Global News Podcast - Thailand PM removed from office

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Thailand's Constitutional Court dismisses Prime Minister Sretta Thavisin for breach of ethics. Also: Thousands of corpses traded in China funeral scandal, Melbourne joins Paris in outlawing e-scooters, and neighbours turn on each other in Portofino air con crackdown.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 13 Hours GMT on Wednesday 14th August, these are our main stories.

A new round of political uncertainty has begun in Thailand after a court removed the prime minister from office. So what comes next? Talks to end Sudan's civil war are underway amid more warnings that the health system is breaking down. And an investigation into the state-run funeral industry in China reveals corruption, including the theft and sale of corpses. Also in this podcast. People don't park them properly, they're tipped over, they're scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish and creating tripping hazards.

It's a real, real problem. The Australian city of Melbourne becomes the latest place to ban e-scooters from its streets, and we hear from the Olympic runner who finished a marathon despite breaking her leg. Thailand is no stranger to political upheaval. There have been coups, military governments and violent demonstrations in recent years.

Now the country has been thrown into more uncertainty after the Constitutional Court dismissed the Prime Minister, Sattar Tarvisan. He said he'd abide by the court's decision. I respect the verdict of the constitutional court. I reiterate that for almost one year I've been in this role. I've tried with good intentions to lead the country with honesty. The judge said Mr Sattar had breached the ethical rules by appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who'd served time in jail. Jonathan

Head is our correspondent in Bangkok. What's his assessment of the ruling? Once again, Thailand's courts are being used to settle the political direction of the country rather than elections. I mean, for the poor Thai voters, they only voted just over a year ago. And at that stage, there was a huge wave of support for the Reformist Move Forward Party. That party was not allowed to form a government by an unelected institution, the Senate. Then it was dissolved completely last week by the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court has dissolved numerous parties. The government that did form was a patched-together coalition by the second-ranking party, Purtai. Their prime minister-designate, Sheta Tawesan, a businessman, has now been felled by the same court. It shows that in Thailand it's the courts that decide and not

the people. I think many Thais will conclude that. Behind it, though, is a slightly more murky picture, which is that Seta was always a placeman. He's a frontman, really, for Thaksin Shinawat, the charismatic, once-exiled former prime minister who has been at the heart of Thailand's conflict for years and years and was allowed to come back from exile and avoid going to prison in what was seen as a grand bargain last year. He chose Seta Thawisin to be his man. We assume, we don't know for sure, that Seta's downfall...

I mean, nobody takes the idea of enforcing ethics seriously in Thai politics. It's a very unethical business. We assume that Mr Thawisin probably has something to do with that. Nobody takes the idea of enforcing ethics seriously in Thai politics. It's a very unethical business. We assume that Mr Taxon probably has something to do with that. We will know once we see Parliament sit and a new prime minister get formed. And we're not sure whether there's some kind of new arrangement in the coalition going on. This is the result of backroom politicking. And sadly, Mr Seta, who's had less than a year in office, has had very little chance to make his mark. So a hugely complex background to all this,

but ordinary Thais must be craving stability. They are, and they're craving a government that can do something to revive what is in effect a sick man economy. Thailand was famous for its breakneck economic growth for decades, up until 2010 or so. But for the last 15 years or so, the economy's just slowed down and slowed down, and everyone wants to see growth back. Mr Setter was trying to do that, although not having a lot of success. I've no doubt that whatever new government will come into office will try the

same thing. But you've only got three years now till the next election. And I think this will tell a lot of Thais that it is the interference of these powerful unelected institutions, the courts that can be used for political reasons, and the fragmented nature of Thai politics right now, which makes it almost impossible to form a government that gives them hope of a new beginning. Jonathan Haidt, it is nearly 60 years since Israel found itself fighting a conflict on multiple fronts. The so-called Six-Day War ended, to many people's surprise, with an Israeli victory. But could the country be about to find itself in a similar situation? Many expect Iran to retaliate for the assassination of a Hamas leader whilst he was visiting the country. And Hezbollah forces in Lebanon are seething at the killing of one of their senior figures in a similarly targeted strike.

Plus, of course, there's the continued fighting in Gaza, where it seems a milestone will soon be reached, 40,000 Palestinians dead. Our reporter Lucy Williamson has the story of how one family was affected by an airstrike this week. For four days, Mohamed Aboukham San was a father. This day will haunt him forever. The day he left his newborn twins, Asil and Asa, at home with their mother while he went to collect their birth certificates and returned to find them killed in a strike on their building in Deir el-Bala. Today he prepared to bury them. A new parent, comforted like a child.

I didn't even have time to celebrate them, he said. Gaza's health ministry says 115 infants, including Asil and Asa, have been born and killed during this war. We asked the Israeli army why the twins' family home was bombed and are waiting for a response. Fighting has continued across the Gaza Strip with both Israel and Hamas under fresh pressure to agree a ceasefire deal to calm spiralling regional threats. Today, Hamas released video which it said showed rockets being launched from Gaza towards Tel Aviv. Israel's army said one had crossed into Israeli territory and fallen into the sea. In the southern city of Han Yunis,

displaced residents not long returned, fled artillery and airstrikes again. Who will breastfeed this baby, one resident cried over the ruins of a building. All her family were killed, even her mother. Reem Abu Haya, three months old, was pulled from the rubble, bruised and battered, the only survivor of an airstrike that her grandmother says killed her parents and eight siblings, along with ten other people. They are the terrorists, the ones that kill children.

They are supported by America. Out of 20 people, this one is the only one left. The focus on Gaza now is shrinking, Out of 20 people, this one is the only one left. The focus on Gaza now is shrinking as the threat of regional conflict grows. But each child left without a family, each father left without his children, is adding to the long shadow of this war. Lucy Williamson. A massive scandal has emerged in China's state-run funeral industry. Investigators there have discovered widespread corruption, including the theft and resale of corpses.

Our China media analyst Kerry Allen told us what more we know about the allegations. This all started really with a Chinese biomedical company that was accused last week of stealing more than 4,000 bodies from crematoriums and medical laboratories in a northern Chinese province to use bones for dental grafts. And what I'm seeing today is that Chinese media are basically signaling that the government is now looking to carry out a nationwide crackdown into the funeral industry. What's important to know is that most of China's funeral parlors are managed under the direct supervision of civil affairs authorities. So we're talking local officials. And reports are saying today that at least eight of these regions across China have reported investigations into people connected to funeral homes and funeral management institutions.

So it does look like it's going to be a real crackdown into both small scale and large offences, but very much targeting corruption. And those allegations of the theft and resale of corpses, I imagine many people in China are deeply shocked by that. They are, yes, but what's very evident today is that on social media platforms like Weibo, if you read any report on this, you'll see that there are zero comments. And I suspect that social media platforms

are playing a role in stopping people from talking about this. But there are so many reports on it talking about how this one popular outlet, the paper, said that the authorities were investigating a crime ring that was stealing and reselling corpses for profits. They were buying them and using them to produce these bone grafts. And we have to factor in in China that funerals and associated services, they're big money-making businesses in China. It's got a huge population. In fact, in 2020, about US$36 billion was spent on the industry. Kerry Allen. The governor of Russia's border region of Belgorod has declared a state of

emergency, saying that Ukrainian shelling had made the situation there extremely difficult. Ukrainian troops have also been advancing in the neighbouring Kursk region of Russia, following that surprise incursion there that started eight days ago. Kyiv says it now controls more than 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory. But the Defence Ministry in Moscow insists its forces have repelled attempts by Ukrainian mobile units to push deeper into Russia. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner gave us his assessment of the situation. I think this has surprised a lot of people because this is very different from the previous kind of shoot and scoot little operations that Ukrainian intelligence has mounted using

pro-Ukrainian Russian mercenaries essentially or volunteers, rebels, traitors in Russia's eyes who went across the border, planted a flag, took some selfies and cleared off back across the border. This is different. This is a light division-sized force of around 10, maybe as much as 12,000 troops backed by tanks, artillery, signals, electronic warfare, air defence. In other words, the full panoply of modern warfare using what's known as combined arms warfare, which has overwhelmed the poor Russian defences. They spotted a weak link in Russia's front line there or the international border and exploited it. The dilemma now is not for President Putin. There's no choice for him. He just wants them out. The dilemma is actually for President Zelensky as to whether he stays put or gets out.

And there are risks and rewards on both sides. Why has he done this? Well, partly to bring the war home to Russians, partly in the hopes of relieving some of the pressure on the Donbass, where Russian forces are slowly advancing, pushing back the Ukrainians. That so far hasn't worked. But also, it's a massive psychological boost for Ukrainians, who all summer have been fed a diet of depressing news coupled with drone and missile strikes. This has given them a course to

celebrate. But let's put this in perspective. The area that they have taken is minuscule compared to the areas of Ukraine that Russia still occupies. Frank Gardner. And if you'd like to hear more about the ramifications of Ukraine's offensive inside Russia, you can listen to the latest episode of The Global Story. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. When they first appeared on the streets around the world about 10 years ago, e-scooters were largely welcomed as a green way of getting around. But a string of fatal accidents involving the vehicles has changed attitudes. Melbourne in Australia has just become the latest city to ban e-scooters entirely because officials say they pose unacceptable

safety risks. Victoria Uwankonda spoke to our Australia correspondent Katie Watson. On Tuesday evening, city councillors voted six to four to ban the scooters almost immediately, so that means all the operators have to remove the scooters within 30 days. Speaking on local radio 3AW, Mayor Nicholas Rees explained. People don't park them properly. They're tipped over. They're scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish and creating tripping hazards. An advocate for the blind, she got hit by one last week in the city on the footpath. So the nuisance, the hazard, it's a real, real problem. There's a study by the Royal Melbourne Hospital and it found that just over 250 patients were admitted to the hospital with injuries from e-scooters in the 12 months up to January 2023. And that was to the tune of nearly two million Australian dollars. Now, some accidents were

deadly, many people not wearing helmets, accidents involving the consumption of alcohol but doctors believe that the total number of patients across the state of Victoria injured by e-scooters is probably much higher than the official numbers. Mayor Nicholas Rees again. There have been issues around insurance and who's liable when accidents occur. So it's a very complex legal environment. The truth is there have been too many accidents, too many injuries. We talk to anyone up at emergency at the Royal Melbourne, they are inundated with people breaking wrists, knocking their heads. So the operators Lime and Neuron have been given 30 days to remove the e-scooters from the streets of Melbourne.

However, this company still has six months left on their contracts with the city council. They have been campaigning quite heavily, trying to petition the council, knowing that they had just a few months left on their contracts. They've put in lots of money in recent months to try and improve safety and regulations. A spokesman for Neuron said that they'd been in discussions to try and introduce measures like restricting the scooter use to areas that would be less congested in the city. But they said that this goes over and above the reforms announced by the state government. And it's very odd that a table proposal for the introduction of new e-scooter technology can also change now

to become a proposal for the ban. So they're obviously disgruntled about the news. Katie Watson. Still to come in the Global News Podcast. You have to imagine it's a tiny fishing village that evolved into this beautiful town that attracts the wealthy and the jet set. And the mayor doesn't want to have these unsightly units visible on the street. Why residents of Portofino in Italy are blowing hot and cold over air conditioning. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts.

But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. 16 months of civil war in Sudan have led to hundreds of thousands of people being killed and almost 10 million fleeing

their homes. Could US-led peace talks that have got underway today end the misery? Well, probably not. And the reason is that neither of the two warring parties, the government nor the RSF paramilitary group, are attending. We'll hear more about that in a moment. But first, let's get the view of James Elder from the United Nations Children's Agency, UNICEF, who spent the past week in the capital Khartoum. Khartoum is a battleground. You've got this enormous city which has just been bled of its people. And bled is unfortunately the right word. When I was in a hospital there a couple of days ago, blood on the floor, again, seeing mass casualties just on that particular day of children coming in. That is not an irregular occurrence. It's just because we were there.

That's why we saw it. In this occasion, it was a group of boys who'd been playing football at a UNICEF child-friendly space when it was randomly shelled, killed a couple of those boys, wounded the entire team. And I spoke to the rest of the team, most of whom were injured and said, boys, when you're okay, are you looking forward to playing again? To which they said, never. So there's a psychological impact to this. Obviously, physically, people are decimated. They've run out of coping capacity. Inflation has skyrocketed. They've moved three times. They're not in their homes. It's brutally hot. Water systems have been destroyed. And this, of course, is in Khartoum. And Darfur, we've had that famine declaration. So across the country, unsadly, we have one of the most shocking situations on Earth, numerically the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet,

and it's getting worse. James Elder from UNICEF. Well, let's get the latest on the peace talks in Geneva now. I asked our Africa regional editor, Will Ross, what chance there is of any movement. Well, it's hard to see anything moving it towards a ceasefire, but possibly more commitments from the rapid support forces to respect human rights. I mean, critics of the RSF, and there are so many of them in Sudan, describe it as an appalling militia that's carried out terrible atrocities, many of them based on ethnic divisions, especially in the Darfur region. And they've put out this kind of propaganda saying, you know, we will protect civilians, etc. But time and time again, we're seeing videos of appalling atrocities

by the RSF. We turn now to Japan, where the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has announced that he won't compete in next month's contest for leadership of the governing Liberal Democratic Party. He's been in charge since 2021, but support for him has massively dropped in the wake of a corruption scandal involving party funding and rising living costs. Mr. Kishida's approval ratings plummeted to 15.5% last month. Shama Khalil is our Tokyo correspondent. Fumio Kishida's approval ratings plummeted to 15.5% last month. Shama Khalil is our Tokyo correspondent. Fumio Kishida's position was becoming more untenable by the day. The more public criticism for the way he handled the fundraising scandal,

the more unpopular he became. And the more unpopular he became, the more convinced the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that for them to survive and to get through the elections in 2025, he could not be at the helm. The painful irony for the Prime Minister is that on the international stage, he'd actually done pretty well. Last year, he hosted the G7 in Hiroshima. He visited Ukraine. He improved ties with South Korea. This year, he addressed Congress when he was hosted by Joe Biden in D.C., and yet domestically, it is a very different picture. At the end of last year, Japanese prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into whether dozens of LDP lawmakers had pocketed millions of dollars in proceeds of fundraising events spanning five years. It rocked the ruling party, this scandal, and several cabinet ministers had

to step down. The prime minister said that he was going to handle this issue head on, and yet for many he actually hadn't. The reforms that he introduced were seen as weak, too little too late, and undecisive, and didn't really hold anyone to real account. Remember, this is not the only scandal that rocked this party. In 2022, weeks after the assassination of the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the level of involvement between the controversial Unification Church and almost half of LDP lawmakers had become clear. And this relationship varied between attending church events, financial or political support. As it stands, there's a

great deal of mistrust in the ruling Democratic Party, even though the Japanese public know that there isn't really any other option. The opposition seems to be weak and divided. But also remember that the Japanese public have been watching all of this unfold while they themselves struggle with a stagnant economy, with a weak yen, with rising food prices and with average wages that have not changed for 30 years. Fumio Kishida today said that the LDP needed a new start. It needed to convince the Japanese public that it can change. The challenge here is whether a different person at the top can actually restore the party's tarnished image. Shaima Khalil.

It may be the biggest name in global coffee retail, but all is seemingly not well at Starbucks, the US coffee chain. On Tuesday, it announced it was replacing its long-standing CEO with the head of a rival consumer chain, Chipotle. Markets have reacted positively to the news, given some of the issues Starbucks has been facing over the last year with labour unions and wage pressures, along with poor sales growth and increased competition in China. Jazz Brizik is a former Starbucks worker. She was

employed as a barista at a franchise in Buffalo, New York. Together with other staff in 2022, she sought to unionise her store. But executives pushed back and the row over unionisation led to serious worker unrest. The staff did vote to unionise in the end. And according to Jazz, who's now left the company and is claiming wrongful dismissal, it marked the beginning of the firm not just losing the confidence of employees, but also millions of customers too. She spoke to Ed Butler. Howard Schultz and other members of the Starbucks executive team took unionising extremely personally. You know, it was basically a referendum on him as a leader.

So Starbucks laid out a scorched earth attempt to bust the union. They fired people, they closed stores, they gave millions of dollars in new benefits to workers at non-union stores in order to deny them to workers at unionising stores to make the union go away. And it didn't go away. Right. Just to be clear, obviously, Starbucks themselves will contest these claims. They say that they just didn't think it was the way to go and that they thought that they had a better system that was more collaborative. But getting beyond the unionisation part, was there a sense that they were also losing sympathy with their wider public? I think the Palestine issue really brought the tension between Starbucks' image as a socially conscious company and their practice.

It was October 9th that I posted the Solidarity with Palestine tweet, but it set off this whole firestorm. You made a post online articulating what you felt was the union view, which was sympathetic towards Palestinians in Gaza. Right. Starbucks sued the union, claimed that workers were supporting terrorism, all of these things. And then the public responded by calling a grassroots boycott of Starbucks that ended up becoming a global movement in the US, in the Middle East, in Morocco, in Malaysia. Right. Lots and lots of customers were staying away. Yes. And I think that shows the difference between this just being an economic market question and a much bigger issue of a company taking the wrong stance and then losing customers as a result of

that. Because I mean, there is an argument, isn't there, that the price of coffee has become daunting for a lot of people with rising prices, lattes costing what, five, six, seven dollars in some cases. It's expensive. That's true. But I think other coffee companies haven't seen the same stock slides that Starbucks has seen. Starbucks itself has been saying they're still seeing the effects of their support for Israel affecting their earnings. are young, progressive, care about issues, want to see Starbucks live up to its stated values, they would actually need to reverse course. Do you want your job back? I would love my job back. Many companies have proven that they will continue to put profit and egos ahead of workers. And I think that's the world we live in. But people don't unionise when they want to tear something down. They unionise when they want to make something the best it can be. That was the former Starbucks worker, Jazz Brizak. Next to the picturesque village of Portofino,

playground of the rich and well-connected on the Italian Riviera. It's experiencing a crackdown on a piece of equipment designed to keep everyone cool during the height of summer, air conditioning units. Police have been ordered to smoke out anyone installing them without permission. Offenders face potential fines of tens of thousands of euros. Josephine McKenna is a freelance journalist based in Italy. She's been speaking to James Kumrasami. Anyone travelling through Italy might have seen these air conditioning units hanging off the edge of balconies and windows, and they're quite unsightly.

And Portofino, it's long had a reputation for attracting the international jet set, way back to Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy. So it has quite a reputation to uphold. And the mayor, Matteo Viacava, is really taking a hard line on these air conditioning units because you have to imagine it's a tiny fishing village that evolved into this beautiful town that attracts the wealthy and the jet set. So he doesn't want to have these unsightly air conditioning units visible on the street. We're talking about narrow alleyways

and the beautiful piazza that attracts plenty of tourists. I've been seeing in the Italian press stories that people are trying to paint their air conditioning units and disguise them. I'm not sure if that's really possible. So they're trying, but clearly not always succeeding because there are some prosecutions taking place. Yes, it seems that they've at least caught around 20 people in the first half of the year and since then another dozen, say, since June. Whether this will end up in court, I think that's unlikely. The mayor seems to want to be reasonable about this. But if they do end up caught and they are in court and they prosecute

it, they could be liable for fines of up to £40,000. And this is your neighbour snitching on neighbour, is that right? It seems to be, yes. I've seen the word vendetta used where there's a tit for tat going on. Who knows what the dispute starts off as, but it's certainly becoming an excuse for people to dob each other in. I'm not sure where this is going starts off as, but it's certainly becoming an excuse for people to dob each other in. I'm not sure where this is going to end up, but we're talking about a town, by the way, that only has 400 permanent residents. And of course, it swells to the thousands in the summer. Portofino is on the mass tourism map now. So we've got 1.3 million posts for hashtag Portofino, I noticed today on Instagram. So they're flooding in to this town.

And perhaps that's another reason why the residents feel a little bit under siege and a little bit concerned about what's going on next door. But this mayor has taken a particularly hard line, and he did last year as well, when he introduced fines on tourists who were loitering and taking photos because he was concerned about the town descending into anarchic chaos. The Italian-based journalist Josephine McKenna. Before we go, for those who haven't attempted it, I'd like you to imagine what it would be like to run a marathon. Now, imagine running that marathon with a broken leg. We've been hearing from someone who's done just that at the Paris Olympics, the remarkable British athlete

Rose Harvey. It was literally only about a couple of weeks before where I just had a little bit of tightness in my hip and to be honest at that point I didn't think anything of it. Neither did my team, we thought it was just a bit of inflammation and that these things always crop up before a marathon. So many people have little niggles going into it. When my hip started hurting just a couple of miles in, it's just crushing. It got really painful and I thought there's just no way I'm going to make it around 26 miles with this pain. But there was also part of me which just knew it wasn't an option. Most of my Olympic dreams were well out of the window by about 10k. I just had that tiny slither of hope that I could finish. Just being part of the Olympic marathon is an incredible experience. And I just couldn't

quite give up on the last little fragment of hope. I'm a big believer that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. I feel like this has been more on the learning side, but I have learned a lot and I have no doubt that it is going to make me a better athlete for the next race. Marathon runner Rose Harvey. And that's all 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, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Craig Kingham. The producer was Nicky Verrico and the editor, Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. Until next time, goodbye. To be continued... and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime,

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