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From Our Own Correspondent

El Salvador's brutal battle with gangs

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kate Adie introduces correspondents' dispatches from El Salvador, the streets of Pakistan's cities, the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, North Korea and Germany. Since the 1990s, El Salvador fell into the grip of street gangs which terrorised the country. Now its President, Nayib Bukele, is running a harsh crackdown on gang members, introducing sweeping new police powers, summary arrests, mass trials and heavy sentences for alleged offenders. Will Grant spoke to some who've suffered, and others who've gained, in this new climate. The last month has seen huge, passionate demonstrations in many of Pakistan's cities in support of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Once he was seen as an ally of the country's military and security establishment, but recently those ties have cooled and he's faced a slew of legal challenges. Caroline Davies has seen how this political drama is playing out in court and on the streets. What happened to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims driven out of Myanmar in 2017? Rajini Vaidyanathan visits the world's largest refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, where many Rohingya families are trying to survive in cramped, squalid conditions. She reunites with a young boy the BBC first met five years ago. Visitors to North Korea often have a hard time understanding what locals really think. But once North Koreans leave the country, they can finally speak out about feelings locked inside - or just not confronted - for a lifetime. Michael Bristow met one North Korean woman who's now making a new life in the north of England. And in Germany, Tim Mansel explores why the future of small-town family butchers' shops appear to be on the chopping block. Like many other sectors in the German economy, retail butchery is struggling to fill all the empty vacancies. Producer: Polly Hope Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:05.6

Today, the latest twists and turns in Pakistan's political drama, as thousands of protesters

0:12.1

turn out to show their support for Imran Khan.

0:15.8

What's become of the Rohingya people driven out of Myanmar, who now occupy the world's

0:20.6

largest refugee camp in Bangladesh?

0:24.0

Her one woman from North Korea got in touch with her innermost feelings and then found

0:29.3

her voice, and, as the Brought Wars seemed better days, as butchers in Germany's small

0:35.4

towns and villages, are forced to shut up shop.

0:39.6

First to El Salvador, a small Central American country with an outsized reputation for violence.

0:46.2

From the 1990s onward it was often counted as one of the world's murder capitals, as rival

0:51.8

gangs ruled its cities through intimidation, extortion and fear, but the country's young

0:57.6

media-savvy president, Naib Bakele, has now launched a hard-line crackdown on crime.

1:04.4

The governments even had to build a new mega-prison to house the rapidly growing numbers being

1:09.4

detained.

1:10.4

Yet, it's claimed that innocent people have been wrongly swept up in the wave of arrests,

1:16.2

and there have been allegations of mistreatment and human rights abuses inside the prison system.

1:22.0

Will Grant, met families affected by both sides of this controversial policy.

1:27.2

Aldelia Rosales has an ugly gaping hole in her living room wall.

1:31.8

It's wide enough to walk through and interrupt the neighbours as they watch television.

1:36.2

To preserve their mutual privacy she's patched it up with a sheet of corrugated iron.

1:40.9

Despite its obvious shortcomings, Aldelia, a primary school teacher in her 40s with two

1:45.7

grown children, is delighted with her new home.

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