after two reuters journalists from mya namar were jailed for seven years for violating a state secrecy law. wa lone and kyaw see 00 said they were framed by the military for reporting on the massacre of rohingya people. two malaysian women convicted of attempting to have sex, have been caned in a religious court. it's prompted outrage from gay rights activists. and this story is trending on bbc.com. the government of gujarat state in india is close to completing what will be the world's tallest statue. it's planned to be a 182 metre high tribute to independence hero sardar vallabhbhai patel. the figure has cost 430 million dollars and will be inaugurated on 31 october. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, its time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, from ramallah.

i'm stephen sackur. more than five decades after the israeli occupation of the west bank began, i've come here, not to meet a palestinian politician, but an artist, perhaps the most renowned palestinian artist of his generation, suleiman mansour. his paintings have come to define a sense of palestinian identity. but in a place like this, in troubled times like these, does art really matter? i have a vision of what the painting should look like, and then i keep trying until i have that image. and it doesn't come usually in the first instance. so this is the first try, i do it. and the effect is —

should show the helplessness of people, and so on. that's how i want this painting to be. but now this is how i feel, personally, and how i think people are feeling. this is dark, this is bleak. the mood, the feel of your paintings has really changed, hasn't it? changed a lot. a big difference between these figures and the figures of the heroic period that i used to do in the ‘70s and ‘80s. it depends on the situation, you know, the political situation. i hope it will change another time, because i love to make heroic paintings, to reach again that feeling of being hopeful and optimistic. suleiman mansour,

welcome to hardtalk. thank you. i want to begin at the beginning. you grew up with conflict, you grew up with loss, you grew up with very difficult family circumstances, your father died when you were young. so i'm intrigued to know why painting? why art? what drew you do it? i had a kind of talent, this is one part of it. the other part is all this hard life that made me kind of lonely and... ..loneliness gives you time for yourself to work on your talent and so on, so i was painting when i was five, six years old and i couldn't leave the paint

and paper and so on. and also, i'm intrigued by the timing, because you were born just one year before the creation of the state of israel which, of course, had a huge impact upon the lives of all palestinians and then, through your adolescence and early adulthood, you then experienced the run—up to the ‘67 war and then the occupation by the israeli military of eastjerusalem and the west bank. and, of course, eastjerusalem is where you were living. what impact did that have upon you? did you see your future and your commitment in a different way? you have so many artists around you, and they are fighting,

and i was sure that palestine would be liberated. you felt that? i felt that very strongly, listening to the arab media, especially egyptian media. yeah, it was a shock, for me and for all the people, when we were occupied. i think at that time we didn't think that the israelis would stay. we thought they will stay, like, a couple of years and then they would have a kind of solution, and then they would go, and that's it. at that time, also, we didn't feel so much palestinians, you know. because all the childhood, adolescence, we were jordanian.

you were underjordanian rule. yeah, and we felt likejordanians. and this feeling of being a palestinian came little by little after the israeli occupation. but projecting your artistic vision of what a palestinian identity was, does that make you a political artist? does it even at times make you a propagandist? sometimes, maybe. at times. but all artists, musicians, literature people, they were affected by the political developments around. and, for me, i wanted to paint. and what — i felt i can't paint a flower, or i can't paint a nude

figure, and that's it. i'm an artist, i have a message. but that's interesting. you mean you didn't ever feel that you could seek out and express beauty for its own sake. it always had to have a cause behind it, did it? yes. always ? always. i remember in 1980, an israeli officer called me and another two colleagues, to his office, and he said, why are you painting political paintings? why don't you make nice flowers? why don't you paint a nude figure, and i will buy from you. from that time, i thought, this is a bad idea, to make floral or a nude figure, or anything like that. and i think my time is precious, and i want to — if i were to do something, it has to have a message. but does it have to have truth?

because, if we look at your paintings, generally your images are very positive, heroic images of steadfast palestinians. is that really the truth of the way palestinians always are, or is it more sort of propaganda notion to help the cause? part of it, yes. another part is that i want to make a kind of idealistic idea of the palestinian land, of palestinian people, and i paint what i want people to be. not what they are. i don't paint realistic ideas about life and people.

you know, like, if i makejerusalem, i take off many things from the rooves, i make it a beautiful city. i try to make it idealistic. something very striking about your work is what happened during the first intifada in the late 1980s, when you and a group of other artists got together, i think you called it you new visions movement, and you declared that you would no longer buy art supplies, canvases, paints from israel. that you would be defiant, you would create your own materials for your own palestinian art, as part of the resistance. yes, and it wasn't an actually our idea. it was the idea of the first

intifada, to rely on ourselves and to boycott israeli products. and we, as artists, we said, why don't we use the same idea. why don't we do the same? so each one started to search for materials that fits his personality, and... which brings us back to the soil, to the land. yes, and it also brings us back to the childhood period where i used to help my grandmother doing things from mud, like walls or ovens. and so immediately, when i thought about material that i would work with, so i came up with the idea of the mud. i used to mix it with tea, straw and colour it with henna,

with natural materials, and then i started doing mud alone. thing is, you still do it today. in fact, one of the things you are best known for around the world is your work in this clay that you put on wood — not on canvas but on wood — and sometimes you incorporate it with paint, sometimes it's entirely a sort of clay vision, but you don't need to do it anymore. what is it about working with clay that you still enjoy, even though you're no longer at a place where you are boycotting art materials? i like the cracks in the mud. the cracks symbolises a kind of feeling, not only with me but with the palestinian people in general. there is a kind of... hope is lost, you know, in a way,

and people are desperate, and they feel frustrated. and also, the checkpoints that we have, hundreds of checkpoints here and there, it's like they have separated people from each other... sort of fragmentation? fragmentation of the society. fragmentation of the ideal palestine. fragmentation of hope. so that's why i still work with mud, and i like the cracks in the mud, which symbolises all these feelings. i just wonder, when we look at that huge canvas behind you, which is so much about heroic struggle and heroic individuals in palestine, do you feel in a way a little embarrassed by it, that it projects images which don't

really match today's reality? yeah, in a way, but i was... i wanted to represent a certain time, from 1948 until 1992, through this painting, including the diaspora, including the occupation, including the resistance, and then the intifada, and then just before the oslo agreement. the hope was very high or very strong among palestinians and i wanted to represent that period, to represent it not only through figures and so on, but also through the spirit of the time. talk to me about the experience,

the personal experience, of being an artist living through palestinian history of the last 50 years. have you known fear? fear coming from your art and the position it put you in with the israelis? no, not really. i remember in 1981 i was imprisoned for a short time. but then the interrogator called and they wanted to interrogate with me. but why did they imprison you in the first place? no reason, no reason. i was going with my family to nablus, with the car, and then i was photographing villages on the road. and they stopped me, and they me and they took the camera and the film. i stayed like two

weeks in the prison. and after a while he asked me, who do you think you are? you know, everybody‘s writing about you, that you are in prison. who the hell are you? i think they were afraid of taking to prison a famous person, especially in cultural and art and so on. and you know, as i... did they ever try to take any of your canvases, your pictures? many, many. not only me, but every exhibition that we made, we have soldiers coming in and taking paintings that they don't like. and the problem is they don't

have a rule, you know? so if you have, like, kind of left—wing soldier come in, then the paintings are left there. but a right—wing soldier comes in, then half the walls are empty. we had in 1981, ithink, yes, ‘81, they made the rule that we can't paint with red, green, black and white. the colours of the palestinian flag. and so we... every artist was painting with red, green, black and white. let me ask you this, maybe it sounds like a stupid question, but do you think, looking back on your long career, that your art, your voice,

your expression, may have taken a different path if you were not palestinian, if you hadn't been born into conflict and hostility, and this desire to express something about your people and their struggle? i'm sure that i would be a different artist, i'm sure. and do you feel in a way that your situation has trapped you as an artist? yeah, sometimes i feel i'm trapped. also i think i used it in a way, because making political art, and sometimes it comes out real truthful, from your inside, and sometimes you just want to make a nice palestinian painting to sell it. i did that, and many artists did that also. it's like using the situation you are in, although you are

trapped in it. interesting you talk about selling art because, of course, you're a professional artist, you have to make a living, you have to make money. for example, your most famous work, probably, is that one known as the camel of hardship, which actually you painted several times, one of which was bought by gaddafi, because he loved it, and it ended up being destroyed, but you painted it again, and i believe the later painting was sold in dubai for $250,000. but the subject was, again, it was an old man bearing the burdens, the steadfast palestinian, and it weaved in themes about jerusalem and loss and all sorts of things. when it sold for that much money, did it make you feel strange? not strange, no.

happy, maybe. but i know that it's a unique painting and a unique subject, and it's very famous. and i don't think every painting i do will be sold at that amount. but this painting, i knew it will be sold for much money. and i wasn't surprised. it's very hard to make value with art. only the dealers and the gallery people, who sometimes i work with, they have a lot to do with this. let me ask you about israelis.

you know, we've talked about israelis, in your life experience, being soldiers who've raided your exhibitions, or who once briefly put you in prison. but you'ave come to know israeli artists too. have you actively sought out collaboration with israeli artists? does that seem something important to you, or do you find that very difficult? it depends on the time. like, from ‘80 until 2004, i think, we were in very good relationships, and we made lots of joint exhibitions. more than 30, 35 exhibitions together. most of them under the bit title of down with 0ccupation,

and for a two—state solution, and so on. now, today, it's impossible to make a joint exhibition or to meet in ramallah, it's very hard. but i hope things will change. and what of pressures from the palestinian side? 0ver recent years, we have seen hamas, for example, in power in gaza, not in the west bank but in gaza, but clearly there are political divisions within the political life of the west bank as well, and there are hardliners who take a very tough stand on any relations with israel. do you feel those pressures from inside palestine too? there are perhaps voices saying that you have been too close to israelis. you've been too co—operative. and i wonder if that

worries you, that trend? for a short while, yes. somebody wrote in the newspapers and others wrote in a magazine and so on, and you felt that people in general are against these activities now. because now it is hopeless. they feel that the israelis are using these exhibitions to whitewash the occupation and to tell the whole world, "look, there's no problem here, artists are working together." it's difficult when you say there is no chance of peace, it's hopeless now. it's difficult for me then to look again at your own art, which is so full, much of it, of hope and idealism. have you lost that? are you a very different artist today, do you think, from the man who painted some

of these very famous images going back to the ‘70s and ‘805? of course i am a different artist today. it is just i can't make heroic paintings like i used to do. i can't paint nice landscapes, because everything is destroyed. people are depressed, they are... ..they are not like people in the ‘70s and ‘80s. they are different. they are very much concerned with living with money and so on. the landscape is destroyed by disturbance, by buildings and so on. and do you, given all of that that you see and feel around you today, do you ever think to yourself,

i don't want to paint any more? no, i didn't reach that situation yet. but to think i did for so many years, and i can't do anything else. and i come every day to my studio, and i make it a point to come to my studio. even if i don't paint, or if i don't do any kind of art, ijust sit and read a book, or drink coffee, and so on. but i make it a point that i should come here every day for several hours. it's your life. that's my life. my studio, my work. and every now and then i make a painting. but i will...

i don't think i will reach that point where i say, "no, i don't want to paint any more," or to stop painting. well, we thank you for inviting us into your studio today. thanks very much for being on hardtalk. it's a real pleasure to be here, and to see some of your work. hello there. yesterday we had quite a mixture of weather. some warm, humid sunshine across parts of eastern england, but further west, we had this weather front bringing cloudy skies and outbreaks of rain. i'm showing you this weather picture from yesterday because that front is going to be with us for much of today as well. it's barely moving at all, so it's going to be quite cloudy over the next few hours across a good part of england and wales too, with the cloud thick

enough for an occasional spot of drizzle, perhaps misty over the hills for a time as well. but for the most part across england and wales, it's going to be a mild night. you can see the yellows here. temperatures way up into the double figures. whereas further north and west, we've got the cooler air for scotland and northern ireland. and across sheltered parts of northern scotland, it could well be cold enough for ice touch of frost for early risers tuesday morning. tuesday, though, will dawn on a bright note for most parts of scotland with some morning sunshine. should be a bright enough start too for northern ireland. different story for most of england and wales, where it's going to be a great start to the day and the cloud will be thick enough for a few spots of rain or drizzle, perhaps across parts of north—west england, the midlands and eastern parts of wales too. for one or two, a damp start to the morning, but as we go through the day, that weather front will tend to ease and the cloud will thin a little bit, so we'll get a few brighter spells coming through. there will be a bit of sunshine for east anglia and south—east england. perhaps not quite as much as we had on monday. we'll still have some sunshine

for scotland and northern ireland, although the cloud will tend to bubble up a bit here a little bit as we head into the afternoon. it's going to be another quite quiet day really weatherwise on wednesday. a lot of dry weather with some bright or sunny spells coming and going. but a change in the weather to the north—west where we see a weather front moving. that's going to be bringing more general rain into western scotland and northern ireland. that rain heavy at times. things cooler there across the far north—west of scotland. further changes towards the end of the week as the jet stream gets more wriggly, more amplified. we're on the downward stretch, the downward limb of the jet stream, and that means we'll have an area of low pressure form as we head towards the end of the week. here is the low. now, uncertainty about the exact position. it might actually be a little bit further westwards, which will bring more general rain in across the uk. either way, i think we're looking at an unsettled end to the weak. rain at times probably best sums up the forecast on thursday, particularly across the northern half of the country, but nowhere is immune from seeing some wet weather. it will be quite breezy and cool, and some of the rain could turn heavy and thundery too. temperatures ranging from 13 in eastern scotland to 18 degrees in london.

i suspect it will stay pretty unsettled on friday and into the weekend with rain or showers in the forecast. that's your weather. welcome to newsdsay. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: western countries condemn myanmar‘s jailing of journalists, but there's silence from china and the rest of asia. "cruel and unjust", human rights groups are outraged after two malaysian lesbians are publicly caned in an islamic court. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: a nation's heritage up in flames. a lack of funding is blamed for the disaster at brazil's national museum. a world drowning in plastic, we'll find out what the japanese experience tells us about the harsh realities of recyling. industrial plastic has value. it can be recycled and turned into new products. but the same cannot be said of household plastic waste. it is dirty, it is difficult and it has virtually no value.