meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
From Our Own Correspondent

Life On Hold

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chechnya's bucolic beauty, touching hospitality and jihadi brides now lost in Iraq. Caroline Wyatt introduces correspondents' tales from around the world:

Chechnya's bucolic beauty, touching hospitality and jihadi brides now lost in Iraq. Caroline Wyatt introduces correspondents' tales from around the world. In the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, Tim Whewell meets a woman whose life has been on agonising, soul-destroying hold ever since her daughter left to join Islamic State. Nick Beake wonders whether freedom of the press is on trial in Myanmar as he crams into a Yangon courtroom where two journalists are in the dock accused of receiving classified documents as part of their investigations into the massacre of Rohingya people. Nicola Kelly is in Tindouf, in Algeria, with Saharawi families who still dream of returning to their homes in Western Sahara which they were driven from by Moroccan troops in 1975. Laurence Blair finds that ghosts of its long dictatorship are haunting Paraguay as it prepares to elect a new president this weekend. And Elizabeth Gowing hears how Serbian vineyards once came to the rescue of thirsty Europeans elsewhere on the continent

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the BBC.

0:05.0

Hello, today, a courtroom drama in Myanmar as two journalists find themselves in the dock after investigating the crimes of Burmese soldiers. We join the

0:14.9

Serrai people waiting in the desert. It's more than 40 years since Morocco annexed

0:19.4

the Western Sahara, but they haven't given up hope of returning home. In Paraguay, it's election time, and in

0:26.2

Serbia, it's time for a glass of wine, as we savour the story of how their hardy Balkan

0:31.3

vineyards once came to Europe's rescue.

0:34.5

It's more than eight months since Islamic State was defeated in northern Iraq.

0:39.3

It'll take years for the group's hundreds of thousands of victims to rebuild their lives, if they can,

0:45.3

the families whose homes were destroyed and their loved ones killed. But they're not the only ones

0:50.8

who still live with the consequences of the group's reign of terror, some of them

0:55.0

far far away from Iraq. Tim Hewell has just come back from the southern fringes of Russia.

1:01.9

The word bucolic doesn't even begin to describe the village of Chumulga in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains,

1:08.0

particularly in early spring. The orchards around the neat brick cottages are just coming into acid green bud.

1:15.3

Turkeys gobble in freshly tilled kitchen gardens.

1:18.6

Streams cascade between fields of grazing cattle.

1:21.9

I didn't mean to come to Chymauga. I was already late for a meeting somewhere else,

1:26.9

but I turned reluctantly off the main road to find a woman called Aza

1:31.5

who'd been begging me to visit to hear the story of her daughter.

1:35.4

I agreed eventually for one reason, because of a phrase she'd used several times in the

1:40.4

messages she left on my phone in a tone of utter despair.

1:44.4

I'm going to go into the forest.

1:47.6

Coming from a quiet middle-aged woman in the North Caucasus, I didn't know what that meant and I was worried. As as a small anxious woman in

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.