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From Our Own Correspondent

The Road Through Yemen

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stories from Russia, France, the Philippines, Italy and Yemen's most dangerous road. Yemen has been devastated by a war which began in 2015 between Saudi-backed pro-government forces and the rebel Houthi movement, aligned to Iran. Lyse Doucet was there dodging snipers and meeting overworked doctors. But that's not the whole picture.

This week, the trial opened of three Russians and a Ukrainian for the murder of 298 people aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine. The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team says it has proof that the missile used to shoot down the aircraft came from a military base inside Russia. But Moscow rejects the evidence and when questioned accuses Steve Rosenberg of disseminating propaganda.

Protecting human rights and freedom of movement in a changing world is at the heart of President Emmanuel Macron’s commitment to a stronger European Union. But the far-right nationalist party of Marine Le Pen is promising the French a different kind of freedom: protection from the European Union with its open borders and open markets. Lucy Williamson has been on the frontier between France and Italy where, despite appearances, tensions run high.

In the Philippines a recent hostage-taking situation in a shopping centre gripped the nation. Alchie Paray, a former security guard, took around 50 people prisoner with a grenade and a gun. His grievance? Unfair treatment by his former employers. The situation has triggered a national debate about labour rights. Howard Johnson, was outside the shopping mall to watch the nine hour drama unfold.

The Italian government placed the entire country on lockdown on Tuesday in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. Cinemas and theatres and even churches have shut, travel is severely restricted and all schools are closed until April. Dany Mitzman describes life in quarantine.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:05.0

Good morning.

0:06.1

Today our correspondent makes polite inquiries of the Russians

0:10.3

about the culprits who shot down a Malaysian airliner.

0:13.0

He's told he's nothing but a piece of propaganda.

0:16.0

It seems borders are closing at the moment,

0:19.0

and there's tension on a ski slope in France

0:22.0

as migrants try to slip in from Italy. In the Philippines, a

0:26.2

gunman who took dozens of people hostages winning the nation's admiration. And

0:31.4

virus lockdown? What's it like for our correspondent in Italy? First the war in

0:37.2

Yemen which drags on a cauldron of involvement of various Middle East countries, principally Saudi Arabia, modern weaponry,

0:45.4

and a poverty-stricken nation.

0:47.8

The UN has called it the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

0:52.0

Journalists face extreme difficulties with many of the local press killed, jailed or just disappeared.

0:59.4

Lees Dousette has been in the divided city of Tice, where she says there are grim sights, but that's not the whole picture.

1:07.0

There is a truth in journalism and perhaps in life that everything looks much worse, more dangerous from a distance.

1:15.0

And so it was with the main road slicing through Yemen,

1:19.0

a long stretch of tarmac which snakes across a long flat plain and rises to the northern highlands. A road

1:26.5

from the southern coastal city of Aidan controlled by the government to the ancient city of

1:31.8

Sana, Yemen's capital, now in the hands of the Huthies.

1:36.0

I've thought about this road for years, heard stories about 70 checkpoints or more, some in the hands of hooty fighters, some held by soldiers, some

1:48.0

by, well, who knows, someone with guns.

...

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