Crossing Continents

It has one of the largest fishing fleets in the world and much of the catch from Thailand's fishing boats ends up on Japanese, European and American plates. Yet the industry stands accused of profiting from slave labour.The BBC's Becky Palmstrom investigates this tale of modern day slavery. She travels to Thailand and Myanmar to find out why and how illegal migrants are being forced onto Thai fishing boats, many of them working for months unpaid. She hears allegations of cruelty and even murder.In Thailand Becky meets Ken, from rural Myanmar, who hoped to make a better life for himself and his ageing parents. He ended up being trafficked twice onto Thai fishing boats. The BBC team was able to bring his parents, back in Myanmar, the first news they had had of their son for four years.The Thai authorities admit that most of their fishing fleet is unregistered and much of it relies on illegal migrant labour. The Thai government insists it is making every effort to clamp down on trafficking and forced labour in i

In the Spanish mining town of Turon a male choir meets once a week for rehearsals. They often sing to the patron saint of miners Santa Bárbara Bendita. Since 1934 miners have been singing this beautiful song in memory of four miners killed in a mining accident in the Maria Luisa mine. Coal mining, once a major industry in Spain, has been in decline for years and in the next few years the EU's subsidies for non-profitable pits will stop altogether. For most miners the closure of pits signals the death of their communities. Natalio Cosoy travels to northern Spain to talk to the miners and their families. Will Santa Bárbara Bendita watch over them as they face an uncertain future? James Fletcher producing.

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in cocaine trafficking through Guatemala en route north, to the United States. Part of the fallout locally, has been a rise in addiction. As a result, more than 200 drug rehabilitation centres have been set up in the capital alone. Many of these are run by Pentecostal churches, with little oversight or regulation. Often addicts are swept up from the streets by 'hunting parties', and forced to attend such a centre. Linda Pressly travels to Guatemala City to investigate compulsory drug rehabilitation.

Gaelic Football is Ireland's most popular sport - there are clubs in every parish of the country. The game is very much part of the Irish identity. But it is losing its lifeblood. And all because of emigration. John Murphy goes to the far west of Ireland, to learn about this uniquely Irish game and hear how clubs are struggling to keep going as more and more young people leave the country, to find jobs abroad. Helen Grady producing.

Almighty God vs the Red Dragon: It sounds like a fantasy action film but it is in fact a real and disturbing struggle in China. The most vivid case involves a group of people who beat a stranger to death in a fast food restaurant. They said they had no choice because the victim was a 'demon'. The killers are fanatical followers of the Church of the Almighty God, a Christian doomsday cult which claims millions of members across China and pledges to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party - which it calls the 'Great Red Dragon'. Gracie uses her fluent Chinese to gain access to families of those caught up in the cult, including a man who infiltrated it to save his wife.

Europe and the US have imposed the toughest sanctions on Russia since the Cold War amid anger over the Kremlin's support for east Ukrainian separatists who stand accused of shooting down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet. But the crisis began further south with Russia's annexation of Crimea in March.Crimea's idyllic scenery drew Soviet visitors for years - some called it the Communist Cote d'Azur. The collapse of communism did little to dent Russia's appetite for their bit of paradise on the Black Sea along with the thousands of Ukrainian holidaymakers who flocked there each year. But now the Ukrainians are staying away and the Russian government is trying to fill the gap by urging employers in Russia to send staff on subsidised breaks in Crimea. A holiday in the newly annexed peninsula has become every Russian's patriotic duty. For Crossing Continents, Lucy Ash visits Crimean tourist resorts and explores the motives behind Vladimir Putin's fateful decision to reclaim Russia's paradise.

For decades, Turkey's Kurds have been struggling against a state that used to deny their very existence as a separate people. In the low level war between the Turkish military and the militant Kurdish group, the PKK, both side have been accused of atrocities. In the 29 years of fighting up to last year's ceasefire, at least 40,000 people died and hundreds of villages were destroyed. But now, just when Kurds in neighbouring Iraq are considering establishing an independent state, and many believe the chaos in Syria will change borders across the region, Kurds in Turkey are increasingly reconciled to remaining within existing frontiers. As Turkey pursues peace talks with the PKK, the militant movement's supporters talk of changing society, not borders. And already, they've initiated some radical experiments.Pro-PKK towns and villages across eastern Turkey are now each governed by two co-mayors, male and female, and the new system has propelled many dynamic young women into power in regions that were once sociall

When a twisting funnel drops from the sky with tearing winds of up to 500 km/h, what do you do? In Oklahoma, people thought they knew the answer. The state is in the heart of tornado alley in the USA, where the public is regularly drilled on storm awareness. But when the largest storm ever recorded formed on the outskirts of Oklahoma City last year, people ignored the best advice and nearly died in their thousands. Now, officials are nervously watching where the next storm will form...and trying to figure what people will do when it does. Neal Razzell goes out and about with the storm chasers in Oklahoma City.

In 1974, police launched one of the biggest murder investigations Iceland has ever seen. The case was eventually solved when six people confessed to their parts in the murders of two men whose bodies have never been found. Forty years on, a government review has found that the confessions were unreliable and a campaign is underway to quash the convictions. But some of those who were wrongly convicted are struggling to accept their innocence. Simon Cox investigates what's seen by many as a stain on Iceland's justice system and finds out how it's possible to confess to the murder of someone you have never met. Helen Grady producing.

The transgenic revolution in agricultural production turned Argentina into one of the world's largest producers and exporters of genetically modified soybean and corn. But there is unease across the nation's vast GM belt, especially about health. In the northerly province of Chaco, the Minster of Public Health wants an independent commission to investigate cases of cancer and the incidence of children born with disabilities.Produced and presented by Linda Pressly.

Each year, thousands of illegal migrants try to enter the United States via a treacherous journey across the Arizona desert. Some succeed, while others are captured by US border patrols and are immediately deported - but not everyone is so fortunate. A growing number simply drop dead from exhaustion.The Missing Migrant Project works on identifying the deceased, piecing together clues found in the personal effects collected alongside the decomposed bodies found in the desert.In this programme, the BBC's Mexico correspondent Will Grant travels to Tucson, Arizona to meet project co-founder Robin Reineke to learn of the challenges facing her office in the small southwestern city of Tucson - which has the third-highest number of unidentified bodies in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles.Migrant rights groups say the vast expansion of the US Border Patrol has exacerbated the problem because the heightened policing of the border along traditional urban crossing points has forced clandestine border cros

How do you restore peace to a country now being torn apart by a vicious campaign of ethnic and religious cleansing? Two men in the Central African Republic believe they have the answer - friendship. Tim Whewell joins the Catholic Archbishop of Bangui, Dieudonne Nzapalainga and the country's Chief Imam, Oumar Kobine Layama as they travel across the country trying to reconcile Christian and Muslim communities.

When the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych jumped into a helicopter and flew into hiding in mid-February, the Kiev protest movement that had opposed him flung open the gates of his abandoned estate.Ordinary Ukrainians poured in to visit the 140-hectare grounds and to catch a first glimpse of the luxurious lifestyle Yanukovych had enjoyed at his country's expense. Many gawped at the extraordinary opulence from the gold fittings to the marble floors and the private zoo. But a group of journalists were more excited by a different kind of treasure floating in the nearby lake. Thousands of documents had been dumped in the water by staff when their boss fled. The papers contained proof - not just of Yanukovych's wildly extravagant tastes - but also of systematic bribery, corruption, nepotism and state sponsored violence.Investigative reporters immediately realised these waterlogged documents could provide crucial evidence for future criminal proceedings. Anxious to preserve them, they worked around the c

There's a silent enemy at work in the civil war in Syria and it's threatening the lives of young children. The war has placed the country's health system under intense pressure and in certain areas vaccination programmes against a range of preventable diseases have not taken place. In October 2013 the Syrian Ministry of Health verified the first polio case in 15 years. Now there are 25 laboratory confirmed cases in the country with another 13 confirmations pending. With the huge movement of populations across regional borders there are fears that polio, along with other infectious diseases, is spreading. In March UNICEF announced a massive polio vaccination campaign for the whole region. For Crossing Continents Tim Whewell travels to the Turkish border and to Lebanon to talk to the doctors and health care workers struggling to cope with a growing crisis.

Natalia Antelava goes in search of Gulnara Karimova - pop star, philanthropist, socialite, intellectual - oh, and incidentally (according to leaked US Embassy cables) the most hated woman in Uzbekistan. The image that graces the screens and billboards of Tashkent is one of a glamorous, dynamic, celebrity who flits from Cannes to New York to Moscow, fronting glossy music videos under her musical alias GooGoosha, with stars like Julio Iglesias and Gerard Depardieu. She runs charities and helps children all in an attempt to win the hearts of the Uzbek people for what some say is a bid to succeed her father as president. But her ambitions have taken a hit and the princess of Uzbekistan's star is falling. Described as a 'robber baron' in cables from the US Embassy, her business dealings are getting her into trouble. Natalia travels to Sweden to find that Karimova us connected to a bribery case which is linked with a money laundering investigation in Switzerland and France. Karimova's rivals for power are now takin

Of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War two, 30 million died on the Russian front. Of those, as many as 4 million Soviet soldiers are still "missing in action". These men - more than the entire population of Ireland or New Zealand - are still unaccounted for.Despite all the official rhetoric on Victory Day, many in power today would rather not contemplate the fate of these men. They lie forgotten and unrecognised by Russia's top brass and the state.But as Lucy Ash discovers, a growing number of volunteers, armed with spades and metal detectors, are now searching for the soldiers. Seventy years after World War II, they feel compelled to look for their remains.Olga Ivishina, a journalist with the BBC Russian Service from the city of Kazan, belongs to this Diggers Movement. While many young Russians professionals spend their holidays on beaches in Thailand, Olga gives up her free time to camp in the forest. Many days she has to wade waist-deep through mud, sometimes in pouring rain, to find th

Could Greenland become the world's next resource hotspot? The government there hopes so - they've been travelling the world touting the country's vast reserves of oil and gas, and huge deposits of iron ore, gold and rare-earth elements. As melting icecaps make all these resources more accessible, mining promises riches for Greenland and the ultimate prize of full independence from Denmark. But there's a catch - many of the rare earth minerals are surrounded by uranium, pitching Greenland into the world of nuclear politics and environmental hazard. Nowhere is this clearer than in the small town of Narsaq in the country's south. Two proposed rare-earth mines could reverse the town's economic decline, but one just miles away will mine uranium too. James Fletcher travels to Narsaq to ask whether mining will be a blessing or a curse.

Brazil's anti-slavery hit-squads are unique. Since 1995, these committed bands of labour inspectors, accompanied by heavily armed police, have rescued 46,000 people deemed to be working as slaves. But Brazil's legal definition of slavery is contentious. It includes degrading conditions of work, which campaigners say amount to coercion. Some employers reject that. And now the stakes have been raised by proposals to confiscate land from bosses found to be flouting the anti-slavery standards. In a journey that takes her from cattle country on the edge of the Amazon, to the parched, rocky badlands of the north-east, Linda Pressly meets the campaigners, employers and politicians on both sides of the argument, and hears powerful testimony from the workers trapped in the middle.Producer: Stephen Hounslow.

Farhana Haider investigates the prosecution of alleged war criminals and asks if the trials are being used to target the opposition.There were numerous reports of atrocities during the brutal war of 1971 between Pakistan on one side and the new state which was to become Bangladesh, which had support from India. The Pakistani Army and Islamic sympathisers in Bangladesh were accused of rape and of mass killings which some have described as genocide. In 2010 the governing Awami League set up war crimes trials which have started to hand down convictions this year, attracting strong public support. However, many international observers have criticised the conduct of the trials as less than free and fair. And supporters of the largest Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami have reacted furiously to the conviction of several of their leaders, saying the process is politically motivated.Farhana Haider asks whether the legal process will really enable Bangladesh to come to terms with its bloody beginnings

On 1 January 2014 Indonesia will launch the largest public health insurance scheme in the world. It will unite a bewildering array of current schemes to cover the entire population, with the poor getting their health care free. Former BBC Jakarta Correspondent Claire Bolderson asks whether the world's fourth most populous country has the resources and organisational skills to make such an ambitious scheme work? Producer: Mike Gallagher.