International Affairs

The Cuban-born poet and essayist has just written his first novel, "The Marks of Birth." It explores the experience of exile through the eyes of a young character whose family is forced to flee the political unrest of a Caribbean island-nation, and begin again in America. Medina has also written two collections of poems: "Pork Rind and Cuban Songs" and "Arching into the Afterlife," and a book of personal essays entitled "Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood."

Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist who has written on Rwanda for "The Village Voice," "The Nation," and "The New Republic," and an investigative consultant for Human Rights Watch/Africa. He wrote a report for Human Rights Watch/Africa based on his visit to Rwanda in May and June of 1993. The report, "Arming Rwanda," is about the arms trade and the human rights violations in that country.

Patrick Bellgarde-Smith is a professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Today, he will place Haiti’s current political situation in a historical context, explaining the history of American involvement in Haiti. Bellgarde-Smith grew up in Haiti, at the height of the Duvalier dictatorship. His grandfather was Dantes Bellegarde, one of Haiti’s leading social philosophers.

Ian Buruma has just written the book, "The Wages of Guilt," which explores the different ways in which the people of Germany and Japan remember World War II. He seeks to explain why Germany has a collective sense of guilt over its war crimes, while Japan tries to forget its involvement in the war. Buruma's other books include "God's Dust" and "Playing the Game."

New York Times reporter John Darnton. This past Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Darnton published a series of articles in the Times about the current state of Africa. He was the Times' Africa correspondent in the 70s. This 3-part series is his return to see how conditions have changed. He reports that living standards have declined far below the rest of the world, with most African countries in economic turmoil, replete with famine, war and drought. He says the World Bank has become the new superpower of Africa with the post-cold war pullout of the U.S. and Russia.

Journalist Martha Honey. She worked as a freelance journalist in Costa Rica from 1983 to 1991. Her clients included Times (London), The Nation, ABC television, and National Public Radio. In 1984, she and her husband, Tony Avirgan were covering a press conference called by contra leader Eden Pastora Gomez, when a bomb exploded killing three journalists, and injuring dozens of other people, including Pastora, who was the intended target. (Tony Avirgan was also one of the people injured.) Honey and Avirgan and other journalists set out to find the person(s) responsible.

Alison Des Forges. She's a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where her specialty concerns the central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. She's also the Co-Chair of the International Commission on Human Rights Abuse in Rwanda, and a consultant to Human Rights Watch Africa on Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda has descended into civil strife since April 6th, when the Rwanda and the Burundi presidents were both killed in a plane crash.

South African journalist John Matisonn. Matisonn is white and grew up in the suburbs in Johannesburg. (His grandparents emigrated to South Africa at the turn of the century). To NPR listeners he's best known for his coverage from South Africa from 1986 to 1991. Matisonn also worked in Washington, D.C. He's now the head of elections for the South Africa Broadcasting Company, SABC, (which before the end of apartheid, broadcast purely government propaganda).

Excerpt from an interview with Desmond Tutu. (Rebroadcast of 05/15/1984).

Journalist and author Allister Sparks. Sparks is a fifth- generation South African. He heads the Johannesburg Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. In 1990, he published his historical study of South Africa called "The Mind of South Africa" (Knopf). His recent piece in "The New Yorker," called "The Secret Revolution" (April 11, 1994, p.56), reveals the little known, behind the scenes drama that started unfolding within South Africa almost 10 years ago.

James Fallows. He's the Washington Editor for the "Atlantic Monthly" and the author of a new book, "Looking at the Sun" (Pantheon). Fallows examines new political and economic systems that have arisen in East Asia which challenge Western principles of capitalism and democracy. Fallows argues the impact of Asia on the West has been hidden by America's false perception about the "success" of individual enterprise and rights in the area.

Dumisani Kumalo grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and fled the country in the 1970s. Kumal is back in the country to act as a monitor for South Africa's upcoming elections.
Jennifer Irish is a human rights activist who is not optimistic about the elections. Irish is coordinator for the Network of Independent Monitors which is tracking election related violence.

South African writer Gerhard Maré is the author of the biography "Appetite for Power." He discusses the upcoming elections in South Africa.

Kemal Kurspahic. He was editor-in-chief of Sarajevo's only surviving daily newspaper, "Oslobodenje." ("Oslobodenje" means liberation in Serbo-Croatian.) Now he is Washington correspondent for the paper. It has been a trial to get out the paper each day. The staff braved sniper fire just to get to work. After the paper's high rise offices were gutted by mortar fire, publication was transferred to an underground bunker. Three staffers were killed covering the war and Kurspahic himself was wounded.

Mexican author Carlos Fuentes. Mexico is in flux. On New Years Day, a violent peasant uprising broke out in Chiapas, and thru negotiations, the Zapitistas (as they call themselves) reached a tentative agreement with the government. Then frontrunner presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated as he campaigned in Tijuana. The Mexican government says at least seven people conspired in the killing. Fuentes will discuss recent events in Mexico and the history that shaped them.

Selig Harrison spent four years as Washington Post Bureau chief in Japan, and is now Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He argues that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea is overstated -- that they are using the "nuclear card to get diplomatic recognition and economic help." Negotiations offer a chance for nuclear disarmament and dismantling throughout the area.

Syndicated columnist and writer for Time magazine, Charles Krauthammer. He favors an economic blockade of North Korea to force its government to stop any development of nuclear weapons. Of President Clinton's policy on North Korea Krauthammer. has said, "To allow North Korea to flout the nonproliferation treaty and become bomb supplier to every outlaw state on the planet would be Clinton's most humiliating and most dangerous foreign policy retreat yet." (Wash Post 3/25/94).

Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. He was the first African to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature (in 1986), and he's been called one of Africa's "finest writers." He is a dramatist, poet, novelist, critic, and political writer. Some of his works have been banned by Nigerian regimes. He's gone into exile several times and has been imprisoned for political protests. He's written 21 books, including "Myth, Literature, and the African World," and his autobiography, "Ake': The Years of Childhood." (Ventura books).

Zlata Filipovic is a thirteen year-old Sarajevan, whose diaries of the war in Bosnia have been published this month as "Zlata's Diary" (Viking). The book begins in August of 1991, with a new school year --fifth grade-- and the trappings of girlhood: piano lessons and tennis. By that spring, Sarajevo was under siege and Zlata's schoolmates were being killed, her family hiding in the basement and abandoned purebred dogs wandered the streets.

Rock Critic Ed Ward on encountering the hip new language in Berlin: English.