Global News Podcast - At least eight dead in Kenya anti-government protests

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Thousands of people protested on the anniversary of the storming of Kenya's parliament. Also: President Trump's emotional encounter with a BBC Ukrainian reporter and the Scottish conman whose tea wasn't homegrown.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Thursday the 26th of June these are our main stories. At least eight people have been killed in anti-government protests in Kenya. As the ceasefire holds between Israel and Iran, calm returns to Tehran as we'll hear from our chief international correspondent who's in the Iranian capital. Also in this podcast... BBC News, Ukrainian. Where are you from?

I'm from Ukraine. Are you living yourself now in Ukraine? My husband is there. Wow. And I can see you're very, you know, it's amazing. At the NATO summit, President Trump has an emotional exchange with a BBC reporter. an emotional exchange with a BBC reporter. We begin in Nairobi. Where on Wednesday police in the capital of Kenya tried to disperse thousands of demonstrators

with tear gas and water cannon. There were anti-government protests across the country where at least eight people were killed and 400 others wounded. That's according to rights groups and medics. Thousands of people came out onto the streets to mark the first anniversary of demonstrations against the government and tax rises. Dozens of civilians were killed and parliament was stormed back in 2024. A year later, protesters such as these were still demanding the resignation of the president, William Ruto. I'm here to fight for the future of my kids. I feel like as a country we're not going in the right direction, especially in education and everything happening.

So I'm here to fight for a better Kenya. Justice has not been served. I am here on the streets to declare that Kenya belongs to God and we need a system overhaul in our country Kenya for the changes to be seen. Not just one person to resign but the whole system to be overturned and what belongs to God to be renewed. Our senior Africa correspondent Ann Soy is in Nairobi. The protestors came out to commemorate one year since more than 60 people were killed

in similar protests against controversial finance bill, which subsequently was withdrawn and amended by government. And today they came out, one, to demonstrate against extrajudicial killings by police, and two, to demand for justice for the people who were killed. And what we observed and I witnessed running battles between police and the protesters, the police were determined to ensure that they did not get close to parliament. Some had even threatened to march on to state house and barricades were set up around state house and there was concerted effort from the security agencies to try and keep people far away from these two government

installations. In some areas, public service vehicles, buses were not even allowed within 10 kilometres of town and so people had to walk. In the evening, town was pretty much deserted as people now started the long trek back home. And how has the government reacted to this? Because they banned live coverage of these demonstrations, didn't they? There have been caution from different organizations, human rights organizations, diplomats in the country against heavy-handed tactics basically against the protesters, but what we observed was no different from what we've seen in the past. In fact, as you say, the government ordered local media stations to stop live broadcasting and when they defied that, we

understand that some officials went to their transmitters just outside Nairobi and shut them off. A lot of the protests were in Nairobi but what about the rest of the country? How widespread was this unrest? It was in different parts of the country. We have seen pictures from the coastal city of Mombasa, from Nakuru, another major town, towards the west of the country, and in all those areas the reaction from police was the same. And are there plans for these protests to continue? We'll wait to hear because what's peculiar about these protests and last year's protests is that the protesters

are very young, they are Gen Zs, most of them, and they have said that they are leaderless and therefore there was no real central organization for the protests. In many parts it was you know small groups coming together and deciding we will go to the streets, we are going to make our voices heard. And soy in Kenya. In Iran, as the ceasefire with Israel holds after 12 days of airstrikes, life in the capital Tehran is cautiously returning to normal.

Our Chief International correspondent, Lise Doucet, has arrived in the city. She's one of the few foreign journalists who've been granted access with the condition that reports are not broadcast on the BBC's Persian surface. That's due to a law from the Iranian authorities that applies to all international media agencies now operating in Iran. We've arrived here on day two of what is widely seen as a fragile ceasefire and you can really feel that this city, bear in mind this is a metropolis of 10 million people, is starting to resume its normal rhythms. You may hear the sounds of the traffic that are flowing again on the streets in and around Tehran. But we're told

that about half of the cafes, the shops, the government offices are still shut. So many Iranians fled from this city when the Israeli bombs started falling at the start of their 12-day military operation and it seems many are staying away until they're absolutely sure that this ceasefire can hold. And the people who are here speak of how shaken they were by what happened here, these unprecedented events, and not just by the intensity and ferocity of the bombs which are falling on their city here and in other parts of Tehran, but the fact that it happened at all. And they're worried. They're worried about the future. And when the government opened up the internet again today, and Iranians turn to the social media platforms which are allowed

here, many are banned or use VPNs to move around the restrictions. You saw this cascade of posts, people supporting the government in what it describes as its heroic resistance against Israel and America, but others too criticizing, criticizing the internet restrictions during those two weeks, there were near total blackouts, criticizing the internet restrictions during those two weeks. There were near total blackouts criticizing the restrictions on their freedoms. And this is the kind of conversations, these discussions that are certain to intensify here in Iran, even though they know that much of what happens next is not going to be determined here, but in capitals like Washington, across the region and far beyond.

Lis de Set in Tehran. NATO leaders are committed to more than double their spending on defence and security, agreeing a target of 5% of GDP by 2035. The decision came at a summit in the Netherlands in response to President Trump's repeated demands that European countries and Canada should pay more towards their own defence. He declared this to be a monumental win for the United States, which is the Western Military Alliance's biggest contributor. There was a strong sense that President Trump was the star of the show, reflected in comments

by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This was how one journalist put it to NATO's Secretary General, Mark Rutter. Some of the comments at this summit suggest that it's all about pleasing President Trump. I think Secretary Rubio called it the Trump summit. Do you agree that it's the Trump summit and how much of this pledge is about keeping the US president happy? And this was Mr. Rutter's reply when he was challenged yet again on the same point. I think he's a good friend and when he is doing stuff which is forcing us to, for example,

when it comes to making more investments, I mean, would you ever think that this would be the result of this summit if he would not have been re-elected president? Do you really think that seven or eight countries who said, yeah, somewhere in the 2030s we might meet the 2 percent, we've now all decided in the last four or five months to get to 2 percent, so doesn't he deserve some praise? And when it comes to Iran, the fact that he took this decisive action, very targeted, to make sure that Iran would not be able to get its hands on a nuclear capability. I think he deserves all the praise. The new 5% target could force many countries to make difficult spending decisions.

Spain's Prime Minister told the summit that his country was still talking about reaching the previous target of 2%, prompting President Trump to say it would mean Spain paying twice as much under any future trade deal. I asked independent defense analyst Jonathan Markers what difference the increased spending goals could make. Well if they meet it, it will make a big difference. It's very important. It's an aspiration over time. It's not going to happen very quickly. Some of it of course will go on defense related activities. 1.5% of the 5% could go on things like resilience in computer systems. It could even go on bridges and strategic roads needed, for example, in a country like Germany to shift forces rapidly eastwards.

But there are two big challenges, finding the money and spending it wisely. NATO militaries are trying to digest the lessons of Ukraine, mass has returned, numbers now matter, thousands and thousands of drones, for example. So the question is to find the balance between old systems and the new systems that are needed in quantity, but also crucially to avoid wasteful duplication between European countries, you know, trying to settle on buying fewer things or all choosing similar systems made by perhaps a much smaller number of companies. You mentioned Ukraine, it had been the main focus of recent NATO meetings, not so much this time. How worried do you think President Zelensky

will be by being effectively sidelined? Well, I think President Zelensky knows the lie of the land. He's had bruising encounters with Donald Trump before. Look, he'll be pleased that support from the NATO countries in general still remains strong. Indeed, the amount of equipment and support coming from NATO's European members is now as important, if not more important, than that from the United States. Mr. Trump hasn't been upping support for Ukraine in practical terms. Of course, there are key things, Patriot anti-air missile systems and so on, that you can only get from the United States. Now, of course, it was interesting that the NATO communique had no mention of Ukraine's eventual

NATO membership. The Secretary General, Mark Rutte, did mention it in his own closing speech. But, you know, let's be honest, this is all a little bit academic. Ukraine isn't going to be joining NATO anytime soon. The crucial thing is that the allies stand behind Ukraine in trying to do as much as they can to enable it to resist Russia's aggressive activities. Jonathan Marcus. Well, it isn't only President Trump who's persuaded NATO members to ramp up their spending,

but the Russian President Vladimir Putin. His full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago has posed the biggest challenge for European security since the end of the Cold War. The NATO summit identified Russia as a long-term threat. But unlike previous gatherings there was no condemnation of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in the final communique. We just heard about US patriot anti-missile systems and

President Trump said that he was looking into the possibility of supplying Kiev with them during exchange with Miroslava Petts, a BBC reporter. BBC News, Ukrainian. Where are you from? I'm from Ukraine. Oh. So my question to you is whether or not the US is ready to sell anti-air missile systems to Ukraine. We know that Russia has been pounding Ukraine really heavily right now.

Are you living yourself now in Ukraine? My husband is there. Wow. I can see you're very, you know, it's amazing. And me with the kids, I'm in Warsaw actually, because he wanted me to be... Is your husband a soldier now? He is. He's there now?

Yeah. Wow. That's rough stuff, right? That's tough. And you're living here? In Warsaw. And you're a reporter? In Walsh Hill. And you're a reporter? I am.

Good. So let me just tell you, they do want to have the anti-missile missiles, okay, as they call them, the Patriots. And we're going to see if we can make some available, you know? They're very hard to get. We need them, too. We were supplying them to Israel. And they're very effective, 100% effective, hard to believe how effective and they do want that more than any other thing as you probably know. That's a very good question and I wish you a lot of luck. I mean I can see it's very upsetting to you.

So say hello to your husband, okay? Well later the BBC's Lucy Hawkins spoke to Amiroslava Petza about her question to the US president. It felt really overwhelming to me, because it's sort of a personal issue. You're not usually talking about that to politicians. Not just politicians. The president of the United States.

Absolutely. And I was not ready to disclose my family situation with him, but because he asked asked I couldn't really lie to him. And you know, in Ukraine the army is one million strong, so many men are fighting on the front lines and it just, the reality is that some of the journalists, female journalists, have their husbands on the front line and that was my situation. It really seemed to resonate with him, what you had to say. Can you tell us about not just your husband but your situation and your child as well?

I have two children actually. They were six when the war, the full-scale war broke out. They were born during the war actually in 2015, twin daughters, and they are right now in war so with my husband's mum. The situation is okay with them. They are in, you know, they are right now in Warsaw with my husband's mum. The situation is okay with them. They are in, you know, they are secure. Everything is fine. They are thriving. But they, of course, they are two of millions of Ukrainian children who fled the country because of Russian whole scale war.

And they are not with their dad? They are not with their dad. Sometimes they see him because now people who are serving in the army can actually go abroad and see their families that are abroad. But to me it's also very personal because as a journalist I have to be in my home country, I have to be in my homeland, I have to tell the story and it's really agonizing feeling that I'm not there, I'm not in Ukraine, and you have to choose. And it's really, really hard for me to be in Warsaw. The city is nice, but I have to be in Ukraine, but I can't because no one can care for my children. And you asked a question. If you dropped me onto the streets of Kiev right now and I asked

any Ukrainian, what do you need? They would say Patriot missiles. They would say Patriot missiles and this is correct because you know today is the morning day in the city of Dnipro. 18 people died in Russian missile attack and Russia has been pounding Ukraine with missile and drone attacks lately as never before. So many people died in Kiev, in all big cities, and it's really getting, there's a feeling that it's really getting more dangerous to live in all of Ukraine. And people are getting desperate, and we know from our sources that Ukraine desperately needs more air defense systems like Patriot, at least ten of them. And we know that it's the US who can provide those. And the question is whether or not the US is willing to sell them. That's why I asked that question, because

I know this means life or death for Ukrainians. If there are enough Patriots in Ukraine, it means that more people will survive. Mineslava Petza from the BBC Ukrainian Service. Still to come in this podcast... None of these plantations had actually produced any tea by this point, and that made it extremely suspicious. The case of the Scottish conman who's tricked businesses into believing his tea was homegrown. In Colombia, the sex camp business has become hugely profitable, with around 12,000 studios employing more women than any other country, 400,000 according to one estimate. Sexual performances are streamed

live around the world. The biggest audiences are in the United States and Europe and demand is growing. A BBC investigation has found evidence that sex cam platforms are exposing women and underage girls to exploitation and abuse. Columbia's President Gustavo Petro has described the studio owners as slave masters. Our global health reporter, Sofia Batitza, has visited the city of Medellin and her report contains descriptions of sexual exploitation which some listeners may find upsetting. I'm watching Kani, a webcam model, streaming online. I do all kinds of shows. They can be very explicit or they can be sensual.

Hi, welcome to my show. If it wasn't for the high-tech equipment at the foot of her bed, she's got ring lights, a camera, a large screen. This could pass for a child's bedroom with stuffed animals, pink unicorns and teddy bears. Kani is one of hundreds of thousands of women in Colombia who perform sexual acts online to men from all over the world. Here many women work for webcam studios, which provide them with everything they need for their performances.

This studio looks quite professional. There are nice bedrooms for the models. I can see high-end cameras, a photo on the wall with the employee of the month. They have a spa where the models can relax and also get cosmetic treatments like Botox and they even employ psychologists who the models can talk to. But I can also see there are small cameras everywhere so I don't think there is much privacy here. So this is the office for Medellin. We have one in Bogota that covers that region, one in Cali, one in Pereira and one in Bucaramanga.

Father and son Juan Carlos and Anthony Rivera own a webcoming empire. You have 817 studios. Yes. I mean, it's a massive industry, isn't it, in Colombia? Yes, it is. An industry that, they say, is helping thousands of women. Now, the models are able to pay school for their kids, buying houses, buying cars.

The money that is coming is helping not only the models, but in general the country. Webcam studios feed content to platforms, websites where people can watch live performances. And it's only a very small number of these platforms based in Europe and in the U.S. that control this industry. And while they're making millions of dollars, especially here in Colombia, our investigation

has found that women are also being exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse. Sophie is playing with her two boys at the park. I do web-caming because otherwise I wouldn't be able to feed my two children. I used to be a waitress, but now I can make six times as much money. She's among the women who told us about filming for up to 18 hours in cramped cubicles, fines for eating or going to the toilet and being forced into degrading sex acts. I was pressured to perform with three other girls. I was forced to do a sex act until I vomited.

I said no, no, no, but the manager would accept requests on my behalf. And webcam studios like this are not just in Colombia. We've collected evidence of studios operating in at least 23 countries, from India to South Africa to the US. The studio where Kaynit performed hired her when she was only 17. I wanted to earn my own money and help my parents. But it's illegal for people who are underage to become models. How did it happen for you?

The webcam studio created false documents. There are times when the clients ask you to do very disturbing things like hurting yourself or behaving like an actual child. I was too young. The demand for this kind of content is growing and while some women are earning significant sums of cash, others continue to face difficult conditions in an industry that remains for the most part unregulated. Sophia Petitza, China's top prosecutor has made a rare admission that torture and secret detentions still occur in the communist state and has vowed to stamp them out. The prosecutor's office, the SPP, said that it had set up a new department to investigate illegal detention

searches and forced confessions. Several recent cases have sparked outrage, as I heard from our Asia-Pacific regional editor Celia Hatton. This has been going on for years and years at all over China at the local level. We know of cases of secret jails that have been maintained by police all across China, even at the village level, all the way up through the system up to the national level. Some of the cases that have come out recently have really alarmed people in China. One case is the case of Xing Yanjun. He's a businessman from Beijing and he was in Inner Mongolia, which is a remote part

of Northeast China. He was rounded up by the authorities there and he was held effectively in a secret prison for four months. His family were then informed that he had hung himself inside a prison cell, but they called that out saying that they just didn't believe that he had actually killed himself. He was also vaguely accused of engaging in illegal gambling. But this was a guy who was an executive, a senior executive at a Beijing tech company. So this has raised a lot of alarm in China increasingly where people were calling out the system saying, this just isn't legal.

We want someone to deal with this. So why do you think they've announced the change in policy now? Why now is the time to vote to stamp out the use of torture? In the past few years, China's legal system has really been trying to reform itself, to make itself more professional. For example, they've reduced the number of crimes that are punishable by death. They've also introduced mandatory reviews of death sentences. I think this goes along with that.

I should add, Val, that China is trying to stamp out the illegal use of detention centers and the illegal use of torture. But I think they're being very careful with their words. They still have secret detention centers that will be used by the authorities, but probably more to deal with people who they think are a threat to national security. So for example, there's one journalist, her name is Jiang Jian. She was one of the prime citizen journalists who really we became aware of during the COVID pandemic. She was in the city of Wuhan, and she recorded videos talking about how people were dying in hospitals back in early 2020. She disappeared into the system and then was accused of crimes at a national level. I don't think the

authorities are wanting to get rid of that kind of detention. They want to stamp out the use of secret detentions, this kind of extrajudicial detention and torture that's being used right now. Sylvia Hatton. Zimbabwe has moved forward with compensation payments to white farmers whose land was seized during the controversial land reform programme that started more than 20 years ago. The deal has revived hopes of a final settlement. A correspondent in Zimbabwe, Shinga Nyoka, reports from Herari where she met some of the farmers who received their payments.

Former farmers arrive for a meeting in the capital. There are elderly, some are using walking sticks and crutches. They are among the 300 people who have agreed to accept the government's recent offer of compensation for white-owned farms seized as far back as the year 2000. Although the offer could have been better, I decided that it was reasonably fair. Mounting medical bills and a sense of pragmatism prompted 71-year-old Arthur Basely to accept the compromise deal.

We actually have to get into that situation where we leave that behind. It's done. We now have to accept what's going to happen in the future. behind, it's done. We now have to accept what's going to happen in the future. I know it's difficult. For us, I believe this is the only opportunity. We can't wait another 10 years for another deal. But not all former farmers are on board. Dion Taron is rummaging through boxes stacked on his veranda since 2008 when he was ejected from his dairy farm.

It's a computer. He leads over a thousand farmers who have rejected the government offer of 10-year bonds and yearly interest payments. There's no guarantee that those government bonds will be honored in any way either. There's no recourse if government doesn't honor that agreement. So it's basically a terrible deal. But what of the black farmers, the beneficiaries of the land reform program? South of the capital, program. South of the capital 25 year old Aaron Gagne is grading his tobacco crop. The first years of farming were a struggle for his family but from ploughing in every spare cent and profit they've grown into a successful enterprise. Yeah I'm very happy because to be honest with you I think we have taken farming to another level because now we are living a good life through

farming and we are doing more than what the white guys were doing in terms of quality of tobacco. As you can see the leaf is good. We have invested in technology and it's now easy. He believes new farmers should contribute to compensation payments, but based on the value of the infrastructure they inherited. It's a divisive issue. So many lives were lost.

They have not been compensated. I met a faction of the 1970s Liberation War veterans group who are suing the government to try to reverse the deal. They say it was agreed to clandestinely and illegally. Godfrey Gurira is the group's spokesman. People are suffering and then the nation itself, what do we have? The hospitals have nothing and then we then have the luxury to pay out 3.5 billion United States dollars. As far as we are concerned it's really an unnecessary act of appeasement.

25 years on, KAM has returned to Zimbabwe's rolling farmlands and while there's some progress, compromise will be needed on all sides in order for the country to overcome this long-standing wrangle over its land. Shingai Nyokka reporting. And finally, a tea fraudster has been sent to prison for three and a half years. Thomas Robinson tricked luxury hotels and stores into buying tea that he claimed had been grown in Scotland but was actually from abroad. As Steve Godden reports, he made $750,000 from the scam over five years.

Every single leaf that we could grow over the course of the next four or five years is already sold. That was Thomas Robinson in 2015 holding court about Scottish tea in the plush surroundings of Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel. He presented himself as a visionary. In reality he was a con man ripping off other Scottish growers like Isla Henderson. He sold her thousands of plants he claimed to have specially engineered for the Scottish climate but really he'd bought them in Italy. It's all very horrible when we found out that it was a fraud you know we really felt lied to, we felt quite betrayed.

Robinson conned high-end customers, including Fortnum and Mason and the Dorchester Hotel, into buying tea he falsely claimed had been grown and produced in Scotland. But publicity was his undoing. Tea expert Richard Ross was suspicious when he heard Robinson was supplying an all-Scottish tea menu to the Balmoral Hotel. I could read these descriptions and see that he was alluding to specific plantations around Scotland, but I also knew that none of these plantations had actually produced any tea by this point, and that made it extremely suspicious. When investigators started digging, Robinson's deception quickly fell apart. In May, he was found guilty of fraud totalling more than half a million pounds as he was jailed today

in Stirling for three and a half years. He apologised for the hubris and arrogance he said were responsible for his actions. Steve Gordon. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith. The producers were Daniel Mann and Peter Goffin.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye.