Fighting Hungary's 'Slave Law'
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A controversial law in Hungary will allow employers to demand 400 hours of overtime from their workers and defer payment for three years. Nick Thorpe examines the rationale behind it, and watches as more than ten thousand people take to the streets in protest.
Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from around the world:
Lorraine Mallinder shares a story of survival and escape from Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, where hundreds of thousands of people have tried to flee violence between local separatists and the military.
Jonah Fisher has the tale of a Ukrainian woman who thought her son had finally been found in Afghanistan. He went missing more than 30 years ago when serving in the Soviet military there.
Jeremy Bristow meets a man trying to preserve the language spoken by Jesus and his followers as he visits some of the shrinking communities of Syriac Christians who still live in Turkey.
And it’s the same procedure as every year for Joanna Robertson in Germany where New Year’s Eve is celebrated with a bang.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Hello. |
| 0:06.6 | Today domestic news has drowned out many stories from less familiar parts of the world. |
| 0:12.1 | We hear of one woman's escape from the separatist conflict |
| 0:15.3 | in Cameroon. A post-war riddle from Afghanistan in the 80s, our correspondent is on the trail. The language of the Shepherds at the Manger can be |
| 0:26.1 | discerned in the Aramaic dialect spoken by Syriacs today. We meet some of their dwindling number, and we celebrate New Year's Eve in Germany |
| 0:36.0 | with a bang. |
| 0:38.6 | For more than ten days now there have been protests in Hungary against what critics are calling a slave law. |
| 0:45.2 | It will almost double the hours of overtime an employer can ask from their staff and allow |
| 0:50.1 | payment to be deferred for up to three years. |
| 0:53.9 | When it was passed by President Yarnosh Arda on Thursday, the demonstrators said they would continue. |
| 1:00.6 | At its peak, more than 10,000 people rallied in Budapest from where Nick Thorpe has been trying to unravel how this crisis came about. |
| 1:10.0 | Two bronze lions flank the steps of the Hungarian Parliament, their proud forms appearing and disappearing through the billowing red, white and green smoke from the protesters flares. |
| 1:21.5 | Packed high on the steps between them stand the riot police in full dress uniform, |
| 1:26.8 | tear gas canisters at the ready, like Roman centurions, arranged for a family photograph. It's an image which would have given the famous Hungarian architect |
| 1:36.2 | Imre Steinle, the mastermind of the Parliament building and a champion of symbolism, |
| 1:41.2 | pause for thought. Were the lions flanked by the police |
| 1:44.6 | protecting Hungarian sovereignty from the mob as the carefully scripted government |
| 1:50.0 | messages would have us believe or were the lions blessing the people as they tried to retake their |
| 1:55.9 | building from a corrupt power-hungry mafia as the messages circling on the leaflets in the |
| 2:01.4 | crowds suggest. |
| 2:03.2 | The roots of the protests lie far away in another country with a lot of bronze lions. |
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