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The Amanpour Hour
Interview With Governor Maura Healey (D-MA); Interview With Wesleyan University President Michael Roth; South Korean Women Fight Back Against Explicit Deepfakes; Interview With British Playwright Ryan Calais Cameron; Is A Painful History Repeating Itself In Sudan; Remembering Mario Vargas Llosa. Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired April 19, 2025 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:59:44]
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm going to hard disagree with that.
Unpopular opinion, ban phones at sporting events and concerts. I was watching the masters and nobody was taking the selfies, they weren't recording Rory McIlroy at the --
(CROSSTALKING)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: There are no phones there.
(CROSSTALKING)
ALYSSA: No, they were in the moment, riveted. It was so exciting, even from home to watch.
And then Coachella is going on. I don't know that people go to Coachella to actually listen to music. They do to take videos of the fact that they're at Coachella.
Ban cell phones at concerts and sporting events, they will be infinitely more enjoyable.
PHILLIP: Yes. I've been to those kinds of concerts. It's not really that much fun. Everyone, thank you very much for watching. Thanks for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE". You can catch me every weeknight, 10:00 p.m. Eastern with our "NEWSNIGHT" roundtable at any time on your favorite social media -- X, Instagram and TikTok.
But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone. And welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR. Here's where we're headed this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOV. MAURA HEALEY (D-MA): What we're seeing is something we've never seen before in this country.
AMANPOUR: Defying courts and testing constitutional limits, is Trump making common cause with international autocrats? I asked Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, who's on the front lines of American politics.
And --
MICHAEL ROTH, PRESIDENT, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY: They're punishing schools for not being loyal, in their view.
AMANPOUR: As the White House targets education, the president of Wesleyan University tells me how these institutions must refuse the loyalty challenge.
Plus --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were lots of terrible images. And then my face edited onto them.
AMANPOUR: A report from South Korea. It's A.I. deep fake crisis and the women fighting back.
Then --
RYAN CALAIS CAMERON, PLAYWRIGHT, "RETROGRADE": For me as an artist, you know, at one point it's like, wow, my play is really relevant. And also this is really scary.
AMANPOUR: The new play on London's West End, chronicling Sidney Poitier's fight against McCarthyism. Playwright Ryan Calais Cameron talks "Retrograde".
Also ahead -- two years into a brutal war and Sudan faces the world's worst humanitarian crisis. History is repeating itself. We look into my archive.
And finally --
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, PERUVIAN WRITER: Well, it was a way of using literature to seduce people, you know.
AMANPOUR: Remembering Nobel Laureate, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a giant of Latin American literature.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
People with no criminal records plucked from the streets and deported to foreign prisons. Protesters tasered at a town hall. Some of the world's leading universities being threatened with funding cuts. Law firms under attack. And the highest courts are defied.
Across the world, people are asking, is this what America has become? And is it ushering in an age of authoritarianism?
In the United States, long the bastion of democracy and the rule of law, many are trying to figure out how to get the ship of state back on an even keel.
My first guest today, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, is an influential voice in her party. And her state is more and more of a target of the current administration.
She told me there's a simple answer. Stand up for your constitutional rights or risk losing them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Governor Healey, welcome to the program.
HEALEY: It's good to be with you.
AMANPOUR: Overseas, we are feeling that this is not the America that has always projected itself as a shining light.
HEALEY: No, it is not. And, you know, I can tell you that every day we see things that the Trump administration is doing that are just really counter to a true America first agenda, true American values and freedoms, and the reasons why so many people come to America and study here and research here and start companies here.
I mean, there's a reason that America, since post-World War II, has led the world in scientific discovery and innovation, in knowledge, right, and with that tremendous economic growth.
But what Donald Trump has done from day one to states like Massachusetts and this country and world markets, is do everything to dismantle that.
AMANPOUR: So let me ask you, because not only are there the tariffs, which no doubt you have to deal with as a state, but there's also the financial crackdown on not just universities but research centers. What is the impact of that?
HEALEY: Tariffs remember, Donald Trump ran on an agenda to lower costs. And every day he has done things that are more inflationary, that are raising costs.
As governor here, I have been focused on number one, I cut taxes.
Number two, I passed the largest housing bill in history to build more housing. Where do we get our lumber from? Canada. Where do we get other products from? Mexico. So he's raising housing costs. He's raising energy costs. He's raising the price on everything that hurts our economy. It hurts the American economy.
[11:04:50]
HEALEY: When you talk about colleges and universities, remember that a place like Massachusetts, we have 100,000 foreign students who come to Massachusetts colleges and universities to study, to do research, to engage in efforts to right now do clinical trials and develop the cures and treatments to cure cancer and Alzheimer's and all these things. We have a number who have won Nobel prizes from here. And also, importantly, these are our entrepreneurs. These are people
who are starting A.I. companies, robotics companies, life science companies, companies that are so important to cybersecurity and defense.
So what he's done is in some instances, try to disappear people from our streets. I mean, literally grabbing a graduate student with no cause, with no due process. And I say that, Christiane, as somebody who is a former prosecutor and twice attorney general. That's happening.
And then he's cutting off funding and he's threatening. And, you know, it just -- it doesn't make any sense.
And this is what the public needs to understand what Donald Trump is doing. He is giving away America's intellectual assets because right now, because of what he's doing, China, countries from the Middle East and elsewhere are on our campuses in our state. And by the way, they're not just recruiting here. They're recruiting in states around the country because this is impacting all states.
AMANPOUR: So when you see Senator Van Hollen going over to El Salvador to try to get one of his constituents out of their gang jail there, he was exported or deported with no due process.
This administration says too bad, you know. Yes, it was an administrative error, but we're not getting him back. This constitutional crisis that we were told would happen when the administration, if it did, challenge or refuse a Supreme Court or higher court order, it's here now, right?
HEALEY: It's a -- it's really quite unbelievable where we find ourselves. And just so folks understand, my background, I was attorney general. In fact, I served alongside Pam Bondi for a time as the attorney general here in Massachusetts.
What we're seeing is something we've never seen before in this country. The weaponization of the Department of Justice, the launching of completely false, false investigations under false pretenses, the refusal to comply with the rule of law, the refusal now to comply with orders from the United States Supreme Court.
We've not seen a president of this country ever do this. And we're on the eve of celebrating 250 years of this great American experiment here, right this weekend in Massachusetts, in fact.
Never in the course of history has a president so refused to comply with the rule of law. It's bad for our people. It's bad for our democracy. It's very bad for business.
And I'll tell you the other thing. The fear is real. You know, I've heard people here who have been green card holders from countries like Canada and Germany and other European countries who are in the process of -- the final set in their naturalization interview. They don't know whether they should show up for fear of being arrested and hauled off to some gulag somewhere in El Salvador. That's the reality and that's why it is very important that people stand up. It's very important what Harvard University did and said enough is enough.
AMANPOUR: You just mentioned Pam Bondi and I was actually interested because I hadn't realized that, you know, you had worked together with her in the past.
So Pam Bondi is sitting in the White House when President Trump and President Bukele are there and talking about this guy who's been deported to Salvador.
And Stephen Miller stand up as if on script and on cue and says that no, he's been viewed as a criminal, when his lawyers, everybody else says that there's no evidence. He's not a gang member. Trump administration itself said it was an administrative error.
When you talk about Republicans why is it that a Pam Bondi would sit there and let this happen. Do you think she really believed this?
HEALEY: I can't really begin to get my head around what is going on? What I see of the responses, it's certainly not anything that is operating within a system that is a system of laws and the rule of law in this country, and that has been important to who America is for these past 250 years.
AMANPOUR: And not to mention, of course, those foreign students who are also incarcerated with no due process and no charges.
Governor Healey, thank you so much for joining us.
[11:09:51]
HEALEY: Thanks for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up later on the show, Harvard -- its name is almost mythical. It's older even than the United States itself.
As Trump targets these academic institutions, the president of Wesleyan University tells me what's at stake.
And later in the show, "Retrograde", the West End play showcasing Sidney Poitiers battle against Hollywood's Red Scare. I talked to playwright Ryan Calais Cameron about the uncanny parallels today.
[11:10:20]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
As we've discussed earlier in the show, the Trump administration continues its tireless campaign to reshape America. And right now, universities are paying the price, literally. Just this week, the government halted more than $2 billion in federal
funding for Harvard after the college rejected White House demands to essentially surrender its independence.
With Harvard now leading the way, other major U.S. Universities are also trying to figure out how to face down similar ultimatums.
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, was the first to speak out publicly. And what's more, he warned that the Trump administration's, quote, "selling Jews a dangerous lie" by claiming its crackdown is to combat anti-Semitism.
And this week, as students, professors and researchers around the nation and the world watch in alarm, Roth joined me from his campus in Connecticut with a robust defense of academic freedom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: So, let me first ask you where you discovered the steel in your spine not to break? What was the point at which you said, we cannot do this?
ROTH: Well, that's a great question because there are some things the federal government can rightly insist upon, and I don't have to agree with those things, but I do have to comply with the law.
For example, the end of affirmative action was a change in how we do admissions and we obey the law. We don't use racial preferences at all in our admissions process. I think we should be able to, but the government disagrees and we follow the law. That seems pretty straightforward.
In our case, we actually got rid of legacy admissions also at that time because if we're not going to give preferences, we shouldn't give preferences to our alumni either.
But there are some things when the government insist upon that are contrary to law, which is to tell universities who to admit, to tell universities how to teach, to tell universities how to understand belonging or fairness on their campuses.
And I think the outrageous arrest and threatened deportation of international students really made me stand up and write some essays about this. Even though I disagree deeply with the politics of those students, that shouldn't matter.
In America, you have the right to speak your mind, whether you have a green card or you're a citizen. And for the federal government to just show up one day at your door and then take you away because of the ideas you express, that is anti-American, anti-educational, and undermines our freedom.
AMANPOUR: Well, I want to ask you about that because you wrote an op- ed in "The New York Times". The headline was "Trump is selling Jews a Dangerous Lie". And this is one paragraph that you wrote. "Jew hatred is real, but today's anti-anti-Semitism isn't a legitimate effort to fight it. It's a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.
Jews who applaud the administration's crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril."
This is really an important statement. So, explain, first of all, the last segment, "will soon find that they applaud this at their peril". You're addressing your own community.
ROTH: Yes. As a Jew myself, I am appalled that people who support Israel will align themselves with an administration that is using scapegoating or racism and -- which has no trouble supping with Nazis when it's inconvenient for them.
I'm appalled that my fellow Jews will support this because they think it'll be good for Israel. I myself believe strongly in Israel's right to defend itself. I'm critical of the current government in Israel, but all of that shouldn't matter.
The idea that you can say you're fighting anti-Semitism and then cancel DEI programs, which actually can be used to protect Jews is absurd. The idea that you say you're fighting anti-Semitism, so you're canceling research grants for diabetes research or Alzheimer's research, this is ridiculous.
What the Trump administration is doing now is demanding a loyalty oath. They are demanding that schools express loyalty to the president and his current beliefs.
This has nothing to do with anti-anti-Semitism. And Jews who align themselves with leaders because they think those leaders are picking on other people, eventually, those -- they find -- the Jews find themselves the targets of that same abuse.
And we've seen this throughout history. The rabbis have talked about it, beware of governments that seem to be your friend and then violate the law. You may like the way they violate the law now. But in the future, it'll be at our own expense.
[11:19:45]
AMANPOUR: You know, I'm sitting here in the U.K. and I cover parts of the world which are not democracies and don't have protections and do crackdown on their students.
Right now, those brave students who've been protesting in Turkey, many, many of them were in jail. Of course, there's no due process.
This is the kind of thing we are used to seeing there. How shocking is it and how long do you think it can last in the United States?
ROTH: It's terrifically shocking and I fear it'll last if people don't speak out against it. It will last if citizens, whether they're at universities or elsewhere, say we need to protect our freedom.
I mean, this is not just about universities, this will be about businesses. This is about churches and synagogues and mosques. This is about civil society where one should have the ability to speak freely.
And our position as Americans in the university world has been so strong because we have freedom of inquiry.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you, the funding that's at threat, the government funding, whether it's the $2.2 billion at Harvard, which has been stopped, whether your funding, Columbia's, et cetera -- is this for DEI projects? Is this for Palestinian-Israeli studies? What is this funding for?
ROTH: It's for everything, Christiane. It's for scientific research. We have a researcher here who works on things for physics, for the Department of Defense and Energy. We -- and they just are freezing things because they can, not because there's some coherent agenda there. They're punishing schools for not being loyal, in their view.
AMANPOUR: Is it just about loyalty or is it a bigger conservative agenda, as expressed by Chris Rufo, and you've heard the interviews, he's the head of an organization, a conservative organization dedicated to doing what you just told me, to taking down liberal universities.
He also says that the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty across the board is totally lopsided. You know, and says that they want color blind admissions. Do they have a point?
ROTH: Absolutely. I wrote in, I think, 2017 in "The Wall Street Journal", about the need for an affirmative action program for conservatives on university campus. That's because in the Humanities, especially in the Interpretive Social Sciences, we tend to hire people who are left of center.
But the schools that they're attacking, it's not like they're graduating these legions of progressives or radicals. You know, the people graduating from Harvard these days, they want to be in Wall Street.
AMANPOUR: Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, thank you so much indeed for joining us. Thank you.
ROTH: Thank you for -- thank you for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: These are critical times for presidents like Roth as the administration continues to single out Harvard with moves to try to change its tax-exempt status now.
Next, South Korea is fighting back against A.I.-powered abuse online. We have a special report speaking to the women who've had enough.
[11:22:57] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
Now, artificial intelligence holds a lot of promise, but the dark side is still proving difficult to control. And we human beings are caught in its trap.
In South Korea, regular photos of ordinary women are twisted into explicit images by men they often don't even know. And now women are fighting back against this latest wave of online abuse.
As CNN's Mike Valerio now reports from Seoul.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE VALERIO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a reckoning across South Korea. Real lives, photos of real people twisted and exploited through A.I.
You're looking at protests against those who go on social media, find profile pictures, just everyday images of women and cruelly change them into what looks like real explicit material. They are deepfakes, A.I. manipulations.
RUMA, VICTIM OF DEEPFAKE: There were lots of terrible images and then my face edited onto them.
VALERIO: This is Ruma (ph). She asked us to use her alias and silhouette her interview to protect her safety and privacy. Ruma is a former student at the prestigious Seoul National University, and she told us how she found out on her phone that this kind of A.I. crime happened to her.
RUMA: I think I was having lunch with my mom and then my phone started ringing. The burst of messages and photos, you know, I was like, bombarded with all these images that I had never imagined, like in my life.
VALERIO: Ruma says she saw that fake nude photos of herself were shared on the messaging app Telegram. They were in a chat room where A.I. deepfakes were encouraged by dozens of anonymous users.
RUMA: My whole body started shaking so bad.
VALERIO: Ruma went to the police, but she also went to cyber activist and journalist Won Eun-ji. Won is renowned in South Korea for investigating cybercrimes. And Ruma asked Won to find who made the explicit deepfakes. Won asked us to pixilate her face so she can keep working undercover.
WON EUN-JI, CYBER ACTIVIST AND JOURNALIST: In my opinion, in Korea, acquaintance humiliation or degrading acquaintances has been viewed as a sort of game.
[11:29:49] VALERIO: Do you find that depressing beyond words that people think this is a game?
WON: It's a serious issue, especially the perpetrators post photos of women they know along with their names, ages, schools, workplaces and places they live on social media.
VALERIO: Won posed as a man on Telegram and helped lead police to arrest two former Seoul National University students who exploited Ruma. Ruma said she barely knew those students at all.
Seoul Central District Court sentenced one of the former students to ten years in prison and the other four years imprisonment. They were convicted of violating a law covering sexual protection of children and adolescents.
Seoul National University said quote, "The school will strengthen preventative education to raise awareness among the members of the university about digital sex crimes and do its best to protect victims and prevent recurrence."
KIM NAM-HEE, SOUTH KOREA'S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY MEMBER (through translator): The (INAUDIBLE) crime is very serious in Korea, but it's not taken seriously in Korean society.
VALERIO: Kim Nam-hee is one of South Korea's lawmakers who passed stronger penalties in September to fight the crimes. The maximum prison time is now seven years, up from five years for anybody convicted of creating non-consensual deepfake explicit images with the intention of distributing them.
VALERIO: Do you think that that's strong enough.?
KIM: Personally, I don't think increasing sentences is the only solution. What's been problematic is that investigations and punishments have been passive until now. Only 20 percent of those indicted for deepfake crimes have actually received prison sentences.
VALERIO: Telegram announced its moderators are removing explicit deepfakes, and the app is sharing data with authorities to remove and target illegal activity.
In a breakthrough, Seoul police said help from Telegram led to the recent arrest of a man who allegedly masterminded the exploitation of more than 200 people since 2020.
For the victims and how they recover, Ruma tells us deepfakes reshaped how she sees the world and how she sees herself.
RUMA: My whole personality changed, I think. I was much more outgoing, much more sociable. But after the incident, I had to kind of retreat to myself and to feel safe.
VALERIO: Mike Valerio, CNN -- Seoul.
(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: After a break, Sidney Poitier stars on London's West End. Well, it's really a new play based on his early career in the 1950s.
My conversation with playwright Ryan Calais Cameron about the Red Scare back then and lessons for today after this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAMERON: It's in the title "Retrograde". You know, it's like if we don't learn from some of the things in our past, then we're doomed to repeat them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[11:32:28]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
In this week's "Letter from London", we turn to an era from which painful lessons can be learned.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, McCarthyism created a witch hunt across the United States known as the Red Scare. This very dark time in American history is the backdrop for a new play here in London by Ryan Calais Cameron, one of Britain's most exciting young playwrights.
"Retrograde" takes an episode in the early life of Sidney Poitier, who became the first black man to win an Oscar for best actor.
Here, he has to decide whether to accept a star making contract with ugly strings attached. Ryan Calais Cameron came in to discuss his latest play and what attracted him to this very American story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Ryan Calais Cameron, thank you for coming in.
CAMERON: Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: From a busy schedule with this new hit West End play.
So, what made you choose Sidney Poitier? I mean, literally, if anybody sees the play, which they do, "Retrograde", it's a case study about McCarthyism through essentially one day just about, a meeting in an office with --
CAMERON: 59 minutes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
I came across this article that he was speaking with Oprah about -- one time that he was at NBC. And he almost got blacklisted. And I was like, what? I'd heard about the blacklisting and so much of my part of the artist, I knew that kind of stuff, but I never heard of it from the perspective of a black actor, someone that was already dealing with Jim Crow, redlining, and then now this.
I was like -- that to me sounds like the beginnings of the story. And as I continued to read about what happened to him through his memoirs, you know, it started to sound more like a thriller. And I was like, OK, someone's got to be writing this.
AMANPOUR: So now, let's start with one of the early monologues from -- or dialogues from the play.
So, he's in the meeting with the writer who's going to make him the star of an NBC program that's going to skyrocket his career.
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And there's the company lawyer, or the production guy.
CAMERON: Yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: And he says, yes, but. So, here's what Sidney Poitier says about the script that's just been handed to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IVANNO JEREMIAH, ACTOR, "RETROGRADE": I'm leafing through the script. I'm like, Marty, I don't understand. I don't understand what the part is.
He says, buddy, it's Tommy. He's offered you, Tommy. See, I think about that moment a lot. I didn't even assume when being offered something even from a friend, that I would be one of the central storytellers without caricature or stereotype.
[11:39:45]
JEREMIAH: See, I love this movie, because it brings something otherworldly that people like yourself cannot even fathom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, there he was expressing his joy and delight to be getting this leading role.
CAMERON: Yes, yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: And then they tell him, but actually it comes with some very ugly strings attached.
CAMERON: Exactly. It comes at a price. And that is --
AMANPOUR: So, the price is?
CAMERON: His soul. You know, it's everything that he is, that made him who he is. His integrity. You know, and he has to sell out or he has to give the name of -- I'm trying not to give too much away -- but he has to give the name of Paul Robeson, who is a massive giant of a man and icon to him. And he has to consider what is more important to him, his integrity,
or moving along in this industry that he's a newcomer in.
AMANPOUR: There is a moment in the play where he talks about, and you -- well, you wanted to pay homage to something Sidney Poitier had done in an actual film called "The Heat of the Night" when he stared down and actually engaged in some physical retaliation.
CAMERON: Yes, yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: So, tell us what you were trying to do with that.
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to play the clip. This is "In The Heat of the Night", Sidney Poitier and the plantation owner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNEY POITIER, ACTOR: We were just trying to clarify some of the evidence. Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say last night about midnight?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So --
CAMERON: That slap is the slap that echoes through generations to me, you know. And I was like, I need to get that moment in this.
AMANPOUR: And how did you get it in, for those who haven't seen it?
CAMERON: Yes, I think it's about Sidney taking ownership over his image and over the path that he's going to take. And the moment in the play where he truly becomes the man that he was born to be, you know.
And he gets -- he gets one over on the -- on the big bad guy in this play, Mr. Parks which night after night gets a massive applause from the audience.
But I was trying to recreate, you know, every time I watched that slap, you know, it does that to an audience.
AMANPOUR: And again, it is really awful what they were asked to do, whether they were black or white or man or women, you know, they were told to disavow any kind of political affiliation. In his case, civil rights, Martin Luther King.
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: So again, this is the -- this is the creative tension throughout.
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Did you write I mean, you didn't write it with today in mind, but when you see what's happening in the United States today --
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: -- with all of this actually they're calling it like a new Red Scare what's happening on American campuses?
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: You know, et cetera.
CAMERON: Do you know what? I did my first draft in 2018, right. So there were a lot of things in my head when I was writing it of like, if we don't rectify some of the things that we're seeing today, do you know what I mean?
And it's like, for me as an artist, you know, at one point it's like, wow, my play is really relevant. And also this is really scary. This is really scary because when I was writing it, I was like, you know, it was almost like a fever dream. And now its reality.
So yes, it's in the title "Retrograde". You know, it's like if we don't learn from some of the things in our past, then we're doomed to repeat them.
AMANPOUR: And you've been -- you've spoken a lot about being inspired by a lot of Americana, American history, American culture.
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Would you today --
CAMERON: Yes.
AMANPOUR: -- want to take this play to the United States in this climate?
CAMERON: I think this play belongs in the United States. It feels like, you know, when I wrote it, it had New York in mind. It's got its essence there. The characters are there, it breathes that kind of like you're saying Americana.
And I think it's like you were saying, its more relevant now than it's ever been.
AMANPOUR: Well, an amazing play. And not giving away the spoiler, does Sidney Poitier accept these ugly strings or not?
CAMERON: Oh, I can't tell you that. I can't tell you that. But it is on at the Apollo right now. So.
AMANPOUR: It's really great. Brian Calais Cameron --
CAMERON: Thank you. As always, thank you very much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And this extraordinary play is on now at London's Apollo Theater until June.
Just a note, it took 38 more years for another black man to win the Oscar, Denzel Washington in 2002.
After the break, history repeats itself in Sudan. I go back to my archive 20 years ago in Darfur, how things never change.
[11:44:03]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
We turn now to a bleak milestone. This week marks two years since the latest war in Sudan. The U.N. says it's the worst humanitarian crisis in the world even refugee camps are under attack.
This is an entirely man-made disaster. Sudan is now the only country in the world experiencing famine. This week, Britain and the E.U. have committed $750 million in life saving assistance.
And it all reminded me of the horrendous genocide during the 2004 Darfur war, which I covered. Mass starvation, displacement and violence at the hands of rebel militias and governments. Decades later, as the world looks away, we cannot.
Here's my report from then.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: I started covering refugee crises just after the first Gulf War, when millions of Iraqi Kurds fled Saddam Hussein's violent campaign of revenge. We watched them huddle pitifully across the border in Iran.
[11:49:46]
AMANPOUR: But soon the U.S. formed a no-fly zone to protect them as they returned to resettle in northern Iraq.
Right now, the biggest and most urgent refugee problem is in Darfur, an embattled and desperately poor region in western Sudan, where people have been caught up in a seemingly endless ethnic conflict.
Hundreds of thousands of them have died, and many more hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes, refugees in their own land.
We're here at the Riyadh camp outside El Geneina, the capital of western Darfur. And what you can see is people living in basic structures. You can't even call these huts because they're just a bunch of twigs and straw matting that people have had to put up.
They don't even have plastic shelter. And that's going to be a big, big problem because the rainy season has just started. Sometimes it comes down in sheets, like as one person described, sheets of glass. We're in what's called an ambulatory therapeutic feeding center. This
is set up by Medecins sans Frontieres, the French relief group, and it's something that they've done exceptionally here to treat the most severely malnourished children.
First, they put them in these scales to determine their weight compared to how old they are. This little upper arm bracelet tells the story. Green is ok. Yellow at risk. Orange is malnourished and red is severe malnutrition.
That's the case with Hamdi Ismail. He's one-and-a-half years old and weighs only about 12 pounds. His grandmother, Khadija, has brought him here because he can't keep any food down. She says he's also got the flu.
For a population on the edge like this one, a simple case of diarrhea can be a killer. MSF has found 20 percent of the children in western Darfur are severely malnourished. That's one in every five children.
Those as badly off as Hamdi don't have long to live unless they can keep fluids and formula down.
Here we are in Habila, a village that has not had any food distribution since June. And so this plane is bringing in much needed food aid.
It's a giant Russian Aleutian commandeered by the U.N., the World Food Programme. And any minute now, it's going to open up. There we see it. And 12 tons of aid it's going to drop to the ground.
Then these armies of people come to collect it and take it to the distribution point. There are columns of men who've come up here, and they're going to haul it back on their bags.
And then there're the ladies. These people have come with their little straw brushes, little baskets, and literally they're picking up every single grain. It's that desperately needed.
It is the promise of home that sustains millions during their darkest hours. While never being allowed to return home, just sows the seeds for the next generation of war and conflict.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And what about Gaza? Starvation stalks that enclave again. As one Palestinian leader says, for more than six weeks now not a slice of bread, not a glass of water, not any medicine has been allowed in.
Dozens of women and children are being killed every day, sacrificed in Israel's 18-month war on Hamas.
When we come back, remembering a giant as tributes pour in for Peru's legendary writer, Mario Vargas Llosa. His legacy and what he told me about how he got started.
[11:53:30]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: And finally, a tribute to a titan of literature. A major figure in the Latin American wave of artistic renaissance, the great Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa passed away at the age of 89 this week. Known for novels like "The Time of the Hero" and "Conversation in the Cathedral", many of his works depicted the horrors of tyranny and the fight against it.
His colorful career included a Nobel prize, a run for president, and an infamous punch up with his fellow great, Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
He remained an influential voice late into his life. And when I spoke to him just a couple of years ago, he told me how it all began.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You were kind of a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, writing love letters for you -- for your student colleagues. How did that come about?
LLOSA: Well, it was a way of using literature to seduce people, you know. I had this this impression that my letters were able to convince people to became friends of mine. It was a way to get acquainted with the -- with the words, with the language, with the Spanish.
[11:59:46]
LLOSA: Probably it was just a radical exercise, you know, be in touch with people through the -- through language.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And that is seductive indeed. One literary critic described Llosa as "A polymath who wears his wisdom lightly, with eyes and ears everywhere, and a voice as loud as thunder." That is a great epitaph.
And that is all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com and on all other major platforms.
I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you again next week.
