves "enthusiastic supporters."
But it's true. The whole of the West was anti-Communist.
OPPENHEIMER: Well, not just that. There was direct aid. There was incitement.
AMANPOUR: So you did that. You took on this massive topic by finding people like Adi to actually uncover the layers of what your family went
through.
Your brother, as I said, was killed. And that's the central part of this film. You talked a lot to your mom, your mother, who's still alive, about
what it was like to go through that and what it's like to live with all these people, the killers, still around her.
We're going to play something and I will ask your reaction afterwards.
(VIDEO CLIP, "THE LOOK OF SILENCE")
AMANPOUR: You know, I don't know how she still manages to live surrounded by these people. I know that she says they will pay later; they will pay
in the next life.
How does she cope?
RUKUN (through translator): Practice. Until I was 40 years old, as I am now, we lived with them. After Joshua's film, in order to prevent people
intimidating us, we moved to a different place, which is far away.
AMANPOUR: And how does your mother live with all that happened throughout all those years?
And there was one really dramatic part of the film, where you find out that her brother, your uncle, was actually a prison guard and then you tell your
mother about it.
Did she really never know?
RUKUN (through translator): About my uncle, my mom really didn't know. But that's our life. It's not only our family but the whole village
experienced things like us.
AMANPOUR: And you are an eye doctor. And this amazing image of you fitting all these perpetrators with lenses and then asking them these
enormous questions, what do you hope will come of this film?
RUKUN (through translator): I hope that I can help people see the past so that in future it won't happen again.
AMANPOUR: Joshua, you couldn't get a better mission statement if you like than Adi. But I just have to say, the film is also visually beautiful.
Were you aware of the juxtaposition between the beauty and the ugliness of what they were saying?
OPPENHEIMER: Yes, I had a feeling that my task here was not to create a journalistic or historical expose of what happened in 1965 but to actually
make us feel that Adi is our brother and Adi's mother is our mother or grandmother, Adi's children is our children so that through one family,
this film becomes a mirror to all of us.
AMANPOUR: Well, it's an amazing film and I really hope that it's a really serious call to action in these cases.
So Joshua Oppenheimer, thank you very much indeed.
And Adi Rukun, thank you so much. Amazing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And after a break, this week a scientific discovery that is enough to drive you to drink. We see a few chimpanzees doing just that.
Imagine primates hitting the bottle from dawn until dusk. That's next.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight imagine a world where Homo sapiens' taste for a tipple is shared without our primate ancestors. Well, we don't have
to imagine because a new scientific study on West African chimpanzees confirms it.
This astounding footage shows our not-so-distant ancestors raiding local supplies and using a leaf as a sponge to shovel down their chosen poison,
which is fermented palm tree sap. Some of the chimps drink the equivalent of a whole bottle of wine with some of the predictable side effects,
passing out before nightfall after binging all day.
But there have been cases of these Bossou chimps swinging under the influence.
And how about this? One theory even goes that by being able to knock back a few, primates have actually survived to climb the evolutionary ladder
because they could forage and feast on fermented fruit when there was little food to go around, a skill and a thirst they stored away in their
genes and later passed on to us.
Not much more I can say. And that is it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on
Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
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