The price of dissent in Belarus
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The repressive tactics of the Belarusian state have been back in the news this week \\u2013 and all over the map. The Olympic Games in Tokyo were shaken by sprinter Krystina Timonovskaya\\u2019s row with her coaches \\u2013 she ended up seeking asylum in Poland. In Ukraine, the head of a group helping Belarusian emigres was found hanged in a park in Kyiv; his death is still being investigated. In Belarus itself, it\\u2019s nearly a year since the disputed election of August 2020 - which sparked mass protests over the result. Since then the government of Aleksandr Lukashenko has been going after people who were involved in the demonstrations with every means to hand. This week, one of the main \\u2018faces\\u2019 of the protests went on trial. Sarah Rainsford was in Minsk and has been speaking to family and friends of Maria Kolesnikova.
In Nigeria, the mass abduction of children has become a tragically recurring kind of news story: eighty taken in one incident, over 120 in another \\u2013 just in the past few months. But it\\u2019s not just crime which is destabilising Nigeria right now. There is the continuing insurgency of the jihadist group Boko Haram in the north, and a crop of separatist movements around the country. As Mayeni Jones reports, the insecurity is now touching even people who\\u2019d previously managed to shield themselves from the worst:
It sounds like the stuff of a military dictatorship: troops will be out on the streets, enforcing a curfew, with people forbidden to leave their homes except on essential business. But this is Sydney, Australia - where yet another lockdown has been enforced, in in an effort to halt a surge in Covid cases. Different parts of this vast country have adopted their own rules \\u2013 but one thing all parts of Australia share is a reverence for the traditional character of the \\u201clarrikin\\u201d \\u2013 a rebellious, anti-establishment type who doesn\\u2019t take kindly to rules or regulations of any sort. So, Phil Mercer asks, how has a larrikin-loving nation reacted to such draconian measures?
Costa Rica gets a lot of good press for its efforts to preserve nature. It\\u2019s got an extraordinary array of micro-climates and species, and it's a leading voice in international efforts to tackle climate change. So it's also a hotspot for nature tourists \\u2013 from bird spotters to those who want to wander into a real live rainforest. But not everything about Costa Rica\\u2019s government is green \\u2013 and not all its life forms are friendly. Michelle Jana Chan went for a night walk which shed light on all sorts of wonders\\u2026 and horrors.
Producer: Polly Hope
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