CUPE Files Legal Challenge to OMERS' Punitive Treatment of Paramedics

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Business Wire

Publishing date:

Aug 11, 2021  •  

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TORONTO — Today, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) filed a legal challenge with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) about OMERS’ treatment of paramedic members accessing earlier retirement options.

“Paramedics have been demanding that OMERS allow them fair access to earlier retirement options for over a decade,” said Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario, about the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. “Now OMERS is saying working paramedics can transition to earlier retirement options only at the risk of deep cuts to their pensions. This is completely unacceptable, and these front-line workers simply deserve better.”

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Paramedics are recognized in federal law as a Public Safety Occupation, a designation that according to the Canada Revenue Agency acknowledges their working conditions as situations “where the limitations associated with ageing are common and have the potential to significantly endanger the safety of the general public.” Paramedics are eligible for earlier retirement options under federal law if their pension plan allows it.

“Access to earlier retirement is a health and safety issue for paramedics on the front lines and for the people we serve in the community,” said Peter Joseph, an active paramedic and chair of CUPE’s Ambulance Committee of Ontario. “Our work as paramedics takes an enormous physical and mental toll, and OMERS is refusing to recognize that reality.”

“Ontario pension law dictates that the value of a worker’s accrued defined pension benefit can’t be reduced but we believe that OMERS is doing just that with its rules for paramedic members’ transition to earlier retirement options,” said Hahn. “It’s our hope that this challenge will reverse OMERS rules that shortchange paramedics and ensure they have access to what they’re entitled to: earlier retirement options and a decent retirement.”

CUPE has raised these concerns with OMERS for months and has attempted to work with the pension fund on a solution.

CUPE represents more than 5,000 paramedics across the province. CUPE Ontario is the largest sponsor of OMERS, representing 125,000 plan members.

Background information

• In OMERS, there are Normal Retirement Age 65 (NRA 65) members and Normal Retirement Age 60 (NRA 60) members. Normal Retirement Age (NRA) refers to the age you can receive an unreduced pension. There are different retirement rules for NRA 65 and NRA 60 members. NRA 65 members can retire with an unreduced pension at the earliest of age 65, or 30 years of service, or “90 factor”. The earliest retirement age for a NRA 65 member is age 55. NRA 60 members can retire with an unreduced pension at the earliest of age 60, or 30 years of service, or “85 factor”. The earliest retirement age for a NRA 60 member is age 50.
• OMERS prohibited unions representing paramedics from negotiating earlier retirement options with employers from 2005 to 2020. Meanwhile, police and firefighters in the plan already had earlier retirement options for many decades. OMERS finally extended this right to paramedic members starting January 1, 2021. However, OMERS’ rules for transitioning paramedic members from NRA 65 to NRA 60 put members at risk of a reduced pension value.
• FSRA is the independent pension regulator in Ontario whose mandate includes protecting pension benefits and administering pension law.
• The intention of the Public Safety Occupation designation is described by the Canada Revenue Agency in the CRA External Technical Interpretation 2002-0119025.

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CUPE report calls for third-party review, alleges underperformance by pension fund manager OMERS

DAVID MILSTEADI

GLOBE AND MAIL 

NSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT REPORTER
PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2021

The union for Ontario public sector employees has renewed calls for an outside review of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, saying the pension’s 2020 loss is part of a long-term pattern of underperformance.

In response, OMERS said Wednesday that an independent review “is not warranted.”

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario said that 2020 was “not just one tough year” for OMERS, which posted a negative 2.7-per-cent return in 2020. The union, which initially spoke out when OMERS released that result in February, issued a report Wednesday that suggests OMERS has underperformed its own internal benchmarks, as well as other large Canadian pension plans, for the past decade or more.

CUPE says OMERS’s 10-year return of 6.7 per cent is lower than seven other major Canadian pensions, whose returns over the period ranged from 8.5 per cent to 11.2 per cent. It’s also lower than the 10-year internal benchmark of 7.3 per cent. OMERS does not disclose the 10-year benchmark figure in its annual reports, which makes it different from the other plans, CUPE says. CUPE said OMERS provided the figure to the union.

The long-term underperformance can also be seen in the 10 years ended in 2019, indicating the issue is not solely the result of OMERS’s performance during the pandemic, according to CUPE.

CUPE has raised questions of OMERS management before, including a lengthy critique of its expenses after it announced its 2018 results. Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario, said the union has engaged with OMERS management and “we kept being told everything would be fine ... we weren’t satisfied with that.”

Mr. Hahn and other CUPE members who appeared at a Wednesday press conference questioned whether benefits would ultimately be endangered.

“We care about this plan – we want to fix whatever’s going on, to provide our members with certainty,” said Yolanda McClean of CUPE’s Toronto Education Worker/Local 4400.

In a statement, George Cooke, the chair of the board of directors of OMERS Administration Corp., said the board, which is nominated by the employer and employee sponsors of the plan, “continually and thoroughly reviews investment performance, independent of management, utilizing external experts where appropriate.”

“Following the 2020 results specifically, we undertook a thoughtful look at our investment strategy and past decisions with an open mind,” Mr. Cooke said in the statement. “We are confident in our strong new leadership team and have concluded that our current investment strategy is appropriate. An additional third-party independent review is not warranted.”

CUPE Ontario represents 125,000 of the pension’s 289,000 active members. Two CUPE researchers authored the report, which was reviewed by PBI Actuarial Consultants of Vancouver. “Overall, we believe the analysis is sufficient to conclude that OMERS investment performance in 2020 and longer term is significantly lower than other comparable plans,” wrote Bradley Hough of PBI.

In 2020, OMERS’s real estate investments posted an 11.4-per-cent loss, while the value of its private equity portfolio declined by 8.4 per cent. Its performance also suffered from being heavily invested in dividend-paying oil and gas and financial-services stocks and underweight in technology companies. The fund’s benchmark was a gain of 6.9 per cent, so it underperformed by 9.6 percentage points, the biggest margin of the past decade, according to CUPE.

"HUMOUR IS SUBVERSIVE" ORWELL

The Facebook group that began Cuba’s wave of protests

Though “City of Humor” was first created as a social space, it became a forum to share criticism and to mobilize.

People shout slogans during a demonstration in Havana on July 11, 2021.

Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters file

Aug. 10, 2021
By Reuters

HAVANA — “Tired of having no electricity?” read a post in a Facebook group for residents of the small Cuban town of San Antonio de los Banos on July 10. “Fed up of having to listen to the impudence of a government that doesn’t care about you?”

“It’s time to go out and to make demands. Don’t criticize at home: let’s make them listen to us”.

The next day, thousands took to the street in San Antonio, a town of some 50,000 people, about 20 miles southwest of Havana, kicking off a rare wave of protests throughout the Communist-run country.

Unrest has been growing across Latin America and the Caribbean as unease spreads over Covid-19 lockdowns and rising poverty. But in Cuba authorities have traditionally tightly controlled public spaces, saying unity is key to resisting coup attempts by old Cold War foe the United States.

The protests, Cuba’s most widespread since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, appeared largely spontaneous as Cubans vented frustrations over long lines for food, power outages, medicine shortages as well as curbs on civil freedoms.

Yet an investigation by non-state Cuban outlet El Estornudo — cited by state television and confirmed by Reuters — recently showed that the first protest was convened online by a San Antonio community forum for local people and those who had emigrated.

The Facebook group “City of Humor” — the nickname for San Antonio which hosts a biannual humor festival — was first created in 2017 as a social space, according to one of its three administrators, Miami-based Alexander Perez.

Over time, people also started expressing their gripes, said Perez, 44, a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. That prompted him and the other administrators Danilo Roque and Lazaro Gonzalez to try to “educate them” about their civil rights and claiming them through peaceful protest.

Neither Roque nor Gonzalez, whom Perez described as two younger men who lived in San Antonio operating under the pseudonyms to avoid reprisals, responded to request for comment.

The backstory shows how the recent expansion of web access in Cuba has been a gamechanger in fostering forums on social media to share criticism and to mobilize.

It also shows how strengthening relations with the Cuban diaspora — thanks to the internet and greater freedom of movement — is influencing politics on the island at a grassroots level.

Virtual communities like “The City of Humor” exist nationwide and emigres are exhorting local people on them to keep on protesting and expressing solidarity, with some even urging violence.

All this poses a challenge to the government which has allowed relatively unfettered access to the internet, unlike China, which blocks many Western social media apps.

Cuba has blamed the protests on online meddling by counter-revolutionaries backed by the United States, which has for decades openly sought to force reform on it through sanctions and financing for democracy programs.

The administrators of the “City of Humor” did not receive any U.S. funding nor had they coordinated protests with other towns, Perez said.

Cuba, where the state has a monopoly on telecommunications, has suffered intermittent disruptions in access to internet and social media since July 11, in an apparent bid to prevent further unrest.

Protests petered out within a couple of days amid those outages, a large deployment of security forces and a wave of detentions.
Teaching civil rights

Posts in “The City of Humor” — which jumped from around 4,000 to nearly 10,000 members after the July 11 protest — show users reminiscing, selling items, promoting businesses and complaining about local issues like water supply.

Perez said the administrators decided three years ago to also attempt to rally the community to demonstrate over shared gripes, with little success.

Last month they felt the time was ripe to try again.

The pandemic and tighter U.S. sanctions had exacerbated Cuba’s economic woes, plunging it into its deepest crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union. And the Covid-19 surge was pushing its already creaking healthcare infrastructure to the brink.

“We decided this was the moment,” said Perez.

The announcement of the protest at the church park at 11 a.m. spread by word-of-mouth and messenging applications, according to three San Antonio residents who requested anonymity.

But Perez said he had such low expectations that anyone would show up that he went to the beach that day. So he was stunned to get a call to say the small early turnout had snowballed.

“We certainly never imagined that San Antonio would be the spark that lit the flame causing Cuba to take to the streets three hours later,” he said.

Videos on social media showed San Antonio protesters shouting anti-government slogans like “freedom” and “we are not afraid”.

“My town came out in force because it just can’t take any more,” said one resident, requesting anonymity.

Within hours, President Miguel Diaz-Canel himself showed up, in a bid — he said later in a televised address to the nation — to show “the streets belong to revolutionaries”.

Some videos on social media showed him being heckled but the unrest there and elsewhere soon dwindled amid a crackdown.

Perez said a heavy security presence in San Antonio meant Cubans would have to bide their time until another protest.

But it was noteworthy, he said, that the government already enacted reforms like lifting customs restrictions for travelers bringing in medicine and food in response to the protests.

“If we manage to achieve this in a few hours of protest” he wondered, “what happens if we spend three days in the streets?”

 #UNIONIZEGOOGLE

Google may cut pay of staff who work from home

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IMAGE SOURCE

Google employees in the US who opt to work from home permanently may get a pay cut.

The technology giant has developed a pay calculator that lets employees see the effects of working remotely or moving offices.

Some remote employees, especially those with a long commute, could have their pay cut without changing address.

Google has no plans at this time to implement the policy in the UK.

Employees in many businesses have proved that working from home permanently is viable during the Covid pandemic.

Many companies are looking ahead to how employees will work as the pandemic recedes, even as the US continues to battle the Delta variant of the disease.

• Covid: Should I be working from home or going back to the office?
• Working from home job adverts rise

Silicon Valley firms, some of which are keen to get employees back to their desks, are experimenting with employee pay structures.

Big tech companies including Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter have offered less pay for employees based in locations where it is more inexpensive to live.

But smaller firms such as Reddit and Zillow have said they will pay the same no matter where employees are based, saying that this improves diversity.

IMAGE SOURCE

A Google spokesperson said: "Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from.

"Our new Work Location Tool was developed to help employees make informed decisions about which city or state they work from and any impact on compensation if they choose to relocate or work remotely."

Alarm

One Google employee, who works in Seattle but has a two-hour commute, complained to Reuters of being faced with a 10% pay cut for choosing to work from home full-time.

"It's as high a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion," the employee said. "I didn't do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut."

Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Google's move raises alarms about who will feel the impact most acutely, including families.

"What's clear is that Google doesn't have to do this," Prof Rosenfeld said. "Google has paid these workers at 100% of their prior wage, by definition. So it's not like they can't afford to pay their workers who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving."

A Google employee in Stamford, Connecticut, which is an hour away from New York by train, would be paid 15% less working remotely, while there were 5% and 10% differences in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas.

Google will not change employees' pay if they work fully remotely from the same city.

Contract questions

In the UK, it's a fundamental part of employment law that employers cannot alter aspects of contracts such as rates of pay without the consent of employees, or without terminating those contracts and renegotiating them, said Emma Bartlett, a partner at employment lawyers CM Murray.

From an employee perspective, it would be demoralising to be paid less for doing the same job, she said, and from a business perspective, it would have the potential to create two tiers of employment, with some employees expected to be in the office, and some not.

If people stayed home working for childcare reasons, and women continue to take the main responsibility for childcare, then this could have the effect of widening the gender pay gap, she said.

Workers may be treated differently in other respects, she added, and organisations would have to work hard to make sure employees were not treated differently in terms of training, promotion, and access to clients.

Hybrid experiments

Some businesses, such as US technology giant Cisco, have put in place a hybrid working plan that has no mandates about how often employees go into the office.

Cisco expects that less than a quarter of its workforce will want to be in an office for three or more days a week.

But other firms, such as Goldman Sachs, want workers to return to offices.

The investment bank's boss, David Solomon, said in February that working from home was "an aberration" rather than "the new normal".

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which represents human resource professionals in the UK, said it was always "the safest option" for firms to seek express written agreement from employees before changing the level of their pay.

In its guidance to employers, it says that imposing a pay cut is a "high-risk" approach, since workers can bring claims for breach of contract or even constructive unfair dismissal.

Rachel Suff, senior employment relations adviser at the CIPD, said: "Rather than making sweeping decisions on issues like pay and how, where and when people work, businesses should aim to balance individual needs with the needs of the organisation.

"It would be quite near-sighted for employers to think about adjusting pay at this early point in hybrid working, given there are so many things to still be ironed out and many people are still yet to return to a physical workspace.

"Given the tight labour market, businesses also need to stay attractive and cutting pay could prove to be a false economy if it turns talent away."

'We want trillions to heal our wounds'

Historians call the 1904-08 period in what is now Namibia, the first genocide of the 20th Century


By Samantha Granville
in Windhoek, Namibia
Published5 days ago

In between the blue water of the Atlantic Ocean and the luscious golden dunes of the Namibian coast are the grounds of a former German concentration camp.

It was here at the start of the 20th Century where the Ovaherero and Nama people were subjected to sexual violence, forced labour and gruesome medical experiences. Many died of disease and exhaustion.

Uahimisa Kaapehi says his heart is heavy standing on the remains of his ancestors.

He is an ethnic Ovaherero descendent who is also a town councillor in the city of Swakopmund, where many of the atrocities took place.

Mr Kaapehi explains what happened generations ago still has a profound impact on his livelihood.

"Our wealth was taken, the farms, the cattle, everything, I was not supposed to suffer this as I'm talking," he says.

"And we - as the Ovaherero and Nama - are not supposed to be suffering."

Uahimisa Kaapehi calls the German settlement "the joke of the century"

Historians have called what happened between 1904 and 1908, in what is now Namibia, the first genocide of the 20th Century.

It is when German colonial forces displaced and killed thousands of Ovaherero and Nama people after an uprising against the colonial rulers.

It is estimated that 60,000 Ovaherero, more than 80% of the ethnic group's total population in the region, and 10,000 Nama, 50% of its population, were killed in this period.

In May, the German government for the first time formally recognised the colonial-era atrocities.

It acknowledged the massacres as a genocide, pledging to pay a "gesture to recognise the immense suffering inflicted". But Germany did not label the gesture as reparations.


'We want land'

It came out to €1.1bn ($1.3bn; £930m). It is understood the sum will be paid out over 30 years and must primarily benefit the descendants of the Ovaherero and Nama.

HULTON ARCHIVE Colonial forces brutally suppressed uprisings by the Ovaherero and Nama

But the descendants, including Mr Kaapei, do not believe the agreement is a sincere apology for what happened.

"That was the joke of the century," he says.

"We want our land. Money is nothing.

"We want them [the German government] to come and say an apology. The money is just to say what they did wrong to us.

"And we don't want a peanut. We want trillions. We want trillions that can heal our wounds."

Mr Kaapehi says his ethnic group lost a century of traditions, culture, and livelihoods - and it is impossible to put a price on that.

The land and natural resources that were taken, cemented his family into generational poverty.

Activists believe it is only fair if the German government buys back ancestral lands now in the hands of the German-speaking community, and returns it to the Ovaherero and Nama descendants.

'Pulling out the knife'

Yet the extent of the reparations has a bearing beyond Germany and Namibia - and could set a precedent for other countries with colonial pasts.

Captives taken after the Ovaherero rebellion were either killed or subjected to appalling brutality

US academics Kirsten Mullen and Sandy Darity, who support reparations for descendants of the slave trade, argue that this tends to mean any concessions made are likely to be small - and only given as a last resort.

In their book From Here to Equality they reference US human rights activist Malcolm X, who famously said: "You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress."

In the case of Germany and Namibia, Ms Mullen and Mr Darity agree that "developmental aid" does not necessarily count as healing the knife wound - it's only the first step.

"Pulling the knife out is not reparations, but it's essential. But it's not reparations. The reparative act is the healing of the wound," Mr Darity says.

"And so if you view these developmental funds as a form of pulling the knife out, then it's not reparations," Mr Darity says.

There is also some irony to reparations debate in Namibia, given that Germany in fact set a precedent in the 1890s.

German historian Horst Drechsler notes that before the genocide, Germany demanded reparations from the Ovaherero and Nama communities after they staged an uprising against the colonialists.

This had to be given in cattle - about 12,000 animals - estimated by German-American historian Thomas Craemer to be the modern equivalent of between $1.2m and $8.8m, which he argues should be added to the reparations.

For Mr Craemer, who specialises in reparations, Pandora's box is now open - and he says more widespread reparations to be paid by other former colonial powers are only a matter of time.

This is partly down to the changing demographics of majority white countries in the West where a more diverse population will force governments to face the grievances of the past.

"People are not [only] determined by the group to which they belong to. There is a possibility that people feel emotional solidarity with people that have been affected by historical injustice," Mr Craemer says.

"Even if they themselves are part of the group that committed the injustice."




Skulls of victims were sent back to Germany for eugenics research



More on this story

Why Germany's Namibia genocide apology isn't enough

Published1 June


What's the right price to pay for genocide?

Published1 April


What is genocide?

Published11 March


A 40-year search for a skull in Germany

Published13 November 2018

INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRY
Wagner: Scale of Russian mercenary mission in Libya exposed

By Ilya Barabanov & Nader Ibrahim
BBC News Russian & BBC News Arabic
Published 23 hours ago
Libya crisis

Wagner: Scale of Russian mercenary mission in Libya exposed


A BBC investigation has revealed the scale of operations by a shadowy Russian mercenary group in Libya's civil war, which includes links to war crimes and the Russian military.

A Samsung tablet left by a fighter for the Wagner group exposes its key role - as well as traceable fighter codenames.

And the BBC has a "shopping list" for state-of-the-art military equipment which expert witnesses say could only have come from Russian army supplies.

Russia denies any links to Wagner.

The group was first identified in 2014 when it was backing pro-Russian separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Since then, it has been involved in regions including Syria, Mozambique, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Wagner's fighters appeared in Libya in April 2019 when they joined the forces of a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, after he launched an attack on the UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in October 2020.

Read the full investigation into the discarded Samsung and its secrets
WATCH: Inside the Wagner group

The group is notoriously secretive, but the BBC has managed to gain rare access to two former fighters. They revealed what type of person was joining Wagner - and its lack of any code of conduct.

There is little doubt that they kill prisoners - something one ex-fighter freely admits. "No-one wants an extra mouth to feed."

This supports other parts of the TV documentary - Haftar's Russian Mercenaries: Inside the Wagner Group - by BBC News Arabic and BBC News Russian. Its other revelations include evidence of suspected war crimes, including the intentional killing of civilians.

A Libyan villager shows images of a relative who was killed. The villager says he survived himself by playing dead

One Libyan villager describes how he played dead as his relatives were killed. His testimony helped the BBC team identify a suspected killer.

Describing another possible war crime, a Libyan government soldier also recalls how a comrade, his friend, surrendered to Wagner fighters but was shot twice in the stomach. The soldier has not seen him since, nor three other friends taken away at the same time.

The Samsung computer tablet also provides evidence of the mercenaries' involvement in the mining and booby-trapping of civilian areas.

Placing landmines without marking them is a war crime.

Just hours after the release of the BBC's report into Wagner's activities in Libya, the deputy public prosecutor at the Libyan Military Prosecutor's Office, Mohamed Gharouda, announced that an arrest warrant had been issued for the son of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

According to the order, which was released internally last week, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is wanted on charges of war crimes committed by the group during Gen Haftar's offensive against the capital Tripoli.

He was arrested during the 2011 uprising in Libya and later sentenced to death in absentia over violence against protesters. In 2017, however, he was released by the militia holding him.

Saif al-Islam has long been suspected of having connections to Russia and the Wagner group, and is believed to be Moscow's favourite candidate to rule Libya.

The revealing Samsung tablet

The tablet was left behind by an unknown Wagner fighter after the group's fighters retreated from areas south of Tripoli in spring 2020.

Its contents include maps in Russian of the frontline, giving confirmation of Wagner's significant presence and an unprecedented insight into the group's operations.

Leaked UN report points finger at Wagner in Libya

There is drone footage and codenames of Wagner fighters, at least one of whom the BBC believes it has identified. The tablet is now in a secure location.

Military maps in Russian on the Samsung tablet

The 'shopping list'

A comprehensive list of weapons and military equipment is included in a 10-page document dated 19 January 2020, given to the BBC by a Libyan intelligence source and probably recovered from a Wagner location.

The document indicates who may be funding and backing the operation. It lists materiel needed for the "completion of military objectives" - including four tanks, hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles and a state-of-the-art radar system.

A military analyst told the BBC that some of the weapons technology would only be available from the Russian military. Another expert, a specialist on the Wagner group, said the list pointed to the involvement of Dmitry Utkin.

He is the ex-Russian military intelligence man believed to have founded Wagner and given it its name (his own former call-sign). The BBC tried to contact Dmitry Utkin but has received no reply.

And in our visual breakdown of the "shopping list" and another document, the expert says the words Evro Polis and General Director suggest the involvement of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a rich businessman close to President Vladimir Putin.

The US Treasury sanctioned Evro Polis in 2018, calling it a Russian company contracted to "protect" Syrian oil fields that were "owned or controlled" by Mr Prigozhin.

Powerful 'Putin's chef' Prigozhin

Investigations by Western journalists have linked Mr Prigozhin to Wagner. He has always denied any link to Evro Polis or Wagner.

A spokesperson told the BBC that Yevgeny Prigozhin has nothing to do with Evro Polis or Wagner. Mr Prigozhin commented that he had not heard anything on the violation of human rights in Libya by Russians: "I am sure that this is an absolute lie."

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the BBC it is doing "its utmost to promote a ceasefire and a political settlement to the crisis in Libya."

The ministry added that details about Wagner in Libya are mostly based on "rigged data" and were aimed at "discrediting Russia's policy" in Libya.

What is Wagner? Its ex-fighters speak

Officially, it does not exist - but up to 10,000 people are believed to have taken at least one contract with Wagner since it emerged fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

About 1,000 Wagner men are estimated to have fought with Gen Khalifa Haftar in Libya from 2019 to 2020.

The BBC in Russia asked one of the ex-fighters to describe Wagner. He replied: "It is a structure, aimed at promoting the interests of the state beyond our country's borders."

As for its fighters, he said they were either "professionals of war", people looking for a job, or romantics looking to serve their country.

The other ex-fighter told the BBC there were no clear rules of conduct. If a captured prisoner had no knowledge to pass on, or could not work as a "slave", then "the result is obvious".

Andrey Chuprygin, an expert working with the Russia International Council, said the stance of the Russian government was - "let them join this thing, and we'll see what the result is. If it works out well, we can use it to our advantage. If it turns out badly, then we had nothing to do with it".





Libya - a decade of turmoil

THANKS TO NATO FOR THE RAPE AND MURDER OF GADDAFI 

Downfall of Gaddafi in 2011: Col Muammar Gaddafi's more than four decades of rule end in an Arab Spring uprising. He tries to flee but is captured and killed

The country splinters: After 2014, major competing factions emerge in the east and west

The advance on Tripoli in April 2019: Gen Haftar, leader of the eastern forces, advances on Tripoli and the UN-backed government there. Both sides get military and diplomatic support from different regional powers, despite a UN arms embargo

Ceasefire in October 2020: Then in early 2021 a new unity government is chosen and sworn in, to take the nation to elections in December. Foreign fighters and mercenaries were supposed to have left, but thousands remain

ARYAN FASCISM; CASTISM, FEMICIDE & MISOGYNY
Dalit girl rape and murder: Indians protest over girl's forced cremation

By Salman Ravi
BBC Hindi, Delhi
Published4 August
image captionProtesters outside the crematorium are demanding the death penalty for the accused


Protests are continuing for the fourth day over the alleged gang rape, murder and forced cremation of a nine-year-old girl in the Indian capital, Delhi.


The girl's parents have accused a Hindu priest and three others of attacking her when she had gone to fetch drinking water from the crematorium's cooler.


Her mother said the gates were shut and she was threatened when she objected to her daughter's cremation.


Police have registered a case of gang rape and murder and arrested the men.


Warning: some readers may find this story distressing.


The girl's parents are Dalits - formerly untouchables - who make a living by begging outside a Sufi Muslim shrine located just across from the cremation ground in Delhi's Nangal area. The girl was their only child.

Her mother told me that on Sunday evening, she had sent her daughter to fetch water from the crematorium, just a few metres from their shanty.

"When she didn't return for over an hour, I went searching for her. At the crematorium, I found her lying on the ground. Her lips were blue, there was blood under her nose, she had bruises on her hands and arms and her clothes were wet."

She said the priest and the three men advised her not to call the police, saying "they would insist on an autopsy and steal her organs and sell them".

What do Delhi rape hangings mean for women?

The pregnant child caught in a media storm

She alleged that they shut the gates to prevent her from leaving, threatened her and even offered to bribe her.

The child's father said that by the time he, along with about 150 villagers, reached the crematorium, their daughter's body was mostly burned.

The villagers said they called the police and doused the pyre with water, but could only retrieve her legs - which means a post mortem exam to confirm rape would not be possible

A senior police official said that based on the information from the parents, a case of gang rape, murder and forced cremation had been registered against the accused.

Protesters have burnt effigies of PM Narendra Modi for not condemning the crime

The incident is drawing comparisons with last year's alleged gang rape and murder of a Dalit teen by four upper-caste men in the town of Hathras in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. That incident had caused global outrage after police forcibly cremated her body despite her family's protests.

Dalits, who are placed at the bottom of the unforgiving Hindu caste hierarchy, remain among India's most downtrodden citizens.

A large majority of the 200 million Dalits are poor and despite laws to protect them, they continue to be subjected to daily discrimination from the upper castes and the authorities.

And Dalit women face the triple burden of poverty, gender bias and caste discrimination.

On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Nangal cremation ground, demanding the death penalty for the accused.

They also called for some local police officials to be suspended, accusing them of harassing the victim's family.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and senior leader of the opposition Congress Party Rahul Gandhi visited the child's family and offered to help them get justice.

Protesters from the Congress burnt an effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of not condemning the crime.

A fatal assault, a cremation and no goodbye

A woman reported rape. Why are police denying it?

Over the past few days, leaders from the Dalit community have participated in the protests and activists and citizens have taken to social media to express outrage.

Some have already dubbed it a caste crime - as the accused priest is reported to be an upper-caste Brahmin.

Since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, rape and sexual violence have been under the spotlight in India.

That attack saw days of protests and forced changes to the country's rape laws, but there has been no sign of crimes against women and girls abating.

According to recent crime figures, every fourth rape victim in India is a child. In an overwhelming number of rape cases, the victims know the perpetrators.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism 

The struggle to secure access to abortion in Argentina goes on

The Argentinian government must continue to dismantle barriers women face in accessing safe abortion.


Mariela Belski
Executive director of Amnesty International Argentina
9 Aug 2021

Demonstrators in favour of legalising abortion react after the Senate passed an abortion bill, in Buenos Aires, Argentina on December 30, 2020 [File: Reuters/Agustin Marcarian]


In recent months, Argentinians have had access to legal abortion for the first time. In December, Argentina became the fourth in Latin America to legalise abortion after the National Congress passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Law

Securing this right for women and pregnant persons was a milestone achievement and the culmination of decades of struggle, setbacks and progress. Now, new challenges emerge: the effective implementation of the law across a vast and unequal territory and the legal battles filed by conservative groups in the nation’s courts.

Amnesty International is currently monitoring the enforcement of the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Law. We have examined at least 33 lawsuits that challenged the law, 20 of which have already been dismissed – at least three of these dismissals are final.

So far, none of the suits filed against the Argentine state claiming that the law is unconstitutional has been successful. Despite some judges being willing to put their religious or personal interests before the rights of women and pregnant persons, in general terms, the judiciary has shown itself to be a guarantor of human rights and, hopefully, it will continue to resist the attacks that attempt to overturn a law approved by a vast majority of Argentina’s Congress.

An additional challenge faced by citizens who want to access this service is that Argentina is a federal state in which each of the 24 jurisdictional authorities is free to determine their own health policies. There are also wide economic and social inequality gaps between the provinces, varying levels of ecclesiastical influence and marked ideological differences between federal governments. These factors all impact the effectiveness of the implementation of the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy law.

In many rural areas, sexual and reproductive health services and trained staff are still unavailable. The province of Catamarca, for example, is home to more than 124,000 women and people of childbearing capacity, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, but, in a response to a freedom of information request by Amnesty International Argentina, the Ministry of Health in Catamarca revealed the region only has two healthcare centres that guarantee access to services for the voluntary termination of a pregnancy.

The province of Buenos Aires, home to 40 percent of the national population, has made significant progress, yet 36 of its 135 districts still do not offer this service. As this is a national law, anyone should be able to get an abortion no later than 10 days after they request it, irrespective of their place of residence. Delays or obstructions represent a violation to their rights.

Access to information is also key to making free decisions. The government has still not organised massive information campaigns to help people know their rights and the options available to them when deciding to terminate a pregnancy.

It is also necessary to have quality nationwide statistical data to have diagnostic tools in connection with the progress and the challenges in the implementation of the law at a federal level. It is also essential to guarantee that students have access to comprehensive sex education, a policy that is experiencing some obstructions in certain jurisdictions.

Abortion access procedures have presented some issues that need to be overcome. The authorities must approve the production and sale of mifepristone, a drug recommended by the World Health Organization, which has been on the list of essential medicines since 2005. This drug, combined with misoprostol, boosts the efficacy of pregnancy terminations and speeds up the process.

Likewise, it is essential to improve the accessibility to interventions using manual vacuum aspiration (MVA), since almost all provinces continue to perform curettage, a less safe method that should be reserved only for those cases where other options are not available.

The women’s rights movement has a lot to celebrate. Argentina has brought abortions out of clandestine settings thanks to activism, research and vital public debates. This same path continues to inspire activists across the region, who also seek sexual and reproductive autonomy. The green wave keeps spreading across Latin America and will surely bring new victories in the recognition of women’s rights.


The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Time to challenge Argentina’s white European self-image, black history experts say


New generation of researchers say country must confront its ‘erasure of blackness’ and the structural racism that exists now

Couples dancing tango in Argentina, in this undated photo. Seven million Europeans migrated to Argentina between 1850 and 1950. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images


Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
Mon 31 May 2021 

Argentina has long taken pride in its European heritage. The mass migration of 7 million Europeans, mostly Spanish and Italian, between 1850 and 1950, created a racial profile many Argentinians feel distinguishes their country from the rest of Latin America even today.

“Mexicans descend from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas – but Argentinians descend from the ships,” goes an old saying that encapsulates Argentina’s perception of itself as a nation of transplanted white Europeans.


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But that Eurocentric view is being vehemently disputed as not only outdated but also factually untrue by a generation of young Afro-descendant researchers and activists who wish to rewrite the accepted version of Argentinian history.

“Argentina needs to understand that it is both very racist and very Afro,” said black activist and researcher Alí Delgado.

University lecturer Patricia Gomes is another Afro-descendant researcher intent on demolishing Argentina’s mythical self-image as a white nation. “In Argentina it used to be said that here there were no blacks, therefore there was no one to be racist with – and hence there was no racism,” she said.

Delgado and Gomes point to recent studies of population surveys and genetics that paint a far different picture from Argentina’s accepted history: one recent study concluded that up to 9% of today’s Argentinians may have ancestry from Africa.

The reason is simple: between the 16th and 19th centuries – long before the wave of European migration – more than 200,000 enslaved Africans arrived at the twin ports of the River Plate, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, capital cities of what are now Argentina and Uruguay.

“The number of slaves who arrived to the region of the River Plate is almost half of those who arrived in the US, which gives an idea of the magnitude of slave traffic in the River Plate region,” according to Alex Borucki, a Uruguayan academic at the University of California Irvine, who co-manages the SlaveVoyages website that traces every ship carrying enslaved people that reached the Americas.

In a sign of the changing perceptions of Argentina’s racial identity, Gomes and Delgado are teaching Argentina’s first ever university courses on the subject.

Their two-month series of lectures for law students at the University of Buenos Aires in March and April was booked solid. Another two-month course will follow in August and September, and the pair are also considering an open seminar for the general public.

Gomes and Delgado argue that the idea of a European Argentina was a fabrication imposed by racist 19th-century leaders to erase Argentina’s rich black culture from the nation’s collective consciousness.

Gabino Ezeiza, a famed Argentinian payada musician, in this picture from 1891. Photograph: Alamy

In 1778, Africans and Afro-descendants made up 37% of the population of what is now Argentina, according to a census by its Spanish colonialist rulers. In some major provinces the proportion was more than 50%.

That number did not drop significantly after independence from Spain in 1816: Afro-descendants accounted for 30% of the population of Buenos Aires for decades after independence. But after that, the number is unknown, because Argentina’s census bureau stopped collecting racial information.

“Census data was manipulated to erase us first from the statistics – and then from the history books,” says Gomes. “From the end of the 19th century the state meticulously began to make us invisible to present Argentina as homogeneous and of European descent.”

Argentina’s “whitening process” has been studied in depth by US academic Erika Edwards in her book Hiding in Plain Sight, published last year by University of Alabama Press.

“The whitening project was a successful endeavor in terms of the erasure of blackness,” said Edwards. “The idea that somebody could be the descendant of a slave is just not there.”

That belief in a strictly European Argentina continues to percolate. “We are all descendants from Europe,” said President Mauricio Macri at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos.

It wasn’t until the 2010 census that an option was included for Argentinians wishing to self-identify as Afro-descendants. “That inclusion was very important but unfortunately it was restricted to only a small segment of the population, with the resulting projection suggesting that only half a percent of the population self-identify that way,” said Gomes.

Delgado and Gomes prefer data from a 2005 study conducted by Afro-descendant researchers that projects 5% of the population as having at least one African forebear.

Black slaves pay homage to the 19th-century politician Juan Manuel de Rosas. Photograph: CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy

A genetic study conducted by the University of Brasília in 2008 reached a different conclusion, finding that 9% of current-day Argentinians are of African ancestry.

Argentina’s pro-European immigration policy was initiated under its 1853 constitution at a time when the country’s post-independence thinkers and politicians were obsessed with the dichotomy of Civilization and Barbarism – the title of a 1845 book by Domingo Sarmiento, the country’s seventh president. In this Manichean view, Afro-descendants were placed squarely on the barbarism end of the scale.

“If it was not possible to physically eliminate Argentina’s Afro-descendants, the decision was to at least eliminate them symbolically, to create a discourse that there are no blacks in Argentina, that Brazil has that problem,” says Edwards.


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The entrenched poverty of many Afro-descendants goes hand in hand with Argentina’s structural racism, says Delgado.

“There are no black journalists or politicians, but Argentina’s poor barrios are full of Afro-descendants. So are our prisons, just like in the United States.”

Most present-day Afro-descendants are of mixed race because of inter-marriage between the male European immigrants who arrived after 1850 and Argentinian women of African descent.

“In the US, a drop of black blood makes you black, but in Argentina a drop of white blood makes you white,” said Gomes. “In a society where Afro-descendants were marginalized, many Afro-descendant families emphasized their whiteness to save themselves. They ripped up old photos and denied the existence of a black relative.”

The popularity of the two academics’ courses suggest that Argentina is finally opening up a long-postponed debate about race and identity.

“It’s time for Argentinians to take their black grandmother out of the closet,” said Delgado.