Myanmar’s Jungle Revolutionaries

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kate Adie introduces stories from Myanmar, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Mexico.

In Myanmar, tens of thousands of people have been killed since the military seized power in a coup in 2021, halting the country’s tentative transition to democracy - a further 2.5m people have been displaced. Quentin Sommerville has spent a month in the east of the country, living alongside resistance groups fighting the junta the jungles of Karenni state on the border with Thailand, and Shan state, which borders China.

In a visit to Kyiv this week, Germany’s foreign minister urged Western governments to supply more air defence weapons to protect Ukrainians from what she described as 'the rain of Russian missiles.' Jonathan Beale met with a Ukrainian military unit known as The Peaky Blinders, which is defending territory near Kharkiv with armed drones.

The world’s largest inland body of water, the Caspian Sea, is shrinking at an unprecedented rate. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent travelled to Mangystau, in western Kazakhstan, to find out why this is happening, and how it’s affecting the people and the wildlife along its coastal communities.

In the city of Tijuana. right on the Mexico-US border, 3,000 men are incarcerated in La Mesa Prison, living six to a cell, and sharing a tiny bathroom. It’s a claustrophobic and monotonous regime, so any distraction is welcome - and that might come in the form of a visit from a group of mostly elderly nuns. Linda Pressly joined them on a mission to provide spiritual support – and some small comfort.

Series Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Coordinator: Sophie Hill

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.2	Hello, today we're in Ukraine's northeast,
0:09.2	where a unit of local fighters known as the Piki Blinders has been taking to the air to defend villagers
0:16.3	from a fresh Russian offensive.
0:19.4	In Kazakhstan we sail on the choppy waters of the Caspian Sea to find out why locals are worried
0:26.5	about its shrinking water levels.
0:29.9	And in Tijuana, on Mexico's border with the US, we meet a sisterhood who found their
0:35.6	vocation somewhat later in life, working in an overcrowded prison.
0:42.3	But first, the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar is at a crossroads. Over the past seven
0:48.8	months, several ethnic groups, along with an emerging army of young recruits, have brought the dictatorship
0:55.2	to crisis point.
0:57.4	The Kereny people have been at the forefront of the fighting and are among those who've suffered the regime's most brutal
1:04.4	repression. Tens of thousands of people including many children have been
1:09.2	killed since the military seized power in a coup in 2021,
1:14.0	which halted the country's tentative transition to democracy.
1:18.0	Some two and a half million people have been displaced.
1:22.0	Quentin Somerville has spent half million people have been displaced.
1:23.0	Quentin Somerville has spent a month in the east of the country,
1:27.0	living alongside resistance groups fighting across Kereney State, which borders Thailand, and Shan State which borders China.
1:36.6	The sunrise was veiled in a haze of wood smoke that hung heavy over the caramel-colored Salween River. In Northern Thailand they were burning
1:45.2	crops and trails of orange flames snaked down the riverbank in the early
1:50.0	morning gloom. The long tailboat's engine roared against the current as we headed up river to the town of Passong in Kereney State Eastern Myanmar.
	...

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