Stuck on Lesbos
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last month a fire burned down the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, which had been hugely overcrowded. The cause was arson, but what was the real reason, and who stoked the fire once it was lit? Gabriel Gatehouse has been investigating the blaze, and Europe's dysfunctional migration policy.
In Kenya, schools have reopened this week for the first time since March, at least for some year groups. The seven-month closure was to help stop the spread of Covid-19. But how have schools, teachers and students been faring in the meantime? And what's it like being at school now? Anne Soy has been finding out in Nairobi.
Hong Kong has been a gateway to China, while enjoying freedoms such as a free press that do not exist on the mainland. But following months of often violent pro-democracy protests, and a new security law imposed by Beijing, the territory's identity is changing. Can it keep its status as a global powerhouse, asks Karishma Vaswani.
Arunachal Pradesh, in India’s tribal Northeast, is home to more than 20 tribes – among them the Tibeto-Burman Idu Mishmi, one of the few to have retained their animist beliefs. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent attends a rare Mishmi festival – and learns about the decline of the number of shamans, and a novel solution to the problem.
There have been weekly demonstrations, some met with police violence, in Belarus ever since the disputed election in August. Protesters have been calling for the resignation of long-term ruler President Lukashenko. All a long cry from when Ash Bhardwaj went cycling in an ancient forest in the country, on the look-out for a Soviet-era relic - or so he thought. And then he too had a run-in with the KGB....
Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Good morning. |
| 0:06.5 | Today, sending children to school plays a large part |
| 0:09.8 | in how a country handles the pandemic, though in Kenya after being closed for seven months, |
| 0:15.3 | we hear some have been turned into chicken farms. In Hong Kong, ever closer |
| 0:20.9 | union with China is meaning a clump down on descent and affecting all aspects of life such as job hunting. |
| 0:28.0 | We head for a corner of the Himalayas and the Edo-Mishmi people still trying to retain their tradition of |
| 0:35.4 | shamans and pass it on to the young. |
| 0:38.8 | And in Belarus we cycle through an ancient forest and have a little run in with the KGB. |
| 0:45.0 | First to the Greek island of Lesbos, still in the process of dealing with the huge fire which destroyed the Moria refugee camp. Fingers have been pointed in various |
| 0:55.8 | directions about responsibility, a protest against massive overcrowding, possible arson, and how such a huge number came to be there. |
| 1:06.2 | Gabriel Gatehouse has been asking questions. |
| 1:10.3 | Yasser Tahari remembers well his first night in Europe. In a way it foreshadowed what was to come. |
| 1:17.0 | The minute we entered our tent, he told me, a fight started. |
| 1:20.0 | Four guys with masks came and set the tent on fire. |
| 1:24.0 | Yasser is 16. He'd fled Afghanistan with his family in fear of his life. |
| 1:29.0 | He'd endured a 10-month journey over land, survived a perilous sea crossing in the middle of winter. |
| 1:35.6 | Finally he reached Lesbos. |
| 1:38.4 | I thought I'm in a safe land, he said. |
| 1:41.3 | Then they sent us to Moria where the real misery begins. I couldn't believe it's |
| 1:46.5 | Europe, he continued. Europe that's always talking about human rights. |
| 1:51.8 | Moria is Europe's largest refugee camp, or it was until it burnt down last month, built as a temporary |
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