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From Our Own Correspondent: Finding the Right Words

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Finding the Right Words

10/02/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Finding the Right Words

Speaking out - with stories from Poland, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and south India

Why Poland's passing laws about its history during WWII; trauma and mental health in Afghanistan; a new TV station amusing Ethiopia; menstrual dilemmas for women at Indian temples

Pascale Harter introduces analysis and reportage from around the world, with stories from Poland, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and south India.

Over the past week, Poland's government has fallen out with some usually friendly nations - among them the US and Israel - over a new law which it's brought in "to protect the dignity of the Polish nation". It proposes prison terms for anyone blaming the country for the crimes against Jews which were  committed on its soil during the era of Nazi occupation. But can states really legislate the discussion of history? Adam Easton talks to Poles on both sides of the debate in Warsaw.

Sahar Zand is still haunted by an image she saw in a newspaper twenty years ago, of some Afghan children playing with amputated body parts after a round of Taliban punishments in the Herat football stadium. Visiting the city today, she finds many Afghans still tormented by similar memories - and very little mental health support for them. 

"State TV is soooooo boring!" - well, it's a chorus heard in many countries, but things used to be particularly tedious for viewers in Ethiopia, says James Jeffrey. Not any more, though - a new station called KANA TV is now entertaining a large audience, as well as figuring out how to dub South Korean soap operas into impeccable Amharic.

And Megha Mohan broaches a rather taboo subject in India: why menstruating women are often denied access to Hindu temples. Left out of her own grandmother's last rites at the famous temple in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, she's left wondering why. 

Photo: Polish President Andrzej Duda in the Hall of Names during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem, January 2017 (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)

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