the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, injustice, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
april 25, 2019
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*Greece to ask Germany for billions in war reparations
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Bangladesh girl burned to death on teacher’s order after reporting sexual harassment: police
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Black identity in the spotlight at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US Criticizes Vietnam’s Ban on Suspected Cancer-Causing Herbicides
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A New European Political Bloc Wants to Dismantle Europe
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Putin’s plagiarism, fake Ukrainian degrees and other tales of world leaders accused of academic fraud
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*White supremacy feeds on mainstream encouragement. That has to stop
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Xenophobic Violence Erupts In South Africa Ahead of Election Season
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Leaked reports reveal severe abuse of Saudi political prisoners
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Lawyers Worldwide Urge International Court: Investigate Israeli Crimes
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Brunei brings in death by stoning as punishment for gay sex
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Government rejects Brexit petition to revoke article 50 signed by 5.8 million people
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Spain hits back at Mexico in row over colonial rights abuses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Hundreds of thousands march in London to demand new Brexit referendum
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*El Salvador Considers Amnesty for Those Accused of Crimes During Its Civil War
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Tropical Trump’ is harnessing racism to destroy the Amazon
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Facing Wrongful Detention and Threats, Afro-Colombian Women Call for Justice
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Racism Against Black People Is Still A Big Problem In Europe, Study Finds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
*world highlights*
4/24/19
*Saudi Arabia executes 37 people, crucifying one, for terror-related crimes
Saudi Arabia has executed 37 men convicted of terror-related crimes, the kingdom's official news agency said Tuesday. One of the convicts was crucified, according to an interior ministry statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). "The ... (CNN)
*Austria: Politician from Hitler's home town resigns over 'deeply racist' poem
*Sri Lanka attacks: Islamic State claims responsibility for bombings
Sri Lanka defence minister says bombings were response to killing of Muslims in Christchurch
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Greece to ask Germany for billions in war reparations
MPs vote to put pressure on Berlin as European parliamentary elections loom
Helena Smith in Athens
the guardian
Sun 21 Apr 2019 08.08 EDT
Greece is poised to send Germany a formal diplomatic note detailing its demand for billions of euros in wartime reparations after MPs voted overwhelmingly for the emotive issue to be raised officially.
In a move bound to stir sentiment ahead of crucial European parliament elections, Athens vowed to pile pressure on Berlin, taking legal and diplomatic steps that will throw the spotlight on crimes committed during the brutal Nazi occupation.
“It is an open issue that must be resolved,” Greece’s deputy foreign minister, Markos Bolaris, told the Guardian, hitting back at German insistence that compensation claims had been conclusively settled.
“For matters of this kind there is international justice,” he said on Friday. “In all disputes the EU abides by it, on principle. Germany may say it has been resolved but what counts is international law.”
Greeks suffered hugely at the hands of Hitler’s forces, enduring what Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, recently described on a visit to Greece as “unimaginable” horrors.
Tens of thousands were killed in reprisals as Greeks mounted what historians would later hail as a heroic resistance against the Wehrmacht [German army], with entire villages being wiped out between 1941 and 1944.
By the time the occupation ended, an estimated 300,000 people had died from famine and the country’s Jewish community had been almost entirely obliterated.
The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has raised the issue more persistently than any other to date.
Despite criticism of political opportunism as European polls near, Greek MPs this week backed a resolution calling for the government to pursue demands for €300bn in damages following debate on the findings of an all-inclusive parliamentary inquiry into the German occupation. The findings have been described as the first complete reading of Nazi atrocities in Greece.
In its report – compiled after in-depth research of records obtained from US national archives and Russia – the cross-party committee estimated that €11bn was owed for an interest-free “occupation loan” forcibly extracted by German forces.
Gold holdings, seized from the country’s central bank in 1943, were used to fund Germany’s campaign in north Africa. A further €288bn, it said, remained outstanding for the destruction Greece sustained during the war.
Berlin has long argued that recompense was delivered when, under a bilateral accord, it paid Athens DM115m in 1960.
But addressing the Greek parliament, Sia Anagnostopoulou, the minister who will be heading the compensation campaign, described the reimbursement as inadequate.
“The agreement did not take into account the occupation loan or reparations … they concerned individuals, victims of the Nazis,” she said, adding that the Netherlands had received a much greater sum despite having “one-hundredth” of the total number of victims of Greece.
“There is an issue here with the German people and the German government with whom we are friend and allies, and we must not forget that.”
Leftist MPs have long claimed that Greece’s brutal wartime experience delayed its development as a modern European state.
The issue of war crimes reignited with renewed passion with the eruption of Greece’s debt crisis in late 2009 when Germany, as Europe’s paymaster, imposed punishing austerity measures as the price of emergency loans to keep the insolvent country afloat.
At its height, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was depicted in Greece in Nazi garb, wearing a swastika armband, with many Greeks drawing comparisons to the time when they lost sovereignty under Nazi rule.
Although Tsipras has since tempered his rhetoric, forging visibly warm relations with the German leader, the question of war debt is likely to gain traction as Greece gears up for general elections later this year.
Prior to Athens exiting its third and final bailout last summer, officials say it would have been “nonsensical” to have raised the issue.
Indicative of the emotions Nazi-era crimes are still prone to elicit, within hours of the vote in the Greek parliament, the MP in charge of Warsaw’s reparations campaign announced that Poland should follow suit.
Greek compensation claims pale by comparison. Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Nazis after an abortive uprising in which 200,000 civilians died. The lives of 6 million Poles – including 3 million Polish Jews – were lost. Poland, which also faces parliamentary elections this year, has since demanded €800bn in war debts it insists it is still owned by Germany.
In a move bound to stir sentiment ahead of crucial European parliament elections, Athens vowed to pile pressure on Berlin, taking legal and diplomatic steps that will throw the spotlight on crimes committed during the brutal Nazi occupation.
“It is an open issue that must be resolved,” Greece’s deputy foreign minister, Markos Bolaris, told the Guardian, hitting back at German insistence that compensation claims had been conclusively settled.
“For matters of this kind there is international justice,” he said on Friday. “In all disputes the EU abides by it, on principle. Germany may say it has been resolved but what counts is international law.”
Greeks suffered hugely at the hands of Hitler’s forces, enduring what Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, recently described on a visit to Greece as “unimaginable” horrors.
Tens of thousands were killed in reprisals as Greeks mounted what historians would later hail as a heroic resistance against the Wehrmacht [German army], with entire villages being wiped out between 1941 and 1944.
By the time the occupation ended, an estimated 300,000 people had died from famine and the country’s Jewish community had been almost entirely obliterated.
The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has raised the issue more persistently than any other to date.
Despite criticism of political opportunism as European polls near, Greek MPs this week backed a resolution calling for the government to pursue demands for €300bn in damages following debate on the findings of an all-inclusive parliamentary inquiry into the German occupation. The findings have been described as the first complete reading of Nazi atrocities in Greece.
In its report – compiled after in-depth research of records obtained from US national archives and Russia – the cross-party committee estimated that €11bn was owed for an interest-free “occupation loan” forcibly extracted by German forces.
Gold holdings, seized from the country’s central bank in 1943, were used to fund Germany’s campaign in north Africa. A further €288bn, it said, remained outstanding for the destruction Greece sustained during the war.
Berlin has long argued that recompense was delivered when, under a bilateral accord, it paid Athens DM115m in 1960.
But addressing the Greek parliament, Sia Anagnostopoulou, the minister who will be heading the compensation campaign, described the reimbursement as inadequate.
“The agreement did not take into account the occupation loan or reparations … they concerned individuals, victims of the Nazis,” she said, adding that the Netherlands had received a much greater sum despite having “one-hundredth” of the total number of victims of Greece.
“There is an issue here with the German people and the German government with whom we are friend and allies, and we must not forget that.”
Leftist MPs have long claimed that Greece’s brutal wartime experience delayed its development as a modern European state.
The issue of war crimes reignited with renewed passion with the eruption of Greece’s debt crisis in late 2009 when Germany, as Europe’s paymaster, imposed punishing austerity measures as the price of emergency loans to keep the insolvent country afloat.
At its height, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was depicted in Greece in Nazi garb, wearing a swastika armband, with many Greeks drawing comparisons to the time when they lost sovereignty under Nazi rule.
Although Tsipras has since tempered his rhetoric, forging visibly warm relations with the German leader, the question of war debt is likely to gain traction as Greece gears up for general elections later this year.
Prior to Athens exiting its third and final bailout last summer, officials say it would have been “nonsensical” to have raised the issue.
Indicative of the emotions Nazi-era crimes are still prone to elicit, within hours of the vote in the Greek parliament, the MP in charge of Warsaw’s reparations campaign announced that Poland should follow suit.
Greek compensation claims pale by comparison. Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Nazis after an abortive uprising in which 200,000 civilians died. The lives of 6 million Poles – including 3 million Polish Jews – were lost. Poland, which also faces parliamentary elections this year, has since demanded €800bn in war debts it insists it is still owned by Germany.
Bangladesh girl burned to death on teacher’s order after reporting sexual harassment: police
Agence France-Presse - raw story
19 APR 2019 AT 09:36 ET
A schoolgirl was burned to death in Bangladesh on the orders of her head teacher after she reported him for sexually harassing her, police said Friday.
The death of 19-year-old Nusrat Jahan Rafi last week sparked protests across the South Asian nation, with the prime minister promising to prosecute all those involved.
Rafi was lured to the rooftop of the Islamic seminary she attended where her attackers asked her to withdraw the sexual harassment complaint she had filed with police.
When she refused, she was doused in kerosene and set on fire.
Police said Friday that one of the 17 people arrested in connection with her death had accused the school’s principal of ordering the attack.
The teacher “told them to put pressure on Rafi to withdraw the case or kill her if she refused”, senior police superintendent Mohammad Iqbal, who is leading the investigation, told AFP.
Rafi had gone to police in late March to report the sexual harassment, and a leaked video shows the local police station chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as “not a big deal”.
Iqbal said at least five of those under arrest, including three of Rafi’s classmates, had tied her up with a scarf before setting her on fire.
“The plan was to pass the incident off as a suicide. But it fell through after Rafi managed to come downstairs while on fire because the scarf burnt and freed her hands and feet,” he said.
Rafi suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and died in hospital on April 10.
But she recorded a video before her death, repeating her allegations against the principal.
“The teacher touched me, I will fight this crime till my last breath,” she said. She also identified some of her attackers.
Rafi’s brother Mahmudul Hasan Noman said people close to the principal had also put pressure on the family to withdraw the case against him.
“They told us that it was a conspiracy against him and that it was fabricated,” he told AFP.
The case has caused outrage in Bangladesh, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowing that “none of the culprits will be spared legal action.”
The death of 19-year-old Nusrat Jahan Rafi last week sparked protests across the South Asian nation, with the prime minister promising to prosecute all those involved.
Rafi was lured to the rooftop of the Islamic seminary she attended where her attackers asked her to withdraw the sexual harassment complaint she had filed with police.
When she refused, she was doused in kerosene and set on fire.
Police said Friday that one of the 17 people arrested in connection with her death had accused the school’s principal of ordering the attack.
The teacher “told them to put pressure on Rafi to withdraw the case or kill her if she refused”, senior police superintendent Mohammad Iqbal, who is leading the investigation, told AFP.
Rafi had gone to police in late March to report the sexual harassment, and a leaked video shows the local police station chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as “not a big deal”.
Iqbal said at least five of those under arrest, including three of Rafi’s classmates, had tied her up with a scarf before setting her on fire.
“The plan was to pass the incident off as a suicide. But it fell through after Rafi managed to come downstairs while on fire because the scarf burnt and freed her hands and feet,” he said.
Rafi suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and died in hospital on April 10.
But she recorded a video before her death, repeating her allegations against the principal.
“The teacher touched me, I will fight this crime till my last breath,” she said. She also identified some of her attackers.
Rafi’s brother Mahmudul Hasan Noman said people close to the principal had also put pressure on the family to withdraw the case against him.
“They told us that it was a conspiracy against him and that it was fabricated,” he told AFP.
The case has caused outrage in Bangladesh, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowing that “none of the culprits will be spared legal action.”
Black identity in the spotlight at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay
Agence France-Presse - raw story
15 APR 2019 AT 15:03 ET
François Guillot, AFP | A visitor looks at 'Mort de Camoens' (1834) by Joseph Léon Rolland de Lestang-Parade, during the press visit of the exhibition 'Black models: From Géricault to Matisse' at the musée d'Orsay in Paris on March 25, 2019.
Black identity is being put firmly in the spotlight at a landmark exhibition at Paris’s musée d’Orsay, which focuses on the ‘forgotten’ black models who inspired the French avant-garde.
In 1865, when Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” went on show in Paris, it sparked a scandal in France. Conservative visitors to the Paris Salon slammed the oil-on-canvas featuring a naked, reclining prostitute and her maid as “vulgar” and “immoral”.
The black maid in the background, however, escaped the censure. In fact, she barely got mentioned by the critics.
“We talked more about the cat than the black woman in the background, who offers the bouquet of flowers to Olympia,” noted historian Pap Ndiaye in an interview with FRANCE 24.
They were called Laure, Madeleine and Joseph, and they inspired masterpieces such as “Olympia” and Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”. But until recently their identities were unknown, and the models themselves had been completely overlooked.
‘Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse’ aims to redress the balance by putting black identity firmly in the spotlight.
The lavish show at the musée d’Orsay, which includes more than 300 items on display, portrays people of colour in French art from the country’s final abolition of slavery in 1848 until the 1950s.
There are portraits of the mixed-race novelist Alexandre Dumas, who penned “The Count of Monte Cristo” alongside Manet’s paintings of Jeanne Duval, the “Black Venus” who was mistress and muse to the poet Baudelaire, and the Cuban singer Maria Martinez.
For French rapper Abd Al Malik, the exhibition is the symbol of an attempt at a new cultural inclusiveness.
“I am one of those people on the periphery, those people who have not been put at the centre of things… Changing the way we look at things, changing our perspective, it’s always with a view to moving forward together,” Malik told FRANCE 24. “It helps us understand our shared, national history.”
The impetus for the Paris exhibition was sparked by a doctoral thesis by US scholar Denise Murrell, who said black models had been eclipsed from art history by racism and stereotyping.
Her Columbia University thesis became the subject of a show at New York’s Wallach Art Gallery, which then grew into the much larger current exhibition at the musée d’Orsay. Next summer, it will head to Pointe à Pitre in Guadeloupe.
“It was time for France to look at these issues, for a national institution to open its doors to these issues,” Laurence des Cars, president of the musée d’Orsay, told FRANCE 24.“It deals with a great unspoken and a great unseen part of the history of art.”
‘Forgotten’ black models
It took extensive research and detective work to uncover and identify the overlooked figures. It was only by going through the family papers of the painter Marie-Guillemine Benoist that they discovered that the subject of her formerly named “Portrait of a negress” was called Madeleine. Olympia’s maid, for instance, was called Laure and that, for Cars, is the goal of “Black Models”.
“The whole point is that you look at the Olympia in a completely different way when you leave the exhibition,” said Cars. “It’s a revolution in the way we look at things.”
“The exhibition also shows that Paris in particular during the 19th century was already multicultural, that there was a black Paris in the 1850s,” said Ndiaye.
It might not have been possible to put this exhibition on a few years ago, explained Ndiaye. “Things are happening in French society with forms of visibility… we are looking at the long history of black people in French society.”
Renaming the portraits
Leading paintings in the exhibition have also been renamed in honour of the black models featured.
Benoist’s painting, which was originally titled “Portrait of a negress”, before being recently renamed “Portrait of a black woman” by the Louvre museum, is called “Portrait of Madeleine”.
“Olympia” has been renamed “Laure” in honour of the black maid in the background.
The exhibit features all the name changes of the paintings, enabling visitors to track the name and history of each painting.
“It was art history that left them out,’ Murrell told AFP. “It has contributed to the construction of these figures as racial types as opposed to the individuals they were.”
“If they had been European,” added Murrell, “their real names would have been revealed at the time.”
For Malik, changing the paintings’ names was not about erasing the paintings’ history but more about reframing them within a contemporary context. “It’s a question of reflecting on the current context, reflecting on the times,” he said.
Before a wave of black volunteers from France’s former colonies such as Senegal fought in the trenches of World War One, their role was usually confined to that of servant, circus performer, prostitute, nanny or wet nurse.
In this exhibition, they finally get their due.
In 1865, when Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” went on show in Paris, it sparked a scandal in France. Conservative visitors to the Paris Salon slammed the oil-on-canvas featuring a naked, reclining prostitute and her maid as “vulgar” and “immoral”.
The black maid in the background, however, escaped the censure. In fact, she barely got mentioned by the critics.
“We talked more about the cat than the black woman in the background, who offers the bouquet of flowers to Olympia,” noted historian Pap Ndiaye in an interview with FRANCE 24.
They were called Laure, Madeleine and Joseph, and they inspired masterpieces such as “Olympia” and Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”. But until recently their identities were unknown, and the models themselves had been completely overlooked.
‘Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse’ aims to redress the balance by putting black identity firmly in the spotlight.
The lavish show at the musée d’Orsay, which includes more than 300 items on display, portrays people of colour in French art from the country’s final abolition of slavery in 1848 until the 1950s.
There are portraits of the mixed-race novelist Alexandre Dumas, who penned “The Count of Monte Cristo” alongside Manet’s paintings of Jeanne Duval, the “Black Venus” who was mistress and muse to the poet Baudelaire, and the Cuban singer Maria Martinez.
For French rapper Abd Al Malik, the exhibition is the symbol of an attempt at a new cultural inclusiveness.
“I am one of those people on the periphery, those people who have not been put at the centre of things… Changing the way we look at things, changing our perspective, it’s always with a view to moving forward together,” Malik told FRANCE 24. “It helps us understand our shared, national history.”
The impetus for the Paris exhibition was sparked by a doctoral thesis by US scholar Denise Murrell, who said black models had been eclipsed from art history by racism and stereotyping.
Her Columbia University thesis became the subject of a show at New York’s Wallach Art Gallery, which then grew into the much larger current exhibition at the musée d’Orsay. Next summer, it will head to Pointe à Pitre in Guadeloupe.
“It was time for France to look at these issues, for a national institution to open its doors to these issues,” Laurence des Cars, president of the musée d’Orsay, told FRANCE 24.“It deals with a great unspoken and a great unseen part of the history of art.”
‘Forgotten’ black models
It took extensive research and detective work to uncover and identify the overlooked figures. It was only by going through the family papers of the painter Marie-Guillemine Benoist that they discovered that the subject of her formerly named “Portrait of a negress” was called Madeleine. Olympia’s maid, for instance, was called Laure and that, for Cars, is the goal of “Black Models”.
“The whole point is that you look at the Olympia in a completely different way when you leave the exhibition,” said Cars. “It’s a revolution in the way we look at things.”
“The exhibition also shows that Paris in particular during the 19th century was already multicultural, that there was a black Paris in the 1850s,” said Ndiaye.
It might not have been possible to put this exhibition on a few years ago, explained Ndiaye. “Things are happening in French society with forms of visibility… we are looking at the long history of black people in French society.”
Renaming the portraits
Leading paintings in the exhibition have also been renamed in honour of the black models featured.
Benoist’s painting, which was originally titled “Portrait of a negress”, before being recently renamed “Portrait of a black woman” by the Louvre museum, is called “Portrait of Madeleine”.
“Olympia” has been renamed “Laure” in honour of the black maid in the background.
The exhibit features all the name changes of the paintings, enabling visitors to track the name and history of each painting.
“It was art history that left them out,’ Murrell told AFP. “It has contributed to the construction of these figures as racial types as opposed to the individuals they were.”
“If they had been European,” added Murrell, “their real names would have been revealed at the time.”
For Malik, changing the paintings’ names was not about erasing the paintings’ history but more about reframing them within a contemporary context. “It’s a question of reflecting on the current context, reflecting on the times,” he said.
Before a wave of black volunteers from France’s former colonies such as Senegal fought in the trenches of World War One, their role was usually confined to that of servant, circus performer, prostitute, nanny or wet nurse.
In this exhibition, they finally get their due.
us promotes a cancer causing product, no surprise!!!
US Criticizes Vietnam’s Ban on Suspected Cancer-Causing Herbicides
April 12, 2019 0:21 AM
VOA News
The Trump administration says Vietnam’s decision to ban herbicides with an ingredient suspected of causing cancer will hurt, not help farmers.
Glyphosate is a chief ingredient in the best-selling herbicide Roundup. Vietnam says it will stop importing Roundup and all other weed killers with the chemical in June.
U.S. agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue says he is disappointed in Vietnam’s decision, saying it will have “devastating impacts.”
“If we’re going to feed 10 billion people by 2050, farmers worldwide need all the tools and technologies at our disposal,” he said Thursday.
The World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” and thousands in the U.S. are suing Bayer, Roundup’s manufacturer, alleging it causes cancer.
Perdue added that U.S. regulators have determined that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans and that banning it means farmers could turn to other herbicides that are unregulated, illegal, and maybe dangerous.
Perdue accused Vietnam of ignoring what he said is its obligation to inform the World Trade Organization that it will no longer import such chemicals.
But a Vietnamese agriculture official says the decision is “in accordance with the current law, international regulations, and in line with Vietnam’s social-economic conditions.”
Bayer issued a statement Thursday saying 40 years of science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide back the safety of glyphosate-based herbicides.
Glyphosate is a chief ingredient in the best-selling herbicide Roundup. Vietnam says it will stop importing Roundup and all other weed killers with the chemical in June.
U.S. agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue says he is disappointed in Vietnam’s decision, saying it will have “devastating impacts.”
“If we’re going to feed 10 billion people by 2050, farmers worldwide need all the tools and technologies at our disposal,” he said Thursday.
The World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” and thousands in the U.S. are suing Bayer, Roundup’s manufacturer, alleging it causes cancer.
Perdue added that U.S. regulators have determined that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans and that banning it means farmers could turn to other herbicides that are unregulated, illegal, and maybe dangerous.
Perdue accused Vietnam of ignoring what he said is its obligation to inform the World Trade Organization that it will no longer import such chemicals.
But a Vietnamese agriculture official says the decision is “in accordance with the current law, international regulations, and in line with Vietnam’s social-economic conditions.”
Bayer issued a statement Thursday saying 40 years of science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide back the safety of glyphosate-based herbicides.
just a bunch of racists!!!
A New European Political Bloc Wants to Dismantle Europe
The politicians behind a continent-wide far-right alliance share concerns about migration—and little else.
RACHEL DONADIO - the atlantic
2:34 PM ET
MILAN—An Italian, a German, a Dane, and a Finn gathered here on Monday to launch a new continent-wide alliance of far-right and right-wing parties that they hope will remake Europe. Their message was one of defending national borders, stopping illegal immigration, combatting Islamic terrorism—and little else.
They dubbed their new group the European Alliance of People and Nations, yet beyond their shared concerns about migration, these parties often have wildly different views, most notably on trade and economics—at the press conference, there was little talk about the euro, let alone about leaving it. The question now is whether these parties, however small, will soar to victory in elections for the European Parliament next month.
Monday’s meeting was hosted by Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and head of the right-wing League party, and also included Jörg Meuthen, the only member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD); Olli Kotro from the True Finns; and Anders Vistisen from the Danish People’s Party. The meeting suggests—but doesn’t yet confirm—that Salvini appears to have wrangled a number of right-wing parties that had previously refused to join forces into a Euroskeptic bloc, held together by a shared vision of national sovereignty in a transnational alliance.
What they don’t have is a coherent vision for what Europe will look like. For instance, Meuthen said the AfD was supportive of the European Union’s unified trade policy and common market. “It’s win-win for the people,” he told me. Just minutes before, however, Salvini had said that if the alliance gained more power in the European Parliament, it might want to name European commissioners who would revisit some questions close to his party’s heart, including trade, taxes, and tourism.
Salvini had said he was there representing a grouping of parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front). But afterward Meuthen told reporters that Le Pen had not yet signed on. In fact, Meuthen told Politico last year that he’d never join up with Le Pen—because of their differences on economics and because of the long shadow cast on the National Rally by its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, who has denied the scope of the Holocaust.
On Monday, it was Meuthen who answered questions about whether AfD members were Holocaust deniers. (He said they were not.) The politicians also fielded questions about whether their fearmongering about immigration had emboldened the man who opened fire at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50. (They said it did not.)
These sovereignist parties may be loud, but they’re not necessarily strong. The biggest bloc in the European Parliament remains the European People’s Party, which includes the Christian Democratic Union of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. French President Emmanuel Macron is also trying to forge alliances for a center-left bloc in the European Parliament that would help fend off the right-wing parties. His bloc would have marriages of convenience more than total synchronicity.
For all their talk of building a new Europe and a Europe of the future, it’s hard to know whether Monday’s event was a blip on the radar, or a perfunctory press event where parties trotted out slogans that already feel stale, or whether it marks the start of a new era, one in which the ghosts of Europe’s dark 20th-century past have come back to haunt the present.
Still, it could mark a shift in the composition of the European Parliament, an institution that has over time fought for, and gained, some measure of clout when it comes to policy making in the bloc. “For the first time in the new European Parliament, there will be not a minority, but an opposition—in the sense that Salvini’s group will be against the EU from inside,” Maurizio Molinari, the editor in chief of La Stampa, a Turin daily, told me. He’s right. It would be a new chapter if the bulk of the EU’s elected representatives question the European structure itself.
They dubbed their new group the European Alliance of People and Nations, yet beyond their shared concerns about migration, these parties often have wildly different views, most notably on trade and economics—at the press conference, there was little talk about the euro, let alone about leaving it. The question now is whether these parties, however small, will soar to victory in elections for the European Parliament next month.
Monday’s meeting was hosted by Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and head of the right-wing League party, and also included Jörg Meuthen, the only member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD); Olli Kotro from the True Finns; and Anders Vistisen from the Danish People’s Party. The meeting suggests—but doesn’t yet confirm—that Salvini appears to have wrangled a number of right-wing parties that had previously refused to join forces into a Euroskeptic bloc, held together by a shared vision of national sovereignty in a transnational alliance.
What they don’t have is a coherent vision for what Europe will look like. For instance, Meuthen said the AfD was supportive of the European Union’s unified trade policy and common market. “It’s win-win for the people,” he told me. Just minutes before, however, Salvini had said that if the alliance gained more power in the European Parliament, it might want to name European commissioners who would revisit some questions close to his party’s heart, including trade, taxes, and tourism.
Salvini had said he was there representing a grouping of parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front). But afterward Meuthen told reporters that Le Pen had not yet signed on. In fact, Meuthen told Politico last year that he’d never join up with Le Pen—because of their differences on economics and because of the long shadow cast on the National Rally by its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, who has denied the scope of the Holocaust.
On Monday, it was Meuthen who answered questions about whether AfD members were Holocaust deniers. (He said they were not.) The politicians also fielded questions about whether their fearmongering about immigration had emboldened the man who opened fire at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50. (They said it did not.)
These sovereignist parties may be loud, but they’re not necessarily strong. The biggest bloc in the European Parliament remains the European People’s Party, which includes the Christian Democratic Union of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. French President Emmanuel Macron is also trying to forge alliances for a center-left bloc in the European Parliament that would help fend off the right-wing parties. His bloc would have marriages of convenience more than total synchronicity.
For all their talk of building a new Europe and a Europe of the future, it’s hard to know whether Monday’s event was a blip on the radar, or a perfunctory press event where parties trotted out slogans that already feel stale, or whether it marks the start of a new era, one in which the ghosts of Europe’s dark 20th-century past have come back to haunt the present.
Still, it could mark a shift in the composition of the European Parliament, an institution that has over time fought for, and gained, some measure of clout when it comes to policy making in the bloc. “For the first time in the new European Parliament, there will be not a minority, but an opposition—in the sense that Salvini’s group will be against the EU from inside,” Maurizio Molinari, the editor in chief of La Stampa, a Turin daily, told me. He’s right. It would be a new chapter if the bulk of the EU’s elected representatives question the European structure itself.
Putin’s plagiarism, fake Ukrainian degrees and other tales of world leaders accused of academic fraud
The Conversation - raw story
05 APR 2019 AT 12:39 ET
A recent college admissions scandal in the United States, which revealed that wealthy parents had bribed officials at elite universities, exposed the price some people are willing to pay to say, “I went to an Ivy League school.”
In a country where the myth of academic meritocracy persists despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, many people were shocked to learn that the education system was rife with illegal and unethical conduct.
But academic fraud is nothing new – and it wasn’t invented in the United States. In certain countries, my research on academic corruption attests, some public officials have built their entire political careers on the false pretense of scholastic achievement.
Lying leadersYou’d think that former German Minister of Defense Baron Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg already had a long enough name.
But in 2006, he decided to add the title of “Dr.” to it, completing his doctorate of law at Germany’s University of Beyrouth.
Or so he said.
It turns out that Guttenburg, then widely seen as the successor to Chancelor Angela Merkel, had plagiarized large sections of his Ph.D. dissertation comparing U.S. and European legal systems.
The internet sleuths who outed his fraud in 2011 gave Guttenberg yet another name – the sobriquet “Googleberg.” He was forced to resign, fled possible criminal prosecution in Germany and, in the United States, landed an honorary position at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta initially tried a different approach when he was accused of academic plagiarism soon after taking office in 2012: He denied everything.
“The only reproach I have is that I did not list authors at the bottom of each page, but put them in the bibliography at the end,” he said.
Ponta quit his post in 2015 after going on trial for tax evasion and facing a series of other scandals.
But he still defended his academic honor.
“After…stepping down from the political scene, I wish to pursue a new doctorate while adhering to and respecting all of the standards and requirements,” he said bravely, after admitting to having plagiarized more than half of his 2004 dissertation on the International Criminal Court.
Ponta later wrote to the rector of Bucharest University to renounce his degree.
Denial: The strongman’s tactic
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been far less receptive to repeated allegationsthat he was not the intellectual braintrust behind his 1997 dissertation, “Mineral and Raw Materials Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy.”
Accusations against Putin first surfaced in 2006, when an investigation by the Brookings Institution alleged he copied about 16 pages of his 200-page Ph.D. dissertation from other sources.
Twelve years later, the Russian strongman found himself defending against accusations that his dissertation had been ghostwritten. According to former Russian legislator Olga Litvinenko, Putin’s dissertation was written by her father, Vladimir Litvinenko, Putin’s academic advisor and the rector of Saint Petersburg Mining University.
Also helpful in “writing” Putin’s dissertation, says Litvinenko: a photocopy machine.
Employing the only cut-and-paste technology available in the late 1990s, she says her father helped Putin cheat by using scissors to snip paragraphs from various sources, glued them together and copied them to create new pages in his dissertation.
Putin has never responded to the allegations.
Models of cheating
Guttenberg’s, Ponta’s and Putin’s reactions to their false doctorate scandals are all completely appropriate, my research finds – if you consider the cultural context in which each occurred.
Leaving office, or even fleeing the country, after allegations of academic corruption, as Guttenberg did, is a rational response in his situation.
Germany ranks sixth of 129 countries worldwide in terms of adherence to the law, according to the World Justice Project’s annual “rule of law” index. There, such criminal acts bring professional disgrace, a likely conviction in court and possibly even jail time.
In an emerging democracy that still struggles with corruption, however, such as Romania, bravado is a reasonable way to handle allegations of academic malfeasance. Among European countries, Romania is among the least likely to hold public officials accountable for abuses of power or to demand transparency from government employees, according to the World Justice Project, which ranks the rule of law worldwide.
And in a well-established autocracy like Russia, frankly, top politicians can afford the luxury of simply ignoring allegations of a falsified resumes. Putin has held top office, as either president or prime minister, since 1999.
His grip on power is so all-encompassing that he is immune to the negative consequences of academic scandal – or pretty much any scandal.
Ukraine’s dissertation factoriesThe same holds true in Ukraine, another struggling young democracy.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for top politicians to hold doctorates. All of the five presidents that have run Ukraine since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 have had their Ph.D.‘s – at least in theory.
But since the country has dozens of private firms that offer ghostwritten dissertations for sale, it has also become a Ukrainian tradition to expose politicians with unearned doctorates.
President Victor Yanukovych’s doctorate and professorship was called into doubt when people noticed that his 2004 application to run for president contained numerous grammatical errors – including the misspelled word “proffesor.”
In 2017, former Ukranian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was also accused of plagiarizing his dissertation.
Both followed Putin’s model: Ignore the scandal and hope it will just go away.
It did. Yanukovych became president on his second try in 2010. Yatsenyuk remains one of Ukraine’s leading politicians.
Don’t ask me about my degree
When asked about how they made their fortune, billionaires often cite Henry Ford’s quip: “I am ready to account for any day in my life, but don’t ask me how I made my first million.”
The car manufacturer’s bon mot hints at the shady – sometimes illicit – origins or great wealth.
For some European and Russian politicians – or even American college graduates – today, the modern equivalent might be, “Don’t ask me how I earned my degree.”
In a country where the myth of academic meritocracy persists despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, many people were shocked to learn that the education system was rife with illegal and unethical conduct.
But academic fraud is nothing new – and it wasn’t invented in the United States. In certain countries, my research on academic corruption attests, some public officials have built their entire political careers on the false pretense of scholastic achievement.
Lying leadersYou’d think that former German Minister of Defense Baron Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg already had a long enough name.
But in 2006, he decided to add the title of “Dr.” to it, completing his doctorate of law at Germany’s University of Beyrouth.
Or so he said.
It turns out that Guttenburg, then widely seen as the successor to Chancelor Angela Merkel, had plagiarized large sections of his Ph.D. dissertation comparing U.S. and European legal systems.
The internet sleuths who outed his fraud in 2011 gave Guttenberg yet another name – the sobriquet “Googleberg.” He was forced to resign, fled possible criminal prosecution in Germany and, in the United States, landed an honorary position at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta initially tried a different approach when he was accused of academic plagiarism soon after taking office in 2012: He denied everything.
“The only reproach I have is that I did not list authors at the bottom of each page, but put them in the bibliography at the end,” he said.
Ponta quit his post in 2015 after going on trial for tax evasion and facing a series of other scandals.
But he still defended his academic honor.
“After…stepping down from the political scene, I wish to pursue a new doctorate while adhering to and respecting all of the standards and requirements,” he said bravely, after admitting to having plagiarized more than half of his 2004 dissertation on the International Criminal Court.
Ponta later wrote to the rector of Bucharest University to renounce his degree.
Denial: The strongman’s tactic
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been far less receptive to repeated allegationsthat he was not the intellectual braintrust behind his 1997 dissertation, “Mineral and Raw Materials Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy.”
Accusations against Putin first surfaced in 2006, when an investigation by the Brookings Institution alleged he copied about 16 pages of his 200-page Ph.D. dissertation from other sources.
Twelve years later, the Russian strongman found himself defending against accusations that his dissertation had been ghostwritten. According to former Russian legislator Olga Litvinenko, Putin’s dissertation was written by her father, Vladimir Litvinenko, Putin’s academic advisor and the rector of Saint Petersburg Mining University.
Also helpful in “writing” Putin’s dissertation, says Litvinenko: a photocopy machine.
Employing the only cut-and-paste technology available in the late 1990s, she says her father helped Putin cheat by using scissors to snip paragraphs from various sources, glued them together and copied them to create new pages in his dissertation.
Putin has never responded to the allegations.
Models of cheating
Guttenberg’s, Ponta’s and Putin’s reactions to their false doctorate scandals are all completely appropriate, my research finds – if you consider the cultural context in which each occurred.
Leaving office, or even fleeing the country, after allegations of academic corruption, as Guttenberg did, is a rational response in his situation.
Germany ranks sixth of 129 countries worldwide in terms of adherence to the law, according to the World Justice Project’s annual “rule of law” index. There, such criminal acts bring professional disgrace, a likely conviction in court and possibly even jail time.
In an emerging democracy that still struggles with corruption, however, such as Romania, bravado is a reasonable way to handle allegations of academic malfeasance. Among European countries, Romania is among the least likely to hold public officials accountable for abuses of power or to demand transparency from government employees, according to the World Justice Project, which ranks the rule of law worldwide.
And in a well-established autocracy like Russia, frankly, top politicians can afford the luxury of simply ignoring allegations of a falsified resumes. Putin has held top office, as either president or prime minister, since 1999.
His grip on power is so all-encompassing that he is immune to the negative consequences of academic scandal – or pretty much any scandal.
Ukraine’s dissertation factoriesThe same holds true in Ukraine, another struggling young democracy.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for top politicians to hold doctorates. All of the five presidents that have run Ukraine since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 have had their Ph.D.‘s – at least in theory.
But since the country has dozens of private firms that offer ghostwritten dissertations for sale, it has also become a Ukrainian tradition to expose politicians with unearned doctorates.
President Victor Yanukovych’s doctorate and professorship was called into doubt when people noticed that his 2004 application to run for president contained numerous grammatical errors – including the misspelled word “proffesor.”
In 2017, former Ukranian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was also accused of plagiarizing his dissertation.
Both followed Putin’s model: Ignore the scandal and hope it will just go away.
It did. Yanukovych became president on his second try in 2010. Yatsenyuk remains one of Ukraine’s leading politicians.
Don’t ask me about my degree
When asked about how they made their fortune, billionaires often cite Henry Ford’s quip: “I am ready to account for any day in my life, but don’t ask me how I made my first million.”
The car manufacturer’s bon mot hints at the shady – sometimes illicit – origins or great wealth.
For some European and Russian politicians – or even American college graduates – today, the modern equivalent might be, “Don’t ask me how I earned my degree.”
opinion: White supremacy feeds on mainstream encouragement. That has to stop
Rather than making concessions to bigots, politicians must confront them. It’s the only way to end the violence
Gary Younge - the guardian
4/5/19
On 19 April 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring another 684, in the deadliest act of domestic US terrorism to date. A white supremacist, among other things, he was radicalised by what he regarded as excessive federal government power, US foreign policy and a constellation of bigotries and inadequacies too numerous to mention. He was sentenced to death and placed in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
While he was there, McVeigh became good friends with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was in the next-door cell. Yousef, who trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, had tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Born within four days of each other, here were two young men both unrepentant about their crimes and ideologies, even if McVeigh had ultimately been more successful in inflicting carnage and misery. He was executed in June 2001. Yousef would later state: “I have never [known] anyone in my life who has so similar a personality to my own as his.”
It is presumably in recognition of the unity of purpose between terrorists who attach themselves to Islam and those who embrace white supremacy that the neo-Nazi terror group National Action has called for a “white jihad”. Inadequate young men brimming with rage and brooding resentment, in pursuit of moral certainty, doctrinal purity and a desire to make their mark on a world in which they feel increasingly superfluous and disoriented. They are as made for each other as Yousef and McVeigh.
The central difference is in how these two complementary strands of political violence are understood and challenged. In British news alone this week we have seen a National Action activist in court who planned to kill an MP and a policewoman with a machete; British soldiers in Afghanistan using the Labour leader’s picture for target practice; and a senior Tory and Brexit proponent, Jacob Rees-Mogg, retweeting a key figure from a far-right party in Europe.
White supremacy poses a serious and urgent threat to our political stability, social cohesion and general security. White people are being radicalised at an alarming rate and in disconcerting numbers. The number of far-right terrorists in British prisons tripled between 2017 and 2018.
While the violence may come from the fringes, the encouragement comes from the centre. Only last week, Britain’s counter-terrorism chief, Neil Basu, claimed far-right terrorists were being radicalised by mainstream newspaper coverage; only this week a cartoonist who portrayed refugees as verminreceived a fellowship from the society of editors for his 50 years’ service to the industry. A senior politician has described women in niqabs as looking like letterboxes; and Ukip, polling at 7%, appointed a notorious far-right activist, Tommy Robinson, as an adviser.
There is of course a relationship between the brutal manifestations of bigotry and intolerance and the antiseptic talk of amendments and parliamentary procedure taking place around this stage of the Brexit negotiations. But it is contextual rather than causal. Brexit didn’t create racism. It has exploited, leveraged, amplified, focused, suckled, fed and nurtured it. It has given many licence to say and do things that would previously be regarded as unacceptable. It has laid bare what was hidden and mainstreamed what was marginal.
There were lots of reasons why people voted to leave the European Union, some of which were perfectly reasonable. But it would be more accurate to state that racism – particularly expressed in the form of nostalgia and xenophobia – helped to make Brexit possible, rather than the other way around.
Moreover, this intensification of rightwing nationalism is global. It’s just a few weeks since the deadly shootings in the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a few months since the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. We live in a period when the presence of fascists in government in Europe is no longer noteworthy and neo-Nazi demonstrators have an advocate in the White House.
White supremacy, and the violence that it spawns, can no longer be lampooned as a postgraduate talking point. It is unpicking the now very fragile fabric that’s keeping us all together.
The number of rightwing extremists arrested in Europe nearly doubledbetween 2016 and 2017; there was a 74% increase in antisemitic offences in France last year; and the number of hate groups in the US is the highest ever. According to a 2017 Washington Post/ABC poll roughly one in 10 Americans believes that holding Nazi views is acceptable – assuming very few of those were black or Latino, that’s a lot of white people in a very dark place.
Were we to borrow the language directed against Muslims at this point, we would be talking about a “death cult” deep in the Caucasian psyche and calling on moderate, law-abiding members of the white community to step up and speak out. There would be lofty lectures on the Enlightenment and liberal democracy and integration. We would be talking travel bans, rendition and muscular liberalism. The Home Office would revoke Boris Johnson’s citizenship on the basis that he was born in the US and his presence here is not conducive to the public good.
The home secretary might treat a roomful of white people, as John Reid did Muslims in east London in 2006, to tips on parenting. “Look for the tell-tale signs now, and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever.”
But we won’t borrow that language, not only because it is patronising and racist, holding one group of people collectively responsible for the actions of just a few on the basis of their shared identity. We won’t borrow it because we know it doesn’t work.
While police protection for MPs and more vigilance of hard-right groups might help in the short term, the reality is that the state can only contain a terror threat – it can’t eliminate it. As Northern Ireland showed us, political violence demands political solutions. At some stage that will require our political class to stop pandering to bigotry and start challenging it.
It should be clear by now, if it was not before, that any concession that is made to bigots does not satisfy but emboldens them. That is, in no small part, how we got here. They need to call it out both in the chamber and on the doorstep. If it came from any other group they would have done it already. In the current climate they can no longer avoid it. Their lives may depend on it.
They know that racism is the problem. They have yet to understand that anti-racism is the solution.
While he was there, McVeigh became good friends with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was in the next-door cell. Yousef, who trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, had tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Born within four days of each other, here were two young men both unrepentant about their crimes and ideologies, even if McVeigh had ultimately been more successful in inflicting carnage and misery. He was executed in June 2001. Yousef would later state: “I have never [known] anyone in my life who has so similar a personality to my own as his.”
It is presumably in recognition of the unity of purpose between terrorists who attach themselves to Islam and those who embrace white supremacy that the neo-Nazi terror group National Action has called for a “white jihad”. Inadequate young men brimming with rage and brooding resentment, in pursuit of moral certainty, doctrinal purity and a desire to make their mark on a world in which they feel increasingly superfluous and disoriented. They are as made for each other as Yousef and McVeigh.
The central difference is in how these two complementary strands of political violence are understood and challenged. In British news alone this week we have seen a National Action activist in court who planned to kill an MP and a policewoman with a machete; British soldiers in Afghanistan using the Labour leader’s picture for target practice; and a senior Tory and Brexit proponent, Jacob Rees-Mogg, retweeting a key figure from a far-right party in Europe.
White supremacy poses a serious and urgent threat to our political stability, social cohesion and general security. White people are being radicalised at an alarming rate and in disconcerting numbers. The number of far-right terrorists in British prisons tripled between 2017 and 2018.
While the violence may come from the fringes, the encouragement comes from the centre. Only last week, Britain’s counter-terrorism chief, Neil Basu, claimed far-right terrorists were being radicalised by mainstream newspaper coverage; only this week a cartoonist who portrayed refugees as verminreceived a fellowship from the society of editors for his 50 years’ service to the industry. A senior politician has described women in niqabs as looking like letterboxes; and Ukip, polling at 7%, appointed a notorious far-right activist, Tommy Robinson, as an adviser.
There is of course a relationship between the brutal manifestations of bigotry and intolerance and the antiseptic talk of amendments and parliamentary procedure taking place around this stage of the Brexit negotiations. But it is contextual rather than causal. Brexit didn’t create racism. It has exploited, leveraged, amplified, focused, suckled, fed and nurtured it. It has given many licence to say and do things that would previously be regarded as unacceptable. It has laid bare what was hidden and mainstreamed what was marginal.
There were lots of reasons why people voted to leave the European Union, some of which were perfectly reasonable. But it would be more accurate to state that racism – particularly expressed in the form of nostalgia and xenophobia – helped to make Brexit possible, rather than the other way around.
Moreover, this intensification of rightwing nationalism is global. It’s just a few weeks since the deadly shootings in the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a few months since the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. We live in a period when the presence of fascists in government in Europe is no longer noteworthy and neo-Nazi demonstrators have an advocate in the White House.
White supremacy, and the violence that it spawns, can no longer be lampooned as a postgraduate talking point. It is unpicking the now very fragile fabric that’s keeping us all together.
The number of rightwing extremists arrested in Europe nearly doubledbetween 2016 and 2017; there was a 74% increase in antisemitic offences in France last year; and the number of hate groups in the US is the highest ever. According to a 2017 Washington Post/ABC poll roughly one in 10 Americans believes that holding Nazi views is acceptable – assuming very few of those were black or Latino, that’s a lot of white people in a very dark place.
Were we to borrow the language directed against Muslims at this point, we would be talking about a “death cult” deep in the Caucasian psyche and calling on moderate, law-abiding members of the white community to step up and speak out. There would be lofty lectures on the Enlightenment and liberal democracy and integration. We would be talking travel bans, rendition and muscular liberalism. The Home Office would revoke Boris Johnson’s citizenship on the basis that he was born in the US and his presence here is not conducive to the public good.
The home secretary might treat a roomful of white people, as John Reid did Muslims in east London in 2006, to tips on parenting. “Look for the tell-tale signs now, and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever.”
But we won’t borrow that language, not only because it is patronising and racist, holding one group of people collectively responsible for the actions of just a few on the basis of their shared identity. We won’t borrow it because we know it doesn’t work.
While police protection for MPs and more vigilance of hard-right groups might help in the short term, the reality is that the state can only contain a terror threat – it can’t eliminate it. As Northern Ireland showed us, political violence demands political solutions. At some stage that will require our political class to stop pandering to bigotry and start challenging it.
It should be clear by now, if it was not before, that any concession that is made to bigots does not satisfy but emboldens them. That is, in no small part, how we got here. They need to call it out both in the chamber and on the doorstep. If it came from any other group they would have done it already. In the current climate they can no longer avoid it. Their lives may depend on it.
They know that racism is the problem. They have yet to understand that anti-racism is the solution.
Xenophobic Violence Erupts In South Africa Ahead of Election Season
By Tanasia Kenney - atlantic black star
April 3, 2019
South Africa is seeing an uptick in anti-immigrant violence once again after weeks of xenophobic rhetoric spewed by the nation’s top politicians.
In the last week alone, Malawians living in a South Africans settlement on the outskirts of Durban, have come under violent attacks by their neighbors, Quartz Africa reported. More than 100 people were forced to cram into a police station for protection as locals went on a rampage, breaking into homes and looting foreign-owned businesses.
The night of terror began after midnight on Sunday and reportedly ended with two people dead and several others injured, according to the news site. The violence was reportedly sparked by locals angry that foreigners were stealing their jobs.
“They started shouting, and telling us to leave, they kept chanting that we must leave their country; they hit and kicked my husband,” 22-year-old Loveness James, who is 9 months pregnant and due any day now, told the Sunday Tribune. “All I could think [about] was my unborn baby, my water breaking and me giving birth in front of the people who wanted us dead.”
Over several days, Malawians in the informal Burnwood settlement of Durban have been targeted for retribution. A separate attack unfolded last week when a Malawian national was reportedly found with stolen goods belonging to a South African. “[This] unfortunate situation was then hijacked by a group of locals who started kicking out other Malawians in the name of getting rid of ‘criminal elements,’ ” a statement from the mayor’s office said.
Calm was finally restored on Apr. 1 after South African officials stepped in and the Malawian community of Durban agreed to write a letter apologizing on behalf of the accused thief. No arrests were made.
Acting Malawian High Commissioner to South Africa Gloria Bamusi applauded the city and South African government for working “speedily” to resolve the issue so the “community of Burnwood and our people from Malawi will now live in a peaceful co-existence.” Despite the resolution, however, many native Malawians say they are ready to return home. More than 100 Malawians displaced by the attacks are now asking to be repatriated.
Elias Twaibu, 30, barely escaped the attacks on foreign nationals in Durban in 2015 and returned to Malawi. That country’s economic straits left him no other choice but to return to South Africa where he again fell victim to xenophobic attack last week.
“I came here [to Durban] because of the economic situation at home. I wanted a better life,” Twaibu told the Sunday Tribune. “Coming back to a country that stripped me of my dignity became my only option. I was so desperate [and] impoverished that I came back here. It’s a decision I truly regret making.”
Malawians aren’t the only nationalities targeted in the recent anti-immigrant attacks. Nigerians, Somalis, Congolese, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans have also faced xenophobic violence by locals overt the last decade, Quartz Africa reported.
According to the news site, “The 2015 attacks were fueled by comments made by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini as he flexed his political muscles. This time, the thread may not seem as direct, but the attacks come after weeks of anti-immigrant rhetoric by South African politicians,” including President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa condemned the attacks on Monday and reminded South Africans that they owe their African neighbors gratitude for their support during the struggle to end apartheid. Just days prior, however, the president blasted foreign nationals during a speech on the campaign trail, saying: “Everybody just arrives in our townships and rural areas and set up businesses without licenses and permits.
“We’re going to bring this to an end,” he added.
Officials with the ANC government have also blamed immigrants for burdening the public service. Opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has expressed similar sentiments and pointed the finger at the ANC for the country’s “failing” immigration policies.
“In a society as unequal as ours, with all of the fractures that we have, it’s clear there is huge contestation at the base of our social structures,” Political analyst Imran Buccas told the Sunday Tribune. “This is not the first time we have seen xenophobic violence in South Africa, and particularly in Durban.”
In the last week alone, Malawians living in a South Africans settlement on the outskirts of Durban, have come under violent attacks by their neighbors, Quartz Africa reported. More than 100 people were forced to cram into a police station for protection as locals went on a rampage, breaking into homes and looting foreign-owned businesses.
The night of terror began after midnight on Sunday and reportedly ended with two people dead and several others injured, according to the news site. The violence was reportedly sparked by locals angry that foreigners were stealing their jobs.
“They started shouting, and telling us to leave, they kept chanting that we must leave their country; they hit and kicked my husband,” 22-year-old Loveness James, who is 9 months pregnant and due any day now, told the Sunday Tribune. “All I could think [about] was my unborn baby, my water breaking and me giving birth in front of the people who wanted us dead.”
Over several days, Malawians in the informal Burnwood settlement of Durban have been targeted for retribution. A separate attack unfolded last week when a Malawian national was reportedly found with stolen goods belonging to a South African. “[This] unfortunate situation was then hijacked by a group of locals who started kicking out other Malawians in the name of getting rid of ‘criminal elements,’ ” a statement from the mayor’s office said.
Calm was finally restored on Apr. 1 after South African officials stepped in and the Malawian community of Durban agreed to write a letter apologizing on behalf of the accused thief. No arrests were made.
Acting Malawian High Commissioner to South Africa Gloria Bamusi applauded the city and South African government for working “speedily” to resolve the issue so the “community of Burnwood and our people from Malawi will now live in a peaceful co-existence.” Despite the resolution, however, many native Malawians say they are ready to return home. More than 100 Malawians displaced by the attacks are now asking to be repatriated.
Elias Twaibu, 30, barely escaped the attacks on foreign nationals in Durban in 2015 and returned to Malawi. That country’s economic straits left him no other choice but to return to South Africa where he again fell victim to xenophobic attack last week.
“I came here [to Durban] because of the economic situation at home. I wanted a better life,” Twaibu told the Sunday Tribune. “Coming back to a country that stripped me of my dignity became my only option. I was so desperate [and] impoverished that I came back here. It’s a decision I truly regret making.”
Malawians aren’t the only nationalities targeted in the recent anti-immigrant attacks. Nigerians, Somalis, Congolese, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans have also faced xenophobic violence by locals overt the last decade, Quartz Africa reported.
According to the news site, “The 2015 attacks were fueled by comments made by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini as he flexed his political muscles. This time, the thread may not seem as direct, but the attacks come after weeks of anti-immigrant rhetoric by South African politicians,” including President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa condemned the attacks on Monday and reminded South Africans that they owe their African neighbors gratitude for their support during the struggle to end apartheid. Just days prior, however, the president blasted foreign nationals during a speech on the campaign trail, saying: “Everybody just arrives in our townships and rural areas and set up businesses without licenses and permits.
“We’re going to bring this to an end,” he added.
Officials with the ANC government have also blamed immigrants for burdening the public service. Opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has expressed similar sentiments and pointed the finger at the ANC for the country’s “failing” immigration policies.
“In a society as unequal as ours, with all of the fractures that we have, it’s clear there is huge contestation at the base of our social structures,” Political analyst Imran Buccas told the Sunday Tribune. “This is not the first time we have seen xenophobic violence in South Africa, and particularly in Durban.”
america's ally!!!
Leaked reports reveal severe abuse of Saudi political prisoners
Exclusive: cuts, burns and bruising documented, despite government denials of torture
Nick Hopkins, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Kareem Shaheen
the guardian
Sun 31 Mar 2019 05.22 EDT
Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns, according to leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for the country’s ruler, King Salman.
The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government’s denials that men and women in custody are being tortured.
The Guardian has been told the medical reports will be given to King Salman along with recommendations that are said to include a potential pardon for all the prisoners, or at least early release for those with serious health problems.
These options are part of a substantial internal review said to have been ordered by the king, who approved the commissioning of examinations of up to 60 prisoners, many of them women, for a report to be circulated around the royal court, a source said.
Some of the assessments were leaked to the Guardian, which asked the Saudi government to comment on the medical reports more than a week ago. A spokesman declined to discuss the issue, despite being given repeated opportunities to do so. Officials did not challenge the authenticity of the reports.
The Guardian has been able independently to verify the accuracy and contents of one of the examinations. The conditions of other individuals, as described in the documents, are consistent with reports that have emerged involving claims of torture, though the Guardian has not been able to corroborate the details.
Pressure on Saudi Arabia over the detention and treatment of political prisoners has been growing in recent months amid claims that some female activists have been subjected to electric shocks and lashings in custody.
With the kingdom also reeling from the aftermath of the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, King Salman is said to have ordered a review of the decision to arrest and detain about 200 men and women in a crackdown ordered by his heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to a source with knowledge of the review, the royal court set aside objections from Prince Mohammed’s aides and sought brief medical examinations on a number of detainees to get a snapshot of their health.
The men believed to have been examined include Adel Ahmad Banaemah, Mohammed Saud Al Bisher, Fahad Abdullaziz Al-Sunaidi, Zuhair Kutbi, Abdullaziz Fawzan al-Fawzan and Yasser Abdullah al-Ayyaf.
The Guardian understands the women include Samar Mohammad Badawi, Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi and Abeer Adbdullatif Al Namankany.
The Guardian has been told the examinations took place in January and the medical reports, which are marked confidential, have been included in a detailed overview that includes three broad recommendations to the king about what to do next.
According to the medical reports seen by the Guardian, the comments about the detainees suggest many have been severely ill-treated and have a range of health problems.
In almost all cases, the reports demanded the prisoners be urgently transferred from solitary confinement to a medical centre.
The remarks on detainees include:
The recommendations from some advisers to the king include a pardon for all political prisoners, the release of individuals jailed from 2017, and the release of prisoners deemed to have health problems.
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia released pending a full trial three women, believed to be Aziza al-Youssef, Eman Al Nafjan, and Dr Rokaya Mohareb.
The Guardian approached Saudi authorities on 21 March for comment. A spokesman said he would respond, but has not provided a comment.
In previous media reports, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said the kingdom had signed the convention against torture and prohibits its use. He said Saudi Arabia “takes any and all allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously”.
The Guardian was warned by several human rights experts during the course of its reporting that trying to contact family members of people in detention would pose serious risks to the family members living in Saudi Arabia. Rights organisations and activists who track detentions confirmed the nine individuals named in the medical reports were in custody in January.
The reasons for their arrests vary, and in some cases, their alleged offences have not been published.
Human Rights Watch called for Saudi Arabia to “immediately release all jailed human rights activists and peaceful dissidents, and invite international monitors to conduct a comprehensive and transparent investigation into their treatment”.
A spokesperson added: “Saudi detainees including women activists have alleged that authorities mistreated them with unspeakable cruelty, including electric shocks, whippings and sexual harassment, and new revelations of medical reports appear to confirm what they have said for months.”
One rights activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the descriptions contained in the reports, including that individuals were being held in solitary confinement, were consistent with evidence that had been collected by activists.
The person said the only way to verify the reports fully would be to give independent monitors access to the individuals who had been identified, and make their assessments public.
The activist said female prisoners had been electrocuted, tied to chairs and beaten around their thighs, backs and buttocks with an agal, a cord that men use to keep their headdresses in place.
The lashes led to deep and lasting bruising. Female prisoners have also been described as experiencing severe weight loss, with one woman said to have lost half her body weight, according to the activist.
Justin Shilad, a Middle East research associate at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the case of Fahd al-Sunaidi, a journalist, showed the extent and reach of the crackdown ordered by the crown prince.
“This is not someone who really stirred the pot in terms of the topics he covered … The fact that he is in detention for no discernible reason, the fact that he was not known as a controversial figure, it really demonstrates the totality of Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on press freedom, on independent journalism or any commentary that smacks of a critical or independent nature,” he said.
“In terms of researching Saudi Arabia [and political detentions], the cone of silence is not like anything I have ever seen, and I have researched Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq … The level of fear, intimidation and all round silencing of information, it is beyond what we see in the war zones in the region where you have the Islamic State operating.”
The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government’s denials that men and women in custody are being tortured.
The Guardian has been told the medical reports will be given to King Salman along with recommendations that are said to include a potential pardon for all the prisoners, or at least early release for those with serious health problems.
These options are part of a substantial internal review said to have been ordered by the king, who approved the commissioning of examinations of up to 60 prisoners, many of them women, for a report to be circulated around the royal court, a source said.
Some of the assessments were leaked to the Guardian, which asked the Saudi government to comment on the medical reports more than a week ago. A spokesman declined to discuss the issue, despite being given repeated opportunities to do so. Officials did not challenge the authenticity of the reports.
The Guardian has been able independently to verify the accuracy and contents of one of the examinations. The conditions of other individuals, as described in the documents, are consistent with reports that have emerged involving claims of torture, though the Guardian has not been able to corroborate the details.
Pressure on Saudi Arabia over the detention and treatment of political prisoners has been growing in recent months amid claims that some female activists have been subjected to electric shocks and lashings in custody.
With the kingdom also reeling from the aftermath of the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, King Salman is said to have ordered a review of the decision to arrest and detain about 200 men and women in a crackdown ordered by his heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to a source with knowledge of the review, the royal court set aside objections from Prince Mohammed’s aides and sought brief medical examinations on a number of detainees to get a snapshot of their health.
The men believed to have been examined include Adel Ahmad Banaemah, Mohammed Saud Al Bisher, Fahad Abdullaziz Al-Sunaidi, Zuhair Kutbi, Abdullaziz Fawzan al-Fawzan and Yasser Abdullah al-Ayyaf.
The Guardian understands the women include Samar Mohammad Badawi, Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi and Abeer Adbdullatif Al Namankany.
The Guardian has been told the examinations took place in January and the medical reports, which are marked confidential, have been included in a detailed overview that includes three broad recommendations to the king about what to do next.
According to the medical reports seen by the Guardian, the comments about the detainees suggest many have been severely ill-treated and have a range of health problems.
In almost all cases, the reports demanded the prisoners be urgently transferred from solitary confinement to a medical centre.
The remarks on detainees include:
- “The patient suffers from severe weight loss with continuous bloody vomiting. There are also a number of wounds and bruises scattered in several areas of the body”
- “There are also a number of visible injuries in the chest and lower back”
- “The patient must be transferred from solitary confinement to the specialised clinic for immediate treatment and further medical examinations”
- “The patient has difficulty walking because of a number of bruises visible on the legs area. A number of injuries are also visible on the forearm and lower back area. Malnutrition and obvious dryness on the skin”
- “The patient suffers from a number of bruises visible on the body, especially in the areas of back, abdomen and thighs. It also appears to be malnourished due to lack of eating and facial pallor and general weakness in the body”
- “The patient cannot move at all due to wounds in both legs as well as severe weakness in the body due to malnutrition and lack of fluids”
- “The patient suffers from severe burns throughout the body. Old wounds were not completely healed because of medical negligence”
- “The patient suffers from difficulty in movement due to severe malnutrition and general lack of fluids. There are also a number of bruises, wounds and sores throughout the body”
The recommendations from some advisers to the king include a pardon for all political prisoners, the release of individuals jailed from 2017, and the release of prisoners deemed to have health problems.
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia released pending a full trial three women, believed to be Aziza al-Youssef, Eman Al Nafjan, and Dr Rokaya Mohareb.
The Guardian approached Saudi authorities on 21 March for comment. A spokesman said he would respond, but has not provided a comment.
In previous media reports, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said the kingdom had signed the convention against torture and prohibits its use. He said Saudi Arabia “takes any and all allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously”.
The Guardian was warned by several human rights experts during the course of its reporting that trying to contact family members of people in detention would pose serious risks to the family members living in Saudi Arabia. Rights organisations and activists who track detentions confirmed the nine individuals named in the medical reports were in custody in January.
The reasons for their arrests vary, and in some cases, their alleged offences have not been published.
Human Rights Watch called for Saudi Arabia to “immediately release all jailed human rights activists and peaceful dissidents, and invite international monitors to conduct a comprehensive and transparent investigation into their treatment”.
A spokesperson added: “Saudi detainees including women activists have alleged that authorities mistreated them with unspeakable cruelty, including electric shocks, whippings and sexual harassment, and new revelations of medical reports appear to confirm what they have said for months.”
One rights activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the descriptions contained in the reports, including that individuals were being held in solitary confinement, were consistent with evidence that had been collected by activists.
The person said the only way to verify the reports fully would be to give independent monitors access to the individuals who had been identified, and make their assessments public.
The activist said female prisoners had been electrocuted, tied to chairs and beaten around their thighs, backs and buttocks with an agal, a cord that men use to keep their headdresses in place.
The lashes led to deep and lasting bruising. Female prisoners have also been described as experiencing severe weight loss, with one woman said to have lost half her body weight, according to the activist.
Justin Shilad, a Middle East research associate at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the case of Fahd al-Sunaidi, a journalist, showed the extent and reach of the crackdown ordered by the crown prince.
“This is not someone who really stirred the pot in terms of the topics he covered … The fact that he is in detention for no discernible reason, the fact that he was not known as a controversial figure, it really demonstrates the totality of Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on press freedom, on independent journalism or any commentary that smacks of a critical or independent nature,” he said.
“In terms of researching Saudi Arabia [and political detentions], the cone of silence is not like anything I have ever seen, and I have researched Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq … The level of fear, intimidation and all round silencing of information, it is beyond what we see in the war zones in the region where you have the Islamic State operating.”
Lawyers Worldwide Urge International Court: Investigate Israeli Crimes
BY Marjorie Cohn, Truthout
PUBLISHED March 29, 2019
On the eve of the first anniversary of the “Great March of Return” at the Gaza border, lawyers and jurists around the world are calling on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.
Today, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers presented a petition from the International Lawyers Campaign for the Investigation and Prosecution of Crimes Committed Against the Palestinian People to Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the ICC. The petition urges Bensouda to initiate a full investigation and prosecute violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed by Israeli officials in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The petition has garnered the support of tens of thousands of lawyers worldwide.
The petition condemns “the unimaginable atrocities that have been committed and continue to be committed by Israel against Palestinian civilians which deeply shock the conscience of humanity.”
It cites the well-established legal principle that victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law “have a right to a remedy and reparation.”
The petition denounces “the failure and refusal” of Israel to hold accountable “those suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian civilians,” which has resulted in “abandoning the rule of law and replacing it with widespread impunity for Israeli officials who have sanctioned and for Israeli individuals who have perpetrated such crimes.”
Israel Bombs Gaza Ahead of Great March of Return Anniversary
On March 25 and 26, in anticipation of the forthcoming election and the anniversary of the Great March of Return, Israel pummeled Gaza with dozens of airstrikes, instilling terror in 2 million Palestinians.
On Saturday, March 30, tens of thousands of Palestinians are planning to walk toward the Gaza border to commemorate the March 30, 2018, launch of the Great March of Return. For the past year, during the weekly protests, tens of thousands of Palestinians have demanded an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the right to return to their homeland. In response, Israeli forces have engaged in violent and illegal repression against demonstrators.
UN Commission Documents Crimes by Israeli Leaders
On March 18, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, convened by the UN Human Rights Council, issued a 252-page report of its findings on the Great March of Return demonstrations.
“We present this comprehensive report with an urgent plea to Israel to immediately ensure that the rules of engagement of their security forces are revised to comply with international legal standards…. The excessive force that took place on 30 March, 14 May and 12 October 2018 must not be repeated,” Commission Chair Santiago Canton told the Human Rights Council.
The Commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that during these weekly demonstrations, the Israeli Security Forces killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither participating directly in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat to life. Among those shot were children, paramedics, journalists, and persons with disabilities. 183 people were shot dead, another 6,106 were wounded with live ammunition.”
Unless acting in lawful self-defense, the Commission noted, “intentionally killing a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. Serious human rights violations were committed which may amount to crimes against humanity.”
The Commission concluded that the Israeli Security Forces’ “conduct also violated international humanitarian law, which permits civilians to be targeted only when they ‘directly participate in hostilities.’ This purposefully high threshold was not met by demonstrators’ conduct, in the view of the Commission, with one possible exception.”
Furthermore, the Commission stated, “Targeting unarmed demonstrators purely on the basis of their current or former political views, or their current or former membership of an armed group — and not on their conduct at the time — is impermissible in the view of the Commission.”
The Commission recommended that the government of Israel:
The Commission’s report will be forwarded to the ICC.
Petition Seeks Accountability in International Court for Israeli Leaders
In the summer of 2014, Israeli forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, nearly one-quarter of them children and over 80 percent of them civilians, in an operation dubbed “Operation Protective Edge.”
The following January, Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine. In a preliminary examination, the Office of the Prosecutor determines whether there is sufficient evidence of crimes of sufficient gravity falling within the ICC’s jurisdiction, whether there are genuine national proceedings, and whether opening an investigation would serve the interests of justice and of the victims.
The petition from the International Association of Democratic Lawyers urges Bensouda to take the next step — from a preliminary examination to a full investigation into Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. In an investigation, the Office of the Prosecutor gathers evidence, identifies suspects, and asks ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant or a summons to appear.
On April 8, 2018, in light of Israeli actions during the Great March of Return, Bensouda stated that “any new alleged crime committed in the context of the situation in Palestine may be subjected to my Office’s scrutiny. This applies to the events of the past weeks and to any future incident.” She added, “I am aware that the demonstrations in the Gaza Strip are planned to continue further. My Office will continue to closely watch the situation and will record any instance of incitement or resort to unlawful force.”
She added, “Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the [ICC’s] Rome Statute.”
Bensouda noted, “Any person who incites or engages in acts of violence including by ordering, requesting, encouraging or contributing in any other manner to the commission of crimes within ICC’s jurisdiction is liable to prosecution before the Court, with full respect for the principle of complementarity.”
“Complementarity” means the court will take jurisdiction only over people whose home country is unwilling or unable to genuinely investigate and prosecute.
Israel has demonstrated its unwillingness to mount an impartial investigation into Operation Protective Edge. In August 2018, the Israeli military absolved itself of any wrongdoing in that operation.
The lawyers’ petition was inspired by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers’ previous international call for lawyers to support the campaign to free Nelson Mandela in the 1980s. Just as that campaign “proved to be for those living under Apartheid in South Africa,” the current petition “is an essential first step in securing equal justice under law” for the Palestinian people.
Today, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers presented a petition from the International Lawyers Campaign for the Investigation and Prosecution of Crimes Committed Against the Palestinian People to Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the ICC. The petition urges Bensouda to initiate a full investigation and prosecute violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed by Israeli officials in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The petition has garnered the support of tens of thousands of lawyers worldwide.
The petition condemns “the unimaginable atrocities that have been committed and continue to be committed by Israel against Palestinian civilians which deeply shock the conscience of humanity.”
It cites the well-established legal principle that victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law “have a right to a remedy and reparation.”
The petition denounces “the failure and refusal” of Israel to hold accountable “those suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian civilians,” which has resulted in “abandoning the rule of law and replacing it with widespread impunity for Israeli officials who have sanctioned and for Israeli individuals who have perpetrated such crimes.”
Israel Bombs Gaza Ahead of Great March of Return Anniversary
On March 25 and 26, in anticipation of the forthcoming election and the anniversary of the Great March of Return, Israel pummeled Gaza with dozens of airstrikes, instilling terror in 2 million Palestinians.
On Saturday, March 30, tens of thousands of Palestinians are planning to walk toward the Gaza border to commemorate the March 30, 2018, launch of the Great March of Return. For the past year, during the weekly protests, tens of thousands of Palestinians have demanded an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the right to return to their homeland. In response, Israeli forces have engaged in violent and illegal repression against demonstrators.
UN Commission Documents Crimes by Israeli Leaders
On March 18, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, convened by the UN Human Rights Council, issued a 252-page report of its findings on the Great March of Return demonstrations.
“We present this comprehensive report with an urgent plea to Israel to immediately ensure that the rules of engagement of their security forces are revised to comply with international legal standards…. The excessive force that took place on 30 March, 14 May and 12 October 2018 must not be repeated,” Commission Chair Santiago Canton told the Human Rights Council.
The Commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that during these weekly demonstrations, the Israeli Security Forces killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither participating directly in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat to life. Among those shot were children, paramedics, journalists, and persons with disabilities. 183 people were shot dead, another 6,106 were wounded with live ammunition.”
Unless acting in lawful self-defense, the Commission noted, “intentionally killing a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. Serious human rights violations were committed which may amount to crimes against humanity.”
The Commission concluded that the Israeli Security Forces’ “conduct also violated international humanitarian law, which permits civilians to be targeted only when they ‘directly participate in hostilities.’ This purposefully high threshold was not met by demonstrators’ conduct, in the view of the Commission, with one possible exception.”
Furthermore, the Commission stated, “Targeting unarmed demonstrators purely on the basis of their current or former political views, or their current or former membership of an armed group — and not on their conduct at the time — is impermissible in the view of the Commission.”
The Commission recommended that the government of Israel:
- Prohibit the use of lethal force against civilians who pose no imminent threat to life;
- Make sure the rules of engagement don’t sanction lethal force against “main inciters” as a status. Ensure the rules only allow lethal force as a last resort, where the target poses an imminent threat to life or is participating directly in hostilities;
- Do not allow targeting based solely on actual or alleged affiliation with a group rather than conduct;
- Investigate all protest-related killings to determine whether war crimes or crimes against humanity have been committed with a view toward accountability;
- Ensure prompt and effective remedies for those unlawfully killed or wounded; and
- Immediately lift the blockade on Gaza.
The Commission’s report will be forwarded to the ICC.
Petition Seeks Accountability in International Court for Israeli Leaders
In the summer of 2014, Israeli forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, nearly one-quarter of them children and over 80 percent of them civilians, in an operation dubbed “Operation Protective Edge.”
The following January, Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine. In a preliminary examination, the Office of the Prosecutor determines whether there is sufficient evidence of crimes of sufficient gravity falling within the ICC’s jurisdiction, whether there are genuine national proceedings, and whether opening an investigation would serve the interests of justice and of the victims.
The petition from the International Association of Democratic Lawyers urges Bensouda to take the next step — from a preliminary examination to a full investigation into Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. In an investigation, the Office of the Prosecutor gathers evidence, identifies suspects, and asks ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant or a summons to appear.
On April 8, 2018, in light of Israeli actions during the Great March of Return, Bensouda stated that “any new alleged crime committed in the context of the situation in Palestine may be subjected to my Office’s scrutiny. This applies to the events of the past weeks and to any future incident.” She added, “I am aware that the demonstrations in the Gaza Strip are planned to continue further. My Office will continue to closely watch the situation and will record any instance of incitement or resort to unlawful force.”
She added, “Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the [ICC’s] Rome Statute.”
Bensouda noted, “Any person who incites or engages in acts of violence including by ordering, requesting, encouraging or contributing in any other manner to the commission of crimes within ICC’s jurisdiction is liable to prosecution before the Court, with full respect for the principle of complementarity.”
“Complementarity” means the court will take jurisdiction only over people whose home country is unwilling or unable to genuinely investigate and prosecute.
Israel has demonstrated its unwillingness to mount an impartial investigation into Operation Protective Edge. In August 2018, the Israeli military absolved itself of any wrongdoing in that operation.
The lawyers’ petition was inspired by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers’ previous international call for lawyers to support the campaign to free Nelson Mandela in the 1980s. Just as that campaign “proved to be for those living under Apartheid in South Africa,” the current petition “is an essential first step in securing equal justice under law” for the Palestinian people.
a religion that sanctions murder!!!
Brunei brings in death by stoning as punishment for gay sex
From 3 April, people in the tiny south-east Asian kingdom will be subject to a draconian new penal code based on sharia law
Hannah Ellis-Petersen South-east Asia correspondent
the guardian
Thu 28 Mar 2019 00.54 EDT
Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex and adultery from next week, as part of the country’s highly criticised implementation of sharia law.
From 3 April, individuals in the tiny southeast Asian kingdom will be subject to a draconian new penal code, which also includes the amputation of a hand and a foot for the crime of theft. The capital punishments are to be “witnessed by a group of Muslims.”
Brunei, which has adopted a more conservative form of Islam in recent years, first announced back in 2014 its intention to introduce sharia law, the Islamic legal system which imposes strict corporal punishments. It was a directive of the Sultan of Brunei, who is one of the world’s richest leaders with a personal wealth of about $20bn and has held the throne since 1967.
Alcohol is already banned in Brunei and there are fines and jail sentences for having children out of wedlock and failing to pray on a Friday. However, a heavy international backlash against Brunei imposing some of the more brutal sharia punishments has slowed their full implementation over the past five years.
Brunei was a British colony until 1984 and the two countries still enjoy strong ties. Homosexuality had been illegal in Brunei since British colonial rule but under the new laws it is now punishable by death rather than prison, which will also apply to sodomy, adultery and rape.
The announcement that sharia law is to be rolled out from next week, specifically targeting the gay community, was met with horror by human rights groups. Amnesty International urged Brunei to “immediately halt” implementing the new penalties, which they said were “deeply flawed”.
“To legalise such cruel and inhuman penalties is appalling of itself,” Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Brunei researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement, adding that some of the potential offences “should not even be deemed crimes at all, including consensual sex between adults of the same gender”.
The sharia law would apply only to Muslims, who make up about two-thirds of the population.
From 3 April, individuals in the tiny southeast Asian kingdom will be subject to a draconian new penal code, which also includes the amputation of a hand and a foot for the crime of theft. The capital punishments are to be “witnessed by a group of Muslims.”
Brunei, which has adopted a more conservative form of Islam in recent years, first announced back in 2014 its intention to introduce sharia law, the Islamic legal system which imposes strict corporal punishments. It was a directive of the Sultan of Brunei, who is one of the world’s richest leaders with a personal wealth of about $20bn and has held the throne since 1967.
Alcohol is already banned in Brunei and there are fines and jail sentences for having children out of wedlock and failing to pray on a Friday. However, a heavy international backlash against Brunei imposing some of the more brutal sharia punishments has slowed their full implementation over the past five years.
Brunei was a British colony until 1984 and the two countries still enjoy strong ties. Homosexuality had been illegal in Brunei since British colonial rule but under the new laws it is now punishable by death rather than prison, which will also apply to sodomy, adultery and rape.
The announcement that sharia law is to be rolled out from next week, specifically targeting the gay community, was met with horror by human rights groups. Amnesty International urged Brunei to “immediately halt” implementing the new penalties, which they said were “deeply flawed”.
“To legalise such cruel and inhuman penalties is appalling of itself,” Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Brunei researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement, adding that some of the potential offences “should not even be deemed crimes at all, including consensual sex between adults of the same gender”.
The sharia law would apply only to Muslims, who make up about two-thirds of the population.
classic example of fraudulent government!!!
Government rejects Brexit petition to revoke article 50 signed by 5.8 million people
MPs will debate the petition but government says stopping Brexit would ‘break promises’
Guardian staff and agencies
Wed 27 Mar 2019 04.39 EDT
The British government has rejected a petition calling for Brexit to be stopped, which gathered more than 5.8 million signatures.
The petition is due to be debated by MPs on 1 April, after breaking the 100,000 threshold for consideration and becoming the best-supported proposal in the history of the House of Commons and government’s e-petitions website.
Rejecting the oft-repeated claim that EU withdrawal is the “will of the people”, it calls for the revocation of the Article 50 letter informing the European Council of the UK’s intention to leave.
The Article 50 letter can be withdrawn by the UK unilaterally, without the need for EU agreement, leaving Britain free to continue as a member on its current terms.
But in its official response to the petition, the department for exiting the EU said: “It remains the Government’s firm policy not to revoke Article 50. We will honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and work to deliver an exit which benefits everyone, whether they voted to Leave or to Remain.
“Revoking Article 50, and thereby remaining in the European Union, would undermine both our democracy and the trust that millions of voters have placed in government.”
The department said while it acknowledged the “considerable number” of people who had signed the petition, the government had written to every household prior to the 2016 referendum promising the outcome of the referendum would be implemented and people voted with that understanding.
“17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed at UK government,” said the department’s statement.
The department added that 80% of those who voted in the 2017 general election voted for parties who committed in their manifestos to uphold the referendum result.
“Revoking Article 50 would break the promises made by Government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy.
“As the Prime Minister has said, failing to deliver Brexit would cause ‘potentially irreparable damage to public trust’, and it is imperative that people can trust their Government to respect their votes and deliver the best outcome for them.”
The petition will be debated by MPs in the Commons’ secondary chamber Westminster Hall. A Government minister will be required to respond to the petition, but there will be no vote on the action it demands.
The woman behind the petition, Margaret Georgiadou, said on Saturday she had received death threats.
She also said she had deleted her Facebook account after receiving a “torrent of abuse”.
MPs will also debate a petition calling for a second EU referendum, which has received more than 120,000 signatures, and another - signed by more than 140,000 - demanding that the UK leave with or without a deal on 29 March.
The petition is due to be debated by MPs on 1 April, after breaking the 100,000 threshold for consideration and becoming the best-supported proposal in the history of the House of Commons and government’s e-petitions website.
Rejecting the oft-repeated claim that EU withdrawal is the “will of the people”, it calls for the revocation of the Article 50 letter informing the European Council of the UK’s intention to leave.
The Article 50 letter can be withdrawn by the UK unilaterally, without the need for EU agreement, leaving Britain free to continue as a member on its current terms.
But in its official response to the petition, the department for exiting the EU said: “It remains the Government’s firm policy not to revoke Article 50. We will honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and work to deliver an exit which benefits everyone, whether they voted to Leave or to Remain.
“Revoking Article 50, and thereby remaining in the European Union, would undermine both our democracy and the trust that millions of voters have placed in government.”
The department said while it acknowledged the “considerable number” of people who had signed the petition, the government had written to every household prior to the 2016 referendum promising the outcome of the referendum would be implemented and people voted with that understanding.
“17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed at UK government,” said the department’s statement.
The department added that 80% of those who voted in the 2017 general election voted for parties who committed in their manifestos to uphold the referendum result.
“Revoking Article 50 would break the promises made by Government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy.
“As the Prime Minister has said, failing to deliver Brexit would cause ‘potentially irreparable damage to public trust’, and it is imperative that people can trust their Government to respect their votes and deliver the best outcome for them.”
The petition will be debated by MPs in the Commons’ secondary chamber Westminster Hall. A Government minister will be required to respond to the petition, but there will be no vote on the action it demands.
The woman behind the petition, Margaret Georgiadou, said on Saturday she had received death threats.
She also said she had deleted her Facebook account after receiving a “torrent of abuse”.
MPs will also debate a petition calling for a second EU referendum, which has received more than 120,000 signatures, and another - signed by more than 140,000 - demanding that the UK leave with or without a deal on 29 March.
racists hate to be called out to apologize!!!
Spain hits back at Mexico in row over colonial rights abuses
Madrid rejects Mexican president’s demand for apology for crimes against indigenous people
Stephen Burgen in Barcelona and David Agren in Buenos Aires
the guardian
Tue 26 Mar 2019 07.57 EDT
A diplomatic row has broken out between Mexico and Spain after the Mexican president wrote to King Felipe VI demanding he apologise for crimes committed against Mexico’s indigenous people during the conquest 500 years ago.
In a video filmed at the ruins of the indigenous city of Comalcalco, in southern Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador called on Spain and the Vatican to recognise the rights violations committed during the conquest, led by Hernán Cortés. The video was posted on the president’s social media accounts.
“There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the [indigenous] temples,” he said. “The time has come to reconcile. But let us ask forgiveness first.”
The remarks came two months after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, made an official visit to Mexico; his government reacted angrily to López Obrador’s letter.
“The Spanish government profoundly regrets the publication of the Mexican president’s letter to his majesty the king on 1 March and completely reject its content,” a government statement read.
“The arrival of the Spanish on Mexican soil 500 years ago cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations. Our closely related peoples have always known how to view our shared history without anger and from a shared perspective, as free peoples with a common heritage and an extraordinary future.”
Reaction in Spain split across political lines. Albert Rivera, the leader of the centre-right Citizens party, said the letter “was an intolerable offence to the Spanish people”, while Ione Belarra, from the leftwing Podemos party, said López Obrador “has every right to ask the king to apologise for the abuses of la conquista”.
Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative People’s party: “It’s scandalous ignorance and a real affront to Spain and its history.”
Harim Gutiérrez, a professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, said López Obrador’s letter was an example of “the instrumentalisation of history for political purposes”.
“He [López Obrador] says it’s an attempt at … achieving ‘a general agreement’ based on forgiveness, which is consistent with his policies of ‘peace and love’,” Gutiérrez added. “The governments of independent Mexico have had all this time to try to overcome the wrongs of Spanish domination and, currently, in Mexico, the legacy of Spanish domination doesn’t explain all our difficulties.”
López Obrador took office on 1 December vowing to champion Mexico’s poor and indigenous people. Unlike millions of mixed-race Mexicans – mestizos – the president is almost entirely of Spanish descent, whose grandparents emigrated from Asturias and Cantabria in northern Spain.
Cortés led a small squadron of soldiers – equipped with horses, armed with diseases such as smallpox, and abetted by indigenous groups at odds with the Aztecs – to Mexico City (then known as Tenochtitlán) in 1519.
The Spanish sacked the city two years later and proceeded to convert the indigenous populations to Catholicism. Cortés has long occupied a controversial place in Mexican history. His indigenous mistress, La Malinche, is still seen as a traitorous figure – with her name forming the epithet malinchista, someone who prefers the foreign to the domestic.
In 2021, there are plans to mark the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán and 200 years since Mexico gained its independence from Spain. López Obrador says there must first be reconciliation before these events can be commemorated.
Spain has shown little contrition about its colonial past. Last November, Pablo Casado, the leader of the rightwing Popular party, commented that: “We didn’t colonise, what we did was to make Spain larger.”
In recent years, various other countries have faced up to the crimes committed against indigenous people during colonisation.
In 2008, the Australian parliament offered a formal apology to indigenous Australians. “We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians,” the parliament said. “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.”
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has apologised on several occasions to indigenous Canadians.
In the US, an apology to Native Americans buried in the middle of a defence appropriations spending bill in 2009 called on the then president Barack Obama “to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in order to bring healing to this land”, something that Obama never did.
In 1995, Queen Elizabeth II formally apologised for atrocities committed against the Maori Tainui tribe in New Zealand in 1865, and in 2013 the British government expressed “sincere regret” for torture and abuse committed by British colonial officers against Kenyans in the 1950s.
Pope Francis, speaking in Bolivia in 2015, asked for forgiveness “for crimes committed against native peoples during the so-called conquest of America”.
In a video filmed at the ruins of the indigenous city of Comalcalco, in southern Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador called on Spain and the Vatican to recognise the rights violations committed during the conquest, led by Hernán Cortés. The video was posted on the president’s social media accounts.
“There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the [indigenous] temples,” he said. “The time has come to reconcile. But let us ask forgiveness first.”
The remarks came two months after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, made an official visit to Mexico; his government reacted angrily to López Obrador’s letter.
“The Spanish government profoundly regrets the publication of the Mexican president’s letter to his majesty the king on 1 March and completely reject its content,” a government statement read.
“The arrival of the Spanish on Mexican soil 500 years ago cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations. Our closely related peoples have always known how to view our shared history without anger and from a shared perspective, as free peoples with a common heritage and an extraordinary future.”
Reaction in Spain split across political lines. Albert Rivera, the leader of the centre-right Citizens party, said the letter “was an intolerable offence to the Spanish people”, while Ione Belarra, from the leftwing Podemos party, said López Obrador “has every right to ask the king to apologise for the abuses of la conquista”.
Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative People’s party: “It’s scandalous ignorance and a real affront to Spain and its history.”
Harim Gutiérrez, a professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, said López Obrador’s letter was an example of “the instrumentalisation of history for political purposes”.
“He [López Obrador] says it’s an attempt at … achieving ‘a general agreement’ based on forgiveness, which is consistent with his policies of ‘peace and love’,” Gutiérrez added. “The governments of independent Mexico have had all this time to try to overcome the wrongs of Spanish domination and, currently, in Mexico, the legacy of Spanish domination doesn’t explain all our difficulties.”
López Obrador took office on 1 December vowing to champion Mexico’s poor and indigenous people. Unlike millions of mixed-race Mexicans – mestizos – the president is almost entirely of Spanish descent, whose grandparents emigrated from Asturias and Cantabria in northern Spain.
Cortés led a small squadron of soldiers – equipped with horses, armed with diseases such as smallpox, and abetted by indigenous groups at odds with the Aztecs – to Mexico City (then known as Tenochtitlán) in 1519.
The Spanish sacked the city two years later and proceeded to convert the indigenous populations to Catholicism. Cortés has long occupied a controversial place in Mexican history. His indigenous mistress, La Malinche, is still seen as a traitorous figure – with her name forming the epithet malinchista, someone who prefers the foreign to the domestic.
In 2021, there are plans to mark the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán and 200 years since Mexico gained its independence from Spain. López Obrador says there must first be reconciliation before these events can be commemorated.
Spain has shown little contrition about its colonial past. Last November, Pablo Casado, the leader of the rightwing Popular party, commented that: “We didn’t colonise, what we did was to make Spain larger.”
In recent years, various other countries have faced up to the crimes committed against indigenous people during colonisation.
In 2008, the Australian parliament offered a formal apology to indigenous Australians. “We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians,” the parliament said. “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.”
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has apologised on several occasions to indigenous Canadians.
In the US, an apology to Native Americans buried in the middle of a defence appropriations spending bill in 2009 called on the then president Barack Obama “to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in order to bring healing to this land”, something that Obama never did.
In 1995, Queen Elizabeth II formally apologised for atrocities committed against the Maori Tainui tribe in New Zealand in 1865, and in 2013 the British government expressed “sincere regret” for torture and abuse committed by British colonial officers against Kenyans in the 1950s.
Pope Francis, speaking in Bolivia in 2015, asked for forgiveness “for crimes committed against native peoples during the so-called conquest of America”.
Hundreds of thousands march in London to demand new Brexit referendum
Andrew MacAskill, Alistair Smout - reuters
MARCH 23, 2019 / 3:29 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people opposed to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union marched through central London on Saturday to demand a new referendum as the deepening Brexit crisis risked sinking Prime Minister Theresa May’s premiership.
Marchers set off in central London with banners proclaiming “the best deal is no Brexit” and “we demand a People’s Vote” in what organisers said could be the biggest anti-Brexit protest yet.
After three years of tortuous debate, it is still uncertain how, when or even if Brexit will happen as May tries to plot a way out of the gravest political crisis in at least a generation.
May hinted on Friday that she might not bring her twice-defeated EU divorce deal back to parliament next week, leaving her Brexit strategy in meltdown. The Times and The Daily Telegraph reported that pressure was growing on May to resign. [nL8N21A0B6]
“I would feel differently if this was a well managed process and the government was taking sensible decisions. But it is complete chaos,” Gareth Rae, 59, who travelled from Bristol to attend the demonstration, told Reuters.
“The country will be divided whatever happens and it is worse to be divided on a lie.”
While the country and its politicians are divided over Brexit, most agree it is the most important strategic decision the United Kingdom has faced since World War Two.
Pro-EU protesters gathered for a “Put it to the people march” at Marble Arch on the edge of Hyde Park around midday, before marching past the prime minister’s office in Downing Street and finish outside parliament.
While there was no official estimate of the numbers, campaign organisers said hundreds of thousands of people were in the crowd as it began to march.
Organisers were confident that the size of the crowd would exceed a similar rally held in October, when supporters said about 700,000 people turned up.
“NEVER GONNA GIVE EU UP”
Phoebe Poole, 18, who was holding a placard saying “never gonna give EU up” in reference to a song by 1980s popstar Rick Astley, wasn’t old enough to vote in the 2016 referendum.
“We have come here today because we feel like our future has been stolen from us. It is our generation that is going to have to live with the consequences of this disaster,” she told Reuters.
“It is going to make it harder to get a job. You are already seeing a lot of large companies leaving. I am worried about the future.”
Two hundred coaches from around Britain were booked to take people to London for the march. One coach left the Scottish Highlands on Friday evening, and another left from Cornwall on England’s western tip early on Saturday morning.
A petition to cancel Brexit altogether gained 4 million signatures in just 3 days after May told the public “I am on your side” over Brexit and urged lawmakers to get behind her deal.
In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 52 percent, backed Brexit while 16.1 million, or 48 percent, backed staying in the bloc.
But ever since, opponents of Brexit have been exploring ways to hold another referendum.
May has repeatedly ruled out holding another Brexit referendum, saying it would deepen divisions and undermine support for democracy. Brexit supporters say a second referendum would trigger a major constitutional crisis.
We already put it to the people. And the people roared,” pro-leave group Change Britain said in a tweet.
Supporters of Brexit say that while the divorce might bring some short-term instability, in the longer term Britain would thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in German-dominated unity that is falling far behind other major powers.
Some opinion polls have shown a slight shift in favour of remaining in the European Union, but there has yet to be a decisive change in attitudes.
Many voters in Britain say they have become increasingly bored by Brexit and May said on Wednesday that they want this stage of the Brexit process to be “over and done with.”
But protesters disagreed with May’s claim that she is on the side of the British public, with one placard reading: “You do not speak for us Theresa.”
Marchers set off in central London with banners proclaiming “the best deal is no Brexit” and “we demand a People’s Vote” in what organisers said could be the biggest anti-Brexit protest yet.
After three years of tortuous debate, it is still uncertain how, when or even if Brexit will happen as May tries to plot a way out of the gravest political crisis in at least a generation.
May hinted on Friday that she might not bring her twice-defeated EU divorce deal back to parliament next week, leaving her Brexit strategy in meltdown. The Times and The Daily Telegraph reported that pressure was growing on May to resign. [nL8N21A0B6]
“I would feel differently if this was a well managed process and the government was taking sensible decisions. But it is complete chaos,” Gareth Rae, 59, who travelled from Bristol to attend the demonstration, told Reuters.
“The country will be divided whatever happens and it is worse to be divided on a lie.”
While the country and its politicians are divided over Brexit, most agree it is the most important strategic decision the United Kingdom has faced since World War Two.
Pro-EU protesters gathered for a “Put it to the people march” at Marble Arch on the edge of Hyde Park around midday, before marching past the prime minister’s office in Downing Street and finish outside parliament.
While there was no official estimate of the numbers, campaign organisers said hundreds of thousands of people were in the crowd as it began to march.
Organisers were confident that the size of the crowd would exceed a similar rally held in October, when supporters said about 700,000 people turned up.
“NEVER GONNA GIVE EU UP”
Phoebe Poole, 18, who was holding a placard saying “never gonna give EU up” in reference to a song by 1980s popstar Rick Astley, wasn’t old enough to vote in the 2016 referendum.
“We have come here today because we feel like our future has been stolen from us. It is our generation that is going to have to live with the consequences of this disaster,” she told Reuters.
“It is going to make it harder to get a job. You are already seeing a lot of large companies leaving. I am worried about the future.”
Two hundred coaches from around Britain were booked to take people to London for the march. One coach left the Scottish Highlands on Friday evening, and another left from Cornwall on England’s western tip early on Saturday morning.
A petition to cancel Brexit altogether gained 4 million signatures in just 3 days after May told the public “I am on your side” over Brexit and urged lawmakers to get behind her deal.
In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 52 percent, backed Brexit while 16.1 million, or 48 percent, backed staying in the bloc.
But ever since, opponents of Brexit have been exploring ways to hold another referendum.
May has repeatedly ruled out holding another Brexit referendum, saying it would deepen divisions and undermine support for democracy. Brexit supporters say a second referendum would trigger a major constitutional crisis.
We already put it to the people. And the people roared,” pro-leave group Change Britain said in a tweet.
Supporters of Brexit say that while the divorce might bring some short-term instability, in the longer term Britain would thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in German-dominated unity that is falling far behind other major powers.
Some opinion polls have shown a slight shift in favour of remaining in the European Union, but there has yet to be a decisive change in attitudes.
Many voters in Britain say they have become increasingly bored by Brexit and May said on Wednesday that they want this stage of the Brexit process to be “over and done with.”
But protesters disagreed with May’s claim that she is on the side of the British public, with one placard reading: “You do not speak for us Theresa.”
no wonder there are caravans to the u.s.!!!
El Salvador Considers Amnesty for Those Accused of Crimes During Its Civil War
The move comes as 20 former military officers are set to be tried for an array of crimes, including murder, rape, kidnapping and crimes against humanity.
by Raymond Bonner for ProPublica
March 21, 10:12 a.m. EDT
Legislators in El Salvador are considering granting amnesty to those accused of crimes committed during the country’s brutal civil war in the 1980s. The legislation would drop all ordinary criminal charges arising from the war, and it would shield anyone convicted of war crimes from imprisonment.
The move by conservatives in El Salvador’s Parliament comes as 20 former senior military officers have been charged with an array of crimes, including murder, rape and kidnapping. In December, a judge cleared the way for the men to also be tried on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Lawmakers succeeded once before in adopting legislation granting wide amnesty to those accused of often ghastly crimes during the war. In 1993, the Parliament voted to block prosecution of crimes committed during the war, a law that remained in place until the country’s top court ruled it unconstitutional in 2016.
Last Saturday, the families of four American Roman Catholic missionaries raped and murdered by soldiers during the civil war sent an open letter to Salvadoran legislators urging them to vote against any proposed new amnesty. The next day, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador issued a statement calling on legislators to reject what has come to be called the Law of Reconciliation. He called it “totally unjust” and said that “instead of protecting and consoling the victims,” it would “protect the perpetrators, granting them impunity.”
The current American ambassador, Jean Manes, did not respond to a request for comment on the possible legislation.
But Manes has supported prosecution of the 20 former military officers. The accused officers include members of the Atlacatl Battalion, the Salvadoran army unit that perpetrated one of the worst massacres in recent Latin American history, killing hundreds of old men, women and children during an operation in El Mozoteand surrounding villages in December 1981. Victims’ families, acting as private prosecutors under Salvadoran law, also filed charges against senior military officials, including the former secretary of defense.
In a confidential cable to Washington, Manes wrote that she had been told that “sufficient evidence exists to demonstrate culpability of crimes against humanity and war crimes at El Mozote.” (The cable was released in response to a FOIA request from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights.) The El Mozote trial “may provide a barometer for the ability of the Salvadoran justice system to tackle its complex history and stubbornly entrenched impunity,” Manes wrote.
The civil war in El Salvador was bloody, dirty and long. More than 75,000 Salvadorans were killed — peasants, students, old men, women, children — with more than 80 percent of those deaths coming at the hands of the army, its paramilitaries and death squads, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission. An archbishop was assassinated; three American nuns and a lay missionary were raped and murdered; four Dutch journalists were executed in a targeted ambush; six Jesuit priests, their cook and her 6-year-old daughter were shot at point-blank range by soldiers from an American-trained battalion. During the war, the Salvadoran army, backed by the United States, raped, pillaged, plundered and killed with impunity. No officers, and only a handful of enlisted men, were prosecuted.
At the time of the El Mozote massacre — which was first reported by journalists for The New York Times and The Washington Post — the American ambassador in El Salvador, Deane Hinton, sent a cable to Washington saying there was no evidence to confirm that civilians had been systematically killed and playing down the gravity of the killings. Elliott Abrams, then the assistant secretary of state for human rights, and who was recently named by President Donald Trump as his special envoy for Venezuela, dismissed reports of the massacre as Communist propaganda. (In 1982, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Abrams called El Mozote an incident which is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.”)
The search for justice by the families of the massacre victims has been arduous. In 1991, at the request of the archbishop’s legal aid office, a court began taking statements from witnesses, and it allowed a team of forensic anthropologists from Argentina to begin exhumations.
The exhumation of the convent behind the church in El Mozote was the most harrowing. Two weeks before Christmas in 1981, soldiers first separated the village’s men, hauled them off, and tortured and executed them. They then herded the women and children into the convent. Using American-supplied M16 assault rifles, they opened fire; then they burned the building, the falling beams crushing the skulls of those who weren’t already dead. A decade later, after painstakingly clearing away the grass and dirt that had overgrown the site, the Argentine team found the bones of 136 children and adolescents. Some were barely old enough to crawl. Average age: 6. The women were between 21 and 40. One was in her third trimester of pregnancy.
But the amnesty protections became law in 1993, and they withstood an initial challenge in the country’s Supreme Court. Human rights advocates turned to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. There was no dispute as to the facts, the court eventually held in a 152-page opinion. As part of a counterinsurgency scorched-earth policy, “the Armed Forces executed all of those persons it came across: elderly adults, men, women, boys and girls, they killed animals, destroy and burned plantations, homes, and devastated everything community-related.”
The court also found that the amnesty violated international law. In a second hearing before the Salvadoran Supreme Court, advocates pressed that argument and persuaded the judges to declare the amnesty unconstitutional.
Today, some of the main supporters of the latest possible amnesty legislation have resumes tainted by accusations of human rights abuses during the war. The principal sponsor, Rodolfo Parker, secretary general of the Christian Democratic Party, was accused by a United Nations truth commission of seeking to cover up the responsibility of senior military officers in the murder of the Jesuit priests.
Parker, who was never prosecuted, has called the claims against him false.
Political parties supporting amnesty have enough votes in the assembly to pass the law, according to an analysis by El Faro, an online news organization, which first published a draft of the proposed law.
The move by conservatives in El Salvador’s Parliament comes as 20 former senior military officers have been charged with an array of crimes, including murder, rape and kidnapping. In December, a judge cleared the way for the men to also be tried on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Lawmakers succeeded once before in adopting legislation granting wide amnesty to those accused of often ghastly crimes during the war. In 1993, the Parliament voted to block prosecution of crimes committed during the war, a law that remained in place until the country’s top court ruled it unconstitutional in 2016.
Last Saturday, the families of four American Roman Catholic missionaries raped and murdered by soldiers during the civil war sent an open letter to Salvadoran legislators urging them to vote against any proposed new amnesty. The next day, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador issued a statement calling on legislators to reject what has come to be called the Law of Reconciliation. He called it “totally unjust” and said that “instead of protecting and consoling the victims,” it would “protect the perpetrators, granting them impunity.”
The current American ambassador, Jean Manes, did not respond to a request for comment on the possible legislation.
But Manes has supported prosecution of the 20 former military officers. The accused officers include members of the Atlacatl Battalion, the Salvadoran army unit that perpetrated one of the worst massacres in recent Latin American history, killing hundreds of old men, women and children during an operation in El Mozoteand surrounding villages in December 1981. Victims’ families, acting as private prosecutors under Salvadoran law, also filed charges against senior military officials, including the former secretary of defense.
In a confidential cable to Washington, Manes wrote that she had been told that “sufficient evidence exists to demonstrate culpability of crimes against humanity and war crimes at El Mozote.” (The cable was released in response to a FOIA request from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights.) The El Mozote trial “may provide a barometer for the ability of the Salvadoran justice system to tackle its complex history and stubbornly entrenched impunity,” Manes wrote.
The civil war in El Salvador was bloody, dirty and long. More than 75,000 Salvadorans were killed — peasants, students, old men, women, children — with more than 80 percent of those deaths coming at the hands of the army, its paramilitaries and death squads, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission. An archbishop was assassinated; three American nuns and a lay missionary were raped and murdered; four Dutch journalists were executed in a targeted ambush; six Jesuit priests, their cook and her 6-year-old daughter were shot at point-blank range by soldiers from an American-trained battalion. During the war, the Salvadoran army, backed by the United States, raped, pillaged, plundered and killed with impunity. No officers, and only a handful of enlisted men, were prosecuted.
At the time of the El Mozote massacre — which was first reported by journalists for The New York Times and The Washington Post — the American ambassador in El Salvador, Deane Hinton, sent a cable to Washington saying there was no evidence to confirm that civilians had been systematically killed and playing down the gravity of the killings. Elliott Abrams, then the assistant secretary of state for human rights, and who was recently named by President Donald Trump as his special envoy for Venezuela, dismissed reports of the massacre as Communist propaganda. (In 1982, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Abrams called El Mozote an incident which is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.”)
The search for justice by the families of the massacre victims has been arduous. In 1991, at the request of the archbishop’s legal aid office, a court began taking statements from witnesses, and it allowed a team of forensic anthropologists from Argentina to begin exhumations.
The exhumation of the convent behind the church in El Mozote was the most harrowing. Two weeks before Christmas in 1981, soldiers first separated the village’s men, hauled them off, and tortured and executed them. They then herded the women and children into the convent. Using American-supplied M16 assault rifles, they opened fire; then they burned the building, the falling beams crushing the skulls of those who weren’t already dead. A decade later, after painstakingly clearing away the grass and dirt that had overgrown the site, the Argentine team found the bones of 136 children and adolescents. Some were barely old enough to crawl. Average age: 6. The women were between 21 and 40. One was in her third trimester of pregnancy.
But the amnesty protections became law in 1993, and they withstood an initial challenge in the country’s Supreme Court. Human rights advocates turned to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. There was no dispute as to the facts, the court eventually held in a 152-page opinion. As part of a counterinsurgency scorched-earth policy, “the Armed Forces executed all of those persons it came across: elderly adults, men, women, boys and girls, they killed animals, destroy and burned plantations, homes, and devastated everything community-related.”
The court also found that the amnesty violated international law. In a second hearing before the Salvadoran Supreme Court, advocates pressed that argument and persuaded the judges to declare the amnesty unconstitutional.
Today, some of the main supporters of the latest possible amnesty legislation have resumes tainted by accusations of human rights abuses during the war. The principal sponsor, Rodolfo Parker, secretary general of the Christian Democratic Party, was accused by a United Nations truth commission of seeking to cover up the responsibility of senior military officers in the murder of the Jesuit priests.
Parker, who was never prosecuted, has called the claims against him false.
Political parties supporting amnesty have enough votes in the assembly to pass the law, according to an analysis by El Faro, an online news organization, which first published a draft of the proposed law.
brazilians elected this fool!!!
‘Tropical Trump’ is harnessing racism to destroy the Amazon
“The pace of devastating rollbacks is mind-boggling.”
By Molly Taft - NEXUS MEDIA - thinkprogress
MAR 19, 2019, 3:59 PM
If you’ve never heard of Ricardo Salles, it’s helpful to think of him as another version of Scott Pruitt. There’s a lot the Brazilian environmental minister has in common with the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, who rolled back countless environmental protections while meeting with fossil fuel industry insiders.
Like Pruitt, Salles seems poised to serve industry interests under Brazil’s new far-right leader, President Jair Bolsonaro. Salles has targeted the country’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, firing administrators and key officials, stripping it of its power to police environmental crimes, and looking into ways to streamline environmental licensing to favor the agribusiness sector.
And, like Pruitt, Salles has had his share of past scandals. Salles was found guilty in December of altering maps for mining companies’ and other industries’ benefit while he was secretary of the environment of São Paulo between 2016 and 2017.
Unfortunately, unlike the round of investigative journalism that ultimately ousted Pruitt, it just got much harder to look into Salles’ activity. Last week, IBAMA’s communications chief was forced out after reportedly continuing to speak with journalists counter to orders from Bolsonaro’s administration. Salles’ office now controls all press requests sent to the agency.
Another key similarity between Salles and Pruitt: their bosses. Bolsonaro, who took office in January after riding to victory on a wave of populist rhetoric, has earned the nickname “tropical Trump.” In his first visit to the United States as president this week, Bolsonaro reportedly met with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Monday evening. On Tuesday, he delivered a joint press conference with President Donald Trump, during which the two praised each other for their similar policies.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro has shown disdain for international climate diplomacy. He has openly considered pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and walked backBrazil’s promise to host this year’s U.N. climate change conference. And while Trump’s white nationalism has certainly manifested in policies carried out by the EPA and the Department of Interior, Bolsonaro’s favors to businesses interested in rolling back environmental protections directly reflects his own racist rhetoric against Brazil’s 900,000 indigenous people, who hold about 13 percent of Brazil’s lands, mostly in the Amazon.
“The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture,” Bolsonaro told a newspaper before his campaign. “They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13 percent of the national territory?”
While serving in Congress in 2016, Bolsonaro vowed to “rip up” an indigenous territory in northern Brazil, promising to “give all the ranchers guns.”
On the campaign trail, Bolsonaro pledged to open the Amazon to economic exploitation and promised to greatly expand energy production, abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental licensing and regulation and open indigenous reserves to mining. While much of his 60-day tenure has been rocked by scandal and ineffective policies, when it comes to how his administration is dismantling environmental protections, “if you’re not following the news in Portuguese on a regular basis, you’re missing [key news] because it’s moving very, very swiftly,” said Christian Poirier, the Brazil program director at Amazon Watch. “The pace of devastating rollbacks is mind-boggling.”
Bolsonaro’s priorities were on full display during the first week of his administration. In one of his first acts in office, Bolsonaro transferred responsibilities for creating and regulating indigenous land reserves from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency to the Agriculture Ministry. Bolsonaro’s choice for agricultural minister was part of the agribusiness caucus in the lower house and has slammed critiques of the industry, while the secretary overseeing land reform is an “extreme, hardline, right-wing, violent rancher,” according to Poirier.
Brazil’s indigenous people refer to the agribusiness industry as their “historic enemy,” Poirier said. As industries like mining and large-scale farming and ranching seek to expand further into the Amazon, they have partnered with a conservative political bloc, known as the ruralistas, to strip indigenous land protections.
“The agribusiness sector in Brazil has very much connected the dots between indigenous rights and forest protections, because they want to remove forest protection,” Poirier explains. “These protected areas are essentially off the market… [Agribusinesses] want to create the precedent to open up the protected areas to industrial activity. They know the Achilles’ heel is indigenous rights. They’re attacking them as kind of the spearhead of an overall environmental assault.”
While Bolsonaro’s government carries out policy attacks, literal attacks are also occurring in indigenous territories. At least 14 territories have been systematically invaded over the past three months by organized and armed “mafias,” who intend to scout logging, farming, and mining areas. In January, Brazilian advocacy group CIMI told Reuters that land invasions had increased 150 percent since Bolsonaro’s election. (In January, Bolsonaro tweeted out a video link interview where one of his ministers claimed that indigenous territories were “established using fraudulent documents,” according to The Intercept.)
Indigenous communities and other land rights activists “are resisting at their own peril,” Poirier said. “There’s very, very little sign that brutality and murder against them will be fully met with justice. Quite the opposite. It’s the sign that there will be generalized impunity and lawlessness.”
Protecting the Amazon, the world’s largest carbon sink, is crucial to the future of the climate. The forest stores an estimated one-sixth of the world’s plant-based carbon. A recent study found that granting tribal land protections in the Peruvian Amazon led to an overwhelming reduction in tree clearing.
And unlike many Americans, Brazilians have consistently said that they care about what happens to the Amazon and how it will impact human existence. A 2015 Pew survey showed Brazil was one of the top countries with more than 70 percent of the population saying they’re “very concerned” that climate change will harm them personally.
But like Trump’s own attacks of “fake news” on climate, Bolsonaro’s regime is making it difficult for this message to spread, Poirier said.
“That’s very much the work of the [indigenous rights] movement in Brazil, to say, look, our rights and your future are inherently entwined because the destruction of our forests, our homes, means the end of your climate,” he explained. “But I don’t feel like it’s far along enough, especially now under Bolsonaro and all the misinformation that is reaching people.”
Given the public backlash against Pruitt’s denial, Bolsonaro and Salles might want to pay attention to one of the signs held up by student protesters in Sao Paolo last week: “Hey, Ricardo Salles: Climate change is not fake news.”
RELATED: Trump and Bolsonaro praise one another for discriminatory policies
Like Pruitt, Salles seems poised to serve industry interests under Brazil’s new far-right leader, President Jair Bolsonaro. Salles has targeted the country’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, firing administrators and key officials, stripping it of its power to police environmental crimes, and looking into ways to streamline environmental licensing to favor the agribusiness sector.
And, like Pruitt, Salles has had his share of past scandals. Salles was found guilty in December of altering maps for mining companies’ and other industries’ benefit while he was secretary of the environment of São Paulo between 2016 and 2017.
Unfortunately, unlike the round of investigative journalism that ultimately ousted Pruitt, it just got much harder to look into Salles’ activity. Last week, IBAMA’s communications chief was forced out after reportedly continuing to speak with journalists counter to orders from Bolsonaro’s administration. Salles’ office now controls all press requests sent to the agency.
Another key similarity between Salles and Pruitt: their bosses. Bolsonaro, who took office in January after riding to victory on a wave of populist rhetoric, has earned the nickname “tropical Trump.” In his first visit to the United States as president this week, Bolsonaro reportedly met with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Monday evening. On Tuesday, he delivered a joint press conference with President Donald Trump, during which the two praised each other for their similar policies.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro has shown disdain for international climate diplomacy. He has openly considered pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and walked backBrazil’s promise to host this year’s U.N. climate change conference. And while Trump’s white nationalism has certainly manifested in policies carried out by the EPA and the Department of Interior, Bolsonaro’s favors to businesses interested in rolling back environmental protections directly reflects his own racist rhetoric against Brazil’s 900,000 indigenous people, who hold about 13 percent of Brazil’s lands, mostly in the Amazon.
“The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture,” Bolsonaro told a newspaper before his campaign. “They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13 percent of the national territory?”
While serving in Congress in 2016, Bolsonaro vowed to “rip up” an indigenous territory in northern Brazil, promising to “give all the ranchers guns.”
On the campaign trail, Bolsonaro pledged to open the Amazon to economic exploitation and promised to greatly expand energy production, abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental licensing and regulation and open indigenous reserves to mining. While much of his 60-day tenure has been rocked by scandal and ineffective policies, when it comes to how his administration is dismantling environmental protections, “if you’re not following the news in Portuguese on a regular basis, you’re missing [key news] because it’s moving very, very swiftly,” said Christian Poirier, the Brazil program director at Amazon Watch. “The pace of devastating rollbacks is mind-boggling.”
Bolsonaro’s priorities were on full display during the first week of his administration. In one of his first acts in office, Bolsonaro transferred responsibilities for creating and regulating indigenous land reserves from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency to the Agriculture Ministry. Bolsonaro’s choice for agricultural minister was part of the agribusiness caucus in the lower house and has slammed critiques of the industry, while the secretary overseeing land reform is an “extreme, hardline, right-wing, violent rancher,” according to Poirier.
Brazil’s indigenous people refer to the agribusiness industry as their “historic enemy,” Poirier said. As industries like mining and large-scale farming and ranching seek to expand further into the Amazon, they have partnered with a conservative political bloc, known as the ruralistas, to strip indigenous land protections.
“The agribusiness sector in Brazil has very much connected the dots between indigenous rights and forest protections, because they want to remove forest protection,” Poirier explains. “These protected areas are essentially off the market… [Agribusinesses] want to create the precedent to open up the protected areas to industrial activity. They know the Achilles’ heel is indigenous rights. They’re attacking them as kind of the spearhead of an overall environmental assault.”
While Bolsonaro’s government carries out policy attacks, literal attacks are also occurring in indigenous territories. At least 14 territories have been systematically invaded over the past three months by organized and armed “mafias,” who intend to scout logging, farming, and mining areas. In January, Brazilian advocacy group CIMI told Reuters that land invasions had increased 150 percent since Bolsonaro’s election. (In January, Bolsonaro tweeted out a video link interview where one of his ministers claimed that indigenous territories were “established using fraudulent documents,” according to The Intercept.)
Indigenous communities and other land rights activists “are resisting at their own peril,” Poirier said. “There’s very, very little sign that brutality and murder against them will be fully met with justice. Quite the opposite. It’s the sign that there will be generalized impunity and lawlessness.”
Protecting the Amazon, the world’s largest carbon sink, is crucial to the future of the climate. The forest stores an estimated one-sixth of the world’s plant-based carbon. A recent study found that granting tribal land protections in the Peruvian Amazon led to an overwhelming reduction in tree clearing.
And unlike many Americans, Brazilians have consistently said that they care about what happens to the Amazon and how it will impact human existence. A 2015 Pew survey showed Brazil was one of the top countries with more than 70 percent of the population saying they’re “very concerned” that climate change will harm them personally.
But like Trump’s own attacks of “fake news” on climate, Bolsonaro’s regime is making it difficult for this message to spread, Poirier said.
“That’s very much the work of the [indigenous rights] movement in Brazil, to say, look, our rights and your future are inherently entwined because the destruction of our forests, our homes, means the end of your climate,” he explained. “But I don’t feel like it’s far along enough, especially now under Bolsonaro and all the misinformation that is reaching people.”
Given the public backlash against Pruitt’s denial, Bolsonaro and Salles might want to pay attention to one of the signs held up by student protesters in Sao Paolo last week: “Hey, Ricardo Salles: Climate change is not fake news.”
RELATED: Trump and Bolsonaro praise one another for discriminatory policies
Facing Wrongful Detention and Threats, Afro-Colombian Women Call for Justice
BY
J.M. Kirby, Truthout
PUBLISHED
March 17, 2019
“Sara y Tulia Libres!” (“Free Sara and Tulia!”) declared a colorful butcher-paper sign. It was taped to the floor next to a ceremonial centerpiece composed of flowers, leaves, seeds and other natural elements surrounded by candles that burned throughout the day.
It was late February, and around 30 Afro-Colombian human rights defenders from around the country had gathered in the western Colombian city of Cali for a conference. They were taking stock of their efforts toward meaningful peace and security, and toward racial and gender justice in a country still experiencing violence despite being in a post-peace accord context.
The conference was organized by the Black Communities’ Process (PCN), a national network that has advocated for protections and rights for Afro-descendant Colombians for more than 20 years, and my organization, MADRE, an international women’s rights organization.
At the conference, the human rights defenders strategized how to move forward under the right-wing administration of Iván Duque Márquez, which rose to power last year on promises of undoing key provisions of the government’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Afro-descendant regions of Colombia, heavily impacted by conflict, overwhelmingly supported the peace deal. Advocates, including women leaders from those communities, helped secure inclusion of a chapter protecting and promoting Afro-descendant and Indigenous rights, including gender rights.
Given the unceasing threats against and killings of Colombia’s human rights defenders over the last couple years, these activists’ continued advocacy is cause to celebrate. Nevertheless, the fates of Sara Quiñonez and Tulia Maris Valencia weigh heavily in their minds.
Criminalization of Colombia’s Human Rights Defenders
April will mark a year that Quiñonez and her mother Maris Valencia have spent in what amounts to administrative detention in Jamundí, a swamp area about an hour from Cali. The prison in Jamundí, one of the largest in Latin America, was constructed with assistance from the United States Bureau of Prisons. Dedicated members of PCN, both Quiñonez and Maris Valencia are from Tumaco on the southwest coast of Colombia, an area that continues to be heavily impacted by Colombia’s ongoing armed violence.
When arrested, Quiñonez was under protective measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombia’s own National Protection Unit. The measures are quite necessary: Quiñonez has faced threats and forced displacement due to her advocacy on behalf of the collective and territorial rights of Afro-descendant peoples and her push for fair implementation of the government’s coca crop substitution program. She was forcibly displaced twicebecause of her leadership position in the Afro-descendant Community Council of Alto Mira and Frontera. Also a well-known local leader, Maris Valencia was part of the women’s group and local committees of the Community Council. The leadership of the Community Council, one of the recognized units of Black autonomous governance in Colombia, has received repeated death threats. Three of its members have been assassinated since 2015.
Along with about 30 people, the government arrested Quiñonez and Maris Valencia in 2018 on what advocates say are unfounded charges of connections to the guerilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as narco-trafficking. This tactic is emblematic of the Colombian government’s attempt to smear human rights defenders, particularly from Black and Indigenous communities, as members of armed groups. Both were denied bail, and remain in maximum-security detention awaiting trial. Quiñonez has only been able to see her young daughter once during this time.
The arrests and lengthy administrative imprisonment follow a pattern all too familiar to Afro-Colombians and other human rights defenders, who see this as a state strategy to halt effective human rights work. In March 2017, for example, police arrested Afro-Colombian human rights defender Milena Quiroz, who had denounced environmental destruction by palm oil and mining companies. The Colombian government accused Quiroz of being part of the ELN support network and charged her with conspiracy and rebellion. Four months later, the prosecutor who ordered the arrests was arrested herself for allegedly belonging to a corruption network within the prosecutor’s office that benefited drug traffickers and paramilitaries.
Quiroz, however, remained detained based on this prosecutor’s allegation that she posed a danger if released because the protest marches she helped organize were evidence of a purported connection to the ELN. In November 2017, the prosecutor’s order for preventative detention was revoked due to lack of adequate evidence. In the finding, the judge remarked that the prosecutor’s office was more focused on producing scandalous media headlines than on conducting a useful investigation.
Quiñonez and Maris Valencia’s detention comes as Afro-Colombian women have become more widely recognized as leaders in struggles to protect the environment from destructive mega-projects and illegal mining, to secure their constitutional right to collective territory, to end armed conflict and to confront gender-based violence. Francia Marquez, for example, won the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America for her years-long work to end illegal gold mining in her community’s territory and to protect the environment. The Canadian Embassy, meanwhile, recently nominated PCN activist Charo Mina-Rojas for its feminist prize for her work on behalf of sexual and gender-based violence survivors, including shepherding a months-long effort to document and report cases of gender-based violence committed against Afro-descendants.
Often framed as a product of armed conflict, targeted killings and other violence against human rights defenders — particularly those whose advocacy impacted the interests of Colombia’s economic and political elites — has long plagued Colombia. While the armed conflict largely ceased following the 2016 peace accord, the killings of such activists continue unabated. More than 550 human rights defenders have been killed since the start of 2016, according to one estimate, and Black and Indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted. On January 5, 2019, for example, longtime Afro-descendant and displaced victims’ rights advocate Maritza Quiroz Leiva was killed. Her murder came after multiple warnings from Colombia’s public advocate, a government body that promotes human rights adherence and producesearly alerts on conflict risks, threats victims’ advocates and social leaders in her region face.
The Search for Meaningful Protections for Human Rights Defenders
In response to international pressure, the Duque government recently announced a “Timely Action Plan” to address the threats and murders of social leaders — a plan representatives of the European Union and other international actors have praised. Colombia’s human rights advocates, however, are concerned that it over-emphasizes military and police responses in communities that are already heavily militarized at the expense of initiatives that address root causes of violence and insecurity. They are also concerned that it fails to provide for implementation of social leader protection programs developed in consultation with impacted communities, as called for by the peace accord. Under the former presidential administration, several communities arrived at agreements with government officials on measures to address the insecurity, but these have yet to be implemented.
Initially appointed to lead the new initiative was Leonardo Alfonso Barrero Gordillo, a retired general who stigmatized social leaders and allegedly obstructed investigations into grave human rights abuses the Colombian military committed. Popular outrage led the interior minister to announce that instead of directing the initiative, Gordillo would serve as a link between the operation of the Timely Action Plan and Colombia’s armed forces and national police — a role that still worries human rights advocates. Notably, the plan comes at a time when the administration has disrupted operation of the body tasked with oversight of peace implementation. The government also is interminably delaying final regulation of a key transitional justice body.
At the February conference, Afro-descendant women leaders — among them women who themselves are under protection due to threats to their lives — raised concerns about gaps in the president’s plan.
“In Colombia, all human rights defenders are considered criminals,” said Danelly Estupiñan Valencia, a feminist activist who faces threats for her advocacy for Afro-descendant communities’ rights in the face of industrial port expansion in the city of Buenaventura.
Local advocates recently called for solidarity with both Estupiñan Valencia and a fellow woman advocate for Buenaventura’s Afro-descendant communities, Leyla Andrea Arroyo Muñoz, after the two noted an uptick in monitoring of their movements and communications. The threats haven’t stopped Estupiñan Valencia from organizing for social justice, nor from calling for meaningful protections for human rights defenders. In order to truly minimize the threat to their lives, Valencia said at the February conference, the Colombian government must take meaningful steps to uphold Afro-descendant and Indigenous ’ territorial rights, including their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding development impacting their communities. Death threats don’t just impact an individual, but “threaten the entire territory,” Estupiñan Valencia explained.
At the very least, advocates hope that the government will re-examine the use of its resources to criminalize threatened Afro-descendant women human rights defenders like Quiñonez and Maris Valencia.
Standing in a circle around the centerpiece and sign, Black women advocates called for Quiñonez’s and Maris Valencia’s freedom — that the prison doors will open for them and Quiñonez’s young daughter will finally be able to hug her mother.
It was late February, and around 30 Afro-Colombian human rights defenders from around the country had gathered in the western Colombian city of Cali for a conference. They were taking stock of their efforts toward meaningful peace and security, and toward racial and gender justice in a country still experiencing violence despite being in a post-peace accord context.
The conference was organized by the Black Communities’ Process (PCN), a national network that has advocated for protections and rights for Afro-descendant Colombians for more than 20 years, and my organization, MADRE, an international women’s rights organization.
At the conference, the human rights defenders strategized how to move forward under the right-wing administration of Iván Duque Márquez, which rose to power last year on promises of undoing key provisions of the government’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Afro-descendant regions of Colombia, heavily impacted by conflict, overwhelmingly supported the peace deal. Advocates, including women leaders from those communities, helped secure inclusion of a chapter protecting and promoting Afro-descendant and Indigenous rights, including gender rights.
Given the unceasing threats against and killings of Colombia’s human rights defenders over the last couple years, these activists’ continued advocacy is cause to celebrate. Nevertheless, the fates of Sara Quiñonez and Tulia Maris Valencia weigh heavily in their minds.
Criminalization of Colombia’s Human Rights Defenders
April will mark a year that Quiñonez and her mother Maris Valencia have spent in what amounts to administrative detention in Jamundí, a swamp area about an hour from Cali. The prison in Jamundí, one of the largest in Latin America, was constructed with assistance from the United States Bureau of Prisons. Dedicated members of PCN, both Quiñonez and Maris Valencia are from Tumaco on the southwest coast of Colombia, an area that continues to be heavily impacted by Colombia’s ongoing armed violence.
When arrested, Quiñonez was under protective measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombia’s own National Protection Unit. The measures are quite necessary: Quiñonez has faced threats and forced displacement due to her advocacy on behalf of the collective and territorial rights of Afro-descendant peoples and her push for fair implementation of the government’s coca crop substitution program. She was forcibly displaced twicebecause of her leadership position in the Afro-descendant Community Council of Alto Mira and Frontera. Also a well-known local leader, Maris Valencia was part of the women’s group and local committees of the Community Council. The leadership of the Community Council, one of the recognized units of Black autonomous governance in Colombia, has received repeated death threats. Three of its members have been assassinated since 2015.
Along with about 30 people, the government arrested Quiñonez and Maris Valencia in 2018 on what advocates say are unfounded charges of connections to the guerilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as narco-trafficking. This tactic is emblematic of the Colombian government’s attempt to smear human rights defenders, particularly from Black and Indigenous communities, as members of armed groups. Both were denied bail, and remain in maximum-security detention awaiting trial. Quiñonez has only been able to see her young daughter once during this time.
The arrests and lengthy administrative imprisonment follow a pattern all too familiar to Afro-Colombians and other human rights defenders, who see this as a state strategy to halt effective human rights work. In March 2017, for example, police arrested Afro-Colombian human rights defender Milena Quiroz, who had denounced environmental destruction by palm oil and mining companies. The Colombian government accused Quiroz of being part of the ELN support network and charged her with conspiracy and rebellion. Four months later, the prosecutor who ordered the arrests was arrested herself for allegedly belonging to a corruption network within the prosecutor’s office that benefited drug traffickers and paramilitaries.
Quiroz, however, remained detained based on this prosecutor’s allegation that she posed a danger if released because the protest marches she helped organize were evidence of a purported connection to the ELN. In November 2017, the prosecutor’s order for preventative detention was revoked due to lack of adequate evidence. In the finding, the judge remarked that the prosecutor’s office was more focused on producing scandalous media headlines than on conducting a useful investigation.
Quiñonez and Maris Valencia’s detention comes as Afro-Colombian women have become more widely recognized as leaders in struggles to protect the environment from destructive mega-projects and illegal mining, to secure their constitutional right to collective territory, to end armed conflict and to confront gender-based violence. Francia Marquez, for example, won the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America for her years-long work to end illegal gold mining in her community’s territory and to protect the environment. The Canadian Embassy, meanwhile, recently nominated PCN activist Charo Mina-Rojas for its feminist prize for her work on behalf of sexual and gender-based violence survivors, including shepherding a months-long effort to document and report cases of gender-based violence committed against Afro-descendants.
Often framed as a product of armed conflict, targeted killings and other violence against human rights defenders — particularly those whose advocacy impacted the interests of Colombia’s economic and political elites — has long plagued Colombia. While the armed conflict largely ceased following the 2016 peace accord, the killings of such activists continue unabated. More than 550 human rights defenders have been killed since the start of 2016, according to one estimate, and Black and Indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted. On January 5, 2019, for example, longtime Afro-descendant and displaced victims’ rights advocate Maritza Quiroz Leiva was killed. Her murder came after multiple warnings from Colombia’s public advocate, a government body that promotes human rights adherence and producesearly alerts on conflict risks, threats victims’ advocates and social leaders in her region face.
The Search for Meaningful Protections for Human Rights Defenders
In response to international pressure, the Duque government recently announced a “Timely Action Plan” to address the threats and murders of social leaders — a plan representatives of the European Union and other international actors have praised. Colombia’s human rights advocates, however, are concerned that it over-emphasizes military and police responses in communities that are already heavily militarized at the expense of initiatives that address root causes of violence and insecurity. They are also concerned that it fails to provide for implementation of social leader protection programs developed in consultation with impacted communities, as called for by the peace accord. Under the former presidential administration, several communities arrived at agreements with government officials on measures to address the insecurity, but these have yet to be implemented.
Initially appointed to lead the new initiative was Leonardo Alfonso Barrero Gordillo, a retired general who stigmatized social leaders and allegedly obstructed investigations into grave human rights abuses the Colombian military committed. Popular outrage led the interior minister to announce that instead of directing the initiative, Gordillo would serve as a link between the operation of the Timely Action Plan and Colombia’s armed forces and national police — a role that still worries human rights advocates. Notably, the plan comes at a time when the administration has disrupted operation of the body tasked with oversight of peace implementation. The government also is interminably delaying final regulation of a key transitional justice body.
At the February conference, Afro-descendant women leaders — among them women who themselves are under protection due to threats to their lives — raised concerns about gaps in the president’s plan.
“In Colombia, all human rights defenders are considered criminals,” said Danelly Estupiñan Valencia, a feminist activist who faces threats for her advocacy for Afro-descendant communities’ rights in the face of industrial port expansion in the city of Buenaventura.
Local advocates recently called for solidarity with both Estupiñan Valencia and a fellow woman advocate for Buenaventura’s Afro-descendant communities, Leyla Andrea Arroyo Muñoz, after the two noted an uptick in monitoring of their movements and communications. The threats haven’t stopped Estupiñan Valencia from organizing for social justice, nor from calling for meaningful protections for human rights defenders. In order to truly minimize the threat to their lives, Valencia said at the February conference, the Colombian government must take meaningful steps to uphold Afro-descendant and Indigenous ’ territorial rights, including their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding development impacting their communities. Death threats don’t just impact an individual, but “threaten the entire territory,” Estupiñan Valencia explained.
At the very least, advocates hope that the government will re-examine the use of its resources to criminalize threatened Afro-descendant women human rights defenders like Quiñonez and Maris Valencia.
Standing in a circle around the centerpiece and sign, Black women advocates called for Quiñonez’s and Maris Valencia’s freedom — that the prison doors will open for them and Quiñonez’s young daughter will finally be able to hug her mother.
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Racism Against Black People Is Still A Big Problem In Europe, Study Finds
By David Love - atlanta black star
December 29, 2018
Being Black in the European Union is difficult, and racial discrimination and harassment are a chronic issue, according to a recently released report that paints a “dire picture” of racism. The report from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) — “Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Being Black in the EU” — examined the experiences of 6,000 people of African descent in 12 EU member nations (Finland, Ireland, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Malta, Sweden, France, Italy, UK and Portugal), including mostly first-generation immigrants from 59 countries, but also those Black people who were born in Europe. The survey examines racial discrimination, hate crimes, racial profiling and social exclusion against people of African descent.
The report is important, necessary and timely, because while Black people have been present in Europe for ages, and nearly two decades have passed since the EU enacted anti-discrimination laws, they face “widespread and entrenched prejudice and exclusion.” The report says the EU cannot tolerate this state of affairs, given the EU was founded on the principles of human rights, the rule of law, freedom, democracy, equality and minority rights. The EU intends to offer their findings so that its member states can formulate legal and policy responses to promote the full inclusion of Black people.
“The International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination emphasises in its preamble that racial barriers are ‘repugnant to the ideals of any human society’, and that ‘there is no justification for racial discrimination, in theory or in practice’. Yet the survey results paint a dire picture of reality on the ground,” wrote FRA agency director Michael O’Flaherty, noting that racial discrimination and harassment are common.
Among the key findings of the survey, 30 percent of respondents experienced racial harassment in the five years before the report, most commonly nonverbal harassment followed by threatening comments and threats of violence. Further, 21 percent said they experienced such treatment in the 12 months before the survey was conducted. Results varied widely by country, ranging from 20 percent of respondents in Malta and 21 percent in the United Kingdom, to 63 percent of in Finland. Only 14 percent of victims reported the incidents to the authorities. Meanwhile, 5 percent were the victims of racial violence in the prior five years — 3 percent in the preceding 12 months — with 35 percent of victims reporting the incidents to the police. Black men (23 percent) were far less likely to report racial violence attacks than Black women (50 percent).
Unlawful and discriminatory police stops and racial profiling of Blacks are prevalent in Europe, with one quarter of respondents stopped by police in the previous five years, of which four in ten said was due to racial profiling. And 2 percent of people interviewed experienced a racist physical assault by law enforcement in the five years before the survey. Nearly two-thirds of police brutality victims failed to report the violence because of a fear or mistrust of the police (28 percent) or because they did not think doing so would make a difference (34 percent).
People of African descent face widespread racial discrimination in all facets of daily life, including barriers to inclusion in employment and housing, the EU survey concluded. For example, 39 percent of the Black people surveyed reported experiencing racial discrimination in the previous five years, one quarter in the past year. A quarter of black people experienced racial discrimination at work or during their job search, and 14 percent were denied rental housing from a landlord.
Particularly unsettling to the EU agency producing the report is that younger Black people are experiencing more discrimination and exclusion than older generations. Also providing context to the economic implications of racism is the fact that 55 percent of the respondents live below the poverty level.
Nearly 50 million members of racial and ethnic minority groups live in the European Union, amounting to 10 percent of the population of the bloc. However, 1 percent of the staff in EU institutions are non-white, and some European nations do not collect data on race. Over the past decade, Europe’s African population rose dramatically, with 1 million migrants from sub-Saharan Africa arriving in Europe between 2010 and 2017. An estimated 7 million people of African descent lived in Europe as of 2011. This comes as many European nations have witnessed a rise in popularity of right-wing, nationalist political parties, including groups with Nazi ties and sentiments, who are united in their anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobia and opposition to the EU. The reemergence of fascist and authoritarian sentiments, racist attacks and Nazi salutes in Europe is a concern.
The EU survey comes as a survey from The Guardian sheds light on racial bias in Britain. The poll of 1,000 people from minority ethnic backgrounds found that 43 percent were overlooked for a promotion in the past five years and 38 percent were wrongly suspected of shoplifting, with Black people especially likely to be suspected. Nonwhite people were more than twice as likely to experience abusive or rude behavior from a stranger in the past week, and 53 percent thought they were treated differently because of their hair, clothes or appearance, as opposed to 29 percent of white people. Some 8.5 million nonwhite people live in Britain, out of a population of 66 million. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission has launched an investigation into widespread racial harassment on university campuses.
These recent revelations suggest Europe has a long way to go to address the issues of systemic racism in its midst, particularly as it related to discrimination against people of African descent.
The report is important, necessary and timely, because while Black people have been present in Europe for ages, and nearly two decades have passed since the EU enacted anti-discrimination laws, they face “widespread and entrenched prejudice and exclusion.” The report says the EU cannot tolerate this state of affairs, given the EU was founded on the principles of human rights, the rule of law, freedom, democracy, equality and minority rights. The EU intends to offer their findings so that its member states can formulate legal and policy responses to promote the full inclusion of Black people.
“The International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination emphasises in its preamble that racial barriers are ‘repugnant to the ideals of any human society’, and that ‘there is no justification for racial discrimination, in theory or in practice’. Yet the survey results paint a dire picture of reality on the ground,” wrote FRA agency director Michael O’Flaherty, noting that racial discrimination and harassment are common.
Among the key findings of the survey, 30 percent of respondents experienced racial harassment in the five years before the report, most commonly nonverbal harassment followed by threatening comments and threats of violence. Further, 21 percent said they experienced such treatment in the 12 months before the survey was conducted. Results varied widely by country, ranging from 20 percent of respondents in Malta and 21 percent in the United Kingdom, to 63 percent of in Finland. Only 14 percent of victims reported the incidents to the authorities. Meanwhile, 5 percent were the victims of racial violence in the prior five years — 3 percent in the preceding 12 months — with 35 percent of victims reporting the incidents to the police. Black men (23 percent) were far less likely to report racial violence attacks than Black women (50 percent).
Unlawful and discriminatory police stops and racial profiling of Blacks are prevalent in Europe, with one quarter of respondents stopped by police in the previous five years, of which four in ten said was due to racial profiling. And 2 percent of people interviewed experienced a racist physical assault by law enforcement in the five years before the survey. Nearly two-thirds of police brutality victims failed to report the violence because of a fear or mistrust of the police (28 percent) or because they did not think doing so would make a difference (34 percent).
People of African descent face widespread racial discrimination in all facets of daily life, including barriers to inclusion in employment and housing, the EU survey concluded. For example, 39 percent of the Black people surveyed reported experiencing racial discrimination in the previous five years, one quarter in the past year. A quarter of black people experienced racial discrimination at work or during their job search, and 14 percent were denied rental housing from a landlord.
Particularly unsettling to the EU agency producing the report is that younger Black people are experiencing more discrimination and exclusion than older generations. Also providing context to the economic implications of racism is the fact that 55 percent of the respondents live below the poverty level.
Nearly 50 million members of racial and ethnic minority groups live in the European Union, amounting to 10 percent of the population of the bloc. However, 1 percent of the staff in EU institutions are non-white, and some European nations do not collect data on race. Over the past decade, Europe’s African population rose dramatically, with 1 million migrants from sub-Saharan Africa arriving in Europe between 2010 and 2017. An estimated 7 million people of African descent lived in Europe as of 2011. This comes as many European nations have witnessed a rise in popularity of right-wing, nationalist political parties, including groups with Nazi ties and sentiments, who are united in their anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobia and opposition to the EU. The reemergence of fascist and authoritarian sentiments, racist attacks and Nazi salutes in Europe is a concern.
The EU survey comes as a survey from The Guardian sheds light on racial bias in Britain. The poll of 1,000 people from minority ethnic backgrounds found that 43 percent were overlooked for a promotion in the past five years and 38 percent were wrongly suspected of shoplifting, with Black people especially likely to be suspected. Nonwhite people were more than twice as likely to experience abusive or rude behavior from a stranger in the past week, and 53 percent thought they were treated differently because of their hair, clothes or appearance, as opposed to 29 percent of white people. Some 8.5 million nonwhite people live in Britain, out of a population of 66 million. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission has launched an investigation into widespread racial harassment on university campuses.
These recent revelations suggest Europe has a long way to go to address the issues of systemic racism in its midst, particularly as it related to discrimination against people of African descent.
funnies
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