Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Brooklyn Rivera spent his life fighting for the rights of the Indigenous Miskito people of Nicaragua's resource-rich Caribbean coast. He died in state custody this month, where he was arbitrarily detained by the Nicaraguan government in 2023. The UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua say Mr Rivera's death highlights the human rights abuses occurring under the regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-president Rosario Murillo. Guest: Reed Brody, Member of the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.

There is a developing bilateral relationship between Russia and the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan. The two nations recently signed an as-yet undisclosed military cooperation agreement in what the Afghan defence minister described as “an expansion of the bilateral relations between the two countries.”

Since 2022, Kim Jong Un’s daughter has become a regular fixture at formal events with her father, leading many to speculate that North Korea's Supreme Leader is positioning her to be his successor.

Despite taking place more that 500 years ago, the Black Death plague still fascinates us, and historians are still unearthing new facts about the medieval pandemic.

Chris Wilson was the first woman to work in an underground mine in Tasmania. She is also a visual artist, a tour guide, and lives in a colourful Romani-style caravan on the west coast of Tasmania. In 1976, while teaching in Queenstown, Chris was part of the Franklin River campaign, and kayaked down the Franklin not long after Bob Brown's transformative journey. A series of unfortunate events forced Chris out of town, but a job ad for a mining exploration company was the ticket home that changed her life forever.

Marjon Mossammaparast is an Iranian poet and English teacher. Now based in Melbourne, she was born in Iran in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution. 

An exhibition called Cane at the Rockhampton Museum of Art is giving voice to the little discussed stories of the South Sea Islander community in Central Queensland. The exhibition features artworks from artists with South Sea Islander lineage, addressing the history, heritage, and identity of these unique communities in Queensland. 

Guest: Melinda Mann

Ben’Imana is set in Rwanda in 2012, during the Gacaca people’s court trials that sought justice and community reconciliation after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Alongside the court proceedings, a genocide survivor organises discussion groups between women from both sides of the conflict: survivors, and those who are related to male perpetrators. Sometimes they are within the same family. Guest: Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, writer and director of Ben'Imana.

Why is the world’s most populous country, which is rapidly advancing in so many arenas, failing to live up to its dreams of glory on the pitch?

Armenia heads to the polls on Sunday in what has been described as “one of its most pivotal elections since regaining independence in 1991.” Just don't describe it as a choice between Russia and the West says Laurence Borers.