India’s farmers protest

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

In Delhi, Republic Day is usually a ceremonial occasion celebrated with military parades and cultural pageantry. But this year’s event was marred by violence – as thousands of farmers drove their tractors into New Delhi in an escalation of months of peaceful protests against proposed agricultural reforms. Rajini Vaidyanathan reports from New Delhi. The Netherlands is seeing its worst violence in 40 years with scenes of looting and rioting across the country. The collapse of the government earlier this month, followed by a tightening of restrictions due to Coronavirus has had a destabilising impact. Anna Holligan says the Dutch are wrestling with the disruption to the usual sense of order. The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in precious minerals such as gold, diamonds and cobalt - but is still one of the poorest countries in the world. For over two decades, rebel groups have fought over mines in the east of the country where thousands of children also toil in the mines. Olivia Acland went to visit one of them Portugal has become one of the European countries hardest hit by the second wave of Covid-19 and another national lockdown has been imposed. Audrey Gillan visited Armona, an island off the coast of the Algarve, which is suffering from tightened travel restrictions and low visitor numbers. Cuba’s Fidel Castro was probably one of the most widely photographed and documented men of his time.. Will Grant has been trying to verify the details of one of those pictures – of Castro as a young man in a sugarcane field – which he needed for a book. It led him to the story of the audacious young German woman who snapped it six decades earlier.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Today the clicheed images of serene cyclists pedaling along quiet streets,
0:10.1	but around the Netherlands from Rotterdam to Amsterdam there's been rioting for several nights,
0:16.0	just what is the impact on Dutch society?
0:19.0	Some of the world's most precious materials come from the poorest countries. We hear from a
0:25.1	gold mine in eastern Congo where children scrape for specks of gold in the mud. The
0:32.2	pandemic reaches into far corners. We're on the
0:35.2	Portuguese island of Armona assessing the impact on the tourist industry. And in
0:41.0	Canada we have the story of a photograph of Fidel Castro taken at the height of the Cold War.
0:47.0	First to India, where Republic Day celebrations, a military parade and cultural pageantry, were overshadowed
0:56.0	by a protest by farmers. There was chaos and violence in Delhi as thousands of farmers marched road horses and drove tractors into the city after months of peaceful
1:07.6	protests against agricultural reforms. The government claims the new laws will make it easier for them to sell their produce.
1:16.6	The farmers believe it'll leave them much worse off.
1:20.1	Regina Vigenarthen watched events unfold. The day began. Regina As the National Capital Delhi prepared to host its annual Republic Day parade, a show of the country's military might and a celebration of India's cultural diversity, many routes in Delhi had been shut.
1:42.0	With the Prime Minister in attendance and thousands of police,
1:46.3	the tightest security usually surrounds the occasion. And so as I made my way to report
1:51.7	on a farmer's protest, time to coincide with this Indian
1:55.3	national holiday, I found myself walking past police barricades just to get to my taxi.
2:01.9	Once on the road I made my way to the edge of Delhi's borders,
2:05.3	where farmers have been peacefully protesting in their thousands for months.
2:09.7	As we approached the outskirts, it too was heavily fortified, hundreds of officers on duty,
2:16.0	restricting traffic in and out of the city.
	...

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