Earshot

Under the rule of President Erdogan Turkey has become the world’s biggest jailer of journalists.

Stella Nyanzi’s words are searing, she plans to topple a dictator with them.  She was imprisoned for her poem on facebook that called the President of Uganda, Museveni, a diseased foetus that should not have been born.  Her 18 months in prison have made her bolder, angrier and more determined to create change in Uganda.

Ma Thida is a major figure in the struggle for democracy in Myanmar.  A surgeon and writer she was initially happy to go to prison to gain experience to write a prison memoir.  However after years in solitary confinement it was only mindfulness meditation and books she had smuggled into jail that got her through.  She speaks to Earshot for this special series marking the anniverary of PEN International from an undisclosed location she has fled to after the February coup in Myanmar.

In this first program in a series marking 100 years of Pen International, the organisation that advocates for prisoners of conscience around the world, we investigate the disappearance of Uyghur poets into the detention camps of Xinjiang.

Are white people being silenced by being labelled as racists? Controversial comedian Isaac Butterfield thinks so.  And what about people who publicly call out racism? Are they also silenced? Sami Shah feels frustrated with all this shouting and looks for answers to cancel culture by confronting his own racism.

The idea that immigrants are taking work away from working class white people has created a perfect racist storm.  Where does the idea come from and how do we counter it?

Why do people who’ve experienced racism dish it out to other racial groups?  Sami Shah investigates a taboo subject that’s like a crack in the mirrorball of multicultural Australia.

Comedian and journalist Craig Quartermaine describes to Sami Shah white Australia’s reaction to Indigenous people and their place in our national narrative as “an uncomfortable truth”.  So how do young Indigenous people get around that reality?  Craig talks to two young people who are facing up to racism with bravery and creativity.

Comedian and journalist Sami Shah had never experienced racism until he moved to Australia from Pakistan. It makes him the best person to prise open the lid on this difficult conversation about what racism means, who experiences it and the impact it’s having on the whole country.

As you enter the town of Lake Bolac in southwest Victoria, you pass a sign that says 'home of aquatic sports', but historically Lake Bolac is famous for its fine quality and abundance of kuyang or short-finned eels. Eels were the most important food source for indigenous communities in this area, but the records that are left are patchworked and few. Walk eel country, following the path of the eel migration and in the footsteps of human history.