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The Documentary Podcast

The Fifth Floor: Life in exile

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's the price journalists pay for telling the truth? For many it's exile. We'll hear from two colleagues, TV presenter Shazia Haya from BBC Pashto and Nina Nazarova from BBC Russian, both living and working in exile.

Produced by Alice Gioia and Caroline Ferguson.

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

0:04.0

This is

0:05.0

You're

0:08.0

You're actually

0:09.0

the fifth floor.

0:10.0

The fifth floor de noosos fifth floor in Newseus.

0:14.0

We see me as well.

0:15.0

To me have this fifth floor

0:17.0

fornak and me this obat.

0:21.0

This is the fifth floor at the heart of global storytelling with BBC

0:26.2

journalists from all around the world. I'm when I left Iran. It's red and a standard small checked luggage. When I was

0:47.3

packing it back in July 2009, I didn't really think I wasn't going back to Iran.

0:54.0

So I chucked in the usual stuff you would pack for a short holiday,

0:58.0

a few dresses, my makeup bag, my laptop, and just a few other essentials. I didn't pack as if I was moving to another

1:07.0

country. I left so much stuff behind. Today, this suitcase has become a symbol of something bigger, resilience, and the will to move on and build a new life.

1:21.0

I'm not the only BBC journalist living in exile. There are 310 of us and the

1:28.1

number has nearly doubled in the past four years. Many face jail sentences, death threats and harassment, both online and

1:37.1

offline because of the work they do. Some prefer to remain anonymous. But today I'm joined by two of my colleagues Shazia Haia from

1:46.6

BBC Pashto and Nina Nazarova from BBC Russian who are both happy to share their stories and the content of their last suitcase with me.

1:56.0

First up is Shazia, who left Afghanistan in a rush after the Taliban took over in the summer of 2021.

2:04.0

We were told that we are not allowed to take so many things with us because we were about to get evacuated in military aircrafts.

2:15.0

So there wasn't...

...

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