Hero or Villain?
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
June the 28th 1914 was the day Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand. It led to the start of the First World War. Allan Little considers why today's Sarajevo is divided over whether Princip was a hero or a terrorist. President al-Sisi's new regime in Cairo: Louisa Loveluck's been finding out whether Egyptians regret voting in a new era of authoritarianism. Brazil has one of the world's worst crack cocaine problems: Katy Watson's been to see a government project which is trying to address it. Aidan O'Donnell visits a sacred city in the Horn of Africa. It is also noted for its production of beer. And while India's new rulers are keen to promote the use of Hindi, Craig Jeffrey's been finding out that the English language is still omnipresent, creeping into even unexpected corners of everyday society.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | And here to introduce it is Kate A.D. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello. Today, Hero or Villain, the people of Sarajevo divided again, this time over the man whose |
| 0:16.0 | gunshots ignited the First World War. |
| 0:19.6 | Watch what you say. |
| 0:21.1 | Government critics learn the value of silence in President Alsicis new Egypt. |
| 0:25.6 | We're in a sacred town in the Horn of Africa known for its 82 mosques and its brewery |
| 0:32.0 | and learning how hands-free pants are part of a new English |
| 0:36.5 | revolution in India. The city of Sarajevo finds itself back in the spotlight today. It's the hundredth anniversary of the |
| 0:45.2 | shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which triggered the First World War. |
| 0:50.7 | The Serb community there has been paying tribute to the assassin Gavrilo Princip. |
| 0:55.0 | Many there regard him as a hero whose actions led to the end of Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia. |
| 1:02.0 | But Alan Little, who reported from Sarajevo during the Balkan Wars of |
| 1:05.8 | the 1990s, says that others in this divided city see Princip as a terrorist. Today's |
| 1:12.2 | centenary they believe is no cause for celebration. |
| 1:16.1 | When I was a first year undergraduate studying history in the late 1970s, I put a pack on my |
| 1:20.8 | back and trekked across Europe heading southeast. |
| 1:24.2 | I wanted to see Sarajevo, where I imagined the 20th century had begun with two fateful |
| 1:29.6 | shots fired by a young revolutionary who at 19 had been my own age when he changed the world. |
| 1:36.0 | I didn't know then how large Sarajevo would one day loom in my own life, |
| 1:40.0 | or that I would come to think of the city not only is the place where the century had begun, |
| 1:44.4 | but also where it would end in another chapter of blood and thunder and sorrow. |
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