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From Our Own Correspondent: Listening is a Start

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Listening is a Start

03/03/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Listening is a Start

Stories of power, danger and resistance from Russia, Kosovo, Venezuela and South Africa

Speculation and suspicion in Russia; meeting an "accidental jihadi" in Kosovo; Venezuela's gnawing hunger and the sounds of South Africa's historic Rivonia trial

Pascale Harter introduces reportage, analysis and reflection from correspondents around the world. 

As Russia prepares for its Presidential election on the 18th of March, Vladimir Putin's grip on power seems unbreakable. But some opposition candidates insist that the process of Russian democracy is fixed - and Gabriel Gatehouse, who's been delving into Putin's earlier career and what happened to some of his early backers, has heard some disturbing stories.

Kosovo - like many other countries - is having to decide how to deal with some of its citizens who went to fight for rebel groups, including ISIS, in Syria and Iraq. Should they be imprisoned, punished, stripped of citizenship ... or rehabilitated? In Pristina, Helen Nianias recently met one young man who spent only nine days amidst the fighting and almost ended up a jihadi 'by mistake' - and hears his suggestions on how to treat others like him.

Vladimir Hernandez has been travelling frequently between London and Caracas over the past three years, reporting on Venezuela's economic and political crisis. He's seen inflation, crime and unemployment spiral upwards - and now, a rising tide of desperation and hunger. He reflects on what's happened to his homeland - and how its people now view the government's version of events.

The Rivonia trial of 1963-4 was, in one sense, the high-water mark of the apartheid era in South Africa: a legal process which sent many of the ANC's most senior figures to prison for life and saw a famous speech from the dock by Nelson Mandela which laid out why he would oppose a racist state to the end. The court proceedings were recorded for sound, and recently the tapes have been released. Gavin Fischer, whose great-uncle Bram was the lead lawyer for the defence, explains why they're so hard to listen to, even today.

Photo: A man fixes a Russian campaign flag of President Vladimir Putin on the balcony of his apartment in Moscow on February 22, 2018.  (ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images)

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