From Roses to Rifles
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To mark their transition from a heavily armed rebel group to a political party FARC has adapted the meaning of their name and replaced the rifles on their logo with roses. Mathew Charles finds out how some former guerrilla commanders are adapting to life as members of the Colombian congress.
Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from around the world:
As Greek MPs voted to accept a deal to end a dispute over the name of its northern neighbour ‘Macedonia’ a familiar cry echoed around the streets of Athens – Όχι. Paul Moss explores the long and proud history of the word ‘No’ in Greece.
In India, Masuma Ahuja visits a prison which some inmates refuse to leave even after the end of their sentences. Sanganer Open Prison has no guards at the gate, no walls or bars and is home to about 450 people.
In Romania, Chris Haslam meets farmers and craftsmen who blame the EU for the decline of traditional skills. The lure of better-paid jobs elsewhere can be difficult to resist for some young people.
And in Sweden, Dougal Shaw visits, what its manager likes to describe as, a “high-fashion, trash shopping-mall.” At Retuna in Eskilstuna, everything on sale has either been recycled or upcycled but can it compete with mainstream shops?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello. Today, what's in a name we asked the other week about the Greeks? |
| 0:10.1 | And now what's in a word? Their MPs may have voted to accept a deal to end a dispute |
| 0:16.3 | over the name of their northern neighbour, Macedonia. But a familiar cry arose in Athens as they |
| 0:22.0 | did. No, a word with a long and proud tradition. |
| 0:27.3 | In India we visit a prison, no guards, bars or walls, but where convicted murderers serve out their sentences and occasionally find love. |
| 0:36.8 | We hear how the lure of better paid jobs elsewhere in the EU is having an impact on traditional ways of life in Romania. And in Sweden we visit a shopping |
| 0:46.8 | centre with a difference. For more than 50 years FARC was at war with the Colombian state. |
| 0:54.3 | At one point the Marxist rebels controlled almost a third of the country |
| 0:58.6 | and had an army of 20,000 fighters. Extortion, kidnap for ransom, drug trafficking and so-called |
| 1:06.1 | taxing of others in the drug trade were all used to finance the fight which |
| 1:10.7 | killed more than 200,000 people. Today though FARC is a political |
| 1:16.2 | party with five seats in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives the result |
| 1:21.1 | of a peace deal signed in 2016. But that deal is a fragile one. The |
| 1:26.7 | government has been criticized for not doing enough to protect former rebels and |
| 1:31.0 | last year Columbians elected a new president who said the agreement |
| 1:35.7 | doesn't do enough to ensure justice for Fox victims. Matthew Charles went to see how some of the |
| 1:41.5 | former guerrillas are adapting to their new lives in politics. |
| 1:46.2 | The FARC don't like lake comers. |
| 1:48.3 | They're in the minority in Colombia where time is often forgotten. |
| 1:51.9 | Punctuality is not a common trait here. |
| 1:54.8 | But I'd been stuck in traffic. |
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