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From Our Own Correspondent: Kill or "Cure"

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Kill or "Cure"

20/01/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Kill or "Cure"

Stories from Gambian survivors, El Salvador jails, the Indian Himalayas and 80s Bulgaria

The Gambians who survived ex-President Jammeh's "HIV cure"; abortion law in El Salvador; Tibetan life on the Indian-Chinese border and why big was beautiful in 1980s Bulgaria

Pascale Harter introduces stories of life-or-death struggles, from writers and correspondents around the world. 

In Gambia many people are clamouring for their ousted dictator, Yahya Jammeh, to be tried for crimes committed during his 22 years in power - from the  detention and torture of critics to the 'disappearances' of those who fell from favour. Colin Freeman met survivors of another abuse of authority: Jammeh's so-called "HIV cure" combining herbal medicine and religious ritual - which worsened the health of its patients.

Benjamin Zand is in El Salvador, examining a culture of violence against women, and the effects of the country's strict laws against abortion - which require medical staff to report anything suspicious and allow for women to be sentenced for up to 40 years. But some of those imprisoned argue they suffered miscarriages rather than ending their pregnancies - and some never even knew they were pregnant.

The border between China and India is long, mountainous - and geopolitically very sensitive indeed. In a zone where any incursion can become an international incident, Rani Singh hears what these boundaries are doing to traditional ethnic Tibetan life on both sides.

And Kevin Connolly returns to Bulgaria to find the past really was another country. In the 1980s it was a hardline Communist state where power flowed through the Party and the Party alone. The current Prime Minister was the old longterm leader's bodyguard. So how much has really changed?

Picture: Campaigning to be re-elected for a third time in 2006 in Serekunda, Gambia, the country's longterm dictator Yahya Jammeh - now ousted - holds the Koran. ( SEYLLOU/AFP/Getty Images)

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