Friday, June 19, 2009

In tonight's programme

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FRIDAY 19 JUNE - 22.30 GMT - BBC TWO
Presented by Kirsty Wark



From the web team:

Scotland Yard will launch an investigation into the alleged misuse of expenses by a small number of MPs and peers, the BBC has learned.

It follows a public outcry about the way many MPs had been using their second homes expenses.

Rather than abating that outcry has continued after parliament published MPs' expenses claims online yesterday.

The censoring of the documents sparked widespread criticism - but even with vast tracts of information blacked out still the revelations keep coming, particularly over petty cash payments, which do not require a receipt.

Eagle-eyed members of the Newsnight audience have been playing their part in flagging up things noteworthy items in the documents - and if you spot something interesting you can drop us a line via our website bbc.co.uk/newsnight

We will have the latest news on that story tonight.

Also, we will be assessing a speech by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which Iran's supreme leader denied that the presidential result was rigged.

The ayatollah demanded that the demonstrations cease and warned that political leaders will be held responsible for any future violence.

What will Mir Hossein Mousavi's next move will be in the wake of that warning, and how will British officials respond to the ayatollah's denunciation of Britain as the "the most evil" of Iran's enemies?

Plus, tonight we will be hearing from former Guantanamo detainee Omar Deghayes.

Four years ago Newsnight established that Omar was in the US detention facility because of a case of mistaken identity.

Now he is free, he talks to Peter Marshall about his long years in the prison and the shifting political sands which mean his accusers have become his allies.

Here is Kirsty Wark with what is coming up on Newsnight Review:

And then on Review we look at how migration and displacement is reflected in culture - with Ekow Eshun, Marina Lewycka (author of A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian) and Peter Whittle.

Outcasts United is the moving true story of the fortunes of a disparate group of asylum seekers - who are settled in the small town of Clarkson, Atlanta.

An inspirational young woman, Luma Mufleh forges a group of teenage boys into a football team which changes the local people's perceptions of the incomers and vice versa.

At the beginning of the book the journalist author Warren St John quotes a moving passage from "The Middle of Everywhere", the book written by Mary Pipher about refugees who were settled in Nebraska:

"The refugee experience of dislocation, cultural bereavement confusion and constant change will soon be all of our experience. As the world becomes globalised, we'll all be searching for home."

That is the strong impression left by the extraordinary film La Forteresse.

The director Fernand Melgar spends 60 days inside a Swiss Detention Centre (the maximum time an asylum seeker can be held there) with incredible access to the professionals struggling to process families from all over the world.

Cockroach is Rawi Hage's novel about an Arab petty thief who is granted asylum in Canada and who is given the opportunity to redeem his past wrongs in a most dramatic way. Will he take it?

Sugar is a movie about another side of migration - the dream of young baseball players in the Dominican Republic to get signed in America, and earn their passport to a better life and sporting greatness.

Sugar is a star player, but when he gets to the US he encounters not just small kindnesses but the harsh realities of racism.

And what about displacement closer to home? Caravan is an award-winning play built on the testimonials of people all over England who were evacuated from their homes during the floods of 2007, to live in caravans for many months.

The audience (a maximum of eight people) enter a caravan much the same as the ones families were moved to, and experience drama close up as the actors take on the roles of flood victims young and old, rich and poor.

And Lionel Shriver has made a film for us arguing that we are only ever interested in one side of the migration story - and not on the impact of it on settled communities wherever they might be.

I hope you'll be watching, Kirsty




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