The Rise and Fall of Nagorno Karabakh

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Katie Adie presents dispatches from Armenia, India, China, Belgium and the Middle East.

The flight of more than 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh last year, after a rapid offensive by Azerbaijan, quickly faded from news headlines. Tim Whewell remembers how the self-declared republic first emerged, as the Soviet Union was in its last throes, and reflects on how nations are born, and re-buried.

More than a billion Indians are heading to the polls over the next six weeks to vote in a general election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a 'digital India' has been a policy priority during his leadership - but to what extent are the less developed parts of the country on board and online? James Coomarasamy visits a village in Karnataka.

The Chinese government is focused on green growth, providing subsidies for the manufacture of solar panels and electric vehicles. Yet in some cities, factory workers have been laid off and fear being left behind. Laura Bicker reports from the once bustling manufacturing city of Dongguan.

The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium was originally built to showcase artefacts from the country's former colony, Congo. Today, visitors to the museum are encouraged to reflect on the impact of Belgium’s colonization, finds Beth Timmins.

Reporters always carry some kind of baggage with them when they head off to cover a story. It was on a recent deployment that the BBC’s middle east analyst Sebastian Usher suddenly noticed that the often unwanted companion that seemingly always accompanied him on trips abroad… had suddenly gone missing.

Series Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Coordinator: Katie Morrison

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Today, Digital India has been a policy priority for Indian Prime Minister
0:11.0	Norendra Modi.
0:12.0	But does it stand up to scrutiny in the country's first
0:16.0	cashless village? China's industrial cities are at a crossroads as manufacturing jobs is sent overseas, leaving many workers with an
0:26.3	uncertain future. The drive to decolonise museums and monuments has spread across the Western world. We hear how one
0:35.3	institution in Brussels has approached the issue and one correspondent recounts
0:40.9	his relationship with words and how they became roadblocks in his reporting
0:46.8	until very recently.
0:49.0	But first, the flight of more than 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh seven months ago
0:56.4	after a rapid offensive by Azerbaijan quickly faded from the global news headlines as events in the Middle East unfolded. But the
1:06.0	land conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan also has a complex lengthy history. In the late 1980s, Nagorno-Karabakh's parliament, then part of Azerbaijan, voted to become part of Armenia. Since then, bloody battles have been fought over the enclave with Armenia
1:26.5	maintaining control until the seemingly decisive Azari offensive last September.
1:32.4	Tim Hewell remembers how the self-declared republic first
1:37.3	emerged as the Soviet Union was in its last throes and reflects on how nations are born and reburied.
1:46.8	In my first job at the BBC in the late 1980s, I sat in a tiny office bashing out talks, a happily long forgotten radio genre, five minutes of instant
1:57.5	in partial analysis on a Flintstone style word processor. Often it was my scary responsibility to tell the world about
2:05.8	a corner of the Soviet Union I myself had never heard of before. Nogorno-Karabakh, a tantalizingly mysterious chunk of Azerbaijan, bigger than Somerset, smaller
2:16.0	than Northumberland.
2:18.2	Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's loosening of the Communist system was just beginning to allow free protests, but the first serious ones
2:25.6	weren't in Moscow as I'd expected. They were on the periphery of the country and some of the biggest
2:30.8	were in Armenia. First it was about the environment.
	...

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