draft but win or lose sunday will be a historic day it will be the first time cubans can say no to a government proposal out in the open and innocent just and just see to have than a cuba. well it's the biggest event in tinseltown the ninety first academy awards were kicked off in hollywood later on sunday well reynolds looks at the films in the running for this year's coveted oscars. the red carpet has been rolled out on hollywood boulevard and the on globes with the names of the winners are ready to open this year's academy awards feature a diverse slate of best picture nominees including the exploits of an african superhero in black and. the life of an indigenous mexican housekeeper in the one nine hundred seventy s. in roma. and working for black in the deep south the only problem is

a story of overcoming bigotry and creating interracial friendships in green book and the like for the brilliant but troubled gay rock star in bohemian rhapsody. the films and performances selected you know the nominated this year for the oscars certainly reflects that hollywood has a greater understanding and it's putting forth a greater commitment towards diversity and inclusion and i think that's a good thing but the four other best picture nominees are vice a bio pic of former vice president dick cheney a star is born is a remake of a venerable tale of fame fortune in fate with a helping of popular songs black klansmen director spike lee's comedy drama about a black policeman infiltrating the k.k.k. and the favorite a lavish dive into the intrigues b.

trails and lesbian love affairs in the eighteenth century british royal court the best female actor nominees include yet operates you know in roma lady gaga in the stars. and melissa mccarthy can you ever forgive me but there's a clear favorite i mean glenn close it's like finally i mean glenn has been the bride for her and it's like i think everybody is like like the best male actor award contest looks like a dead heat between christian bale's startling in person a sion of cheney invites and romney malek's passionate portrayal of the talented and freddie mercury is bohemian rhapsody the television ratings for the oscars broadcast have been shrinking for years and twenty teen was the worst year yet by including a broadly diverse slate of dominate this year the film industry hopes to bring

those numbers back up and give the academy awards more relevance rob reynolds al jazeera hollywood more on that and everything else that we have been covering here in al-jazeera on our website the address on your screens right now al-jazeera dot com and of course a lot on the crisis at the venezuelan border. now reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera venezuela's opposition leader is calling on the international community to keep all options open following saturday's violent border clashes over american aid efforts to get supplies into the country descended into violence between forces loyal to president and opposition at least two people were killed in clashes in the end of this indian border and around three hundred others were injured around sixty of murderous troops also the fact that to the opposition and the venezuelan leader cut diplomatic ties with colombia. the

u.n. says a record number of afghan civilians were killed in two thousand and eighteen due to an increase in suicide bombings and aerial attacks a report shows that three thousand eight hundred four civilians died in the conflict last year nine hundred twenty seven of them were children that's an eleven percent increase from two thousand and seventeen and more than at any time since they began keeping records the were in afghanistan has taken a terrible toll on civilians and twenty eight witnesses deplorable levels of harm inflicted upon. the u.s. so the highest number of civilians killed in the conflict since the united nations began system systematic documentation of the impact of the war on noncombatants and explosive devices killed at least twenty four people in syria's central how my province it went off as a van packed with workers passed by syrian state t.v.

says the device was one of the many left in the area by isis fighters people in senegal are currently voting for their next leader the president of micah salah seeking a second term and faces four main rivals to his bid since president south came to power the colony is said to be booming but opposition candidates say that ordinary people are suffering with high youth unemployment and observers say as many as thirty five people were killed in election violence in nigeria on saturday it's expected to be a close call between president mohammed hari and his main rival at the coup of a back voters queued for hours into saturday night after many falling stations stayed open late going to have more news for you in half an hour coming up next one on one east thanks for watching by.

when chinese authorities clamp down on what they see as unwanted or illegal activity. in not only make arrests they pressured the accused to confess on television. lawyers book publishers activists though. they've all been paraded on state media often before any formal conviction. i'm steve cho on this episode one east investigates china's public confessions are they real or just for show. their feelings. i apologize for the. displays of contrition.

words and i want to say that was. a just all. admissions of guilt all they had of what happened we know why woody allen's audition for her home. televised to audiences of hundreds of millions of people across china and beyond. since at least two thousand and thirteen chinese authorities have subjected dozens of alleged nor breakers to this kind of treatment . the televised confessions are regularly presented as interviews and embed it in news programs previous high level country in two thousand and four some reports like this one featuring swedish citizen wayman high are also repackaged for audiences outside china i got quite clear sense that he had been tortured for

example when he or he was detained. it's a serious allegation. but quasars business associates lam winkie says she too confessed under jurists. norio. water. again to you know wearing the ring thirty five as i would be going into like that. they put me in this chair they locked me in it and locked the page where all these camera lenses proclaim through the bars of this cage i have myself been made of stars and planets television against my will. to fight myself and mr humphrey i represent your corporate investigator peter humphrey and activist peter darlin have since been released they're now turning the spotlight back onto the platforms that at their confessions accusing chinese state media of human rights violations the media are not just innocent bystanders forced through broadcasts

these things they help make to help produce them to help extract them. it's no secret china has plans to extend the global reach of its stay toned t.v. network. but there are now growing calls for the international community to hold its journalism to international standards actually they are not media we are a part of commies pungent spark and. yet thousands and yet you know. so well what i'm saying about lamb when keith never intended to be an activist. but these days he's a regular at pro-democracy protests in hong kong and an outspoken critic of the chinese regime. up until two thousand and fifteen though lamb led

a quiet lie. if managing this bookstore on a busy streets in hong kong. it served a nice market customers came looking for gossipy political books banned in mainland china but then one after another lamb and four men linked to the bookstore mysteriously disappeared. lam says his ordeal started when he went to visit his girlfriend in mainland china. or one israel told some government guy her love was hundred and i just thought you know someone ira were summoned the whole. hour and i'm old. saw as a sub some so do not judge her adorable children your goal. and. all of. back in hong kong speculation grew that the booksellers had been kidnapped

and were being held in mainland china. thousands of people took to the streets demanding answers. inside his cell in mainland china cut off from the outside world had no idea what was happening in hong kong could be anything yet. he didn't realize he'd appeared alongside three of his bookstore colleagues in a report produced by hong kong based phoenix television in it the men confessed to smuggling banned books into mainland china we. all unit usual. for months no one outside mainland china knew what had happened. then in june two thousand and sixteen he reappeared in hong kong chinese police had ordered him to return to the city to retrieve

a hard drive containing information on his bookstores cus. dumars he used the opportunity to access the internet and what he read affected him deeply. you know how much i'm guy home you're looking. at you all although you were one guy. you ladies are nothing more. i w. and what i. would like no one. instead of returning to the mainland lamb called a press conference where he spoke about his disappearance and t.v. confession oh yeah. ok. yeah. beijing's response was swift. china's ministry of foreign affairs issued this report all but day later you don't

see szechwan what i mean i think you more than me we follow john what our family john what are your welcome and i mention your chair. we've come to berlin to meet another accidental activist. for the past three years and you look away has worked on a difficult oftentimes exhausting campaign to compel chinese authorities to free her father lamb's fellow bookseller a min high a swedish citizen originally from china. i do think it makes a lot of sense for me to continue my advocacy here as my father is. president. really here. and he has lived here for many years yes property. away disappeared from another of his overseas properties on october the seventeenth two thousand and

fifteen. close circuit t.v. footage shows him returning to his condominium in the thai resort town of pataki or . a man appears to be waiting for him. then unload his car before driving off again marking the start of a bizarre saga that is still unfolding here you've just got to know what i think you mean you would have bought the jungle saudi and all but when you're fired for which she isn't charging in january two thousand and sixteen whey appeared on chinese state broadcaster c.c.t.v. the report said he returned to china to turn himself in for allegedly killing a pedestrian while driving under the influence of alcohol thirteen years ago really well as well so i just. sort of a sense of the. bell.

and there's a high that's the. way your sense of me and. i would say. his daughter angela spoke to one o one east shortly after the first confession and back then for security reasons we agreed not to show her face we asked how she felt about her father's t.v. appearance i couldn't watch the whole thing because it was too missionary. clearly the best that i saw seemed very scripted in october two thousand and seventeen two years off the way disappeared from thailand china's foreign ministry announced that he was a free man would be a high you go troll should it be

a pun for the young yet you are. you treating my meat you are eating each in your shirish it's your. volume you shoot up. in walla reading. but three months later the bookseller was in the news again. he'd been seized by plainclothes chinese agents while on a train from shanghai to beijing with him to swedish officials. angela who had been allowed regular skype calls with her father in the months following his so-called release says she now believes the chinese government never meant to free him i got quite clear sense that he had been tortured for example when he was detained. and he also did tell me that they didn't know who the people were his friends that were. did not want him to leave china. he

showed me a particular set of photographs taken of him as sort of smiling and sort of doing the peace sign with his fingers on some sort of a segue in a park. you know only told me that was taken by his by his friends and the. in the tone of voice in which he said that made you know made it quite clear he needs friends wire and i think you know that the setting of the image. also very sort of heavily suggests that the image was produced as kind of evidence that he was having a good time you turn and eve to flee to china nearly three weeks off that being seized from the train away resurfaced smiling and in seemingly good spirits as he took part in an alleged interview arranged by china's ministry of public security chinese state media were invited to the event. she is hong kong south china morning post or i.c.m.p.

was also present at the so-called interview and released this video of. the think they are c n p handled this whole situation appallingly badly and they continue to do so i believe. they still haven't owned up to what they did which was to. don't critically participate in the circulation of propaganda. in an email to the newspapers editor in chief angela wrote the interview a scripted point by point rebuttal of the criticism against china's treatment of my father might as well have been a statement from the foreign ministry you still decided to run the story knowing these could not possibly be my father's own words why editor in chief tammy tam replied to angela saying with regard to your father's

case i assure you categorically that we did not collaborate with the chinese authorities to portray your father as speaking freely while in custody the south china morning post declined our request for an interview but in a statement said it was staunchly independent we had to choose between meeting in a stage managed setting it said or having no access to him at all and we made the decision to proceed based on news merits. peter darlin never wanted to be a prominent activist. for years he kept a low profile quietly working at the beijing based legal aid n.g.o.s he co-founded with chinese lawyer wong ciarán jiang but in the summer of two thousand and fifteen or thirty's took one as part of what is now known as the seven zero nine crackdown on lawyers and human rights activists. and then five months later they came for

darlin. it was a massive operation fifteen to twenty state security officials but came to my home in the evening cameras rolling lights on and it was state security not the police. or sheriff's people. are just a series while in detention don and realized the only way out was to agree to a taped confession. he relented ought to spending days being watched around the clock by gods and ensuring long interrogation sessions. there was a real. little they had a script writer or had you know the camera people we had a director then me and her the c.c.t.v. journalist us two actors and literally just reading the lines like

a rehearsal except you don't see the papers. since his deportation has lived in chiang mai thailand he's now preparing to leave asia for good. we film only in dollars mindful that quaint mean high disappeared while holidaying in this country and of the fact that darwin is still recovering from his old deal i had a pretty intense sort of p.t.s.d. related symptoms to deal with when i first relocated here like my girlfriend disappears in the supermarket to go get something without telling me and you know they'll have a minor freak out standing in the aisle like what's going on. you know that's really what i want you know. in late december scuffles break out outside a courthouse in the northern chinese city of chen jin starlin's former cofounder one choice junks trial gets underway. he's been held without access to his

family or lawyers for more than three years. the courts hands him a four and a half year sentence for subversion he is one of the few people that have refused to make a four c.v. confession. he wishes to be tortured to death before submitting to something that he know isn't wrong like making a forced to be confession admitting some kind of crime but he doesn't consider a crime. others swept up in the seven zero nine crackdown appear to have buckled under pressure though. in august two thousand and sixteen one of china's most celebrated human rights lawyers appeared in at least two separate t.v. reports. wang you said she was rejecting an award conferred on her by the american bar association. as a. wang

you has since made clear she agreed to the so-called interviews for the sake of her son the teenager was attempting to flee china when he was stopped at a border town in myanmar his father long john says chinese authorities used him as a bargaining chip purse was. put in with you all to move to the general room. says hi go on for work or of a monday and move from the city your new book of job joy you will want to let you know. but what exactly is the aim of such confessions activist and academic dr tung bell believes that beyond intimidation and she really ation they serve another purpose. rather than the permits and i read the sentence. i lose face and i know i

would be criticized by other humans activists. and i may lose my. right makarios to continue my work tongue knows what it's like to butt heads with the chinese government. he was once a human rights lawyer who took on some of china's most high profile causes and legal cases tongue was detained multiple times and now lives in exile in the united states he says he too was filmed making a confession but the footage never aired. that me and tortured me and and sauced me to two concise interactive in the video since he thinks of enemies and. i would be

community arraignments. but it you know. who this person was was like you know our happiest moments in our village is highest to good i'd be great on the we were so brave enough to risk. we were arrested. not all televised confessions involve critics of the chinese government. peter humphrey and his wife ran a risk consultancy in shanghai. in two thousand and thirteen they were asked by pharmaceutical giant glaxo smith kline or g s k to conduct background checks on an employee that same year as authorities intensified a corruption probe into the drugs company humphrey and his wife were also arrested

. people were being arrested my friends and i think i did time bomb forty people. shortly off of those rights because. j.f.k. informed me. that the person we had investigated for them was coming off for us. under. weeks off to his arrest humphrey appeared on chinese state television. she's never gotten over the experience when they. paraded me in front of the cameras for the first time in office of two thousand and thirteen. i had been held in conditions of great duress. virtually two months almost two months. humphrey says he was given a sedative just before the so-called interview then let into a cage and strapped into

a chair. home of course you gun safety no horses so each take all the fun part your horse shit. i was very drowsy but i was still trying to resist saying anything the would amount to confessing to a crime that i never committed. but psychologically what do you do when you're locked opposite case the animal in handcuffs in a locked chair in a last cage and i even though you've never been convicted of a crime. humphrey and his wife spent nearly two years in prison after a court convicted them over legally acquiring information. he developed cancer during his time behind bars and suffers from p.t.s.d. but he's recovering and he still wants justice. today we're in chizik london

looking for the new european headquarters of the c.g. t.n. the international arm of chinese state broadcaster c.c.t.v. . we find the right building but it's hard for humphrey to be here for long tell you when i'm doing some and i think any moment i think some some is going to come and grab us. and here. is just the recurring nightmare from what i went through and i stand here in my own country breathing free fresh air and you know i'm supposed to be free to live this nightmare of what they did to me and i'm standing outside you know the building which is soon going to be occupied by an organization that and assisted the police in doing the. complete for.

the two peters are joining forces the last week we've been. backed by darlins n.g.o.s safeguard defenders humphrey is lodging a complaint against city t.n. and c.c.t.v. . here. i have here and i thought come the british broadcasting regulator i'm going to visit their office and i meet him this morning. i'm feeling a little bit nervous because this is a very emotional. emotional moment for me. to actually moon for i think it's a significant complaint a significant milestone on my efforts there winning the right. in his complaint humphry accuses c.c.t.v. of working in active collaboration with the police and the chinese state his

confessions he says were procured under conditions tantamount to torture. he concludes c.c.t.v. and c.g. t.n. should be denied licenses to broadcast in the u.k. for violating of comms rules neither c.c.t.v. nor c.g. t.n. responded to our requests for comment but this is the chinese government's reaction to humphrys complaint war machine on move on move it right with mission and media. thank you hey don't do mission and bad. juju choose again where you assume in general to julian gloom you so we need you or you or john or the challenge when you are in a written statement to one a one east chinese authorities also stated china is a country ruled by law the british citizen peter humphrey already pleaded guilty

and showed repentance when he served the sentence and he was released on june the ninth two thousand and fifteen. lamb winkie peter dahlan and angela quaid have also filed complaints to off come on. human low ball thing that all you have on all fours i'm a bankruptcy. a mother you go in on. a on printers are you gonna live on what i am or you are. he's lost his bookstore and his livelihood and says he still receives occasional threats but lam says it's worth the risk to draw attention to china's forced confessions.

lost and abandoned. found and say. one on one east reveals how one charity is giving pakistan's lost children a new chance at life on al-jazeera. venezuela's

opposition leader calls on the international community to keep all options open after a day of violence along the border. but i have some secret this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up booming business verses widespread poverty and unemployment rival narratives on test senegal votes for a new leader. to call for an all out battle against sexual abuse in the catholic church. and it's

hollywood's night to shine we'll look at the films capturing the most attention and what's different about this year so. we begin with the crisis in venezuela an opposition leader who calling on the international community to. keep all options open that's after saturday's violent border clashes over u.s. aid efforts to get supplies into the country evolved into fighting between forces loyal to president maduro and opposition activists at least two people were killed and hundreds injured more than a hundred of madieu those troops defected from their posts and the venezuelan leader sever diplomatic ties with colombia in a moment we'll go to our correspondent on the ground but first let's take a closer look at where the aid is trying to get in president nicolas maduro has for

has closed for crossings along the border with colombia which also shut its side the main entry point is the seam on one of our international bridge it connects the city of kuta with san antonio in venezuela my daughter has also shot the border with brazil there was violence on saturday at the gateway in parker i'm on the brazilian side as trucks carrying aid trying to cross in to venezuela our sons are n.p.r. t. is live for us in cupertino on the colombian side of the border so.