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From Our Own Correspondent

The Meaning of Home

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Until recently, a small, independent and politically neutral Syrian radio station was broadcasting in exile from Istanbul. But Radio Alwan was forced to close when the Trump administration made the decision last year to pull $200m of funding for Syria’s stabilisation projects, knocking the station off air. Some of the station’s staff are scattered across Europe and those who have remained in Turkey say they now feel vulnerable following the Turkish offensive in NE Syria and what they see as a hardening of the country’s position on refugees. So where do you belong if your adopted country no longer welcomes you and the door to your own country is closed? Emma Jane Kirby met ex Radio Alwan broadcasters in Istanbul to try understand why the word “home” no longer has any meaning for them.

Across Latin America millions have left their homes to better their families' lives. These have been years of huge outward migration from Venezuela, Central America and Cuba. Will Grant has now spent more than a decade living in countries which many of their own citizens feel forced to leave.

In the municipality of Has, in the rural mountainous north of Albania, it’s estimated that one in five people has left over the past ten years. It used to mainly be men, but now even primary age children are making perilous journeys into richer parts of Europe including the UK. Jessica Bateman asked one teacher how it feels to watch your school slowly disappear.

If you are forced to leave home, the word evokes a sense of loss. In the early 1970s, the dictator who ruled Uganda, Idi Amin, suddenly decided that the country’s long-standing community of Asians – mostly small business people of Indian origin – should be kicked out. He argued they put ethnic Ugandans at a disadvantage. Reha Kansara grew up with her mother's memories of life in her "East African paradise" and has just made her first visit to Uganda to see the country for herself.

The story of the nativity often inspires people to show compassion to the homeless around Christmas. Pregnant women and new mothers are particularly vulnerable. But the challenges of new life don’t end with finding a safe place to stay. On the occupied West Bank, Jeremy Bristow recently travelled with a group of female medics to visit the minority Arab Bedouin population.

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:05.4

Today the perks of an absolute monarchy in Africa, and the people in Eswatini who are starting

0:11.9

to chave under the rule of their king, trying to get around the restrictions of reporting

0:17.3

from Tigray as the Ethiopian government keeps most journalists out.

0:22.8

In France, President Macron's remarks on vaccination show the strong arm of the state,

0:29.6

and were treated to a long walk, and an introduction to a storm visit in the Carpathian mountains

0:35.4

of Ukraine.

0:37.7

First to a question still preoccupying almost every country in the European Union, as

0:42.7

well as the United Kingdom, how to manage migration.

0:46.7

Some try to contract the problem out by reaching agreements with and finding some funding

0:51.4

for neighbouring states to keep back people trying to arrive without papers.

0:57.0

The border enforcement is a never-ending headache for governments across the continent.

1:01.8

In Greece, there's a particular sense that the country is having to police its frontiers

1:07.0

for the benefit of richer countries further north.

1:09.8

There's also an appetite for tougher policies.

1:13.2

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Kerry Arcos Mitsotakis has tightened its

1:18.3

asylum laws, built new walled camps, and pushed back boats at sea.

1:24.0

Fergalkein has followed many global waves of migrants and refugees from their home countries

1:29.0

along their journeys and to their various endpoints.

1:32.6

A recent visit to the Greek islands, which are still dealing with migrants arriving by boat

1:37.6

from Turkish waters, got him thinking about the big picture again.

1:43.2

Once we had a country, the line is WH-Ordans, and it came to mind as I walked through the

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