Dilemmas in Damascus
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Despatches: Syrians, exhausted by a seemingly unending conflict, face agonising decisions over their future, as Lyse Doucet has been finding out. Misha Glenny's in Rio as violent protests continue less than two months before the Brazilian city hosts the World Cup. The far-right Front Nationale could emerge from next month's European elections as the best-supported party in France -- Emma Jane Kirby encounters Euroscepticism, verging on Europhobia, in the south of the country. Matthew Teller's in Qatar: its economy's growing at nearly twenty per cent a year but its people are finding it hard to cope with a rapid pace of change. And Simon Worrall in the United States hears a love song as he witnesses the annual migration of Hispanic workers to Long Island.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent. |
| 0:05.0 | We make one version of the programme for the BBC World Service, |
| 0:09.0 | but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate A.D. |
| 0:16.6 | Hello, today agonizing decisions for Syrians worn down by a war no one expected would last so long. |
| 0:24.4 | A talk with Jesus, as rioting again hits Rio only weeks ahead of the World Cup. |
| 0:30.8 | A story from the old port of Marseille, about a snake, a sharp knife, and who might |
| 0:36.6 | have most to fear from the upcoming European elections, and in the United States an Ecuadorian love song as spring finally arrives on Long Island. |
| 0:47.0 | It's been yet another week of conflict in Syria. |
| 0:51.0 | President Assad's warplanes have been attacking rebel positions in and around the city of Aleppo. |
| 0:56.5 | A village market was hit on Thursday. It's reported that 27 civilians, including three children, were killed. Amid the violence, plans are going |
| 1:05.8 | ahead for a presidential election on June the 3rd. |
| 1:09.2 | Lee's Doucette's been discussing it with people in the capital Damascus. |
| 1:13.0 | A Syrian friend has a big dilemma. |
| 1:15.5 | It's one that confronts parents the world over. |
| 1:18.0 | Where should his little boy go to school? |
| 1:21.0 | Now, as any parent knows, it can be a difficult decision. But most would not know the |
| 1:25.9 | difficulty of this decision in Damascus. First, he told me, I must ask, is the school likely |
| 1:32.3 | to be shelled? |
| 1:34.0 | Second, how many checkpoints are there between my house and that school and if something happens, |
| 1:39.1 | how quickly can I reach him? |
| 1:41.0 | He then burst into loud laughter. I haven't even begun to consider how good the |
| 1:45.6 | school is and who the teachers are, he exclaimed. Then he took a long draw on his cigarette, |
... |
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