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Kate Adie introduces insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents and writers.

Kate Adie introduces insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers telling stories from around the world.

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From Our Own Correspondent: El Salvador's brutal battle with gangs

20/05/2023

El Salvador's brutal battle with gangs

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, El Salvador's brutal battle with gangs

A crackdown on gang violence has filled El Salvador's prisons - but is everyone guilty?

President Nayib Bukele says he's 'the world's coolest dictator' and his ongoing crackdown on gang violence has filled the country's prisons - but is everyone behind bars guilty?

Kate Adie introduces correspondents' dispatches from El Salvador, the streets of Pakistan's cities, the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, North Korea and Germany.

Since the 1990s, El Salvador fell into the grip of street gangs which terrorised the country. Now its President, Nayib Bukele, is running a harsh crackdown on gang members, introducing sweeping new police powers, summary arrests, mass trials and heavy sentences for alleged offenders. Will Grant spoke to some who've suffered, and others who've gained, in this new climate. 

The last month has seen huge, passionate demonstrations in many of Pakistan's cities in support of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Once he was seen as an ally of the country's military and security establishment, but recently those ties have cooled and he's faced a slew of legal challenges. Caroline Davies has seen how this political drama is playing out in court and on the streets.

What happened to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims driven out of Myanmar in 2017? Rajini Vaidyanathan visits the world's largest refugee camp, in the Bangladeshi city of Cox's Bazar, where many Rohingya families are trying to survive in cramped, squalid conditions. She reunites with a young boy the BBC first met five years ago. 

Visitors to North Korea often have a hard time understanding what locals really think. But once North Koreans leave the country, they can finally speak out about feelings locked inside - or just not confronted - for a lifetime. Michael Bristow met one North Korean woman who's now making a new life in the north of England.

And in Germany, Tim Mansel explores why the future of small-town family butchers' shops appear to be on the chopping block. Like many other sectors in the German economy, retail butchery is struggling to fill all the empty vacancies.

Producer: Polly Hope
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

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