Diary of Your Week: Difficult thoughts

Hi it’s Paul here, in the time I’ve been working here I established pretty early on that WHYS is privileged to have fantastic contributors and callers .

On air: Violence in Nigeria

Two questions appear to be at the centre of your discussions of the weekend’s shocking violence near Jos. They are: 1) Why is it happening? and 2) why isn’t more attention being paid to it? (Though Hillary has now commented.)We’ll ask both, as well as hear about our sister’s show Africa Have Your Say’s discussion on what now needs to be done to present such massacres happening again. Questions and comments welcome… and pls leave your number if you want to come on air. We won’t publish the number online.

Is Mexico’s war on drugs getting out of control?

We’ve all heard about Mexico’s war on drugs, a fight between rival drug cartels and government forces. Ciudad Juarez remains Mexico’s murder capital and across the border in El Paso it’s also very dangerous. “It’s a war in which the president can’t claim victory, can’t pull out and which only gets worse” says Ioan Grillo from Time Magazine. He also says “Mexico’s drug war could become its Iraq”. So is it really this bad?

On air: Can men be taught not to hit women?

70 percent of women experience some form of physical or sexual violence from men  “the majority from their husbands, intimate partners or someone they know,” according to the United Nations.

Today in England the government announced that from 2011, children will be taught from the age of five how to prevent violent relationships.

But is this something that can be taught?

Talking Points for 27 May

Hello, It’s Priya with a few ideas for what we might do today… any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thanks Abdul in Oregon for moderating this page overnight.

First, there is something of theme developing surrounding the protection of children.

Talking Points for 19 May

Hello there, it’s Priya today. Thanks very much to Bob in Australia and Abdelilah in Morocco for looking after the latest blank page. A massive 229 comment so far, it has taken me a while to read through them all, but there are some interesting ideas. More on those below.

How do you recover from a violent loss?

It’s hard enough to lose a loved one, but does knowing that they died in a senseless, violent way make it harder for those left behind.  A number of you have been responding to Lubna, since she wrote to us about her neighbour Ali being killed by a bomb. It followed her almost being killed herself, by a roadside bomb a few days earlier. Some of you have written about how you’ve dealt with extreme trauma, and we’d like to pick up on this.

Kenyan violence

Violence has again erupted on the streets of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and in the Rift Valley following the murder of an opposition politician. Mugabe Were, a member of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) of the defeated candidate, Raila Odinga, was attacked outside his home, police said.

This is what Omar in Naivasha told the BBC 2 hours ago.
“Naivasha is in a state of chaos. Bullets are raining down on people from planes. People are panicking and not sure what to do. They are trying to take refuge at the police station, kikuyu people are trying to break into the same police station. There is chaos all around and people unsure of where to go to protect themselves”.

I’ve just spoken to Omar who tells me he is afraid that Kenya could be worse than Rwanda.   He wants to tell you all about the situation on today’s programme.

Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society, writing in the Independent this morning, says the violence is horrific but Kenya will not become a new Rwanda.