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Outlook: Indonesia's Death Row Priest

Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte

12/05/2015

Indonesia's Death Row Priest

BBC World Service - Outlook, Indonesia's Death Row Priest

Father Charlie Burrows, the Irish priest giving spiritual advice on Indonesia's death row

Irish priest giving spiritual advice on Indonesia's death row; Ukrainian director on making a film entirely in sign language; Canadian comedian who found fame in China.

Two weeks ago 8 prisoners convicted of drug offences were executed by firing squad in Indonesia and the news caused an international outcry. One of the men executed was Rodrigo Gularte. He was convicted of smuggling 6 kg of cocaine into Indonesia inside surf boards. But his family argued that Rodrigo was suffering from schizophrenia, and should not have been on death row, but getting mental health treatment. Gularte's spiritual advisor was Irishman Father Charlie Burrows, who was with him on the day of the execution.  

Last week we heard from the man who has one of the world's largest vinyl record collections. Zero Freitas from Sao Paolo, Brazil, thinks he could own six million. Fae Ellington from Jamaica heard him and got in touch with us on our Facebook page. She said "This is amazing! So much of history is captured in music. I wonder if he has a copy of The Poppy Family, 'Which way you're going Billy.' Or a recording of the Jamaican Folk Singers." 

Canadian Mark Rowswell has been called 'the most famous foreigner in China'. The lanky stand up comic with a mop of brown hair astonishes hundreds of millions with his flawless Mandarin, impeccable timing and insider knowledge of Chinese culture. 

It's a story that inspired Pixar's animated film "UP" - a woman in her mid-eighties refused to sell her home to make way for a huge shopping mall - so the developers simply built the mall around her little house. But as the cranes moved in, Barry Martin, the man in charge of the construction project, went round to check she was OK. He ended up becoming her friend, and ultimately her carer. When Edith Wilson Macefield died at the age of 86, she left everything she owned to him.

The Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy has made a film with no spoken dialogue and no subtitles. Called 'The Tribe', it is entirely in sign language and uses only deaf actors. Set in a boarding school for deaf children, it tells the story of a boy drawn into a violent world of criminal gangs and prostitution rackets, and was shot in Kiev during the Winter of 2013 / 2014 when a series of clashes between protesters and riot police in Maidan Square led to many deaths and a change of president. 

(Picture: Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte. Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images.)

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