tv Studio B Unscripted Al Jazeera April 21, 2021 2:30pm-3:01pm +03
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stops clubs competing against each other playing against each other properly the super league's remaining members across italy and spain initially said they would reconsider ways to reshape the project but the english exodus has left it dead in the water atletico madrid and into milan have now pulled out and event as president and. the vice president of the super league at mit's it can no longer go ahead david stokes al-jazeera. and let's take a look at some of the headlines we're following here on al-jazeera at least 22 patients have died as a public hospital in india's western maharashtra state when their oxygen supply ran out following a leak in the tank the hospital has been treating coronavirus patients elizabeth branham has more from new delhi we 1st heard that it was the number was 11 but hospital authorities said that they were trying to doctors were trying to save
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lives after the incident and that number has now gone up to 22 the hospital authorities the city's administration said that they're going to look into what happened who was responsible and hold people to account but unfortunately accidents in indian hospitals and not uncommon they have been a number of hospital fires for instance over the past year during the pandemic of this comes as major hospitals in years campers or warning bell ran out of oxygen less than a day india's reported almost 300000 new cases and more than 2000 deaths both recalled daily numbers former police officer derek chauvinist been found guilty on all 3 charges including 2nd degree murder for the killing of george floyd javanese due to be sentenced in 8 weeks and faces up to 40 years in prison. russian president vladimir putin is warning moscow respond in
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a harsh way to any foreign provocations but he says he wants good relations with other countries and also held the breakthrough of russian covert 19 vaccines and said he believes russia will achieve herd immunity by the autumn he made the comments in his annual state of the nation. a protest leader in. the charged with along with 40 other demonstrators for the murder of 2 policemen video released shows a vehicle ramming a convoy of motorbikes the man was then taken away by armed men the head of sri lanka's roman catholic church is accusing the government of stalling investigations into the 2019 easter bombings the attacks on catholic worshippers killed 269 people and left more than 500 injured nearly 200 suspects were arrested but no one is being charged. those are the headlines.
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there was no way in life that i would have left damascus but then you're faced with this decision you either leave or you die. a filmmaker photographer and refugee from syria. conversations about food without allow you to have conversations about difficult things and this is what i tried to do. a restaurant entrepreneur and activist. it's always very difficult when you approach it from your culture and your society and you live in exile especially when it comes to its identity i am the face of every woman who has been sidelined because of the color of her skin because of the size of her dress size because of
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a muslim name and identity. i heard you talking about empowering women through your cuisine but i also read in an interview that you don't describe yourself as a feminist so why is that it's very complicated because you know i feel that in the west you know a lot of white feminists don't get me. there is this kind of almost black and white a bit like there's good immigrant bad immigrant and unfortunately feminism is riddled with this i have been very uncomfortable when i've seen conversations around you know. women wearing his jobs and this whole idea that they really don't have the right to talk about the rights of women somehow that piece of cloth has taken away
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their right to speak about feminism and this makes me deeply uncomfortable because i think that there is in that there is an acceptance of the fact that i can be in my culture i can be deeply rooted in all the positive things about our culture i can still raise my voice against patriarchy the gender bias in you know in my culture is terrible and you know i have the right to west as opinions but i also have the right to defend things that are positive for of women and i don't feel i need to burn everything that is beautiful to prove that i'm a feminist my rights don't come from ridiculing my mother and my grandmother you know this is the difficulty that you know i have very uncomfortable when people bash a culture for being what it is every culture has its problem this is my problem about women as the bait in this country they extort people like me and this is very hard
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. but you know when you talk about the flu to people and being on the fringes you were not on the fringes you were right in the heart of it during the pandemic what made you go into the hospital on a dime but all of us i would cross the road and not walk the same side of the hospital because the infection was rampant so tell me what made you do that when the pandemic started i was freaking out i started putting on instagram i was like is anyone else cared about this or is it just me because the pandemic basically reminded me of what happened back home but since to me when i came here i thought i was going to be safe everything's fine i'm going to see it live a safe life so when i saw when i started seeing queues outside supermarkets and i started seeing seeing log downs and things i was like i was being very triggered so i wanted in a way to do something so i can stay sane and also to help the community where i
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live i live in east london i really like my community is so diverse and we have a hospital and i saw that they were urgently looking for cleaners i haven't done cleaning professionally before i'm sure there wasn't a long list of people wanted to be. next day they called me i got the job and i was assigned to work in a corporate board cleaning and disinfecting and i went there honestly like feeling so proud i was like yes we're all working together to fight this and i was very excited my colleagues in the ward were from about 10 countries. it was like the united nations in one ward and i didn't mean the hospital to become an activist i was there literally just to disinfect toilets and beds and but a month later i started seeing that the pandemic actually exposed the all like the injustice in our societies because what happened is that the government here announced a bereavement scheme in the bereavement scheme basically they announced is that if you are a migrant workers. working for the n.h.s.
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during the pandemic and if you die they give your family indefinite residency in the country but the government decided to exclude cleaners porters and health care assistance and ward hosts basically the people in the bottom of the paramedic who are mostly migrants you know so i thought i was very unfair i was like this is insane how how could this happen in britain the one of the oldest democracies in the world i went to my car and i had like 9000 followers on twitter and i was like you know what i'm a filmmaker i believe in the power of a moving image and i have this platform some going to use it so i recorded a message to boris johnson and i put it on twitter and within 4 hours it got 5000000 views and then the government announced a u.-turn i don't take the full credit because there were loads of people talking about it it was a collective work but yeah it was quite surreal for me to be honest for that to happen and also led me to think about the pandemic in a larger scope because with time i started seeing the failures just you turn after
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us and after you turned and in the midst of all of that they started to highlights or focus their attention on migrants and refugees crossing the channel to seek asylum here and it was just obviously like a technique to you know to divert our attention to say we may have we messed up so much but look look at these vulnerable refugees and migrants who want to come and seek asylum here be angry from them don't get angry with us so this is happened every time every time there's been a problem people have a war and this is happen from biblical times you know there's nothing that will unite people more than hatred and you know hate the person who's the most wonderful very easy that's how you'd like them but your video i think that was so powerful and also because it was so raw you know that the paid and it's the power of storytelling we were just talking about it's basically about checking our privilege and offering people our megaphone or giving a platform to other voices i think that it's relevant to all of us especially in
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this day and age especially in the midst of the pandemic of black lives matter of all of these movements that need to it's about people with a larger platform. you know inviting others to speak and that's how it should be there is this term which i read sometimes from my activist friends or campaigners when they say we are the voice for the voiceless i personally do not agree with that you know i find it slightly problematic because people are not voiceless people have voices you know what they don't have is a platform so i wouldn't say i am a voice for the voiceless i would say i am a voice and i sometimes lend my megaphones to other voices people one agency so describe them as voiceless you're taking their agency away from them i personally i'm not uncomfortable with that word because i feel it has helped me
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from hospitality but i've taken on this kind of terrible saajan in in kitchens the bullying the fact that there are very few women who are powerful and the fact that if someone and i'm saying this as a lawyer if a mere chef had touched a female outside the kitchen he would be in jail he'd have a criminal record somehow in hospitality we have protected these men who are violent and bully so i have seen my role as being. that voice because in hospitality everybody always allegiance to someone i mean for those who are from that part of the world it's a bit like bollywood you need to have a godfather you need you either your husband or your uncle or your brother has to be some big you know boss and that's how you get powerful being on the fringes has
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allowed me to raise my voice for those who are trapped who are chained by their obligation to the system and this is something that you know is significant and i don't know what you feel about this that you know where there is a hierarchy and you know how that's that's that's it and i mean essentially that's what you're doing that's what you were just talking about that's what i was saying so disrupting hierarchies in every industry and every society. in every corner of the world and as a refugee i was always at the receiving end of humanitarian work or advocacy you know people advocate on my behalf people donate to me or people raise awareness on my behalf now what i'm trying to do with my work because i work with a few n.g.o.s and charities is that we should be doing the work you know i don't want someone to advocate on my be have i want to advocate so myself. and i want the tools so if you want me to do this offer me the tools give me the training and i can do it and i think this is how it should be so so it sounds i do consulting work
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and i always advise organizations to hire people with lived experience people who have lived as a refugee and of course have the education and they can do it you know you're going to have to do it on their behalf and it's related to diversity by the way in workspace where you are very like you're well aware of its diversity doesn't only happen on the front you know diversity is not if you're a t.v. station diversity is not having a black presenter or a muslim presenter or a gay presenter is about to have diversity in within the commissioning editors you know in the top of the parents you're absolutely right and this is one thing that vibe you suffered hospitality because it is invariably a white male who's in a position of power and there's a lot of stuff selection so you will find other white males who are promoted and there is this thing the bed a lot of females hit the glass ceiling because in the kitchen suddenly they find
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the doors are closed and they can't actually progress beyond a certain amount and one of the things that you know i will be doing inshallah once we finally open and we stole yes i have i have setting up a mentoring school in my restaurant not to teach people how women how to cook or how to bake i want to teach women how to lead and this diversity is a problem i'm very conscious of the fact of ticking a box and you know and with me you bring me on board you take lots of boxes you know i'm 50 yes a little aged you know oh i. just i thought that's it that's just have are but i am blocking the way for other people to come on and this is something that you know i'm very conscious often i'm sure you are as well that you know we need to create space on the stage for others to join us. absolutely so one go to the questions out my question is based on identity how did you deal with b.
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identity crisis coming into a different culture a different background a different environment it's all a very difficult when you're a proto from your culture and your society and you live in exile especially when it comes to identity i definitely had an identity crisis when i came here because there is this pressure from the society that you have to integrate and while you are integrating you feel like you are cutting loose from your roots. so i balance it out by making sure that i be friending as many brits as possible because they did help me navigate the system here and there help me understand britain but i also made sure that i kept close ties with my syrian friends so i do not totally let go of where i come from it is tiring it's sometimes suffocating but the beauty of london is that it's got. communities from all over the world that's how i
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managed to stay sane and try to start to work out my identity crisis taking on your point about being london i think it's embrace to us all and i have lived longer in the u.k. than i have in india i still there in the implodes i don't have eat pork i don't drink alcohol you know people say oh but you know they feel have been integrated i have integrated as much as i want i'm at peace with myself and even though it's kind of slightly disconnected than he used the word suffocating yes sometimes it's very hard but then also comes with that great privilege of being able to speak 2 languages to talk into cultures to dress in 2 ways you know and as a woman it's a huge luxury that i can be this and i can be that you know my nurse mint and my roots are now into lance which is not unusual this happens to a lot of people who are still living in the same house where they were born most
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people have moved on they have new relationships new jobs new cities new countries new passports it is difficult but it is about identity and language and religion and culture. but is part of what they're doing all of us are doing every day it's just that they don't understand that this is what they're doing but juggling lots of plates together so we take another question i'm a journalism student from pakistan and my dream is to work as a foreign correspondent one day but i also don't want to turn a blind eye to or the harsh realities of the world we live in today so my question to you as that do you think i would need to dilute my accent to fit more western norms to follow my dreams that and again i do not dilute your accent i say that because. i've done it there was a phase in life where i wanted to speak the way the perfect american accent because i thought that would be accepted if i more similar to americans or to westerners
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but it really wasn't to the white move it's good to be influenced by the the language or the culture in my opinion to learn from it but i don't have to do it so well that i will be accepted you know i don't have to be speaking exactly like. david so david can befriend me i take so much pride in my spelling mistakes in my mispronunciations and i was going to carry on like are i think that it is not the accent it is the story that you're telling never ever forget your roots ever because this is what will make you unique be carry something very unusual in our d.n.a. which is so personal if the food you ate is the songs that your mother sang this is what has made you not your accent not what you wear you know i think i'm always very concerned when i see
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a lot of women talking about you know what they're wearing what they're doing what they post on their social media and i strongly say you are beyond your dress size beyond how many followers you have the bank balance of your partner the car you drive if you like an arrow can pierce through the heart of someone with you on message that is your success and whichever accent you say it in it doesn't matter that message is very important so one greets you from the ground you would serve a global migration center. if you believe that human mobility is where our society. how can you take all her classes and. not only in western countries. for centuries people moved around and migration happens because of a crisis and a problem the politicized issues of it now makes it very difficult but then
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you know land mass you know like in africa and asia people do move not everybody is coming across into europe but the problem is that it is seen as this is the only debate that's happening there are very poor countries like bangladesh was supporting a huge number of people religious and you've got you know a country like lebanon that has got massive number of you know syrians movement happens but the stories are not told this is to do with some amount of racism and some amount of bias it was labeled a crisis a refugee crisis when the 1st thing to arrive to europe as if it wasn't happening before then. there is a refugee crisis beyond the borders of europe of course and populism has led to some i mean it's changed europe when i did the journey in 2015 compared to now now europe has closed its borders militarized and fenced up their borders at some point the rescue boats were allowed to dock in italy. so what can you do about that we
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have to understand and we have to clarify that climate change and manmade crises will push more and more people to move so we need to be our politicians our m.p.'s our leaders uphold the rules of law when it comes to refugees and migrants and stop focusing on nationalism and hate and closing our borders there are people in croatia. in macedonia in northern greece who are beaten up by european police and pushed back which is against the law you would think that such a thing wouldn't happen in europe so we should probably also start from there you know that you don't beat up anyone full stop but especially someone who's fleeing for their life. i wanted to know what all the ways you can explore to shine a light so let's women and girls people can. have their voice heard and not be silenced but also. combating racism and really the to see some chance
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i think it is really important that you raise your children to understand that they must call it pulling and i'm very conscious and this is why i speak a lot about racism about discrimination because i know i'm on stage the spotlight has hit me now i feel i am the face of every woman who has been sidelined because of the color of her skin because of the size of her dress size because of a muslim name and identity and i think that it is a responsibility that we all have you know and even if it is just about educating your colleagues or educating your neighbors who you feel have prejudices you know you don't need to do something dramatic but it is a drop in a drop when you and i will both be gone people leave that legacy that person whose mind you changed whose heart to a changed world then possibly infer someone else this is the only way we can make
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a difference because we need to bring down hatred and get people to accept us as equal because we are equal hello i'm one of the founder of. i would like you to speak more about how the lake of existing laws through the embassy push people to cross them it's really a looking for life. to change so how a story can actually change people vision and she's flaws that help people and it. is a really good question and if you'd only ask a smile answer that it works when you put a face on the crisis because when we wait about a crisis from the news focusing on numbers so in 2016 your so you're here on the news 400 people arrive to greece 500 people arrive to italy says i'm people but who are these people tell me who they are where they come from their background why are they fleeing and 2nd of all why are they going on boats because there is no such
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thing as a humanitarian visa by the way there's this other mess that it's they call them illegal migrants according to the g. geneva convention you are perfectly within your within your rights to cross as many countries as he wants and then get to britain or get to sweden to get whatever you want and then claim asylum it is not illegal it is perfectly legal so. how do we address it again i'll go back to storytelling i'll go back to putting a face on a crisis i also want to just have got this whole culture now where people you know you can't get you know these are so if i want to hire a cook he'd have to have the qualifications of a brain surgeon to qualify so you know raising these kinds of threshold making it almost impossible to use the legal route to apply for visas so even you know this australian point system these are all deeply flawed it is this whole idea of going back to the good immigrant of the bad immigrant we want you know the math teacher
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but we do not want someone you know who will sweep you not the flaws in the hospitals but you need people to sweep floors the hospital this is completely skewered to words what they think they need and what they think they can get away with because it's like a hungry lion you are fed hit it into the tabloids and the newspapers are now you have to keep feeding them these stories of hatred then you have dehumanised whole group of people that people don't see them as human anymore they don't want them in the country and that is a problem. a last question is well that's your dominion your dealer's harvest or insubordination was around an exception of the people that are belittling in your silly little nearing or ensuring for democracy. i think it's very very complicated every time i eat i remember my grandmother saying that on
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every grain your name is written if it is not her destiny that grain will fall from your mouth eating is such a privilege to resent that someone else eats it respectable what they eat is deeply wrong people die of hunger in india and this is something that we should actually recognise that hunger isn't our isn't our myths we should not use food as a weapon against each other i should not go and force my food habits my likes and dislikes on someone else i should be happy it's a blessing they eat i eat they are lying people to force us into debates about food and hatred i want to see as many people go to bed having eaten a meal for me that would give me dignity i don't want to hate anyone. it's been and really great. and i hope so we will do it around
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a table in the restaurant thank you very much actually this is how you know we actually get to know each other then you share that bread together there's that moment where you are together at one level it doesn't matter where you come from the color of your skin your gender of who you are that's the moment of equality that shared moment that you have that same food everybody invite someone different and let's feed and let's not rush everybody and this can reduce the amount of hatred that thank you. sometimes we writers especially from the developing world africa i think we're really close that. entire relationship with the past. and because of stuff. you can't talk about the complexity of history one of my
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guiding is in. humanity made by the problem i have is i don't know what it takes place. ready for another perspective listen to the take al-jazeera is flagship news podcast with malenka bailout or discover hindsight and original docu drama podcast a new writing by charles dance the famous game for most of politics and culture go
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undercover allegations of corruption by those in power and if you get your news in 2 minutes from al-jazeera news updates on home already. that seems a promising paul thought of the pandemic but implementing the greatest inoculation in history is testing the global community around the world already a clear gap between rich nations and poor ones when it comes to vaccinating their populations from the geopolitics to the pure economics the misinformation and the latest developments what's going on here is very different for a start the backswing comes in the form of the nasal spray special coverage of the corona virus pandemic. politicized by the forces of nature. for years. i can document his struggle for his survival and builds
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a template for global action on climate change. the climate dialing a witness. on. this is al jazeera i'm with a check on your world headlines at least 22 patients have died at a public hospital in india's western. states when their oxygen supply ran out following a leak in the tank the hospital has been treating coronavirus patients and this comes as major hospitals in india's capital new delhi are warning they will run out of oxygen in less than a day india's reported almost 300000 new cases and more than 2000 deaths both record daily numbers elizabeth purana.
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