Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The State We're In: Olympic Special, August 9th 2008

THE STATE WE'RE IN
DATE: Saturday, August 9, 2008
PRODUCTION #: 1011359
HOST: Marnie Chesterton

SEGMENT A: (12 :30)

PROGAM TAG: (:29)

Rights of Beijing Recyclers: Marnie talks with China correspondent Karen Meirik about the thousands of people working as independent trash recyclers who have been forced out of Beijing before the Olympic Games.

Solzhenitsyn and Human Rights: Marnie talks with Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch about the human rights legacy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS: Correspondent Eric Beauchemin joins host Marnie Chesterton to recap the top human rights news of the week, including the sodomy charge against Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Iran's decision to stop stoning people to death, and condemnation of the execution in Texas of a Mexican national.

TEASER B: Marnie tells us what's coming up in the B segment

MUSIC BED (1:30)

SEGMENT B: 18:30 THIS WEEK'S THEME IS "The Right to Compete"

STORY: Saudi Arabia does not allow women to be part of its Olympic team or take part in any other major sporting events. Female sport is also banned in Saudi public schools. Despite this, Lina al-Meena and her husband set up the Jeddah United Sports Company in 2006. One of JU's main aims is to promote female sport in the Kingdom with the eventual hope of producing Olympic-standard athletes. We talk to Lina and her sister Sara who both play on the women's team.

STORY: In 1950, the Dutch Athletics Union suspended sprinter Foekje Dillema on the grounds that she was a man. Before her lifetime ban, she won a number of high-profile sprinting events both at home and in London and was widely touted as a future Olympic champion. She died in December last year, just months before genetic tests proved unequivocally that she was, in fact, a woman. Science correspondent Thijs Westerbeek explains the science behind this story with the help of clinical geneticist Dr Kamlesh Madan of Leiden University.

STORY: Iraq has seen five years of war. More than a hundred athletes have been killed. On top of this, many training facilities have fallen into disrepair. But this doesn't stop sportspeople from risking their lives to go out and train. Ahmed Abid Hassan is the outspoken Chief of the Iraqi Wheelchair Fencing Union. He tells us about the terrors of being an elite athlete in his troubled homeland.



TEASER C: Marnie tells us what's coming up in the C segment
MUSIC BED (1:30)

SEGMENT C: 18:30

NAOMI'S STORY: 10 years ago, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed. In the Nairobi blast, 200 people were killed and 4000 were injured. One of the victims was Naomi Kerongo, a Kenyan trade development officer. She spent two years in hospital, recovering from her physical and psychological wounds. As a result, she lost her job, her house and her children. Naomi tells Marnie her story and her fight for rights for the victims of the bombing.

COMPENSATION FOR TERROR VICTIMS: The victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks received billions of dollars in compensation. The African victims of the US embassy bombings have received nothing. Marnie asks Professor Rianne Letschol, the research director at the International Victimology Institute in Tilburg in The Netherlands, about the rights of terror victims to compensation.

CLOSING MONTAGE:
MUSIC BED (1:00)

PODCAST RUNDOWN:

In this edition of TSWI, we examine the impact of the Olympic Games on trash recyclers in Beijing, the human rights legacy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the right to compete. And we mark the tenth anniversary of the US embassy bombings in Africa.