Witness History: Archive 2010

*** Contains descriptions that some listeners may find upsetting ***

Enslaved Africans are forced to work in sugar cane fields - the hours are long and there are frequent, brutal punishments. They have endured these conditions for 200 years.

By 1831 the anti-slavery movement is gathering pace and the slaves decide to take action - by going on strike.

Samuel Sharpe became a Jamaican national hero as he led the island's slaves in a rebellion against the overseers and sugar plantation owners.

The rebellion was brutally crushed, but over time, the rebellion had a significant impact - and two years later in 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act is passed.

Picture: Making sugar in Jamaica, Credit: HultonArchive/Illustrated London News/Getty Images

People in the Chiapas region, led by the charismatic, ski-mask wearing, sub-commandante Marcos, rose up against the Mexican state. They called themselves, Zapatistas.

The play Hamlet can tell us a great deal about the time in which it was written.

At the turn of the 16th century England was faced with many of the problems which plague its hero.

Hafez al Assad was the Syrian Defence Minister in the winter of 1970 when his struggle for power came to a head. His former friend, the hardline Baathist, Salah Jadid, was jailed for life.

The film, The Great Escape, has become an all-time favourite. It is about a mass breakout from a German prison camp during World War 2. Flight Lieutenant Ken Rees, who died in August 2014, took part in the real-life escape effort, and talked to us about the escape.

For several days over Christmas in 1914 the fighting stopped on the battlefields of the First World War.

British and German soldiers left their trenches to sing carols, exchange gifts and even play football.

With archive recordings from the BBC and testimony from the Imperial War Museum.

Image: British and German troops make a Christmas and New Year truce at the Western Front, Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The nuclear physicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov had spent seven years in internal exile in the Soviet city of Gorky.

His return marked a change in attitude towards dissidents under the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Christmas 1991 was a difficult time for the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Economic and political difficulties crippled the government.

Armed men roamed the streets of the capital Tbilisi, looting and fighting.

On December 21 1988 a US passenger plane blew up over Scotland.

Pan Am flight 103 was heading for the USA when a bomb exploded on board, killing all the passengers and crew.

The wreckage of the plane fell on the small town of Lockerbie in the Scottish borders.

Witness hears from one man who lived through that night in Lockerbie.

On 20 December 1989 more than 20,000 US soldiers descended on Panama.

General Manuel Noriega - the country's leader - sought refuge with the Papal Ambassador.

Witness hears from a young man drafted in to help communicate with the US troops.

It is seven years since one of the Washington snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo, was convicted of murder.

He and John Allen Muhammad had terrorised the US capital for three weeks in autumn 2002, killing at random.

Witness hears from one man who lost his brother during their rampage.

On 16 December 1998 the US and Britain began a four day bombardment of Iraq.

Their justification for Operation Desert Fox was Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations resolutions on disarmament.

Prakash Shah was the UN special representative in Baghdad - he lived through the bombing.

"The destruction of Grozny was apocalyptic... I saw a lot of deaths. I saw people who got wounded by shrapnel from mortar fire and they were dying very slow deaths. But it was very difficult to go and help them because the next target could be you."

In December 1994, Russian forces invaded Chechnya and laid siege to the capital Grozny.

Aslan Doukaev was a university teacher when the first Chechen war began.

He survived months of conflict on the streets before leaving the city for the safety of the mountains.

Hiding in a hole in the ground, bearded and unkempt, the former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was dragged blinking into the light by American special forces.

So how did it feel for Iraqis? Muwaffaq al Rubaie had suffered at his hands and was asked to go and identify the former dictator.

After eight years of military rule, thousands of mainly young, left-wing, Argentinians had gone missing - 'the disappeared'.

Miriam Lewin was one of the few who survived, she talks to Witness.

Smallpox was once one of the most feared diseases in the world - disfiguring and often deadly.

Donald Henderson is the American doctor who led the fight to rid the world of this terrible disease.

His campaign started in the 1960s, and international scientists only agreed that he and his team had succeeded on 9 December, 1979.

He tells Witness how they tackled virus - in the laboratory, and on the ground.

Image: Smallpox cell, Credit: Getty Images

It is exactly 30 years since the former Beatle, John Lennon, was shot dead in New York.

Two days before John Lennon was killed, he spent several hours talking to a young BBC music journalist, Andy Peebles.

For Witness, Andy remembers the man he met - his mood, his conversation, his wit.

Andy Peebles with John and Yoko

When Japanese bombers and fighter planes attacked the US fleet in the Pacific it came as a huge surprise to many. Listen to some archive recordings from the time.

In December 1992, the US sent armed troops into Somalia to help protect aid convoys carrying food to the hungry. They called it Operation Restore Hope - but it was not universally welcomed.

The first trains full of Jewish children left Berlin in early December - heading for sanctuary in Britain. The Kindertransports only stopped with the outbreak of war in September 1939. They helped thousands of children from all over Nazi occupied Europe to escape the Holocaust.

Children arriving at Liverpool Street station. Getty images.

The killing of 4 American churchwomen brought to light the extent of the violence in El Salvador, and the ruthless military tactics used against the liberation theology wing of the Catholic church.

The first man to cross by land from Britain to France in 8000 years tells us what it was like.

Howard Carter was an English archaeologist who had searched the Valley of the Kings for years - hoping to find the burial place of Tutankhamun. He kept a detailed record of the discovery.

In 1532 a few hundred Spanish conquistadors took on tens of thousands of Inca warriors.

As the two sides met, the Spanish governor Pisaro put out an invitation to emperor Atahualpa who was promised he would be received as a friend and a brother.

But the Inca emperor was taken captive and thousands of his followers were killed.

Freddie Mercury's personal assistant remembers the last days of the musician's battle with Aids.

The story of how acclaimed Japanese writer Yukio Mishima ended his life in a violent and bloody way.

We hear a graphic account of the killing of hundreds of captured Taliban after they rose up inside a prison in Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan during the first dramatic weeks of the West's invasion of the country

It is over 60 years since men at the Roswell air base in New Mexico first reported strange lights above the desert.

Then they found strange debris in the sand. But were they the remains of a UFO?

With Somali pirates on trial in the United States, we go back to the era of America's Civil War and a piracy trial that gripped the country.

Tank on Athens street. Getty Images

The leader of a student protest in Greece nearly 40 years ago tells us of the moment when the country's military junta sent in the tanks, and how she only just managed to escape with her life.

What was Benazir Bhutto like as a young woman and why did she follow her father into politics?

Victoria Schofield met her at Oxford university in the 1970s where they became friends for life.

In November 1940 sustained German bombing raids left the ancient English city of Coventry in ruins. Its medieval cathedral burned down and hundreds of its citizens were killed.

Alan Johnston looks back for Witness.

World War I produced a generation of British poets like no other.

Witness hears from the son of Robert Graves, about his father's wartime experience and the poetry that grew out of it.

When Barack Obama was about six years old his mother remarried and the family moved to the Indonesian capital Jakarta. There, he learnt the local language and went to an ordinary Indonesian school.

Some listeners may find parts of this programme disturbing.

With enough sex, violence, and swearing to outrage even London audiences, the play Blasted caused a scandal when it was first performed.

But did it change British theatre in more fundamental ways?

When the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez canal in 1956, he took control of one of the main oil routes from the Middle East. France and Britain tried to seize it back.

Witness speaks to Tony Bunce, who was a young British soldier involved in the invasion of Port Said in 1956.

(Photo: The wreckage of a ship sunk by Egyptians to block the Suez Canal appears at the surface of water, 11 November 1956 in Port Said.) (Credit: STAFF/AFP/Getty Images)

It's twenty years since Burma last held a general election. We hear from someone who was there about the atmosphere, the excitement and the risks of living through that time.

On 4 November 1995 the Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen sang at a peace rally in Tel Aviv alongside Israel's leader Yitzhak Rabin. Moments later the Prime Minister was shot. Aviv Geffen talks to Witness about that night, and its effect on his life.