22/01/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Philippa Thomas. Petrol bombs,

rubber bullets and now deaths in the streets of Ukraine's capital Kiev.

Two people have died from bullet wounds in the escalating violence,

the first fatality is it since the political crisis started in

November. Together at last - Syria's

government and opposition join the international peace conference in

Switzerland. But Syria insists President Assad must stay despite

this warning from Washington. You cannot restore Syria, you cannot

save the Syrian people, so long as Bashar Al Assad is in power. The

kind of provocative statements, repetitive statements, old

language, based on hatred towards the Syrian government. Why are we

being moved on? Also coming up: The perils of reporting China. Our

correspondent is moved on while covering the trial of a prominent

human rights lawyer. And how to get information to the

world's most isolated nation. We'll talk to the human rights group using

weather balloons to reach the people of North Korea.

Hello and welcome. At least two protestors have died from bullet

wounds in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, the first fatalities since

Ukraine was gripped by political crisis in November, on the day that

a new law restricting demonstrations came into force. Anti-government

protestors have been throwing petrol bombs and stones. The police have

responded with rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. This report

from our correspondent, Daniel Sandford, in Kiev.

As night fell, violent demonstrators were stoking the fires on the

barricades in Kiev. This was the day when new anti-protest laws were

introduced in Ukraine, but they were not designed to deal with this kind

of chaos. This evening, this central kiosk where is like a vision of

hell, with black tyres burning and to testers throwing stones and

firing fireworks, straight into the lines of riot police. The violence

started at breakfast time, police had tried to clear the barricades,

this was the protesters' response. The riot officers they were

attacking had been deployed it to defend the Ukrainian parliament

which passed the hated new laws. The Prime Minister made this statement,

which only stoked their anger. TRANSLATION: The cynicism of the

terrorists has reached the stage where they are throwing Molotov

cocktails at people. It all began in December as

demonstrators in favour of joining the European union. --

demonstrations. Has ended with officers firing plastic bullets on

the crowd and today they please confirmed for the first time that

some protesters had died. In hospital, I found this man, a

retired military man from crime who lost his eye in the fighting on

Monday. It was his birthday full. -- it was his birthday. I was near the

barricade when the riot police hit my head. I took the bullet out

myself with my hand and then I was taken away by ambulance which

brought me to hospital. I had surgery straightaway and my eye was

removed. Below Parliament, police made several attempts to clear the

crowd. This resulted in further injuries. The violence is still

really can find it to one street. -- of violence is confined. There are

laurels in the fighting when peaceful protesters went up to the

front line to sing the national anthem before chaos started again.

The BBC's Duncan Crawford is monitoring events on the ground.

What is it like there tonight? We have seen clashes going back and

forth over the course of the day, and owned a ten minute walk from

where I am at the moment. In the road leading up to parliament which

has been the focus of these clashes between riot police and the

protesters, we seen the riot police using stun grenades, firing plastic

bullets into the crowd. The protesters were throwing rocks. And

they were also throwing Molotov cocktails back at them. The

opposition leaders have been holding talks today with President

Yanukovych. They expect more than -- they have spent more than three

hours in talks. Earlier on, they came to the stage behind me, at the

Independents were all stop many hundreds of people are still

listening to protest leaders speaking. The tally click all, the

former world heavyweight boxing champion, now a leading opposition

figure, he heads up a party. -- Vitali Klitschko. He told the

protesters that if the government does not a concession, tomorrow we

go on the attack. Very strong words indeed. Another opposition figure

told the crowd that, I am going forward, even if I get a bullet in

the head. So a really tense situation here tonight. The rhetoric

has it really wrapped up and the possibility for more violence is

very real tonight. -- really ramped up. The Ukrainian Prime Minister has

told us that a lot of what we are seeing are the extremists and

radicals of the far right and most of the country is functioning as

normal. Yes, the Prime Minister told the BBC that the country is

functioning as normal. He is correct in that. If you go outside of the

protest area here in the centre of Kiev, if you are not in those mean

streets read the classes are taking place, people are going about their

business as normal. -- those streets where the classes that are taking

place. This is a serious situation. The opposition want to see the end

of these anti-protest laws that were brought into force today. They want

to see the Parliament resign and they would like to see snap

presidential election is called. So far, President Yanukovych has not

showed any sign that he is going to budge even one little bit. Thank you

very much. For the first time, the Syrian

regime and the official opposition have been brought to the same table

- as peace talks begin in Montreux in Switzerland. The UN Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon has hailed that fact in itself as an historic step.

But the talks - supposedly about forming a transitional government to

replace the Assad regime - have opened with angry speeches,

including a declaration from the Syrian Foreign Minister that

President Assad will not go. Our Middle East correspondent, Paul

Wood, is in Montreux. War criminal to some, a saviour to

his supporters in Montreux today. The fate of President Assad is the

main issue of this conference. These are not yet direct talks between

regime and opposition but at least they are in the same room will stop

Syria's Foreign Minister had this to say about the regime's opponents.

The media lured these people, these terrorists, by claiming they are

moderate but they know full well they are extremists. And they are

terrorists. The UN Secretary General accused him of using inflammatory

language. You are seeing I live in New York, I live in Syria, I have

the right to give the Syrian version here in this forum. Of course. I

never objected to that. We have to have some constructive and

harmonious dialogue. Please refrain from any inflammatory remarks... An

team and is usually quite mild-mannered but these are

intractable issues. -- Ban Ki-moon is usually quite mild-mannered. The

opposition insist that President Assad cannot be part of a

transitional government. Other victims in Syria are just too low

one man to remain on his throne. No phone has the value of one single

innocent life. There is no way, no way possible in the imagination that

the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could

read in the government. One man and those who have supported him can no

longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage. No-one should have

worried that the diplomatic niceties would obscure the real issues here.

One side thinks these discussion should be all about regime change.

The other side believes the talks should be about anything but the

transition of power. And at the end of a first day of meetings, the two

sides seem as far apart as ever. The latest fighting. Perhaps 130,000

people have died in Syria, President Assad has clung onto power. But he

cannot win an outright victory. Neither can the rebels. The hope of

this conflict lies in both sides recognising that fact. And beginning

a dialogue. In the last hour, Syria's ambassador

to the UN, Bashar Jafaari, spoke to reporters from Montreux. He objected

to Iran being excluded from the talks, and said in order for Syria

to engage, there needs to be a difference in the way the Syrian

government was addressed. The statements and the speeches of

most of those who took the floor today in the meeting and, as you

know, the 40 delegations took the floor, did not encourage the

national political buyer logs. It was a kind of provocative statement,

a repetitive statement, old language, based on hatred towards

the Syrian government and based on a kind of blind provocation which is

counter-productive, fruitless and unsuccessful. Not positive at all.

Let's talk to our chief international correspondent, Lyse

Doucet, is in Montreux. The real talks will get under way on Friday.

How do you assess the situation now? It is as Ban Ki-moon said in his

press conference, he said it is not easy for two sides to sit down after

so much death and destruction. When you talk about the pain and the

sacrifices that Syrians have made, every Syrian at that table today

would have lost somebody in this war. They would have been looking at

the other side of the table and blaming them for the hardship of

their own family and friends and neighbourhoods, which lie in ruins.

The accused each other of having blood on their hands. And being

responsible for war crimes. It would have been naive to expect anything

else, but John Kerry also called it difficult, the beginning of a

difficult and complicated process. The real test comes on Friday, the

UN envoy has admitted, that it will not be in agreement -- it is not in

agreement that the two sides will sit in the same room and discuss the

details. I think we should have no illusions, this is going to take a

very, very long time and if there is a lesson from the Northern Ireland

peace process, two sides on the sit down to negotiate when they

understood there is no military solution. There are powerful

commanders who are not at this meeting and they are fighting as we

speak. It seems as though the future of President Assad is a red line for

both sides. Indeed. That is a good way to put it. Neither of them wants

to cross it. Bashar Jaafari, the UN ambassador of Syria, is still

talking, still defending President Bashar al-Assad's right to stay in

power. But of course, for the opposition, they simply cannot

countenance a process which does not state explicitly that President

Hassan must go. And even Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General

made it clear that the document which underpins this whole process,

called Geneva one, that was signed up to in May of 2000, June of 2012,

explicitly state that there must be a transitional governing body, all

of whose members are there by mutual consent. And if that is the

criteria, there is no way that President Assad would pass that test

so it is about transition, so one way or another, that has to be on

the table or else there will be no one at the table. Thank you very

much. Much has also been said in Switzerland about the urgency of

getting humanitarian aid into Syria. Joining me from Westminster

is the British Conservative MP who has been urging an agreement over a

safe corridors to do just that. Thank you for being with us. We are

hearing a lot of political rhetoric, a lot of it is angry. You think

there is any potential in these talks to get at least local

agreements at that age? Yes, I think the most important thing about this

is that a process has finally started. -- about aid. You cannot

resolve conflict with people sitting around and talking. Other side have

a lot to get off their chest which is why there is all this hyperbole

that we are hearing today. At the end of the day, it is about

protecting the Syrian people. And we have 9 million displaced people

internally and 2.4 million people as refugees in the surrounding

countries. I think it is absolutely paramount to try and create some

form of safety corridor. If all sides care about the Syrian people,

they should at least come up with some sort of solution to give safe

passage to the majority of people in Syria by giving them some area where

they can be safe in their own country. If we do not do that, the

pressure on neighbouring Lebanon, I met with the ambassador today and

she said 25% of their country today are Syrian refugees. In Jordan, they

are under the same pressures. In Iraq and Turkey as well. If this

goes on, for much longer, the social pressures in the neighbouring

countries could be potentially explosive. You know quite well the

way that President Assad's mind operates, you have met many times

leading up to 2011, for him, it seems to be, stick it out until the

end, he does not want to go. Yes, he is obviously regime change and

protecting the regime has been his red line. But actually, those that

surround him, he is disposable at the end of the day, if the cost

becomes too high. If there is a risk to their own future, he would be

disposable, you will be disposable to the Russians, disposable even to

the Iranians. The question is, how much pain and pressure are they

willing to withstand to keep him. How much blood has to be let between

now and the eventual time in which he will go, because surely he will

go. He has no future in Syria at all. A final thought about what can

be done now in practical terms? You spoke about getting conditions

sorted out on the ground to allow some humanitarian aid in, there are

many splinters and factions with the militia, does that but aid workers

at risk? There are two factions, there are the forces of Bashar

al-Assad and the Free Syrian Army better represented right 150,000

people. The fly in the ointment, if you will, is a group representing

about 15,000 people in the East End in the north, and that is where the

pressure is from. But where the majority control is, between

President Assad and the Free Syrian Army, I believe that there is space

enough to create safe stones and safe corridors. Thank you. The trial

of a prominent Chinese human rights campaigner has begun in Beijing.

Shoo Ju-yoong is the founder of a group demanding government

transparency and full disclosure of the assets of Chinese leaders. He's

accused of gathering people to disturb public order. And in a sign

of how sensitive trials of this type can be, our correspondent Martin

Patience was jostled away from the court by the security forces.

Street after street, block after block, a huge security presence. It

felt like a military operation. The police filmed everyone's moves. At

this is what justice looks like in China. Why are we being moved on?

The courtroom is just down the road, but as you can see, the police here

are pushing us our way. What is clear is that China does not want

any coverage of this trial. This is the man in the dock, Shoo Ju-yoong,

filmed here in prison. He liked the new so-called citizens movement

which called for government officials to publicly declare their

assets. The group staged anti-corruption protests. Their

message was resonating with the public, but there are methods,

trying to organise an independent movement, have now landed them in

court. His lawyer says that the trial is a sham and he is not being

allowed to call witnesses. A handful of supporters gathered outside the

court. Transparency is all part of the National anti-corruption

campaign, said this woman. Our leaders must declare their wealth.

The president decides what is disclosed, he wants to avoid

damaging revelations. Today, details emerged of secret offshore accounts

held by some of the Chinese elite. Among those named, his own

brother-in-law. Unsurprisingly, the reports were blocked here. China's

leaders say they are serious about tackling corruption, but as today's

trial shows, they will do it on their own terms.

Now a look at some of the days other news.

Russian police are hunting for a woman they fear may be planning a

suicide bomb attack in Sochi during the Winter Olympics. The woman,

named as Ruzanna Ibragimova from Dagestan in the North Caucasus is

believed to be the widow of an Islamist militant. Wanted posters

have been distributed throughout the town.

The police in Italy have made ninety arrests in a major anti-Mafia

operation. Assets were seized in raids in Rome, Naples and Florence.

The operation centred around the Contini clan, part of the Camorra

crime network based in Naples. Bars and pizzerias run by the family in

the centre of Rome were searched by the police. One was a popular

restaurant close to Parliament. The controversial comedian Dieudonne

has been taken into custody in France. He's been called a pedlar of

hate by the government for sketches regarded as anti-Semitic. Earlier

today he allegedly assaulted a bailiff who attempted to collect

fines for offences including racial discrimination and hate speech.

The passengers rescued from a Russian research ship that became

trapped in thick Antarctic pack ice last month are finally back ashore

in Australia. More than 50 scientists and tourists had to be

airlifted from the Akademik Shokalsky onto another vessel after

several failed rescue attempts. As the sun rose over Tasmania, so

too did the spirits of those that had been stranded in the Antarctic

ice will stop finally, after many weeks at sea, they sailed into

Hobart on an Australian supply ship. The Akademik Shokalsky was

stuck for ten days and several rescue attempts failed before

finally help arrived. This has been a complex and controversial rescue.

There are no questions about whether the Russian research ship should

have been in such dangerous Antarctic waters in the first place

and who will pay for this very expensive international rescue, as

the ordeal for the passengers finally comes to an end. The leaders

of the expedition have defended their actions insisting they were

simply the victims of a freak event. The fundamental problem was the fact

that there was a massive upheaval, movement of the ice from another

part of Antarctica into that area. We had not seen that in any of the

satellite imagery before and it caught us. We were unfortunately in

the wrong place at the wrong time. Australian authorities have said the

rescue mission has disrupted other valuable projects in the Antarctic

because their main supply ship was needed to bring members of the

stranded expedition safely back to dry land.

How do you get information to the people of the world's most repressed

regime North Korea? It has no Internet. No dissident voices.

Virtually no alternative sources of information to the authoritarian

government of Kim Jong-un. Well one answer is to send in weather

balloons carrying rather unusual cargo.

Here with me is Thor Halvorssen, the president of the New York-based

Human Rights Foundation who was in South Korea a week ago to help

launch the balloons. Tell us first what you were sending over the

border? Well, the balloons themselves, each of them have a

bundle, the bundles weigh about eight kilos and it ranges from

leaflets, they are waterproof leaflets is, they have slogans that

are in favour of democracy and information that they would not

otherwise come across, as well as transistor radios, USB keys

containing information, education and in some cases, just dollar

bills. Who is with you? You have got human rights activist sending over

the weather balloons, do you also have defectors from North Korea? The

main people pushing this had been defectors who themselves received a

balloon like this, material from a balloon like this, and that is why

they decided to defect. You know that it works. Yes, it is mostly

anecdotal, but we are in a push to dramatically increase the technical

capabilities of this, so that we can both track them using GPS and really

help these defector group is with some good technology and linking

them with people, peer-to-peer networks, people that can help them

with this. Why would the police so keen to stop you? There was a lot of

police in June, but lastly, there was no police, the Chief police came

to let me know everything would be, but the last time, the North Korean

government sent out a press release to say they would bomb the side, and

this is the usual rhetoric by that government, but then there was one

from the Ministry of Defence of North Korea saying they were dead

serious about arming this site, so in many ways, this is an example of

the South Korean government spending to the will of the North. You can

see why the North Korean government is sending tee threatened by you

sending in this information, but are you endangering these people who are

likely to be, if they are found with this information or transistor

radios, they could be, or worse. Whether it is North Korea, Cuba,

dictatorships anywhere, the people living in it, they have many times

had so many things done to them. They suffered so much that and act

like reading a brochure or watching some entertainment from the South,

is a tiny Revolution, but it is something that they do, very

knowingly, of what they are doing. Just the very act of finding

something, picking it up and is looking, they are conscious. They

are meant to hand it over to the police, they're not meant to look,

but a lot of the time, they look at it and then they handed her over. It

is reaching the population, it is reaching the military. The number of

defectors that I have met who were active soldiers when they

defected... You are reaching into the establishment? Absolutely,

definitely, and many people who have never heard of anything happening

elsewhere, they are learning. It is not just propaganda, we send in

entertainment, things like TV shows that reveal that there is a world

out there and everything on it, and everything they are taught to

believe is not true. Thank you very much for coming in to talk to us

about this. This is BBC world News, thank you very much for being with

us. That is all from me. Good evening, most of us have had

some very decent weather in the last couple of hours. Tonight, some heavy

rain on the way. If you live