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From Our Own Correspondent: Merkel's Balancing Act

03/04/2021

Merkel's Balancing Act

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Merkel's Balancing Act

Stories from Germany, Namibia, Armenia, the Kurdistan region of Iraq and eastern Romania.

Germany's CDU considers its aspirant leaders; Namibia examines its colonial past; grief and anger in Armenia; Nowruz as celebrated  in northern Iraq; Europe's last leper colony.

The German Chancellor is widely respected as good at crisis management, but public confidence in her government's pandemic policies is ebbing away. How will her party, the CDU, campaign during this autumn's general election - is it possible the next Chancellor could be a Green? Jenny Hill reports from Berlin on power struggles and shifting opinions.

While the Christian Democrats confront their future, the German state is still carrying on talks with the government of Namibia about its colonial past. Land rights, official apologies and reparations have all been discussed . So has the treatment of the Herero and Nama peoples in the early 1900s, which some historians now consider "the first genocide of the 20th century".  Tim Whewell met black and white Namibians still viewing their heritage though very different lenses.

In Armenia the public mood is mutinous, in the aftermath of the most recent round of conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. A ceasefire agreement is holding, but there's grief and anger on the streets of Yerevan. Mark Stratton has friends in the disputed territory and hoped to revisit them, to see how they had survived the fighting.

Millions of people in Iranian and Kurdish communities around the world recently celebrated Nowruz - the Persian New Year, a joyful festival full of the symbolism of rebirth. But it's enjoyed particularly passionately in the ancient town of Akre in the Zagros mountains in northern Iraq. Leila Molana Allen climbed its stone ramparts and steep hillsides to witness the spectacle.

In eastern Romania, there's a village like no other: Tichilesti, home to Europe's last leprosarium - a facility where people with Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy, were once sent for life. Nick Thorpe shares some of the stories he heard there.




Photo: March 31st,2021 REUTERS/ Hannibal Hanschke/Pool

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