Riots in Mauritius and the Queen 'jumping out of a helicopter'

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Philippe Sands, Professor of the Public Understanding of Law at University College London, who tells us about the history of ethnic tensions in Mauritius.

The programme begins with Kaya a Mauritian musician whose death sparked three days of rioting. Then, we hear from John Huckstep who was interned by the Japanese when living in China during World War Two.

In the second half of the programme, we tell the story of how Semtex was invented, and the debate about where the German capital should be after reunification.

Finally, the man who made the Queen appear to jump out of a helicopter tells us how he did it, with the help of corgis, a clothesline, the Queen's dresser and of course James Bond.

Contributors: Veronique Topize - Kaya's widow. Cassam Uteem - Former President of Mauritius. Phillippe Sands - Professor of the Public Understanding of Law at University College London. Jurgen Nimptsch - Former Mayor of Bonn. Wolfgang Schauble - Member of German Bundestag. John Huckstep - Held as a child at an interment camp in China. Stanislav Brebera - Brother of chemist who invented Semtex. Frank Cottrell-Boyce - Writer.

(Photo: Mural of Kaya. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm Namulanta Combo, and I'm excited to tell you that my award-winning
0:05.3	podcast, Dear Daughter, returns on the 27th of February for a brand new season.
0:10.6	Dear Daughter is a podcast from the BBC World Service, full of personal insight and thoughtful
0:16.4	letters of advice.
0:18.1	It's a handbook to life for daughters everywhere.
0:21.6	So if you haven't already, catch up with the first season now while
0:25.4	you're waiting for season two. Search for dear daughter wherever you get your
0:29.7	BBC Podcast.
0:39.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC with me Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there
0:46.2	and who have appeared on the Witness History Strand this week on the World Service.
0:50.4	Coming up, a remarkable story of a childhood lived under the Japanese occupation of China during the Second World War.
0:57.0	People in their next bed in their dormitories were immediately hoaked off and taken into Shanghai, but what we think was taught you in many cases.
1:07.4	Also, James Bond, the Queen, her corgis, and that Olympic Games helicopter, and the contest between Berlin and Bonn over which should be Germany's
1:17.0	capital after the collapse of communism. This debate wasn't about Bonn or Berlin, about West Germany or South Germany, it wasn't
1:26.4	about regional interests, it simply was about the future of Germany in a united Europe.
1:34.0	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but first, ethnic tensions in the Indian Ocean.
1:39.1	In the late 1990s there was rioting on the island of Mauritius after the death of a local musician
1:44.4	called Kaya. It was not the first or only eruption of violence there.
1:48.8	Rina Stanton Sharma has the story. Sege Man, the real was your position position.
1:54.0	That's Sege Man by Kaya.
1:59.3	His death in police custody in 1999 sparked three days of rioting in Mauritius.
2:05.0	Kaya, whose real name was Joseph Topes, was part of the Mauritian Afro-Kriel community,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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.