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From Our Own Correspondent

Baffled in Brittany

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Brittany there’s been some concern about how the UK’s long goodbye to the European Union will affect it’s fishing fleets. Last weekend France reminded Britain that the UK exports most of its fish production to EU countries. Post-Brexit negotiations about fishing rights, security arrangements and a host of other issues promise to be far from straight forward. But Julia Langdon finds many people in the historic port of St Malo are not that bothered about what’s just happened on the other side of the channel. They have – as it were - other fish to fry. Two guards who worked at a prison in Yaroslavl, north east of Moscow, were jailed last month for abusing an inmate. Despite official claims that Russian penitentiaries are cleaning up their act, prisoners, their relatives and human rights activists tell a very different story. Oleg Boldyrev investigated another recent case. The Naga, a Tibeto-Burman people made up of dozens of different tribes, inhabit the mountainous borderlands of India and Myanmar. Administered by the British from the middle of the 19th century until after WW2, at least 200,000 Naga have since died fighting for an independent homeland. Although an official ceasefire was signed in 1997, there’s still sporadic fighting between the Indian Army and Naga rebel groups. Antonia Bolingbroke Kent sensed the tension in a remote village straddling the Indo-Myanmar border. In a small village in western Cameroon a martial arts academy has become a Mecca for local youth. With a judo area, boxing ring and top quality instructors it is a hive of activity in an otherwise sleepy rural community. Zak Brophy was made to sweat for the story when he visited but as a reward his boxing coach took him to meet his dad. A spate of deadly bear attacks in Romania has raised fears that the number of Europe's largest protected carnivore is getting out of hand. Fatal encounters between bears and humans have become disturbingly common. Many believe the steep increase in the bear population is down to a 2016 ban on trophy hunting by environmentalists. But Jeremy Bristow discovered that the bears are far from the only danger in Romania’s forests.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:04.6

Good morning.

0:05.8

Today, life in a Russian prison, it's violence to the sound of heavy metal music.

0:11.3

We have a tale of headhunters, not the prowling business sort, but

0:15.6

tribal trouble on the border between India and Myanmar. A cheetah hunt is recalled in Cameroon, while in Romania bear hunts are just a memory too, which is

0:27.4

why a walk in the woods might be inadvisable.

0:32.1

Those of us old enough to remember Cod Wars are aware that fishing rights can get you in deep

0:37.4

internationally disputed waters.

0:40.8

Last weekend France reminded Britain that the UK exports most of its fish production to EU countries

0:46.3

so there are a lot of negotiations ahead. Saint-Malo on the north coast hosts a picturesque port with lavish

0:54.3

fui-deamer dishes on the local menus, but Julia Langdon has found that the

0:58.9

locals have as it were other fish to fry. Nothing much except the weather disturbs the usual business of the

1:05.6

local fish market in St. Marlow where I've been staying. A storm was expected on my last day and that's

1:12.1

not good for business. The Poissonier was ready to talk

1:15.7

to me about the weather but she didn't have time to talk about Brexit.

1:19.1

Fouliashte you want to buy she asked impatiently. The gloomy glare of her magnificent

1:25.9

wild turbot reflected her indifference to politics. Perhaps she feared I was going to ask

1:32.0

about quotas and the common fisheries policy, but she was of course quite wrong.

1:37.0

I spent enough time on that topic when I first reported from Strasbourg in the 1970s.

1:42.0

At that time, in the 1970s. At that time in the eastern region of

1:45.3

Al-Sas-Lorain there was still a visceral fear of war and a yearning for peace at all

1:50.7

costs. But when we actually joined the common market it was always the price of fish

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