POLTICAL PRISONERS

French court orders release of Lebanese militant held since 1984

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison 

- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.

The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.

“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.

Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.

Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.

He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.

However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.

The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.

– Veteran inmate –

One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.

Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.

Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).

A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.

At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.

His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.

There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.

Jailed Russian poet could be ‘killed’ in prison, warns wife


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Russian poet Artyom Kamardin, 34, was jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war poetry. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five a half year for attending the public reading - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Anna SMOLCHENKO

The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.

Artyom Kamardin was arrested in September 2022 after reciting — on a Moscow square where dissidents have been gathering since the late 1950s — a poem that fiercely criticised Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In December 2023, Kamardin was convicted of inciting hatred and undermining national security. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the public reading.

Kamardin, 34, lost his appeal last month and is soon expected to be sent to a penal colony to serve his term.

“I am afraid they will kill him,” his wife Alexandra Popova, 30, who is still based in Russia, told AFP during a visit to Paris. “He is being treated a bit like a Ukrainian. Like a Ukrainian captive.”

In a widely-publicised case, both Kamardin and Popova were beaten and humiliated when security forces stormed their apartment the day after he read his poem, entitled “Kill me, militiaman!”, according to them and rights activists.

The reading took place days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilisation, the first such call-up since World War II.

Kamardin’s poem from 2015 is peppered with swear words and takes aim at pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“Kill me, militiaman! You’ve already tasted blood! You’ve seen how brothers-in-arms dig mass graves for the brotherly people,” Kamardin declaimed near the statue of Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

– ‘Fascist dictatorship’ –

In a statement from jail, Kamardin said poetry helped him reflect on “my homeland’s transformation into a fascist dictatorship”.

“I was born in a free Russia,” he wrote. “Now this country no longer exists, it was killed and devoured by the monster that calls itself Russia now.”

During the raid Kamardin was sexually abused with a dumbbell handle, according to Popova.

Security force members used their phones to record the assault, she said. “There was a lot of blood,” Popova added. Kamardin was then told to go on his knees to record an apology video.

The men also threatened to gang-rape Popova. “At one point they locked themselves in a room with me and pretended to start taking off their trousers,” she said. The couple were also called Nazis.

Amnesty International has said that the details of “his arrest and torture are horrific even against the abysmal human rights standards of today’s Russia.”

Russian propaganda has mounted a campaign of harassment against the couple. “Sit tight, or they will kill you,” Kamardin was already told in jail, according to his wife.

Putin has used the war, now in its third year, to radically transform Russian society.

Independent media outlets have been shut, top rights groups dismantled, criticism of the war outlawed, and dissidents jailed, muzzled or pushed out of the country. Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died suddenly in an Arctic colony in February.

Popova, who is part of a six-member collective supporting Russian political prisoners, said the country had changed since the start of the war.

Many people now justify “the killing of other people”.

Even if Moscow’s war against Ukraine comes to an end, repression in Russia might not stop, she said.

“Society has become cruel,” Popova added. “People inform on each other.”

The head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last month there was no repression in Russia, with just “minimal restrictions” against those who he said “are essentially siding” with the West.


– ‘Only chance to save people’ –


Popova urged Western governments to do everything to help free Russian political prisoners.

She praised the release of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals in a prisoner swap on August 1 and said more such exchanges were needed.

“People die in Russian prisons,” she said, calling them “victims of war”.

“These are the people who oppose what is happening now and they pay for their position with their health and lives.”

In July, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old pianist and anti-war activist, died in detention in the city of Birobidzhan near the China–Russia border.

In April, Alexander Demidenko, a 61-year-old volunteer who helped Ukrainian refugees, died in jail in the southern city of Belgorod.

“Artyom has a chance to get out earlier if there are any exchanges of political prisoners,” Popova said.

“The only chance now to save people from Russian prisons is through exchanges.”

While many Kremlin critics have left Russia, Popova said she had no plans to go. She wanted to keep supporting political prisoners, above all her husband.

“My heart is bleeding,” she said. “I have to be near him.”

Russia shuts Moscow’s famed gulag museum


By AFP
November 14, 2024

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.

“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.

The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.

They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.

Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.

Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.

Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.

The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”



– ‘Great loss’ –



Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.

“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.

“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”

But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.

“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.

“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”

Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.

While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.

School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.

Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.

In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.

Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.

Iran activist kills himself after demanding release of prisoners


By AFP
November 14, 2024

ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.

Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.

He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.

The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.

Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.

“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.

He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.

“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.

It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.

– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –

Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.

Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.

“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.

Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”

The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”

British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.

“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.

 

Who are We to Accuse Iran of “Malign Influence”?

US & UK have never behaved honourably in the Middle East

by Stuart Littlewood / October 12th, 2024

“I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification,” Keir Starmer told Jewish News.

So our brand-new prime minister has refused to rule out UK military involvement in any Israeli response to Iran’s recent missile attack, condemning what he calls Iran’s “malign role” in the Middle East.

And he refused to say whether MPs would get a vote beforehand on any military action. “We support Israel’s right to defend herself against Iran’s aggression, in line with international law, because let’s be very clear, this was not a defensive action by Iran, it was an act of aggression and a major escalation in response to the death of a terrorist leader.

“It exposes, once again, Iran’s malign role in the region: they helped equip Hamas for the seventh of October attacks, they armed Hezbollah, who launched a year-long barrage of rockets on northern Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes, and they support the Houthis, who mount direct attacks on Israel and continue to attack international shipping.”

Of course, Starmer didn’t mention the many attacks Israel had made on Lebanon and Iran over the years or explain why Hamas and Hezbollah came into being.

Be honest: who exactly are the “malign” influences in the Middle East?

Just as Britain and America would like everyone to believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict began on October 7 last year, when it had been going on since 1948 (and before), they’d like us to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But you have to go back over 70 years to find the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have endured a whole century of British exploitation and bullying. The US-UK-Israel Axis don’t want this important slice of history to become part of public discourse. Here’s why.

In 1901 William Knox D’Arcy, a Devon man, obtained from the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of Persia. The Persian government would receive 16% of the oil company’s annual profits, a rotten deal as they would soon realize.

D’Arcy, with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, eventually found oil in commercial quantities in 1908.  The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.

Just before the outbreak of World War 1 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British Government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16% and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually canceled the D’Arcy agreement and the matter went to the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement but still didn’t amount to a square deal.

In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and the company changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonized part of southern Iran.

Iran’s tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was brutally put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951, while Aramco was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis, Anglo-Iranian handed Iran a miserable 17.5%.

Hardly surprising, then, that Iran wanted economic and political independence. Calls for nationalizing its oil could no longer be ignored. In March 1951 the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavorable to the host country.

Social reformer Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government’s wishes, canceling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets. His explanation was perfectly reasonable: “Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results thus far. With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.

“Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced…. Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.” (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525)

For his impudence he would be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death. Britain, determined to bring about regime change, orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins… All sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

America was reluctant at first to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill (prime minister at the time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into the arms of Russia just when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America’s new president, Eisenhower, onboard and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

So began a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in exile, signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA. In August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over.

Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He remarked: “My greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share, with 40% going to Anglo-Iranian.

The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

The US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died in 1967.

The CIA-engineered coup that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy inevitably backfired 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.

If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees Iran might today be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, a title falsely claimed by Israel which is actually a repulsive ethnocracy. So never mention the M-word: MOSSADEQ.

But Britain seems incapable of playing fair. In 2022, when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian, was freed after five years in a Tehran prison it transpired that the UK had owed around £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain battle tanks ordered by the Shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979. Iran had been pursuing the debt for over four decades. In 2009 an international court in the Netherlands ordered Britain to repay the money. Iranian authorities said Nazanin would be released when the UK did so, but she suffered those years of incarceration, missing her children and husband back in the UK, while the British government took its own sweet time before finally paying up.

Smoldering resentment for more than 70 years

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003, summed it up. “The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens.

“The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked the UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France, and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”

As it happens the company I worked for at that time supplied the Iranian government with electronic components for military equipment. We were just mulling an invitation to set up a factory in Tehran when the UK Government announced it was revoking all export licences to Iran. Britain had decided to back Saddam. Hundreds of British companies were forced to abandon the Iranians at a critical moment.

Betraying Iran and throwing our weight behind Saddam went well, didn’t it? Saddam was overthrown in April 2003 following the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq, and hanged in messy circumstances after a dodgy trial in 2006. The dirty work was left to the Provisional Iraqi Government. At the end of the day, we couldn’t even ensure that Saddam was dealt with fairly. “The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein were tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time”, said the UN Human Rights Council’s expert on extrajudicial executions.

Philip Alston, a law professor at New York University, pointed to three major flaws leading to Saddam’s execution. “The first was that his trial was marred by serious irregularities denying him a fair hearing and these have been documented very clearly. Second, the Iraqi Government engaged in an unseemly and evidently politically motivated effort to expedite the execution by denying time for a meaningful appeal and by closing off every avenue to review the punishment. Finally, the humiliating manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law.”

Alston acknowledged that “there is an understandable inclination to exact revenge in such cases” but warned that “to permit such instincts to prevail only sends the message that the rule of law continues to be mocked in Iraq, as it was in Saddam’s own time”.

So now we’re playing dirty again, supporting an undemocratic state, Israel, which is run by genocidal maniacs and has for 76 years defied international law and waged a war of massacre, terror and dispossession against the native Palestinians. And we’re even protecting it in its lethal quarrel with Iran.

It took President Truman only 11 minutes to accept and extend full diplomatic relations to Israel when Zionist entity declared statehood in 1948 despite the fact that it was still committing massacres and other terrorist atrocities. Israel’s evil ambitions and horrendous tactics were well known and documented right from the start but eagerly backed and facilitated by the US and UK. In the UK’s case betrayal of the Palestinians began in 1915 thanks to Zionist influence. Even Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet at that time, described Zionism as “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. A century later it is quite evident that Zionism has been the ultimate “malign influence” in the Middle East.

Sadly, the Zionist regime’s unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity against unarmed women and children in Gaza and the West Bank — bad enough in the decades before October 2023 but now showing the Israelis as the repulsive criminals they’ve always been — still isn’t enough to end US-UK adoration for it.FacebooTwitteRedditEmail

Stuart Littlewood, after working on jet fighters in the RAF, became an industrial marketeer in oil, electronics and manufacturing, and with innovation and product development consultancies. He also served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and a member of the Police Authority. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and has produced two photo-documentary books including Radio Free Palestine (with foreword by Jeff Halper). Now retired, he campaigns on various issues, especially the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

 

Afghan, Iranian women launch campaign on recognition of ‘gender apartheid’

• By Amu TV
• 
  

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Women’s protest in Kabul. File photo.

A group of women from Afghanistan and Iran has launched the campaign “End Gender Apartheid,” calling for it to be recognized as a crime against humanity.

These activists are urging countries to confront and end the “gender apartheid” enforced by the Iranian government and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The campaign began on social media on Tuesday, June 18, with activists sharing their photos using the hashtag “End Gender Apartheid.”

They are also calling on nations to classify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.

In their messages, the women’s rights activists express solidarity with women in Afghanistan and Iran and encourage countries to criminalize gender apartheid.

They are urging nations to respond to the “oppression and discrimination” against women in Afghanistan and Iran.

Participants in the campaign aim to have gender apartheid included in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which is currently under review by the U.N. Legal Committee.

Many prominent women’s rights figures and female artists from Iran and Afghanistan, including Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, Habiba Sarabi, Mitra Mehran, Yalda Royan, Fawzia Koofi, Shirin Ebadi, Golshifteh Farahani, Azita Ghanizada, and Banafsha Yaqubi, along with dozens of women’s rights activists from both countries and around the world, have joined the campaign.

Simultaneously, Richard Bennett, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, presented details of his latest report at the 56th session of the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, June 18.

Bennett emphasized the issue of “gender apartheid” in Afghanistan, stating that violence against Afghan women is pervasive and severe. He highlighted the systematic and institutionalized discrimination in the country and the exclusion of women by the Taliban, urging it to shock the conscience of humanity.

Irish writer Paul Lynch wins Booker Prize 2023 with Prophet Song inspired by Syrian War

'This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave,' said judge Esi Edugyan

Paul Lynch, author of 'Prophet Song', accepts the 2023 Booker Prize. EPA

Simon Rushton
Nov 26, 2023

Irish writer Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize on Sunday for his novel Prophet Song, the story of a family and a country on the brink of catastrophe as an imaginary Irish government veers towards tyranny.

Lynch, 46, was presented with his trophy by last year's winner Shehan Karunatilaka, at a ceremony held in London.

The writer, who lives in Dublin, is the fifth Irish author to win the award, worth £50,000 ($63,000) after Dame Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.

The event on Sunday had a keynote speech delivered by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released from a prison in Iran last year.

Canadian writer Esi Edugyan, chairwoman the judging panel, said the book was “a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave” in which Lynch “pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness”.

Ms Edugyan said Lynch’s book “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment” but also deals with “timeless” themes.

The novel, Lynch's fifth, seeks to show the unrest in western democracies and their indifference towards disasters such as the implosion of Syria.

“From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism,” Ms Edugyan said.

'I wanted to deepen the reader's immersion to such a degree,' Lynch said. AFP

Lynch, who was previously the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper, said he wanted readers to understand totalitarianism by heightening the dystopia with the intense realism of his writing.

“I wanted to deepen the reader's immersion to such a degree that by the end of the book, they would not just know, but feel this problem for themselves,” he said.

Past winners of the Booker, which was first awarded in 1969, include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel.

The island of Ireland has had one more Booker win, Northern Irish writer Anna Burns in 2018.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe spoke about reading during her imprisonment in Iran.

“Books helped me to take refuge into the world of others when I was incapable of making one of my own,” she said.

“They salvaged me by being one of the very few tools I had, together with imagination, to escape the Evin [prison] walls without physically moving.”

“One day a cellmate received a book through the post. It was The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, translated into Farsi.

“Who thought a book banned in Iran could find its way to prison through the post? We hid the cover in newspapers to hide it from the camera.”

She said inmates wanted to read the book, as did a guard.

Irish author Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker Prize

By AFP
November 26, 2023

Irish writter Paul Lynch with his 2023 Booker Prize-winning novel 'Prophet Song'
- Copyright AFP Saidu BAH

Clara LALANNE

Irish author Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction on Sunday for his novel “Prophet Song,” a dystopian work about an Ireland that descends into tyranny.

The 46-year-old pipped five other shortlisted novelists to the prestigious award at a ceremony in London

He becomes the fifth Irish writer to win the high-profile literary prize, which has propelled to fame countless household names, including past winners Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

“This was not an easy book to write,” Lynch said after collecting his award, which comes with £50,000 (around $63,000) and a huge boost to his profile.

“The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel. Though I had to write the book anyway. We do not have a choice in such matters,” he added.

Lynch’s book is set in Dublin in a near future version of Ireland. It follows the struggles of a mother of four as she tries to save her family from totalitarianism.

There are no paragraph breaks in the novel, which is Lynch’s fifth.

Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, who chaired the five-person judging panel, called the story “a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave”.

“With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment,” she said.

“Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings.”

The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2022, and September 30, 2023.

– Murdoch, Doyle –

None of this year’s six finalists — which included two Americans, a Canadian, a Kenyan and another Irish author — had been shortlisted before and only one had previously been longlisted.

The shortlisted novels, announced in September, were chosen from a 13-strong longlist that had been whittled down from an initial 158 works.

Among them was Irish author Paul Murray’s “The Bee Sting”, a tragicomic saga which looks at the role of fate in the travails of one family.

Murray was previously longlisted in 2010.

Kenyan writer Chetna Maroo’s moving debut novel “Western Lane” about grief and sisterhood follows the story of a teenage girl for whom squash is life.

The judges also selected “If I Survive You” by US writer Jonathan Escoffery, which follows a Jamaican family and their chaotic new life in Miami.

He was joined by fellow American author, Paul Harding, whose “This Other Eden” — inspired by historical events — tells the story of Apple Island, an enclave off the US coast where society’s misfits flock and build a new home.

Canada was represented on the shortlist in the shape of “Study for Obedience” by Sarah Bernstein. The unsettling novel explores the themes of prejudice and guilt through a suspicious narrator.

The Booker was first awarded in 1969. Last year’s winner was Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka for “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”.

The previous Irish winners are Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.

Opinion (NOT A REVIEW)

This year's Booker winner is political fiction  at its laziest

Cal Revely-Calder

THE TELEGRAPH

Sun, 26 November 2023 

Showing civilisation on the brink: Paul Lynch - David Levenson/Getty Images Europe

I should have seen this coming. For the last four years, the Booker Prize has alternated between picking the right book and the very wrong. Last year, it went to Shehan Karunatilaka for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a comic thriller set in Sri Lanka and the afterlife. That novel was a deserving winner, quick-witted and spry in style. According to the pendulum, then, 2023 would go awry.

And so it has. Though the shortlist was the strongest in years, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song was by some distance the weakest link. In Britain, and his native Ireland, Lynch’s novels are well-regarded, but none of the previous four have been runaway hits. (On the other hand, the Americans admire him, and he’s oddly successful in France.) His style has a self-serious beauteousness; reviewing Prophet Song for this paper, Declan Ryan described it as “darkly lyrical, rich and somewhat stylised”. Several critics have even gestured to Cormac McCarthy, a comparison Lynch must like: he has used the latter’s sparse, magisterial writing for one of this novel’s three epigraphs.

Prophet Song, like some of McCarthy’s work, shows civilisation on the brink. In a totalitarian Ireland – secret police, arbitrary arrest – a molecular biologist, Eilish, loses her husband to the machine. She decides she must rebel, but she’s quickly isolated at work, and when a civil war erupts, her children slip from her control, while the distance to her father, who has dementia and lives across town, becomes a terrifying gulf. The conflict soon reaches Dublin: homes are destroyed, the lines of contact shift, Eilish and co become unmoored.

Booker chair Esi Edugyan said that Prophet Song "forces us out of complacency" - Handout


Lynch has described Prophet Song as allegorical: “Why are we in the West so short on empathy for the refugees flooding towards our borders? [The novel] is partly an attempt at radical empathy.” He wanted to bring the crisis home to the West, and make readers identify with those displaced. Upon his victory, Esi Edugyan, chair of this year’s judges, declared that Prophet Song “forces us out of our complacency” and “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment”. Readers, she added, “will not soon forget its warnings”.

The problem is how she, and Lynch, imagine political fiction to work. There isn’t much to be gained from slamming morals upon the table. Most people who care about an issue as big as the refugee crisis already know what they think. “That could be me, were I not in the West” is the most basic thought any person can have.

Allegories are hard to craft well, because once they’re solved, the bulk of the text can seem like mere ornament. You can add explosions, and make them exciting, but that’s not the same thing as making them resonate. The purpose of Prophet Song is obvious early, so its success relies on how it’s told; yet Lynch’s prose is undisciplined, overwritten and often illogical, as when Eilish muses on the “easterly breeze blowing cold hell upon Bull Island yet cooling the mind to think”. Nor are the plot and the pacing impressive. Lynch is a film critic too, and it shows. Too many novels wish they were prestige TV scripts; this one thinks it’s in Hollywood.

The disappointment is all the more bitter, because the judges had the opportunity to reward what fiction, and only fiction, can do. They could have gone for Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane, Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, or Paul Harding’s This Other Eden – all superior books – while I half-expected the winner to be Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, about the disintegration of an Irish family. It has been lavishly overpraised, but in its thematic breadth, physical length and (slightly strained) humour, it was at least obvious “Booker bait”.

Overturning perceptions: Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience was a strong contender - Alice Meikle

But I had hoped they would give the Prize to Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein, which – as I wrote last weekend – was my novel of the year. I haven’t believed since 2020, and Shuggie Bain, that someone deserved the Booker more. Study for Obedience and Prophet Song have a similar pivot: an isolated figure, an ambient threat. Bernstein’s novel is about a woman who moves to a “cold and faraway land”; her heritage, which we slowly learn is Jewish, sees the locals react with menace and fear. Her character makes the situation stranger still: she longs to be obedient, subservient, to abnegate her autonomy and dissolve into a group.

She’s no Hollywood heroine, in other words: no solitary figure defying the world. And so much isn’t stated outright; your sympathies keep being unsettled, your perception overturned. What is she thinking, and the locals doing, and what are the desires or hopes or self-loathing beneath it all? Study for Obedience could never be called an allegory – if anything, it’s a rebuke to those who like their stories trite.

The irony, then, is this: the Booker Prize could have gone to a political novel, one that does “force us out of our complacency”, and that represents, per the rubric, “the best sustained work of fiction” this year. It would have been a novel in which politics and fiction were interwoven subtly, and still have me thinking five months on. Yet the judges overlooked it – and, worst of all, on the same terms by which they picked Lynch. Come back next year, I guess.

Global event for young leaders in Belfast with ‘big rebellious spirit’ concludes


Claudia Savage, PA
Thu, 5 October 2023

The 2023 One Young World Summit in Belfast had a “big rebellious spirit”, a delegate has said.

The summit saw thousands of young leaders from more than 190 countries have discussions over three days on the biggest issues affecting humanity.

Delegates listened to speakers including the Queen of Jordan, Sir Bob Geldof, Rio Ferdinand and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.


Between panels, delegates were given the opportunity to network and collaborate on issues including climate change, peace and reconciliation, education, refugee rights and racial justice.

Akanksha Deo Sharma, a One Young World delegate from India, at the summit in Belfast (Claudia Savage/PA)

Akanksha Deo Sharma, from India, said attending the summit had been “life-changing”.

“I think this summit has been very inspirational, very thought-provoking,” she said.

“And what I loved the most was it had an undertone of a very big rebellious spirit, which I really respect.”

She added: “I have heard so many amazing young shapeshifters, change-makers, and the one lesson that I will take is that – you are enough, you can make a change.

“Everybody, no matter if they are one person or an organisation or running a big team. You all have the capability to make change.”

Nothulasizwe Mokoena, a delegate from South Africa, said her time in Belfast had been “mind-provoking”.

Nothulasizwe Mokoena, a One Young World delegate from South Africa (Claudia Savage/PA)

“I found myself thinking deeply about social challenges that I didn’t really think about before the summit,” she said.

“So really mind-provoking and really just mind-blowing. A lot of learning to take home with me to go back and start working and working hard.”

Ms Mokoena said her discussions at the forum gave her a new perspective on how global issues vary from country to country.

“When I came here, I thought we kind of like have the same challenges, but each and every country is actually experiencing different challenges,” she said.

“And what we are experiencing in South Africa is completely different to what they are experiencing in Japan. So we all come in here with different challenges and sharing perspectives, and it has been interesting.”

Ryosuke Bamba, from Japan, waved a Japanese flag as he took pictures with other delegates he had met during the week.

One Young World delegate Ryosuke Bamba, from Japan (Claudia Savage/PA)

“I really enjoyed making that connection and sharing my experiences and the good thing was we inspired each other and I was inspired by working with the delegates,” he said.

Motaz Amer, who is originally from Yemen and is living in Northern Ireland, said the week was “unbelievable and incredible”.

“People from different parts of the world, more than 190 countries, the same place together sharing perspective and experiences. Just a lifetime. Yeah, you cannot find it anywhere else,” he said.

Mr Amer said he had learned to speak some Japanese.

Motaz Amer, who is originally from Yemen and is living in Northern Ireland, at the One Young World summit in Belfast (Claudia Savage/PA)

“Listening is key. Diversity drives innovation, and together we can change the world,” he said.

“We are not the leaders of tomorrow, we are the leaders of today.”

Semiratu Abdallah, from Ghana, works in renewable and green energy.

“The week has been very amazing,” she said.

Delegate Semiratu Abdallah at the summit in Belfast (Claudia Savage/PA)

“It was very enlightening, learning and relearning different things.

“And then the message of hope has been very repeating over everything that I’ve learned and every discussion that I’ve had, so that’s the one thing I’ve taken away from here is the message of hope.”

Rishi Sunak urged to raise India detention of British man

Damian Grammaticas - Political correspondent
Wed, September 6, 2023 

Jagtar Singh Johal (right) arrives at court in India in November 2017

A cross-party group of MPs are calling on Rishi Sunak to intervene in the case of a British man who is facing the death penalty in India.

More than 70 MPs signed a letter urging the PM to call on Narendra Modi to "immediately release" campaigner Jagtar Singh Johal, when he travels to Delhi for the G20 leaders' summit.

They say Mr Johal has been "arbitrarily detained" for over five years.

The PM's spokesperson would not confirm or deny if the case would be raised.

Mr Johal, who is now 36, comes from Dumbarton in Scotland. He was a blogger and campaigner for Sikh human rights, which are said to have brought him to the attention of the Indian authorities.

He travelled to India in October 2017 to get married. The campaign group Reprieve says that while he was out shopping with his wife, he was hooded, bundled into a car by men in plainclothes, "severely tortured", and made to sign blank pieces of paper.

UK accused of tip-off that led to Brit's torture

Scot held in India faces murder conspiracy charge

Brit 'tortured to sign blank confession' in India

Tory MP David Davis told the BBC that "the first duty of a state should be to prevent a citizen getting harmed", and that if a citizen had been harmed and subjected to injustice, "the government should be raising the most serious protests".

He added: "That does not seem to be happening at the moment and that is a failure of the Foreign Office to do its most fundamental duty."

In their letter, the MPs say that "upon his arrest, Jagtar's interrogators electrocuted him, and threatened to douse him in petrol and set him alight. To make the torture stop, Jagtar recorded video statements and signed blank pieces of paper."

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said he had been targeted "because of his activism writing public posts calling for accountability for alleged actions committed against Sikhs by the authorities".

The MPs' letter says the UN Working Group "concluded that Jagtar's continued detention...lacks any legal basis".

Almost six years on, Mr Johal remains in prison in India. He faces eight charges of conspiracy to murder, linked to political violence in India. His family say court proceedings have started but been adjourned repeatedly.

His brother Gurpreet Singh Johal, who is a lawyer and Labour councillor in Dumbarton, told the BBC: "The fear for the family is that false allegations have become false charges, which could become a false conviction and result in the death penalty."

He said both former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May had discussed the case with India's prime minister, and said "it would be very difficult for Rishi Sunak not to raise the case... if Rishi Sunak doesn't, the question will be 'why didn't you?'.

Gurpreet Singh Johal has criticised the UK government's response to his brother's case

"Given Rishi Sunak has a good relationship with the Indian prime minister it shouldn't be a hard ask. Almost six years have elapsed, no evidence has been produced against Jagtar. These are just charges alleged against him, and it should be innocent until proven guilty."

He added: "It should be very easy to call for Jagtar's release. The UK did it, rightfully so for Nazanin [Zagari-Ratcliffe] and Anousheh [Ashouri] in Iran previously."

Asked if Mr Sunak would raise the case, the prime minister's official spokesperson said: "I am not going to pre-empt what they will or won't discuss."

In response to further questions, the spokesman said the government had raised concerns relating to Jagtar with the Indian government "on more than 100 occasions".

He said they included consular access, judicial process and reports of torture.

He said the family was receiving consular assistance and that Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad had met them recently.

However, in a letter sent to Gurpreet Singh Johal in July and seen by the BBC, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he had decided it was best not to press India over the issue.

Mr Cleverly wrote: "I do not consider that calling for Jagtar's release would result in the Indian authorities releasing him. Indeed I fear this could impact the co-operation we depend on... to conduct consular visits, resolve welfare concerns and attend court hearings."

That has angered both Mr Davis and Mr Johal's family. Gurpreet Singh Johal said: "It's saying basically 'I'm not going to do it and I'd rather have him rot in jail', that's the impression I get."

Mr Davis said it set "a terrible precedent" and "it encourages more governments to be prickly about complaints".

Gurpreet Singh Johal said he believed the UK's reluctance to speak up about the case now was connected to Mr Sunak's desire to sign a trade deal with India.

"Their focus appears to be that India are an up-and-coming country and they want this trade deal signed off with them, and they are putting trade over human rights," he said.

Mr Davis said he was clear a trade deal should come second to legal rights of a British citizen.

He added: "You don't have to be Palmerston to understand that the rights of a British citizen are the paramount concern of a British government and we do not accept torture as the price of a trade deal. Full stop."