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From Our Own Correspondent

The Lady and the General

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Aung San Suu Kyi was once heralded by many in the west as a valiant campaigner for democratic rights. As civilian leader she looked set to put the country on a new path after years of military dictatorship. But her refusal to acknowledge the army’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims damaged her standing abroad. And although her party managed to secure a landslide victory in elections last year, it may prove to have been a pyrrhic one, says Jonathan Head, after the military coup this week.

Mexican’s President, Manuel Lopez Obrador, may have had a lucky escape from the worst effects of Covid-19, but the same cannot be said for a vast numbers of his compatriots who are battling to find treatment. The president has now recovered, says Will Grant, but his citizens are still struggling for breath.

In a court in Moscow this week, Russia’s opposition leader described President Vladimir Putin as “a poisoner” before he was sentenced to nearly three years in prison. Alexei Navalny’s arrest and sentencing has had an electrifying impact on the opposition movement in the country, as throngs of protestors took to the streets of Moscow, and beyond. Has the Kremlin finally over-played its hand? asks Sarah Rainsford.

Our central Europe Correspondent Nick Thorpe has been following the Danube, upriver, from Romania to Germany. On one night, he accompanied a conservation team to go jackal howling among the biggest reed-beds on the planet.

South Africa has been battling to control a new variant of Covid, detected in the country last year. More than 45 000 people have died since the beginning of the pandemic. or those who are grieving, the customary burial process has been curtailed. Many are restricted to watching live streams of the funeral, while closest family grieve alone, says Pumza Filhani.

Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Serena Tarling

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:04.9

Today the wealthy can access no expense-beard treatment,

0:08.8

others face lengthy cues and a bed and oxygen if they're lucky.

0:13.9

We're with the pandemic in Mexico, where months of mismanagement have finally caught up

0:18.9

with its president.

0:20.5

In Russia, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to two years eight months

0:26.2

in prison, but his supporters appear undeterred in the face of the Kremlin's iron fist.

0:32.8

In South Africa, COVID restrictions have changed traditional grieving, ushering in solitary

0:39.0

occasions in place of the crowded events that lasted several days.

0:44.1

And many of us have tried to lighten lockdown with some new hobby, but you're unlikely to

0:50.0

match our correspondence experience of jackal howling in Romania.

0:55.8

Next to Myanmar, and the extraordinary highs and lows of Anxonsu-Chi's career,

1:01.7

valiant campaign of her democratic rights, and house arrest, leading the country after

1:06.8

years of military dictatorship, a very public refusal to acknowledge the army's ethnic

1:12.3

cleansing of the Rohingya minority, landslide victory in elections last year, and now the

1:19.5

army are back with a military coup, and those elections, as Jonathan Head, may prove

1:25.3

to be a peric victory.

1:28.8

Military coups, real hunters taking over with uniforms, lots of braid and tanks on the streets,

1:34.1

have become such an aberration that when they do happen, there is always an element of disbelief.

1:40.7

It is as though a part of our breakneck technology-driven world is suddenly catapulted back to

1:46.2

a bad movie from the 1970s.

1:49.2

The one that took place in Myanmar on Monday was especially baffling, as it was carried

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