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Outlook: Father and Son's Fight Against the Mafia

Italian Businessman Nino de Masi

04/06/2013

Father and Son's Fight Against the Mafia

BBC World Service - Outlook, Father and Son's Fight Against the Mafia

Italians Nino and Giuseppe de Masi on their decades-long fight against the mafia

Matthew Bannister talks with Nino de Masi who fought the mafia, Brazilian novelist Edney Silvestre and a Sri Lankan lesbian who married a British man to avoid an arranged marriage.

Businessman Nino de Masi and his father Giuseppe are well known in Calabria in southern Italy for standing up to the local mafia. The region is notoriously dominated by the Ndrangheta, which in recent years has become even more powerful than the Sicilian mafia.The family company celebrates its 60th anniversary next year, and father and son have been targeted ever since it came to the notice of organised crime. But a few weeks ago, the threats were dramatically stepped up, and Nino is now under 24 hour police protection. Matthew Bannister spoke to them about what's going on.

And the Brazilian novelist Edney Silvestre who was already well known as a TV presenter and journalist before he wrote his first fictional book called If I Close My Eyes Now. It is a mystery novel in which two young boys come across the body of a murdered woman, a discovery which marks the end of their childhood and is based on an incident that Edney was told about when he was young.

Himali de Silva is a lesbian who was born and raised in Sri Lanka. When she reached her early 20s, her parents began making arrangements for her to marry. But Himali had other ideas. As a student, she'd become friends with Nick, a young wheelchair user from the UK. And he offered to marry her to free her from her fate. 

Twenty-year-old Kiriko Takemura has gone from being an ordinary school girl to international pop stardom in a very short space of time. She's better known as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - the new face and the voice of Japan's kawaii or cute culture.

And on Witness, it's 50 years since a boycott of the buses in the English city of Bristol helped to bring about Britain's first laws outlawing racial discrimination.

Picture: Nino di Masi

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