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UNRWA Chief Warns of Major Disaster in Yarmouk; Officer Charged with Murder after Video Surfaces; Imagine a World. Aired 11-11:30p ET

Aired April 08, 2015 - 23:00   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, CNN HOST: Tonight: a war within Syria's war, a besieged refugee camp already on Assad's front line now overrun by ISIS.

Can, will anyone save Yarmouk's refugees?

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PIERRE KRAHENBUHL, UNRWA COMMISSIONER GENERAL: If the world doesn't seize this opportunity to think differently and to act differently on the

Syria crisis, then I think truly we will be confronted with a major disaster on the ground.

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AMANPOUR: Also ahead, another fatal police shooting rocks America. Protesters take to the streets. But will it come to prosecution? The

numbers will shock you.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Syria is now the forgotten war and out of sight a desperate situation is just getting worse.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Look at the faces on these children, bewildered, grasping hands after surviving an apparent missile attack on

Aleppo by Assad's forces.

Today millions of Syrians face a grim choice, ISIS or Assad. This chilling new video shows ISIS fighters taking over the Yarmouk refugee camp

which is within a stone's throw of Bashar al-Assad's palace in Damascus.

There are reports already emerging of beheadings, kidnappings and mass killings. The United Nations says some 18,000 Palestinians refugees live

in Yarmouk now, which is down from 150,000 when the war started.

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AMANPOUR: Life was already a living hell for the people there. The Assad regime has surrounded, bombed and starved the camp for nearly two

years now. The United Nations agency responsible for this camp is shut out and demanding that the international community intervene to avert a

massacre and mass starvation.

Few outsiders have seen the tragedy with their own eyes. But the chief of the U.N.'s Relief and Works Agency, Pierre Krahenbuhl, has just

come back from Yarmouk and he calls the situation completely catastrophic. He joined me a short while ago from base in Amman, Jordan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Pierre Krahenbuhl, welcome to the program.

PIERRE KRAHENBUHL, UNRWA COMMISSIONER GENERAL: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Give me an idea of how desperate the situation is for the ordinary people in the Yarmouk camp.

KRAHENBUHL: Well, you know, I was in Yarmouk myself three weeks ago. And what I saw at the time was already incredibly desperate. And there

were scenes that were already very unbearable in the sense of people lining up for distribution of assistance, incredibly weakened after years and long

periods of fighting but also of siege.

And I'm thinking about their faces now and as they were coming up towards me and were discussing where are they currently with this

intensification of fighting, have they found places to, you know, be in safety or are they exposed to extreme circumstances.

It must be harrowing to be in the bombed-out homes and buildings that they were barely surviving in in the past and now have to confront this

incredible escalation of violence around them.

AMANPOUR: And Pierre, you have not and UNRWA hasn't been in there for the past week since ISIS has made this dramatic takeover of the camp.

And there is a quote from a resident, Feraz (ph), on your website, saying, "Many of us wish to die but we cannot end our lives. We can do

nothing but wait, like in the play 'Waiting for Godot.' We're waiting for someone who never shows up."

Pierre, they have no hope that the international community or anybody is going to rescue them from this.

KRAHENBUHL: Well, this is why a international political mobilization is needed and every actor with any influence on parties on the ground has

to come forward, whether this is political or religious leaders or others to convey the message.

You're right. We have not, for the past week, been able to access the region. We have said we are ready to go in at any time, but of course for

that, a truce is needed and guarantees in terms of security are needed.

But to bring it back to your point, the people inside -- remember that these are people who originally were forced to leave Palestine in 1948 and

'67; here we have another generation of Palestinians faced with the indignity of loss of life, of living in insecurity, of having to abandon

their homes, living in fear and also facing dispossession.

The world has to realize that this is a tragedy within the wider Syrian catastrophe but one that the world really cannot take the risk to

ignore or to overlook.

AMANPOUR: And yet, Pierre, it is. It's ignoring it and it's overlooking it. You briefed the U.N. Security Council just this week and

you have said, frankly, to your bosses, why don't you come here and look for yourselves?

KRAHENBUHL: Yes, I think nothing replaces the fact of being confronted with this extent of suffering one's self. And I did submit that

proposal and idea to the Security Council sincerely also because, if anything positive could come out of Yarmouk, it would be today that the

international community would come together in ways that it hasn't on the Syria conflict.

This division in the international community has, of course, been a major issue and we realize that beyond the maps that we like to look at,

beyond the reflections on the front lines and the military strategies, at the end of the day all of these situations boil down to what is happening

to individual men, women and children. And there are 3,500 children in Yarmouk right now.

And if the world doesn't seize this opportunity to think differently and to act differently on the Syria crisis, then I think truly we will be

confronted with a major disaster on the ground in Yarmouk and also nobody will be able to say that we didn't know it was going on.

AMANPOUR: Well, have you been able to and would you ever negotiate with ISIS, who seem to be storming through? That's one question.

And the other question is, since they are so close to Damascus and the presidential palace, the surrounding forces belonging to Assad, has Assad

been persuaded to open a humanitarian corridor?

And if not, why not?

KRAHENBUHL: Well, we have, of course, a practice of engaging with the different parties in the conflict in order to secure access. There has

been a longstanding, of course, dialogue with the Syrian government on access to a variety of camps that -- where Palestinians were in Syria

during -- you know, for preceding decades and also now during the conflict.

We have just recently reopened an access route to Yarmouk, which allowed us to resume supplies three weeks ago and that's started to become

a regular pattern, which was good news; not sufficient, but good news. And now, of course all of this has been turned upside down.

In terms of dialogue with parties and armed groups inside Yarmouk, previously that did exist because, again, for security, it was of course

required that people would know that UNRWA was carrying out these activities.

With the current situation of the -- on the ground, we do not have contacts with the Islamic State. And of course if a truce were to take

place and the conditions were possible, it would be a moral imperative for us to reach out to everybody to try and reach people in need.

This is our role. This is our responsibility.

AMANPOUR: You know, people don't remember; the last time there was some kind of mention of Yarmouk in the public, was with that iconic picture

of the crumbled town and the crumbled camp and people lining up for food from you guys. That was a moment when the world sat up and, oh, look, took

notice of that.

Now ISIS is there and there are horrendous reports.

Have you been able to confirm any of the reports of beheadings or other such brutalities there?

KRAHENBUHL: No, we haven't, although of course we do receive phone calls like many others from inside the camp and many of the phone calls, of

course, very desperate about the security circumstances, the survival, what people are thinking about now as literally about their survival.

There really isn't any other parameter. You know, parents will think about the security of their children. Some have lost contact with their

children and this is, of course, something that for any parent is an unbearable thought, that this is going on currently.

The access for us is too difficult at this stage, the intensity of what's going on is too difficult for us to independently verify what's

going on. But we have no doubt that deep, you know, inside the camp, in these bombed-out homes and buildings where they have been barely surviving,

there are tragedies unfolding for Palestine refugees.

And, again, this is a community that is already so destabilized historically, having been expecting and waiting for a long-lasting solution

to their historic plight that, of course, the situation in Yarmouk is sending shock waves through the Palestine refugee communities in Lebanon,

in Jordan but also in the West Bank and in Gaza.

And I think altogether it is an issue that the international community has to take up much more seriously, including addressing politically the

long-lasting issue of the occupation and the Israel-Palestine issue, I think all of these things are today on the table and the thoughts go right

now urgently to the people inside Yarmouk.

But in a way they reflect what the community is going through at large.

AMANPOUR: A major tragedy. Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, thank you very much for

joining us.

KRAHENBUHL: You're welcome, Christiane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And this week Syria and its so-called official opposition is sitting down for political talks in Moscow but not the main opposition

exile groups, even the Russian government is playing down any hope of a breakthrough.

And after a break, we turn to another high-profile abuse of power, even more bullets hitting America's race relations -- that's next.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

The predictability is shocking and it's infuriating, another American police officer shot and killed an apparently unarmed black man. He was

shot in the back as he fled. It happened in the state of South Carolina. Police say 50-year-old Walter Scott, who's a Coast Guard veteran and a

father of four, had been pulled over for a broken tail light. The officer, Michael Slager, is now in jail, charged with murder. And he's been fired

from his job. But this only after the horrifying cell phone video surfaced of the attack that, in fact, happened on Saturday. And it contradicted the

officer's previous account.

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AMANPOUR: Now at a rowdy and high-tension press conference just moments ago, the town's police chief said that he was deeply affected by

that video.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDDIE DRIGGERS, NORTH CHARLESTON POLICE CHIEF: I'm going to be totally honest with you. I am. And give me just a second. The honesty

comes from my heart. I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw.

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AMANPOUR: And it did frighteningly clear-cut. But this is a rare case. Police officers are rarely charged with murder after killing

suspects.

Why is that?

Joining me now in the studio is Richard Aborn. He's a former prosecutor and a long-time adviser on criminal justice issues.

Welcome to the program.

RICHARD ABORN, PRESIDENT, CITIZENS CRIME COMMISSION OF NYC: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: And you could imagine for an American audience but also for an international audience, this does seem sort of de rigueur here in this

country.

First and foremost, do you think that the swiftness with which the officer was dealt with would have happened if there hadn't been this

incriminating video?

ABORN: No, I don't think it would have happened. In fact, the original statement coming from the police and from the defense lawyers was

that this was a justifiable act in response to a man either resisting arrest or trying to wrestle with the officer over the Taser and thereby

threatening the officer. Clearly the video shows a much different story and shows the power of these videos.

AMANPOUR: Now there was, as I said, quite a rowdy press conference. The mayor and the police chief tried to answer the questions. But one of

the things that they didn't answer was -- and the video shows this -- you know, this is a man who's down for the count. And yet the first thing the

pursuing officer, Slager, shouted to him was, "Down on the ground. Put your hands behind your back," he cuffed him.

ABORN: So that is unfortunately standard police procedure. Whenever they have a person on the ground, I don't think the officer realized that

the man had been shot and killed at that point, so he was following standard procedure. But this is a terrible case from beginning to end. It

is frankly a bit difficult to understand what the defense is going to be in this case.

This happens to be one of the more clear-cut cases that we see. Very often there are many more questions around police shootings. They're not

as clear-cut as this one seems to be.

AMANPOUR: Well, there were eight bullets fired and they hit him. Now the mayor said today and announced that they are ordering more police body

cams. They already have some and he basically assured the public today that every single officer on the street would wear a police cam.

Is that a good thing?

ABORN: Yes, that's a very good thing. We've been advising police departments throughout the country, we're even advising corrections

departments now because they have a terrible problem in our jails that officers wear body cams. And ironically, officers, when they first hear

about this will resist it. They don't want the invasion of privacy. But they find more often than not that the body cams actually help them because

they can explain what sometimes seems inexplicable and they can sometimes stop themselves from being falsely accused of police brutality.

So the cam is sort of this objective view or this objective witness that can help us understand what happened.

But understand a single body cam, a single shot doesn't always tell you the whole picture because actions happen 360 degrees; body cams give

you one view.

AMANPOUR: So it won't be the magic solution, so to speak.

ABORN: But it's very, very helpful, very helpful.

AMANPOUR: Now again, we saw in Ferguson, we saw in New York, the killings of these individuals -- black -- by white police men who weren't

even indicted. So now the mayor of this town in South Carolina came out pretty quickly. And this is what he said when he first had seen the video.

Let's listen.

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KEITH SUMMEY, NORTH CHARLESTON MAYOR: I can tell you that as the result of that video and the bad decision made by our officer, he will be

charged with murder. When you're wrong, you're wrong. And if you make a bad decision -- don't care if you're behind the shield or just a citizen on

the street -- you have to live by that decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, that's what he said and it was pretty open and pretty frank. And there was a tweet by a very prominent musician who said, "Can

you imagine the amount of murders that went down before the age and development of cellphone videos? This didn't start this year."

ABORN: Well, therein lies the problem. So this mayor clearly learned one of the lessons of Ferguson, one of the big problems in Ferguson was the

city government and the police department did not get information out to the public in a timely way. This mayor's learned that lesson and is doing

that.

We've got to keep the public apprised as to what's going on and be open and transparent about that.

Now speaking of transparency, your viewers may not know that in the United States there is no national reporting requirement that police

shooting is to be reported at some central database, the FBI or wherever. That's wrong. We need to change that. We also need to research what

happens in these shootings because officers are in incredibly dangerous jobs. It is the most dangerous job we have in society. But sometimes they

go wrong but also sometimes they have to use their guns and they kill people and it's the correct thing to do.

So we need to understand what happens in each case.

AMANPOUR: You mentioned that and this is an aspect of quite a lot of controversy right now, the fact that there is no central database and just

to talk about that in terms of statistics, between 2007 and 2011, there were at least 2,715 -- well, the FBI calls justifiable police homicides but

a study by the Bowling Green State University said that only 41 on duty police officers were charged with murder and manslaughter.

That seems a very out-of-whack proportion. And isn't that the problem, that the police officers almost never get held accountable?

So if you listen to the data site from the FBI, they say there were 2,100, whatever the number was, justifiable homicides --

(CROSSTALK)

ABORN: -- justifiable homicide, there's not going to be indictment. And that's the problem with murders.

AMANPOUR: But is it justifiable homicide because that also raises the question about the bar. Some people say that whenever an officer,

quote-unquote "feels threatened," even if somebody's running away from them -- as was in this case -- that goes into this statistic. That's what --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: -- justifiable.

ABORN: No, that is not what the FBI calls justifiable. There are very clear rules around what constitutes a justifiable homicide. I was a

homicide prosecutor for years. And one of the first things you learn is that you've got to make sure you have all of the facts because the first

story you hear from the police is very often not the real story or the full story.

And then you have to decide not only what happened but whether or not there's any justification for it. It's not like a robbery. Either I

robbed you or I did. There's no justification for robbing. But I can be involved in a shooting and it can be self-defense. That's a fully

justifiable act. I can improperly perceive a threat to me. That could be a manslaughter. I could act in a way that's reckless but not intentional.

That's a criminally negligent homicide.

So homicide's a very difficult thing to identify without understanding everything that's going on. And that's why I say all the time we need to

be much more transparent with the public about these cases. This operates on two different levels, right, there are really two questions. One, was

the individual officer acting either legally or illegally, justified or not, when he fired that weapon and killed somebody?

And then secondly, are we being sufficiently transparent with the public to make sure the public is reassured that we're doing everything we

can to fully investigate these cases.

On the second point, we're failing.

AMANPOUR: And certainly the people who are in the press conference today, despite the fact that this man has been charged now and is in jail,

this police officer, they were very upset because they say this happens very rarely and the bar for quote-unquote "feeling threatened" or

justifiable is very low for a while police officer compared to a black citizen. That's what they feel.

ABORN: Sure.

AMANPOUR: Do you think, given the crisis that we've had in this country over Ferguson, New York and the rest, that now there's been a

tipping point, there's going to be some real changes?

ABORN: Yes. I think we are now seeing action from the federal government, the attorney general, Holder, has said that this is now a

crisis and we have to address it. The FBI's indicated willingness to conduct this database. State legislatures around the country, including in

New York, are thinking very creatively about how to reassure the public that we're doing the right thing. I think we have to drop this excessive

secrecy around grand juries.

For sure, sometimes you need secrecy in a grand jury proceeding. I'm not denying that. But you don't need it in every case. And you have to

weigh the need for secrecy with the need for the public to know. And frankly, the need for the public to know always has to win out. So we have

to get that balance right. Legislatures are looking at that.

So my view is that we have to open up the grand jury proceeding much more, make sure the public is reassured that the case has been fully

prosecuted, prosecuted meaning presented to the grand jury. If the grand jury declines to indict, and prosecutors should explain why they think that

happened.

We have to reassure the public. Transparency is critical to highly functioning governments.

AMANPOUR: Really interesting, really important, Richard Aborn, thank you very much for joining me --

ABORN: My pleasure.

AMANPOUR: -- thank you.

And this attack will, of course, be covered by America's most trusted moral voices now, the late-night satirists, who also happen to be snagging

some big interviews away from the traditional anchors, like the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden.

And after a break, we turn to their Zimbabwean counterparts. Imagine satire speaking up in a country where opposition is brutally struck down --

that's next.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, today the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe made a state visit to South Africa. The talks with the South

African president, Jacob Zuma, were about economic ties. But what's been making waves online is this new picture, which makes Mugabe look like he's

wearing earrings and sporting a new hairdo. Now it's easy to laugh when you're outside the country. Inside Zimbabwe, hundreds of his critics have

been arrested for less.

But imagine a world where a motley crew of comedians defiantly make fun of the government and the state media from inside the belly of the

beast. That's "Zambezi News."

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We bring you the news reliable, like an authoritarian yet loving and fatherly ruler.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Made up of a group of comedians, including two former hip-hop artists and distributed by DVDs, YouTube and elsewhere on

social media, it's been on for three years now and it has 6 million followers who do enjoy the rare spectacle of roasting their government.

And these tongue-in-cheek commercials.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you a high-powered ruler? Do you think it stings from pesky genetics? Do you get marks from dirty opposition

parties? Do you find foreign government in your underwear? You need sovereignty (ph).

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Now mindful of how many activists have been jailed or worse, they know the risk of speaking truth to power. They are

even banned from state media and they are harassed by the police during their live shows.

But they say, "That means that state security must be watching 'Zambezi News,' too. And so I guess that means they're getting the

message. And that's half of our job done."

And that's our job done. That's 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 New York.

END