Aung San and a Disputed Legacy
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 July 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s Martyrs’ Day in Myanmar and the country’s founding father, Aung San, is being honoured. His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi now leads the government, but with her reputation in tatters for her failure to condemn the excesses of the armed forces. Nick Beake reflects on the contradictions.
50 years after the first man walked on the moon, India has been celebrating the successful launch of its own lunar mission. Rajini Vaidyanathan joins a group of schoolchildren basking in the glow of national pride.
Thousands have been killed in the Philippines in President Duterte's “war on drugs.” He’s also got a reputation for a sense of humour that’s not to everyone’s taste. Howard Johnson wonders whether his jokes have conditioned people in the Philippines to accept atrocities.
Greece has a new prime minister after elections earlier this month. He’s promised to end the country’s brain drain, to persuade the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve left in recent years to come home. Jessica Bateman asks if that’s what they’ll want to do.
And, Vincent Dowd hears how technology is making shipping safer as he takes a boat trip out to the Fastnet Rock off the coast of Ireland, with its lighthouse, “a great cathedral tethered to the ocean.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Good morning. Today, Reflections on the Moon in India. |
| 0:10.0 | Jokes in the Philippines that are no laughing matter. |
| 0:12.0 | In Greece, they have a brain drain how to stop it and we have a bumpy ride to the fast net lighthouse hidden in Atlantic mist. |
| 0:22.0 | But first to Myanmar for... in Atlantic Mist. |
| 0:34.0 | But first to Myanmar, formerly Burma, where they've been commemorating the nation's founding father, Ang San, who secured independence from the British following the Second World War. After he was killed, a military dictatorship seized control, |
| 0:38.0 | ruling with an iron fist for decades crushing any kind of dissent, |
| 0:42.0 | locking up most of its critics, including Ang-Sans' daughter, |
| 0:46.2 | Ang San Suu Kyi, revered under house arrest as a symbol of freedom, now as leader of the civilian government criticized for presiding |
| 0:55.4 | over what the UN calls genocide against the Rohingya people. |
| 0:59.9 | As Nick Beek observes, her father also meant very different things to different people. |
| 1:06.4 | It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone accused of genocide in the flesh. |
| 1:11.6 | Minon Lai, the commander-in-chief of the Burmese Armed Forces, stepped forward and saluted. |
| 1:17.6 | White cap, green uniform, and laminated ID pass around his neck, as if anyone didn't know who he was. |
| 1:25.6 | The 66-year-old who's said to have given the orders to drive out hundreds of thousands |
| 1:30.1 | of Rohingya Muslims from their homes stood silently in reverence. |
| 1:35.2 | This was a rare day when the most powerful man in the country would be overshadowed. |
| 1:40.2 | Not even he could compete with the enduring legacy of the founding father of the modern nation, |
| 1:46.0 | General Ensign. |
| 1:48.1 | If you want to see what he looked like in the flesh, you can watch old Pathay Newsreel filmed in London way back in 1947. |
| 1:56.2 | Wrapped in his trademark trench coat the youthful smiling Burmese figure looks at ease among |
| 2:01.1 | the much older pipe-smoking British politicians. |
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