BBC - Dictatorland Series 1 (2018)

Ben Zand travels to some of the worlds's longest-running dictatorships, discovering the sinister and at times bizarre reality of life there.
Kazakhstan
In this episode, Ben Zand travels to Kazakhstan to experience the sinister and at times bizarre side to living in a dictatorship.

Beginning his journey in the capital city Astana, he finds a wealthy country. In the Bayterek Tower - the national symbol of Kazakhstan - Ben places his hand in a golden handprint of the president, where he's told he can make a wish. But he also finds that he's being quietly accompanied by a minder to keep an eye on him.

Deciding to get out of town, Ben takes the overnight train across the country to Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty. It's Independence Day, celebrating 25 years since the end of Soviet rule, so Ben is keen to see some of the festivities.

But instead, because the government is nervous of protests, Ben is hurried out of town by the local mayor's office and forced to spend the day being shown around a nearby ski resort, where his minders provide him with fascinating facts on the size of the ski lift and the speed of the ice. It's a fun day out, but it isn't really what Ben had in mind. So to try and find out more about the other side of life here, Ben goes to a dissidents' gathering, where he meets Zhanbolat Mamay, who runs one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Kazakhstan.

Zhanbolat explains the fear that he lives in, and how journalists and politicians have reason to be scared for their lives. He recommends that Ben travels to the west of Kazakhstan, and a town called Zhanaozen, if he wants to get a real sense of the anti-government sentiment in the country.

Ben travels to Zhanaozen with a lawyer called Asel, who has spent years fighting for compensation for residents in Zhanaozen, many of whom lost friends and relatives, and many others of whom were injured, when the local police massacred 16 striking oil workers in 2011.

Asel takes Ben to meet two victims of the massacre. But as the sun sets, heavily armed police flock onto the streets - even five years after the massacre, the town is still more or less under curfew. When Ben gets back to his hotel, he's terrified to discover that the secret police are looking for him. It's a scary end to a journey in a country where the government still seems to have a lot to hide.

Belarus
In this episode, Ben Zand travels to Belarus to experience the sinister and at times bizarre side to living in a dictatorship.

Ben begins his journey in Belarus by heading to President Lukashenko's home town. He sees a small shrine to the president before setting off to find a mysterious spring in the woods which Lukashenko apparently drank from as a child, and to which he attributes some of his dictatorial manliness and prowess.

Ben then heads to Belarus's capital city, Minsk. This is a country that most Brits only hear of once a year, during the Eurovision Song Contest. And so Ben gets an introduction to the place from Belarus's 2011 Eurovision entrant, Anastasia. She sang a song called I Love Belarus, and from Ben's conversation with her it doesn't sound like she was lying. She insists that people in the country are content with the leadership.

But, Ben wonders, perhaps that is because of the infamous KGB. Belarus is the only former Soviet Union country that hasn't bothered to rebrand its secret service, and still calls it the KGB.

Perhaps it isn't surprising - this is a country in which the president apparently isn't worried about PR. When accused of being a dictator by the German foreign minister - who is homosexual - President Alexander Lukashenko responded by saying that he would rather be a dictator than be gay.

Given which, Ben wants to know more about what life is like for gay people in the country. So he heads to one of the most testosterone-fuelled environments he can find - an ice hockey stadium - to talk to a journalist who covers LGBT rights for a channel that's illegal in Belarus and has to broadcast from neighbouring Poland.

Having had a taste of dissent in Belarus, Ben goes to visit Pavel, a serial protester who at only 28 years old has already been to prison 19 times. Ben hears about his most famous protest, which saw him place teddy bears with pro-democracy slogans outside government buildings. Pavel was arrested, and when a Swedish organisation heard about the stunt, it decided to go even bigger: it flew a plane over Belarus and threw 1,000 teddies out of the window, with more slogans attached. Lukashenko was so terrified of the teddy bear invasion that he fired the head of his air force and expelled the Swedish ambassador.

But Ben also hears from Pavel how Lukashenko seems to be softening up a bit, in a bid to cosy up with Europe. Pavel hasn't been to prison for over a year. And there is even a protest happening in Minsk, which Ben decides to go to.

Though the protest is a promising sign of increasing freedoms in the country, Ben still comes face to face with the KGB, who are busy filming all the protesters - including Ben. It's a surprising and uncomfortable end to a journey through a country that seems to be trying to change, slowly.

Tajikistan
In this episode, Ben Zand travels to Tajikistan to experience the sinister and at times bizarre side to living in a dictatorship.

But before he gets there, Ben has some preparation to do: in the airplane toilet, he shaves his beard off. This is a country in which people have been dragged off the streets for sporting overly long facial hair.

Landing in the capital city Dushanbe, Ben heads to see one of Tajikistan's biggest claims to fame: the second tallest flagpole in the world. Of course it was built as the tallest, but has now been pipped to the top spot by Saudi Arabia, another dictatorship. Other authoritarian regimes dominate the Big Five when it comes to flagpoles - countries like North Korea, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Could it be, wonders Ben, that while rich middle-aged men get a fast car as a midlife crisis-inspired penis enlargement, dictators go for giant flagpoles instead?

Still wowed by the size of the pole, Ben goes to meet a man called Rustam, who was forcibly shaved by the police a couple of years ago. He finds out that the president of Tajikistan is worried about beards because he's terrified of Islamic radicalism. To find out more about how the government is keeping control of radical Islam, Ben heads to meet Aslideen, a youth activist who set up a movement that does the government's dirty work for it - keeping an eye on people out on the streets, reporting any suspicious behaviour to the police and generally terrorising the locals. Tajikistan is starting to feel like a police state in which independent thought is quickly stifled.

On a mission to find some signs of dissent, Ben goes to meet a prominent young hip-hop artist. Around the world, hip-hop is a way for the youth to express their frustration; surely the rapper Baron will tell Ben what's wrong with this country? Instead, Ben finds Baron rapping about how great the president is, and he tells Ben that it would be stupid for him to rap about anything critical of the regime.

It seems the population is so well trained that the government barely even needs to censor people. Though of course if it has to, it will, and it's more than happy to shut down any social media sites that become a problem. When a video of the president dancing embarrassingly at his son's wedding ended up doing the rounds online, the president did what any self-respecting dictator would do - he shut down YouTube in the country.

As Ben is shown a beautiful but simple mountain village, surrounded by snow-capped peaks in the middle of nowhere, the secret police suddenly turn up. The country may be poor, but there's always money for flagpoles and the surveillance of dissent.