Iran-U.S. crisis reminds us how culture matters in war time

January 14, 2020

As tensions have ratcheted up between the United States and Iran, a series of tweets by President Donald Trump threatening the deliberate targeting of Iranian cultural sites triggered a strong negative reaction around the world.

In fact, following Trump’s tweets, Pentagon officials reassured the world that the U.S. would not target Iran’s cultural sites, and would follow the laws of armed conflict.

Quickly, the president himself appeared to backtrack, declaring: “You know what, if that’s what the law is, I like to obey the law.”

Explaining his earlier position, Trump had embraced a dangerous logic:

“[Iran is] allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way.”

The argument is disingenuous, as it purports to highlight the value of human life as higher than that of cultural sites, while suggesting that those who want to protect heritage are implicitly attaching more importance to culture than to the torturing and maiming of people. This is simply not true.

Both international law and the U.S. military Law of War manual are clear on why protecting cultural sites in conflicts should be a priority for the belligerents. 
A view of Iran’s UNESCO world heritage site of the Qara Kelisa
 (Black Church), in Chaldran, 850 kilometres northwest of the
 Iranian capital Tehran. Also known as St. Thaddeus Church, 
it is believed to have been built in AD 66. AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian

‘Law of War’

In 1954, the Hague Convention tackled the issue of “Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.” The convention established cultural property as a legal category in international law where cultural property was defined as “movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people.”

The convention addresses wartime behaviour by prohibiting the use of cultural property in manners that could lead to its destruction or damage, and establishing the obligation to refrain from any act of hostilities directed at cultural property except in “cases of unavoidable military necessity.”

Furthermore, countries are forbidden from using their own cultural sites for military purposes (such as storing weapons or explosives) in hopes that they will be protected from an attack.

The Hague Convention was very much a reaction to the devastation brought about by the Second World War, which saw the deliberate destruction of countless cultural treasures. It signalled a desire on the part of the international community to protect the world’s cultural heritage from the ravages of war, and recognition that the loss of this heritage represents a loss for the country affected as well as for humanity.
What is cultural heritage important?

More recently, the world has witnessed the wanton destruction and plundering of historical heritage driven by ideological motives in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali, Syria and in many other countries rich in archeological heritage.

These events have highlighted how the destruction of cultural heritage can become just another weapon of war, one with targets that aren’t military resources or infrastructure, but rather the memories, history and identity of a people.
Left: Temple of Bel in April 2010, Palmyra, Syria. 
Right: ISIL propaganda image showing the temple’s 
destruction in 2015. (Left: Bernard Gagnon; right: ISIL propaganda), 
CC BY

Indeed, often the deliberate performative destruction of cultural heritage is used exactly for that purpose: erasing traces of a past that someone wants forgotten, so that a new history can be written.

Examples of this abound, from the Taliban’s demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan to the destruction of the Timbuktu manuscripts in Mali at the hand of the Islamist rebels of Andar Dine and the annihilation of Shi’a and Sufi heritage by ISIS in its controlled territory.
Teaching military cultural awareness

Awareness of the importance of preserving cultural sites in war, both to protect the world’s cultural heritage and to signal respect of every country’s history and contribution to humankind, is incorporated in the training received by the United States’ armed forces. The Department of Defense’s Law of War manual includes literally hundreds of references to this issue. 
 
The Pentagon deck of cards, ‘Respect Afghan Heritage,’ was handed out to troops with hopes of raising cultural awareness. (@hannahbloch)

The Pentagon even distributed decks of playing cards with photos of cultural sites to troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to underscore the need to safeguard heritage sites and artifacts. One of the cards showed a picture of the Statue of Liberty, with the words, “How would we feel if someone destroyed her torch?”

At times of heightened tensions, when relations between two or more countries veer dangerously towards conflict and countless lives are at stakes, it is worth remembering why culture matters not only in peacetime but also, or perhaps especially, in conflict, when humanity is most at risk of getting lost in the fog of war.

Author
 

Costanza Musu

Associate Professor, Graduate Scool of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Disclosure statement

Costanza Musu receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.
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University of Ottawa provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.

Will Flight PS752 victims be remembered differently than those killed in the Air India bombing?


January 13, 2020 

There’s been an incredible outpouring of grief across Canada since Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.

We have learned that among the 57 Canadians killed, there were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers. Children, newlyweds and entire families perished. Many of them have been described by Canadian news media and leaders as “exceptional.” They belonged to Canada’s vibrant Iranian communities and are being remembered as such in tributes and memorial services across the nation.

“Your entire country stands with you tonight, tomorrow, and in all the years to come,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told about 2,300 people who attended a memorial service in Edmonton on Sunday. “We share your grief,” he said on the day of the crash.

Trudeau called it a “moment of national pain” and recounted stories he’d heard from impacted families over the past few days, including one of a 10-year-old “who was confident he’d one day be prime minister of this country he loved so much.”


I’ve spent more than a dozen years researching public memory of another air disaster that resulted in an even greater number of Canadian casualties — the Air India tragedy.

Indeed, news of PS752 is triggering memories of June 23, 1985, when Air India Flight 182 fell into the Atlantic Ocean near Cork, Ireland, after a bomb hidden among the luggage exploded. All 329 passengers and crew on board that flight were killed. Among them were 280 Canadians, the majority from Indian-Canadian families, as reported by the official inquiry by Public Safety Canada.
‘I felt gutted’

Winnipeg resident Nicky Mehta was 13 at the time that her uncle, aunt and two young cousins were killed on the Air India flight. On the day after Flight PS752 crashed, she woke up to an abbreviated list of “deadly plane crashes that killed Canadians” published in the Winnipeg Free Press that did not include Air India. “I felt gutted,” she told me. “It was re-traumatizing to see that Air India was not even worth a mention here.” The article has since been removed.

Back in 1985, there was no collective outpouring of grief or statement of national solidarity for the victims of Air India Flight 182. Were these victims not “exceptional” enough? In fact, they too were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers, as well as homemakers, teachers, civil servants and more.

Notoriously, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered his condolences to Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi for India’s loss instead of addressing his own citizens.

 

A member of the Iranian community in Calgary lights a 

candle during a memorial for the victims of Flight PS752 crash.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

It is clear that for many Canadians (not just Mulroney) the Air India bombing was unthinkable — and thus unmemorable — as a tragedy of national consequence due to the dominant assumption that Canadian identity is synonymous with whiteness. Indeed, critics as well as relatives of the dead have raised the obvious question: would there have been such trouble recognizing the bombing as a national tragedy if the majority of those killed were white rather than brown Canadians?
Crucial evidence lost

Now well-documented as the result of criminal trial proceedings and a long-awaited federally appointed Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India 182 are repeated instances where government officials, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP and Canadian airport authorities ignored, disbelieved, erased and lost crucial evidence — including surveillance tapes of eventually acquitted suspects and warnings by the Indian government and Air India officials of an attack on the airline.

Relatives of those killed in the bombing of Flight 182 also testified to how the government failed to provide them with the most basic, practical supports in the days, months and years following the deaths of their loved ones, many citing compounded grief as a result of being treated like second-class citizens for their “Indian-ness.”

Sociologist Sherene Razack has said that although “there is evidence that some Canadian officials acted heroically,” systemic racism played a role in Canada’s pre- and post-bombing response or lack thereof. In her expert witness report for the inquiry, she observed:


“When police, political and media elites all consistently treated the Air India bombings as a foreign event, it is not surprising that Canadians do not recall June 23, 1985. As a nation, we were not shaken, transformed and moved to change our own institutional practices for a tragedy we considered had little to do with us.”

It would take 25 years of lobbying by Air India families before the government of Canada would publicly claim their loved ones, as well as the suspected perpetrators, as Canada’s own.
Has Canada changed?

Does the national mourning as a result of the tragedy of PS752 mean then that Canada has since changed? Are we befittingly shaken this time around? Other news reports are citing diversity and multiculturalism experts who think so, some claiming that there has been a “180-degree shift.” But I am curious to see how the victims of this tragedy (and those of the Air India bombings, for that matter) continue to be remembered in time.

Despite the fact that the Air India bombing is now referred to by public authorities as “the worst encounter with terrorism Canada has experienced,” or even “Canada’s 9/11,” most of my undergraduate university students have never heard of the incident.

The 35th anniversary of the Air India bombings approaches this coming June. It remains to be seen how long it will take for the Flight PS752 victims to be forgotten.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Indian

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit the memorial

 honouring victims of the 1985 Air India bombing at a 

ceremony in Toronto in 2015.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu

It also remains to be seen if the deaths of these passengers will be mobilized in the interests of increased western military involvement in the Middle East. Again I can’t help but think of the Air India bombings, and the ways in which the government of Stephen Harper strategically used the memory of its victims to bolster support for conservative anti-terrorist legislation; or more recently, conservative pundits who invoked the bombings over and over again to bait NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh before last fall’s federal election.

Nor am I convinced that Canada’s response to this recent air tragedy and the loss of so many Iranian-Canadian lives means racist reactions won’t still emerge.

Often during times of national crises and heightened political tensions, race-based fears and anxieties about foreign and/or domestic terrorism result in the intensified stereotyping of particular people and places as inherently threatening — as exemplified in President Donald Trump’s latest characterization of Iran as a “rough neighborhood.” To be sure, the potential for rising anti-Iranian sentiment in Canada also exists.

And so as further details of the tragedy in Tehran unfold and political players in and beyond Canada negotiate their stakes, I expect that public memory will shift along with it, including how the incident and its casualties are remembered and understood.

This is how public memory works: when new information and investments become present, we tend to revise how we make sense of the past.

The best we can hope for is that our practice of collective remembrance might become the grounds upon which those of us who were not immediately affected by the downing of PS752 — or the Air India bombings — join in memory and mourning with those who were. In doing so, we learn to live alongside one another in the aftermath of loss with renewed connection.

Author

Angela Failler

Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory, University of Winnipeg
Disclosure statement
Angela Failler receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs Program..
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University of Winnipeg provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

Transgender hate crimes are on the rise even in Canada

 August 20, 2019 
BEFORE THE MURDER OF TORONTO TRANS ACTIVIST JULIE BERMAN AT THE END OF DECEMBER 2019

People participate in the 2016 Trans Pride March in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima

Canada has a good reputation for LGBTQ rights. Federal political leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, attend pride parades across the country. But a rising tide of violence against transgender people raises the question: what will Canada do to protect trans and nonbinary people from targeted violence?

I am a security and surveillance doctoral researcher and recently received a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation scholarship to further look into anti-transgender trolls and digital vigilantes.

On a personal level, the hostility I’ve faced in the year and a half of transitioning as a trans woman has been immense. I’ve been aggressively harassed several times on Ottawa streets. I’m subject to constant weird looks, angry glares and misgendering. For these reasons, I battle anxiety as I leave my apartment, obsessing with how I look. If I look out of place it might provoke someone to lash out. This vortex of hostility and fear makes it challenging for me to trust strangers in my own community.

Our institutions and public spaces have historically ignored the basic rights and dignity of trans folk. At best, we are invisible in our institutions and in the daily grind of most Canadian lives, at worst, we are subject to hatred, suspicion and disgust.

On July 22, Statistics Canada published police-reported nationwide crime statistics for 2018. The report includes a table on hate crime that includes sexual orientation. Although the “gender identity and expression” category was recently adopted in the federal hate speech legislation, it does it not have its own category in the charts for the official Statistics Canada report. Statistics Canada says those hate crimes are reported as “transgender” and “agender” but gets put into the “other” category within “sex.”

Before the new wording in the legislation, police had not kept an official record on the hate crimes against trans and nonbinary folks. This invisibility had troubling implications for our criminal justice system. With no record of the violence we experience, there was no need for the government to act.

Now that there is an official federal category, will we start to see changes in the reporting of the violence? It seems like we still have a ways to go.

Climate of fear

The vitriolic national debates around Bill C-16 which proposed that the Canadian Human Rights Act be amended to include trans and nonbinary folks set the tone for transgender rights in Canada. The legislation was successful, but the language of hatred used by far-right politicians and residents around the legitimacy of transgender and nonbinary identities had a chilling effect on our feeling of public safety and security.

This climate of fear for trans and nonbinary folks has been distilling for years. The category of “sexual orientation” was officially added to the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1996 after a former Canadian Armed Forces captain, Joshua Birch, was discharged for publicly identifying as gay. Birch and his team argued that the exclusion of sexual orientation from human rights legislation constituted a form of discrimination.

Roughly two decades later, transgender folks became recognized as a protected class. Up until recently, trans folks have not been protected by Canadian human rights legislation.

Permission to hate

Recently in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford and his government meddled with how transgender issues are taught in the primary educational curriculum. The Ford administration decided the topic of “gender identity” was not “age appropriate” for grade school and removed it from the curriculum, postponing this lesson to Grade 8. Ford’s move reinforces the negative idea that being transgender is inappropriate and exceptional.

In a journal article published in Critical Criminology, researchers Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens from the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology make the argument that hate crimes grow substantially in “enabling environments” where people are given a tacit “permission to hate.”

Another example of this can be found in the United Kingdom, where the police do keep a record of anti-transgender hate crimes. In a recent article, the BBC reported that there had been an 81 per cent increase in crimes against transgender and nonbinary folks in just one year.

This increase in violence has thrived in the context of growing public hostility towards trans people. The BBC article reports: “Transgender people have their existence debated on a near daily basis across U.K. media, and several activists believe this negative attention reinforces the poor treatment they receive on our streets.”

Community data

Despite the lack of police data, there has been some research into the struggles faced by trans Canadians. In 2013, the Trans PULSE Project published results of a survey of 433 trans Ontarians. Their report said, “experiences of transphobia were nearly universal among trans Ontarians, with 98 per cent reporting at least one experience of transphobia.”

Another survey conducted by Egale in 2011, which surveyed 3,700 LGBTQ students across Canada, reported that 74 per cent of trans students in Canada faced verbal harassment and 37 per cent have faced physical harassment.

 

People cheer on participants of the 2016 Trans Pride March in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima

By not explicitly naming the violence, the state demonstrates complicity in the invisibility and violence that trans and nonbinary folks face.

When police institutions ignore the existence of hate crimes, it sets up an environment that enables more violence and harassment. Analyzing a series of police interviews, Perry and Scrivens found police were generally apathetic around the rising threat of far-right hate crimes.

They wrote: “In addition to the neglect paid to any known right-wing extremism presence, some police personnel deny — at least publicly — that there is any risk associated with the extreme-right. They trivialized their potential for growth and violence.”

Federal election

Election season is just around the corner, there is no better time to put the fire under the feet of our elected representatives.

In the meantime, Trans PULSE is conducting another large survey into the experiences of transgender and nonbinary folk. Share, and if applicable, participate. This is an opportunity to build a record of our experiences in the vacuum left in the wake of our exclusion from the institutional memory.

We need to have a collective conversation about the consequences of the widespread oppression and persecution many of us face when general anti-trans hostility is allowed to fester unacknowledged.

Author

Abigail Curlew

PhD Sociology, Carleton University

Disclosure statement

Abigail Curlew receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral fellowship and the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation (PETF) Doctoral Scholarship. She is affiliated with Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.

THE CONVERSATION 

LABOUR VICTORY FOR DIVERSITY IN PUTNEY, UK

'Every single day of the next parliament, 
I will fight for a better and more equal country'

By Sian Bayley 

Rosena Allin-Khan, Fleur Anderson and Marsha de Cordova,
who all won their seats for Labour in Wandsworth tonight.
Credit - Wandsworth Labour/Simon Hogg.

It’s been a dark and difficult night for the Labour Party who lost a number of seats in the General Election last night [December 12].

But Putney, on the banks of the Thames in the borough of Wandsworth, bucked the trend with a Labour gain to see three female Labour MPs elected in the borough.

Fleur Anderson took the seat for Putney, storming home with 22,718 votes compared to the Conservatives’ 18,006.

In her victory speech she thanked staff at the count and said her win was a “bright light in a dark night.”

Her victory saw the London borough of Wandsworth turn red after a huge campaigning effort that saw more than 700 volunteers out canvassing one night this week to win the constituency from the Conservatives.

She praised a “people powered campaign,” but acknowledged “Brexit will be damaging for Putney.”

She added: “We want to remain. Brexit will not be done by Boris Johnson, it will take years and years of negotiation.

“The Labour party must not stop in our efforts to block Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit. We could now be facing five more years of austerity, and that’s heartbreaking for all the people who supported us and all the people who voted for Labour.”

Marsha de Cordova was up next for Battersea, praising “one of the most energetic, organised and dynamic campaigns.”

She said: “Every single day of the next parliament, I will fight for a better and more equal country.”

However, she quickly lost her voice from the amount of talking she had been doing on the night.

She croaked to the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it had been a “good campaign,” in Wandsworth.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan concluded the night by holding on to Tooting for Labour, shouting “we have three red ladies in Wandsworth.”

She applauded the “unprecedented numbers of people of voting,” and said people were voting “with their heads and hearts against the division being stirred up by the Prime Minister.

“Tonight the message was read loud and clear, Tooting went out in the cold and in the rain to reject division and elect a pro-remain member of parliament. I am very grateful to everyone that put their faith in me.”

But acknowledging Labour’s defeats nationally, she said: “Tooting is disgusted with the cuts the NHS have seen, which is why they have voted for their local doctor. Tooting doesn’t want to lose more lives to violent crime, we want proper policing. Tooting needs genuinely affordable homes, not a government in the pocket of developers. The harsh reality is that tomorrow the food banks will be open. Record numbers of parcels will be handed out, and on Christmas Day, 3,000 children in Wandsworth will wake up homeless.

“Apart from Tooting electing the local woman who is willing to fight for them, there is little to celebrate tonight.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service at the end of the evening Ms Anderson said she hoped that having Labour MPs will force through change at Conservative-led Wandsworth council.

“It means something for the council. The Conservative council are being held to account even more now with three Labour MPs,” she said.

“The people of Wandsworth have said they prefer to have Labour.”

She added: “I will do everything to serve and to honour their vote. I will also be looking at the issues on Putney High Street, including air pollution.

“I can’t wait to start being an MP and to tackle some of the inequalities in our area. I will be working very much on Roehampton and opposing some of the worst parts of the regeneration.

Turnout was very high at 77.41 per cent compared to 72.1 per cent in 2017.

Battersea and Tooting also saw a high turnout, with 75.83 per cent and 76 per cent respectively.

Conservative candidates left swiftly after the results were announced. The Local Democracy Service has contacted them for comment.

 ---30---

VIDEO: Barrister arrested at St George's University during security guard strike

SOLIDARITY FOREVER 

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

By Riley Krause cavemankrause Reporter - Croydon & Merton

A barrister was arrested just hours into a protest outside St George's University of London on Monday morning.

Security guards at St George’s went on strike in protest at what their trade union has described as an “antiquated and discriminatory regime of outsourcing.”

During the industrial action, music was playing, horns were being blown and members from the union were handing out flyers outside the building.

But less than two hours into the first day of protests, police arrived at the scene.


Officers told the group that if they didn't move away from the building's entrance that they would "start nicking people" as they were "causing a nuisance."

At this point the music had stopped playing.

That was when lawyer Franck Magennis - who was part of the group protesting - stepped in to ask what was going on.

He questioned police about their right to stop the protest at the site and after a short discussion, was arrested.

"We are taking lawful industrial action as the security guards are in a dispute with their employer," Mr Magennis told the Wandsworth Times following his arrest.


"When I arrived on the scene there was no music and the police were trying to say, pursuant to legislation that we were trying to commit some specific crime that takes place on NHS property and they were threatening to arrest everyone.

"As a lawyer I stepped in and asked them to explain this and we were in the process of talking it through and one of the three elements of the offence requires you to be on NHS property without a reasonable excuse and committing a nuisance.

"So I was saying why do you think workers taking industrial action is not a reasonable excuse, he said ‘I’m not discussing it with you’ and I was saying they need to explain the offence and so he put his hand on my arm and arrested me."

Shortly after he was taken to a police van and after talking a bit more to the officers, he was taken out of the cuffs.

The group of protesters were however forced to leave the site less than two hours after the protest began.




So why are they protesting?

The workforce is outsourced to Noonan Services Group UK. Trade union United Voices of the World (UVW) are demanding that the workers be made direct employees of the university.

The workers currently only receive the statutory minimum in sick pay, annual leave allowance, maternity pay, paternity pay, and pension contributions.

Among those striking today was Cetin Avsar who has worked at the hospital for nearly two years.

He told the Wandsworth Times: "They treat us as if we’re nothing, like we're not human beings.

"All we want is to go in-house and we want he same benefits as the SGUL staff. "We want equal pay, respect, equality, everything because we don’t get any sick pay, no other benefits.


"The management haven’t even had the decency to sit down and listen to us. The duty of care is being ignored."

Another member of the security staff who was out protesting was Denis B M Darboh.

He echoed those same sentiments.

"It makes you feel down," he added.

"We work longer hours, we don’t get sick pay at all, if we’re ill we have to struggle to get in.

"We have to argue to get holidays. We get treated differently. We want to come in-house so that we are on the same level."



While the university has not yet responded to a request for comment, a letter obtained by the Wandsworth Times was handed out during the police action.


The letter was from Jenni Doman, deputy director, estates and facilities at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

It read: "I wanted to write to confirm the Trust's position on any strike and demonstration activity on site.

"As the site is private land including the perimeter road no industrial action can take place directly on any part of these areas.

As the landlord for your occupation this also includes the SGUL areas of occupation and all entrances and exits.

This is consistent with all Trust procedures in these instances.

"If this action is due to take place then this must be off site and all those participating in this must also be respectful to all those patients, visitors and staff/students visiting the site.

"If this is not followed them the Trust may take more formal action to remove anyone found not to be adhering to this."

A further 13 days of strikes had been planned throughout January and February.

POSTMODERN PAGANISM Scotland's largest puppet, a ten-metre tall sea goddess called Storm,

 

2/50 13 January 2020

Puppeteers from Vision Mechanic rehearsing with Scotland's largest puppet, a ten-metre tall sea goddess called Storm, in the grounds of the Museum of Flight, East Lothian. Made entirely from recycled materials, it was unveiled ahead of its debut at the Celtic Connections Costal Day celebrations in Glasgow this weekend

'Absolute unit': Escaped Highland cow delays trains after walking onto tracks

Commuters held up for around an hour after trespasser escapes country park

Jon Sharman

A hulking Highland cow held up train passengers near Glasgow after escaping from a country park, leading rail staff to dub the beast an “absolute unit”.

The disruption also set off a deluge of bad puns, with ScotRail pledging to get the escaped livestock “moooooved as soon as we can”.

Glasgow City Council, whose workers were dispatched to help, also got in on the action early on Tuesday morning after a number of the animals escaped from Pollok Country Park.

“The coos have been retrieved and moooved back to Pollok Park. Our cooncil team are working with rail staff to check where the breach in the fence is,” the local authority tweeted.

ScotRail released a still image from one of its CCTV cameras, and tweeted: “Absolute unit spotted on the track at Pollokshaws West. Sorry if you’re being delayed due to this.”

Video later posted by Network Rail Scotland showed the cow being led away from the tracks by a person holding a bucket of feed.

Commuters were delayed for about an hour.

The “absolute unit” meme originated on Twitter, when in 2017 a user posted an image of Goring Hotel managing director David Morgan-Hewitt alongside Queen Elizabeth II with the caption, ”in awe at the size of this lad. absolute unit”.

The phrase has since been used to describe any animal, person or even cuddly toy that is deemed remarkably large.

A Highland cow caused rush-hour delays to trains around Glasgow after escaping from a country park.

Rail operator ScotRail initially tweeted about “reports of a couple of Highland Cows on the railway line at Busby”, in East Renfrewshire, at 8.48am on Tuesday.

However, at least one of the animals, described as an “absolute unit”, was spotted on the tracks at Pollokshaws West, which is on the same line and near Pollok Country Park.

In a series of tweets, ScotRail said: “We’ve had reports of a couple of Highland Cows on the railway line at #Busby. We think they’re on the run from Pollok Park… We’ll get them moooooved as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.

“Absolute unit spotted on the track at Pollokshaws West. Sorry if you’re being delayed due to this.

“@NetworkRailScot track staff on their way to attempt to encourage these coos to mooove back to the park.

“It’s not safe to attempt to pass the area at the moment. In this picture, you can see trains on both tracks are being held. We really appreciate your patience if you’re on board either train or at a station waiting.”

We've moved the animal clear of the railway assisted by @GlasgowCC staff. @ScotRail services are returning to normal, though there is some disruption ongoing at Glasgow Central while trains which were unable to depart are moved from the station. pic.twitter.com/13Imucs0h1

— Network Rail Scotland (@NetworkRailSCOT) January 14, 2020

The firm also said “services are being disrupted into Glasgow Central High Level at the moment due to several line issues across the Network”.

Network Rail said: “Our teams are beginning to arrive on site to deal with this issue and mooove this Highland Coo so trains can run again safely.”

The organisation then posted a video showing the animal being enticed off the line with a bucket of food.

A Glasgow City Council spokeswoman said the cow had been “retrieved safely” by staff from the park just before 10am.

She added the council was in contact with ScotRail to determine where the creature “breached the fence” and was also checking if it was more than one animal, with reports of a cow’s appearance in Busby.

---30---

Indonesian mayor orders anti-LGBT+ police raids amid wall-to-wall coverage of UK serial rapist case

The plans will increase the risk of persecution, human rights official warns

Adam Withnall Asia Editor @adamwithnall

Reynhard Sinaga is described as Britain's most prolific rapist ( GMP/PA )

Police are to be sent on anti-LGBT+ raids in an Indonesian city after a man was jailed for drugging and raping dozens of men in Britain.

Responding to the convictions against Manchester-based Indonesian student Reynhard Sinaga, the mayor of Depok in West Java said he wants officers to prevent “the spread of LGBT” and “protect the children”.

British police believe Sinaga attacked 195 men and prosecutors described him as “the most prolific rapist in British legal history”.

The student is reported to have family ties to Depok and the case has received widespread coverage across Indonesian media.

Plans to storm the homes of LGBT+ people, announced by Depok mayor Mohammad Idris, have been condemned by the national human rights commission.

Reynhard Sinaga: Most prolific rapist in UK history jailed
Show all 11





Mr Idris, who is reportedly known for his anti-LGBT+ statements, said he had sympathy for Sinaga’s family and wants to set up centres to assist those he called “victims” in his community.

After the plans were published on the city’s official website, they were criticised by the head of the National Commission on Human Rights, Beka Ulung Hapsara.

Mr Hapsara said such raids would “increase the risk of persecution and other law-defying acts”. The commission said it had also written to the Depok government to express its concerns.

Watch more
 

Mother of Britain’s most prolific rapist says ‘he’s still my baby’
 

The rape drug we should be worried about isn't GHB – it's alcohol

 

More victims of UK’s most prolific rapist come forward, police say

Amnesty International condemned what it called “the latest vicious campaign against LGBT+” people in Indonesia, and said there “can be no justification for these hateful raids”.

“The authorities in Indonesia repeatedly launch humiliating crackdowns on suspected same-sex activity, and misuse laws against loitering or public nuisance to harass and arrest [LGBT+] people,” said Usman Hamid, Amnesty International Indonesia’s director.

Homosexuality is not regulated by law in Indonesia, except in Aceh province where Islamic law bans same-sex relations.

But the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation has recently seen a rise in hostility towards the LGBT+ community. Nearly 90 per cent of Indonesians who understand the term LGBT+ feel “threatened” by the community, and believe their religion forbids same-sex relations, according to a 2018 survey.

Such sentiment has been fuelled in part by government officials and public figures. A study last year found almost 50 anti-LGBT+ statements were made on record by authority figures in a single month.

Dede Oetomo, an Indonesian LGBT+ activist, said the community was braced for hysteria over the Sinaga case, with media often ignoring requests to avoid making the convicted rapist’s sexuality the focus of their coverage.

A 22-year-old Depok resident who identifies as bisexual said the planned raids would “violate private spaces” and waste public money.