It’s a summer marathon (of sorts)! Strap in for back-to-back BenarNews episodes, this week featuring the anti-quota protests rocking Bangladesh.
How It’s Made
Eugene and Amy sit down with Mahbub Leelen to unpack the mass student protests in Bangladesh that have claimed over 200 lives and seen more than 10,000 arrested. Leelen serves as Bangla content manager of RFA’s sister organization BenarNews, a news outlet covering security, politics and human rights in Southeast and South Asia.
In June, students began peacefully protesting a decision by Bangladesh’s High Court to reinstate a quota, reserving 30% of civil service jobs for descendants of the country’s independence war heroes. Leelen offers insight into the various tensions building up to the unrest, what tipped the situation into violence and how the BenarNews team covered it all despite an internet shutdown.
Podcast Free Asia
The crew entertain their first email before jumping into some corrections. Eugene allows that he should have used the term “astronomy” when discussing the constellation Canis Major, as “astrology” refers to the belief that celestial objects affect events on Earth. On the topic, Eugene explains that since the zodiac was made around 600 BC, the sun now rises in Leo between August 11 and September 16. Thus, the Insider Crew are technically Cancers, rather than Leos! On a final space-related correction, Eugene acknowledges that while the U.S. is the only country that has lead a manned mission to the moon, both the Soviet Union and China have completed successful robotic moon missions.
Listeners may have noticed a volume issue while listening to RFA Insider on certain platforms. The issue has since been addressed, except on older episodes on YouTube. Listeners using an app that downloads episodes will need to re-download them to listen at an improved volume.
The Rundown
“The Rundown” features two silly Weibo rumors, with the cursory caveat that online posts are representative of nothing more than the subgroups and communities they spring from.
A BBC report posted on Weibo and X claimed that China’s Chang’e 6 mission, which recently returned after successfully landing on the far side of the moon, had been abusing aliens there. Some Chinese netizens used the report to discredit Western media, but RFA’s Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found that the report had been doctored, and that the original BBC article contained no accusations of alien abuse.
Eugene shares another debunking from the AFCL, this time regarding reports that South Korea is petitioning to change its Chinese name to one sounding closer to “Korea” in an effort to de-Sinicize and appease the U.S. Upon further digging, it appears that this rumor has sporadically surfaced in the news cycle over the last 15 years, and that the supposed South Korean lawmaker who proposed the name change legislation, Lee Sang-hoon, cannot be found in the records of the South Korean national assembly. From a linguistic perspective, the rumored new Chinese name, when pronounced in Korean, sounds little like “Korea.”