Crossing Continents
359 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★★ - 68 ratingsSeries focusing on foreign affairs issues
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Episodes
Sexual Abuse in US Prisons
December 06, 2012 11:30 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBLinda Pressly investigates why rape and sexual abuse is so common in America's huge prison system - and asks if new measures to fight it will succeed. Producer: Helen Grady.
The Mystery of South Africa's Missing Textbooks
November 29, 2012 11:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBMany schoolchildren in South Africa's northern Limpopo province have gone for months without school textbooks. There was money to buy them. There was also a contract to deliver the books. Yet they didn't arrive. Students and parents are furious with politicians of the governing ANC - and say the problem is due to mismanagement and corruption. They say the issue typifies the faults of the political system, and that their children have been the victims. Rob Walker investigates the mystery of t...
El Salvador's Gang Truce
November 22, 2012 11:30 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBIn one of the most violent countries on earth, peace has broken out. In March, a truce was brokered between El Salvador's two most violent street gangs; they agreed to stop killing each other. The Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 are criminal outfits that trace their origins to Los Angeles. In the 1990s, older members were deported from the US and forged local 'branches' on the streets of El Salvador. Since the truce - brokered in prisons with the gangs' leaders - the murder rate of this sma...
The Mayor of Mogadishu
November 15, 2012 11:30 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBAndrew Harding meets the Mayor with the job of running Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. Can the man nicknamed "Tarzan" tackle mass corruption and the physical and psychological impact of years of brutal warfare? Andrew joins Mohamed Ahmed Noor who, by request of the president, has returned with his wife and family from a life in London to try and clean up Mogadishu. The mayor discusses his ambitious vision for a city, much of which currently lies in ruins. He proudly shows off the new Mogadi...
Israel's New Front Line
September 06, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBWhen Israel was established, its tiny community of ultra-Orthodox Jews were, uniquely, exempted from the normal requirement of service in the Israeli Defence Force. They were seen as keepers of the spiritual soul of the nation, and their vital duty of studying religion and Jewish law was more important than wielding guns. 70 years on, and the community's numbers have grown massively - and there are increasing demands for the ultra-Orthodox to play their part in the defence of the nation. A S...
Gold and Governance in Romania
August 30, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBTessa Dunlop travels to Romania to investigate why a proposed open-cast gold mine has caused the longest-lasting political storm in the country since the end of Communism. The mine, in the rural community of Rosia Montana in the Transylvanian mountains in western Romania, would be Europe's largest. Its supporters, including most locals, say it would bring much-needed jobs to the area, which has suffered very high unemployment since the last mine closed there a few years ago, after two mill...
Bulgaria's Criminal Football
August 23, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBNo fewer than 15 football club bosses have been murdered in Bulgaria's top football league in the last decade alone. In this edition of Crossing Continents Margot Dunne investigates reports that many have been deeply involved in mafia businesses. There are continuing reports that the game is riddled with corrupt practices including match-fixing and the illegal procurement of European Union passports for overseas players. Crossing Continents examines these claims, attending a match which ha...
Korea Host Bars
August 16, 2012 10:30 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBSouth Korean women, tradition says, are hard-working, respectful to family, and know their place in Korea's Confucian hierarchies. But the country's rapid economic development has meant some startling changes below the surface of that conservative social structure. Perhaps the most controversial is the advent of Host Bars - all night drinking rooms where female customers can select and pay for male companions, sometimes at a cost of thousands of dollars a night. Originally set up to cater to...
Cold Turkey in Karachi
August 09, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.6 MBKarachi is facing a drugs epidemic. Pakistan's sprawling port city has an estimated half a million chronic heroin addicts. The drug is cheap and easily available as it comes across the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, before being shipped to Europe and the US. Mobeen Azhar finds out how a charity is trying to help addicts and their families. An NGO called the Edhi Foundation operates what is thought to be the world's largest drug rehabilitation centre. It's here that Mobeen meets brothers Yusaf...
Rwanda Cycling
August 02, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBRwanda is a nation of bicycles; large cumbersome machines, piled high with sacks of coffee or potatoes, so heavy they can only be pushed up the steep winding roads in this "land of a thousand hills." Rwanda -- a country known only for the genocide of 1994, when an estimated 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were murdered in cold blood in a mere 100 days -- is also a nation in need of heroes. It may now have found them: lycra-clad athletes in helmets and wrap-around sunglasses on five...
Spain's White Elephants
July 26, 2012 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBThe state-of-the-art Aeropuerto Don Quijote in Ciudad Real opened for business at the end of 2008. The vision was to create an air hub in the heart of Spain, and its backers believed it would bring business, jobs and tourists to this underdeveloped region. But just over three years later the airport closed - bankruptcy proceedings are on-going. Now it lies abandoned and empty, the silence broken only by birdsong and the occasional whoosh of a high speed train. In Crossing Continents, Pasca...
China Tweeting
July 19, 2012 10:30 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBIn just three years China's main microblogging site, Sina Weibo, has surpassed Twitter's entire global membership. More than 300 million Chinese are now tweeting, with millions more joining the national conversation every month. Shanghai-based journalist Duncan Hewitt finds out how microblogging is changing China. Thanks to social media China is witnessing the emergence of a civil society of activists and justice-seekers. These 'netizens' are using Sina Weibo and other services to publicise...
Some Promised Land
July 12, 2012 10:30 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBWriter and broadcaster Maria Margaronis follows the route taken by migrants fleeing war or poverty who are risking their lives to reach the Europe Union. It is estimated that around 75 thousand people are attempting to make the perilous journey each year in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers. They are fleeing from war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Somalia or simply in search of a better life where their economic prospects aren't so bleak. Some of them never make it, suffocating in t...
China: Too Old to Get Rich?
May 17, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBIn this week's Crossing Continents, Mukul Devichand tells the stories of Shanghai's rapidly ageing population. China's natural ageing process has been accelerated by the One Child Policy. Mukul tells the stories of an ageing city and asks whether China's rapid economic growth could be undermined. Shanghai's image is youthful and contemporary, of a globalised metropolis buying into a new lifestyle at chains like Ikea. But the Ikea Shanghai store is home to a different category -- and age --...
Russia's New Energy Frontier
May 10, 2012 10:25 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBLucy Ash visits Russia's new energy frontier in the Arctic Yamal region and explores the impact oil and gas extraction is having on the indigenous people there. Gradually but inexorably, reindeer give way to railroads and gas rigs. She goes to stay with a family of herders near the base of the Yamal Peninsula, whose name in the local Nenets language means "the end of the earth." Yamal is home to the largest single area of reindeer husbandry in the world and unlike many indigenous people of...
A Death in Honduras
May 03, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBHonduras has the highest murder rate in the world. The People's Funeral Service deals daily with the fall-out from these extreme levels of violence. Set up by the Mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital city, it distributes coffins, maintains two funeral homes, and even offers a mobile service where employees take everything necessary for a wake - including bread and coffee - to someone's house or local church. All of these services are totally free for poor people in the city. In Crossing Conti...
The Marriage Breakers of Bangladesh
April 26, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBIn Bangladesh, twenty percent of girls are married before their fifteenth birthday. Jemy is likely to be one of them. She is thirteen years old and due to marry a cousin in three days time. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Oli is touring the slums of Dhaka, telling parents not to marry off their daughters. And in the wards of the Dhaka Medical College lies Poppy, awaiting an operation to repair a body broken by childbirth at the age of twelve. This week's Crossing Continents looks at the issue of...
The Pink Certificate
April 19, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBThere's a Turkish saying that every man is born a soldier; and in Turkey every man is conscripted for military service of up to 15 months. There is no alternative to this; Turkey does not recognise the concept of conscientious objection. But one group of people are exempt - homosexuals. Their presence in the army is deemed damaging to morale and operational effectiveness. But the process by which homosexual men are asked to prove their sexual orientation is arbitrary and humiliating. Some ar...
Forced Sterilisation in Uzbekistan
April 12, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 26 MBNatalia Antelava reports on Uzbekistan where women have become the new target of one of the most repressive regimes on earth. She uncovers evidence that women are being sterilised,often without their knowledge, in an effort by the government to control the population. The programme speaks to victims and doctors and highlights the fear and paranoia that have made this such a difficult story to tell. Women have fled the country in order to escape the practice. Only a few brave Uzbeks have been...
The Angola 2
April 05, 2012 10:25 - 28 minutes - 26 MBTim Franks looks at the case of two US inmates who have been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana for what will be 40 years this month. It's believed to be the longest period of time in US penal history. For most of their confinement Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were held in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a prison often known as "Angola", after the origin of the people who worked there when it was a slave plantation. The two were originally imprisoned for armed robbery. The men ...
Canada's prescription drug crisis
March 29, 2012 10:30 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBCanada's First Nations communities are in crisis. Addiction to prescription pain-killers is rife, and it's devastating the fragile communities of northern Ontario. OxyContin - an opioid drug capable of inducing a high like heroin - is widely abused in Canada. But on isolated reserves, people talk of an epidemic. For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly travels to Fort Hope - Eabametoong First Nation - to investigate the impact of drug use. Fort Hope is accessible only by air, apart from a ...
What happened to the Kurdish spring?
January 12, 2012 11:25 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBTwenty years ago, the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq achieved effective autonomy after the first Gulf War, establishing a liberal constitution and a democratic assembly. The region is booming economically, thanks to its huge oil reserves. But things are not that simple on the ground. In February, there were protests in the city of Sulaimaniya against corruption and the dominance of the two parties which govern the region. The demonstration was violently suppressed, resulting in the deaths o...
Saving the Brazilian Amazon
January 05, 2012 11:25 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBThe Amazon rainforest is perhaps the world's greatest single environmental asset. For years the accepted wisdom has been that the remorseless tide of destruction there is unstoppable. Justin Rowlatt travels to Brazil to question this conventional account and finds that over the last five years rates of deforestation have plummeted by more than half. There is now serious and credible discussion about stopping deforestation completely and even replanting rainforest in deforested areas. He jo...
Frank Wild's last journey
December 29, 2011 11:25 - 28 minutes - 26 MBSir Ernest Shackleton has a heroic place in the annals of Antarctic exploration, famously for his expedition on the aptly-named Endurance in 1914. He intended to cross over the Antarctic landmass. Instead, his ship became stuck in ice which eventually crushed it. Shackleton and his crew made a desperate voyage in three small boats to Elephant Island, where they split up. The men on the island were left under the command of Shackleton's Number 2, Frank Wild. Shackleton and a small team sailed...
The Graves of Kashmir
December 22, 2011 11:25 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBJill McGivering, the BBC World Service South Asia editor, investigates the discovery of thousands of bodies in mass graves in Indian Kashmir. Human rights groups suspect they are just some of the victims of "disappearances" at the hands of the Indian military in this contested region. The authorities respond that the bodies are in fact those of militants who have infiltrated from Pakistan. Will an official investigation reveal the truth? Producer: Michael Gallagher.
China's Migrant Worker Mega-City
December 15, 2011 11:25 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBThe world economy has pinned its hopes on China's economy, which depends on over 150 million migrant workers and their labour. The system of internal migration, based on the idea that workers do not settle in the places they work, has sustained an economic miracle and rapid development. But the country has seen a summer of unrest, with rioting among migrants in the Pearl River Delta and angry reactions to the injustices of the system. Mukul Devichand visits Guangzhou, the southern metropolis...
Exposing Bali's Orphanages
December 08, 2011 11:29 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBEd Butler reports on a cycle of abuse in the orphanages of Bali. Some seventy orphanages now populate the island, housing thousands of children, many recruited from poor families, on the promise of a decent diet, education, and healthcare. But in some cases the promises are empty, as unscrupulous owners abuse and exploit the children - using them for free labour over long hours, and forcing them to beg. The most lucrative profits come from well-meaning tourists, who are often convinced by th...
Farming Zimbabwe
December 01, 2011 11:25 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBIn 2000, President Robert Mugabe introduced "fast-track land reform" to Zimbabwe in a wave of often violent takeovers of mainly white-owned farms. Led by veterans of the second Chimurenga - the Zimbabwe War of Liberation of the 1960s and 1970s - the takeover was seen internationally as a disaster. It was widely reported that cronyism and corruption meant only the country's politically-connected elite were benefiting from the land reform programme, and in the process were leading Zimbabwe's ...
Roubles and Radicals in Dagestan
November 24, 2011 11:25 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBThe main focus of the violence in the North Caucasus these days is in Dagestan, Chechnya's neighbour. Shoot-outs between police and Islamist militants occur almost daily, and suicide bombings and assassinations have become common. In response, the authorities use what many see as excessive force and the violence spirals still further. In the past two years suicide bombings in the Moscow metro and a Moscow airport have been traced to the region. In Dagestan it's a war that has touched almost ...
India's Whistleblowers
November 17, 2011 11:28 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBRupa Jha investigates how local-level campaigners against corruption in India face threats and violence - despite promises that the government will stamp out graft. She tells the stories of two whistleblowers in two different states who faced ferocious intimidation after they tried to challenge powerful individuals on the take. Producer: Ed Butler.
Zimbabwe's child migrants
September 08, 2011 10:29 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBMukul Devichand goes on the road with young children travelling alone on a journey of desperation, danger and hope - south from Zimbabwe and across the border to South Africa. Producer: Judy Fladmark.
9/11 - Toxic Ash
September 01, 2011 10:29 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBDavid Shukman reports on the thousands who have become ill from the toxic dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept 11th. The buildings released a cocktail of deadly carcinogens including, asbestos, lead, mercury and PCBs. Frontline responders such as fire-fighters, police and emergency medical workers breathed in the contamination for several weeks as they toiled at Ground Zero. The fires burned for a hundred days and many of the emergency workers toiled w...
The Mystery of Dirar Abu Sisi
August 25, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBOn the 18th of February 2011 a Palestinian engineer by the name of Dirar Abu Sisi boarded a train in eastern Ukraine. He was travelling to Kiev, where he hoped to apply for Ukrainian citizenship. But when the train arrived at its destination the following morning, Mr Abu Sisi was no longer on board. He had vanished. For more than a week, nothing was heard from Mr Abu Sisi, a manager at Gaza's main power plant. Then his wife got a phone call: her husband was in an Israeli jail. Now he is aw...
Takoradi, Ghana's Oil City
August 18, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBIn December, Ghana turned on the taps and began pumping its first commercial oil. Production will top 100,000 barrels a day this year -- enough the government believes to more than double the country's economic growth. At the centre of this oil rush is the once sleepy city of Takoradi. Already things are starting to change here: new businesses setting up to service the offshore oil industry, an increase in population, and, spiralling expectations. So can Ghana - one of the most stable countr...
Murder, migration and Mexico
August 11, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBEvery year, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans leave home and travel north overland, hoping to make a new life in the United States. This has always been a difficult journey. Now it is perilous. Mexican drug cartels have seen a business opportunity in the migrants: they are being systematically kidnapped en route, and held to ransom. Often they have been killed, and Mexico is currently investigating a number of mass graves. With the Mexican government's hardline military campaign a...
The Mourides of Senegal
August 04, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBTim Judah travels to Senegal to report on the Mourides, an increasingly powerful Senegalese Muslim movement that stresses the importance of hard work Many of the African street sellers in cities like Paris or Rome, and on Mediterranean beaches, are in fact Mourides. Far from being chancers who washed up on Europe's shores and now barely scrape a living from selling fake designer handbags or miniature Eiffel towers, they are part of a very organised and supportive brotherhood that now wields...
Escape from North Korea
July 28, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 26 MBLucy Williamson reports from Seoul on the dangerous trade of the people brokers, smuggling desperate people out of North Korea to the safety of the South. She investigates the way the South Korean government tries to integrate refugees from the North into their own modern, open society - and the challenges this creates for people who have only known poverty and extreme political repression.
Libyan refugees
July 21, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBCrossing Continents joins a British doctor volunteering to help women and children stranded in Tunisian refugee camps while the men fight Gaddafi's forces in the mountains south of Tripoli. Producer: Bill Law.
On the road with Hillary Clinton
July 14, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBThe BBC's Kim Ghattas has gained exclusive, behind the scenes access to the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during one of her recent overseas visits. Code named "Special Air Mission 883", the trip took eight days, covered thirty thousand miles and touched down in four countries in the Middle East and Africa. Kim joins what is affectionately known as "the bubble", the travelling band of diplomatic staffers, special security detail, international press and handlers that accompany the ...
Searching for an Alzheimer's Cure in Colombia
May 19, 2011 10:15 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBEarly-onset Alzheimer's has stalked a poor extended family in Medellin, Colombia. The family carries a dominant gene that means that half are at risk. The disease strikes family members as young as 25 and by their 40s sufferers are in the grip of full-blown dementia. Alzheimer's is by and large a disease of the developed world, if for no other reason than that people in the developing world don't live long enough to suffer from it. Now by using the Colombian family to trial new drugs, resear...
The Pakistan Connection
May 12, 2011 10:30 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBFollowing the discovery that Osama Bin Laden was living close to the heart of Pakistan's military establishment in Abbotabad, Owen Bennett-Jones investigates the ties between elements of Pakistan's army, intelligence and government with jihadi and Taleban forces. Producer: Rebecca Kesby.
South Africa: Aurora Mine Controversy
May 05, 2011 10:28 - 28 minutes - 26 MBIn South Africa a mining company whose owners include the grandson of Nelson Mandela and the nephew of President Jacob Zuma has left thousands of its employees without work and, they claim, without pay. Back in 2009 the company, Aurora Empowerment Systems, bid R605 million (£55 million) to take over two gold mines on the outskirts of Johannesburg, despite having no experience in mining industry. Aurora promised steady jobs, housing and bursaries for miners' children. The reality has been ...
What happened next?
April 28, 2011 10:28 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBLucy Ash revisits some of the significant stories covered in recent years and discovers what has changed since our initial reports. In some instances, there have been attempts to bring suspects to justice. In 2009 Crossing Continents uncovered disturbing evidence of alleged atrocities by the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Kosovo War ten years ago. Since then a trial has opened in the capital Pristina and two former KLA leaders are being prosecuted for war crimes. The case began in March ...
Germany
April 21, 2011 10:28 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBDavid Goldblatt looks at whether Berlin's alternative culture is under threat from commercial pressures. Or do developers and artists need each other to exist? Berlin has long been a magnet for artists from within Germany and abroad. After the wall fell in 1989 they flooded into the vast deserted buildings left in the Mitte area of the former East of the city. But over the last few years developers have been moving into this increasingly fashionable area, increasing rents and evicting squat...
Egypt: Sisters of the Revolution
April 14, 2011 10:28 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBThree years ago Bill Law travelled to Egypt for Crossing Continents to meet five extraordinary women who were fighting for human rights and equal pay for women in Egypt. For this programme, Bill returns to Egypt to tell the story of the unfolding revolution through the eyes of those very same five women. Their stories are a unique insight into how the revolution came about and raise questions about its future. Producer: Daniel Tetlow.
Ecuador
April 07, 2011 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBThe Ecuadorian Amazon region is one of the most bio-diverse on the planet. In one area, nearly 600 bird species, 80 kinds of bat and 150 varieties of amphibian have been recorded. And it's possible that the density of one of the rarest wild cats, the jaguar, is twice as high as anywhere else in the world. This is also home to two of the last uncontacted groups of indigenous people in the world, who choose to live undisturbed in voluntary isolation. But beneath the rich tropical soil lies a...
Uganda
March 31, 2011 10:25 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBAnna Cavell investigates the human trafficking of Ugandan women to Iraq. They were lured there by promises of well-paid jobs - but instead found themselves effectively in slavery, beaten and in some cases raped. She hears the story of how a Ugandan security contractor and an American officer together organised a courageous freelance raid which freed nine of the women. And she discovers that despite the rescue, the practice appears to be continuing. Producer: Natalie Morton.
Baghdad Airport
March 24, 2011 11:25 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBGabriel Gatehouse hears the extraordinary tales of the people coming into and out of Iraq - and paints a portrait of a still troubled country through its international gateway. It's not been the safest of places: one worker describes seeing a car bomb attack on the airport road and you still need to pass through five checkpoints to enter the terminal. Gabriel meets the people entering the country - like British and Ugandan security men, and pilgrims from Iran, bound for Iraq's Shia holy sit...
Cambodia: Country for Sale
January 13, 2011 11:15 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBThe paddy fields of impoverished Cambodia have suddenly become a prime slice of global real estate. But will the rural poor pay the price? This tiny Asian nation has just begun to recover after dictator Pol Pot's reign of terror, in which around 2 million Cambodians died, and the brutal civil war that followed. But now a very different story is unfolding in the agricultural heartland which once became notorious as the "killing fields." In a world plagued by food shortages, Cambodia is sudden...
Palliative Care in India
January 06, 2011 11:25 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBIt's estimated that nearly one million Indians with conditions like cancer die in acute, unnecessary pain because of the lack of palliative care. Restrictions on morphine prescription are being lifted, but too slowly. One of the most sophisticated systems of palliative care in the developing world has been established in the Indian state of Kerala. The grassroots movement to create a much-valued and effective palliative care system in Kerala has been called a silent revolution. Every wee...