♪ anchor: scores of people arrested in hong kong, as beijing's new national security law comes into effect. among the penalties is life in prison. last chance in russia to vote on constitutional reforms. one of them will reset president vladimir pututin's term limits. and it is going to be "very

disturbing," the words of dr. anthony fauci talking about the covid-19 deaths in the u.s., which has been excluded from the eu's list of safe travel partners. those are the headlines. i am claire pryde. thanks for joining us. we start with prorotests s in hg kong on the 23rd anniversary of the city's handover from british to chinese rule. schools of people -- scores of people have been arrested, namely for violating beijing's national security law. it was approved just yesterday, tuesday, and gives beijing the power to crack down on a variety of political crimes. oliver farry with more. oliver: i am and one of the main shopping districts today. at the last council, about 180 arrests by the police. seven of those on suspicion of violating the new national security law, which came in at

11:00 last night. the police have been out, waving flags today. generally color-coded flags. they have a new one today, which is purple, and tells people about their singing or their slogans that they are wearing on their t-shirts could be. in violation of the national security laws. . . so they have wasted no time. people on the street have not been particularly housed by the police, either despite all of the arrests. but of course, that could change in t time. claire: so while people clearly feel keen to fight for their freedoms, what does this all mean for the pro-democracy movement in the long term, do you think? oliver: well, it could actually be very grave for them.

there is a strong possibility that beijing will move the national security law, such a very, very broad reaching, in order to disqualify election candidates from the pro-democracy camp. we have already seen yesterday that joshua wong and three other party actually resigned from the party and distanced themselves from it, so they are clearly worried that there might be future repercussions from them. there are even stories of lawyers in hong kong and other pro-democracy figures, they are asking journalists to delete chapters, just in case it gets them in the future. it is probably too soon to tell the implications for the law. theill see probably when 1st constitution's start to happen just how hard beijing is going to come down on protesters, under this legislation. claire: think of your loved

ones, the words of vladimir putin on tuesday as he encouraged people to vote to reform the constitution. today, wednesday, as the last day of the last day of voting. russians were given a week to cast their ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. one of the cause additional amendments would allow president putin to stay in office until 2036, but officials encouraging people to vote have focused on other changes, like a ban o on same-sexex marriage. joining me now, mikhail plumas from the russian lbd d news network. what is your reaction to the vote wrapping up in russia today? michail: hello.

the dutch as a whole, the changes will look striking, and there is no needd to add such. is for us to make the kind of internal positions. claire: there have been very little focus on best, though kid when he addressed pressure yesterday, he did not mention that himself, and everyone in the government, all of the officials, they are promoting other aspects of the constitutional reforms. like i mentioned before, one of them focuses on same-sex marriage, effectively banning it. what do you make of that, and have you been able to campaign from where you are? you are living in exile right now. have y you been able to discoure people frorom voting or actually encourage them, rather, to reject the changes? at the: yes, of coursrse,,

network, ofgbt course we would like to make people think about this environment and to make the decision as we know to these amendments. claire: do you think that much more change in russia, though, as a result of this amenendment, for example, in terms of homophobic attacks -- i understand you yourselves were attacked after coming out to a friend. what difference do you think this constitutional amendment will make in terms of how members of thehe gay communinit, lgbtq community and d russia fe? you ththink there will be m more tolerance or m more violence? mikhail: yes, absolutely. ratey raiaise the homophobic , again.

people will ththink that they ae a good citizen, whihich makes gd things in the name of the institution, especially with that amendment. make ----ly, it might of humanan rights s defenders ad lgbtq, because same-sex marriages could be known as anti-constitutional, and that worries me a lot. encourage at all by the fact that vladimir putin's popularity is ebbing with young people? i understand young people were amongst his biggest supporters before, and now the tide is turning. do you think that is necessarily a good thing when itit comes to how much longer he w will bebe n power? mikhail: yes, i think so, because enonough of t them -- at

least one generation grerew up within the term of one man, so this kind of joke that there's no work of the president, it is putin. all right. we will leave it there for now. thank you very much for your time, mikhail tumasov. u.s. has setws, the and other single-day record for new coronavirus cases. tuesday saw 44,358 in cases there. speaking to lawmakers that a come of the country's top infectious diseasese e experts d the country is going in the wrong direction, and he would not be surprised if it goes up ote,00,000 today, if, qu "this does not turn around." much of western europe continues lifting lockdown measures, even continuing to welcome tourists,

the united states continues taking steps backwards. the country's top and fencers disease specialist has warned the u.s. is far from -- top infectctious disease specialist has warned the u.s. bringing bars under control. dr. fauci: we are now having 40,000 plus cases a day. i would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day, if this does not turn around, and so i am very concerned. reporter: more than half of the 50 states have seen a rise in cases, with 16 of them forced to either pause plans to reopen or reimpose restrictions. among the worst hit -- arizona, california, florida, and texas, which account for half of new infections. on tuesday,, new york, new jersey, and connecticut added eight more states for their travel advisory list, requiring any travelers coming from those states to quarantine for 14 days. meanwhile, democratic presidential candidate joe biden

assailed other jumper's handling -- president trump's handling of the pandemic. bidenen: the covid-19 threat is still here. it did notot have toe e this wa. otherafter m month, asas leaderers in otheher countries k the necessary y steps to get the virus under control,. donald trump failed us. reporter: people outside of the united states, too, are likely to suffer from the country's failure to contain the virus. despite a desperate need for tourism revenue, the european union has extended its travel ban on american tourists, some 15 million of whom usually visit the continent each year, mostly in the summer. eard,e: now, as you just becaususe of those awfulul coronavirus numbers, the u.s. has not made it onto the you eu's list of safe travel partners. the countries that did make it include australia and south korea.

is 15oday, july 1, this countries allowed to travel to the eu. that is good news for the tourism industry, but many in that sector hope american tourists will be allowed back soon. haxie meyers-belklkin repeports. some 50 every year, million americans a visit europe, but that was before the global pandemic, with cases in the u.s. still rising steadily, the eu has decided not to run the risk of letting american tourists in for the time being, news that came as a particular blow to mamany french businesse. [speaking french] haxie: for context, last year,

friends welcome some 5 million u.s. tourists. italy, meanwhile, is praying for the u.s. ban to be lifted in time for their lucrative s summr season. tourism accounts for 13% of the country's gdp. >> [speaking italian] haxie: the eu has vowed to review its list of greenlight tourists every two weeks. with its decisions on americans unlikely to shift unless the country s sceeds in stemming the spread of the virus. u.s.,re: now, after the brazil is the worst affected country by the covid-19. andst 1.5 million cases some 60,000 deaths. the virus reachching all corners

of the country, even deep in the amazon. brazil's military handingng thee this week to handle personal protective equipment and medication. >> deep in the amazonon, indigenous people wait for their turn with a medical team from the brazilian military. administering covid-19 tests and disturbing protective material and medications, including the controversial antimalalarial drug chloroquine. the need of turnout, thohough, s far from complete. >> [speaking foreign language] >> hunundreds of tribes people have already died of the disease that many fear has the potential to decimate brazil's native populations. with no acquired immunities to external diseases, statistics showing death rate among indigenous coronavirus patients of 9.1%, nearly double the

national average of 5.2%. have dismissed the military aid as a public relationsstunt, being big counting chris that right wing --sident jaya bolsonaro being big countnter criticism tt right wing president jr bolsonaro has ignored the threat. his s administration pushes to open up the amazon to commercial exploitation.. the national agency tasked with defending the borders of native reservations has seen as budgets slashed and its personnel reassigned, leading to a sharp increase in incursions by illegal loggers, miners, and poachers, , who leave environmental damage, and potentially the coronavirus, in their wake. claire: that is that is it for now. thanks for watching. ♪

hello and welcome to the "france 24" interview. we have one of the living legends of war reporters. hello. thank you very much for being with us. you are here with good news. finally, 22 years after being published, your memoir is being published in french, an iconic book all around the world. it is translated in french now. so i wananted to first ask you a question, because in the first pages, you are writing, "i did not want to chase nostalgia."

what did you mean by this? place,, indochina is aa excluding the war, captured the imagination of french planters, american soldiers, journalists, and war changes people and changes me. or givet want to frame a sense of it as nostalgic for war or the subject for the countries i was in, but they were going through the most to time --he -- ring this hovering this time. horrendous time. even so, it has marked me and mark other people. in a sense, it is nostalgic. u or farewell to china, all of the journalists being put in this major war in

indochina. writiting the book was a way yo hardcovers, that is between hardcovers, my aperiences in indochina as juncker war cocorrespondent, but it is also a book of coming-of-age, entering out of and - -- entering adulthoodod confronting horrific situations and one of the most beautiful places in the world. >> you are very nicely using the river, which is namely the mother of waters, which you go , and using the river as a memorial or a lot senses, i bet you are also saying, or you river is not as

inviting a as it seems. >> well, the river is a most beautiful river, and i traveled long lengths of it, not in china but in indochina, laos, vietnam, cambodia. its ferocity, in the border between loas and cambodia, and then it becomes more g gentle. but i have also seen it travel through lands which, at that time, were at war, and the mosot horrific t things were happening all around the mekong, and i used to see bodies snaking down the mekong that they had massacred, the civilians. >> the book is an iconic book, published 22 years ago, and very famous, one of the key books therding the memories of indochina war. the question is -- how do we france we were

covering the war, the war in middle china? it took 22 years to be translated by the french public. inld you say or think that the west, there are probably some problems to face, because it is, by the way, a war that we lost, and it was quite difficult to address to the public this kind of memory. >> maybe a little bit, but the main reason it was not translated, to be honest with you, as my publisher did not want to translate into into french. i could not do much about it. i always wanted to translated into f french, having a vevery strong attachment to frae in all sorts of ways, of course moving to the former french colonies in cambodiaia, made tht even more strong for me.

thatt there is a yes, there is a tennessee bite western countries to try to forget and turn their back on colonial episodes. other same time -- >> t the americans were not as eager as well toto address the defeat in vietnam a few years later. >> no, the americans a are, you know, very bitter into feet and madman iney us -- megamononey is victory, as we saw with the second world war. what you had beenn witnessing regarding the tragic events of the book, people from going into the china sea. i want to ask you come as a reporter, are you, combining this with your memory, such

tragic, because what you are describing is extremely violent. ghosts?ive with >> sometimes, because i am older, when i'm confronted, by ofmple, with photographs southeast asian children, people from cambodia, vietnam, laos, in difficult circumstances, i am really touched, because i can see in their faces what i saw in their faces back in 1970 to 9075 when i was there. i can see how they express fear, how they express terror, hunger, it is really sort of -- breaks my heart. >> you think this event, young men built you or destroyed you? what is the present age? but thenk it built me,

question is -- i am not the same person, obviously, that i was all those years ago. but i think that -- somebody said t to me "there is no such thing as a bad experience," but you can learn from it. but that is a bit tough, actually. but what the important thing is, journalists are terribly pillar of alleged -- terribly privileged. i was privileged to be there at a young age, privileged to see those young things, horrible as they were, to see life at its sharporrendous at the end, but also to see terrific humanitarian as human beings as well, and that marks you. from that point of view, i do not think it has turned me into a cynic. >> back to the book, before tragedy, i wanted to ask you your reflection, after covering war solo long the world, it looks like history teaches us nothing, because we have the

same tragedy in the indian ocean, and the military, we have refugees all around the world and still problems of current governments, the lack of understanding or willingness to do something by the international community. what is your reflection? is it worth it? >> well, it does not nullify what i did jade i think it is they repeatthat themselves. ii do not t think that anyone cn change thehe world by what they have written at t all, i think that is incredibly pretentious. but i think trying to write, you know, what you see and what you feel as a journalist, because we place,a privileged lifting your readers on your shoulder so they can actually see what you see, bringing that home to them has to be a good thing. >> t there are some beautiful pages and lines your writing in

your book. you mentioned beauty into sadness, and i would like to ask you whether you reconcile this contradiction between violence, barbaric actions you have been witnessing and this beauty. i would esespecially like to knw what you were witnessing in cambodia, how do you reconcile that, or how i is it possible? >> well,l, i think that human beings havave two sides to them, anand i think one of ththe thins that i c came away with is that human beings, even, you know, and these places, in the most exotic places, they can behave disgustingly toward each other, and they can be led very badly by people who encourage that, and that is what happened in cambodia. famousw, therere's a french expression about the smile, because the cambodians always smile, so they have a theireautiful people, but

famous companyny and king of the 19th century, who said to -- cambodian king ofof the 19th century, who said to f french colonial officicers, who said "you've got to realize that cambododians are like water buffalalo in the rice fieldsds. they seem to be placid, but if you provoke them too much, they get very mad and can get angry," and that is what happened. human, professional experience, going back to what you had been expensing in southeast asia, would it be possible today? um, i think largely not. journalilism has changnged so m. fifirst ofof all, you cannot get away from your office, your foreign editororial or editotor. you have to have them with you all the time. he is s in touch witith you alle time, asasking youou what you s, tetelling you where toto go. one has lost one's independence.

i would love to be a solitary figure, wondering around, reporting what i see. of course, that has all changed. obviously, you know, like in syria, it was very dangerous, to go to, but at the same time, we lost in cambodia, 20 journalists, more than 20 journalists in eight weeks. it is a horrific tragedy figure. they were either killed or still missing, so they are dead. that figurure has never been matched,d, even in syriaia. it was extortingng everyry. -- it was extraordinary. i say they are sometimes the precursors of isis,, not froroma religious point of view or anything like that, but they were just psychopathic, and they killed anyone who encroached on theieir territitory,otot to have publicity or anything like that, done, b but just out

of a pathological hatred of them. >> thank you very much. this is the end of the "france 24" interview. thank yoyou so much. bye-bye. ♪

sonoko sakakai: well, i i grew p in a very smalall town called kamakuura, which is about an hour outside of tokyo. and so i was immersed in the old world, old japan, very artisinal, without even knowing what that word is. theyey have this craftsmananshi. that was s the way pepeople liv. you had t to know howow to work with your hands. and it was a an awakening for me as a young child looking at the craftsman's work.