As Poland’s Duda seeks election ‘Trump bump,’ Putin looks to revise history

June 26, 2020 · By The World staff
Producer Joyce Hackel

US President Donald Trump holds a joint news conference with Poland's President Andrzej Duda in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, DC, June 24, 2020.
Credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters

US presidents don’t usually meet with world leaders days before a presidential vote. But this week, President Donald Trump welcomed President Andrzej Duda of Poland to the White House just ahead of Poland's national election this Sunday, in which the conservative Duda is running a tough reelection bid.

From the Rose Garden, Trump, a Republican, did his best to give Duda a "Trump bump."

"I do believe he has an election coming up and I do believe he’ll be very successful," Trump said.

Related: Young people in Poland are rediscovering their Jewish roots

From her vantage in Warsaw, author Anne Applebaum says Duda’s photo-op with Trump might have gained him points at home. Or it might be a gamble that doesn’t pay off.

"... it was a kind of clear intervention in the election."Anne Applebaum, historian and author

"Those in his party thought that this meeting would be a kind of slam dunk reason to vote for him, and they played it up as a great diplomatic success," Applebaum said. "Those who aren't going to vote for him thought it was a very strange thing for the American president to do. I mean, it was a kind of clear intervention in the election. There was no other purpose to the meeting. There was nothing achieved. There were no documents signed. It was a long trip to get a photograph."

Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and expert on central and Eastern Europe. Her forthcoming book is called "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Allure of Authoritarianism." Applebaum spoke with The World's Marco Werman about the presidential meeting and Trump's indication he may move US troops out of Germany to Poland — and how Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts at historical revisionism play into security considerations on NATO's eastern flank.

Related: How Russia laid the groundwork for future disinformation campaigns

Marco Werman: The two presidents have met one-on-one five times in recent years, three times at the White House. How do you understand their alliance? What can they actually do for each other?

Anne Applebaum: [From] Trump's point of view, Duda is useful because he's one of the few European leaders who openly admires him and openly wants to be around him and be seen with him. Most of the others have now become pretty wary. From Duda's point of view — look, the United States remains very popular in Poland. NATO is very popular. And so from Duda's point of view, it makes him seem like he's close to the United States. Of course, this is incredibly risky from Duda's point of view, because the next president, if it's not Trump, might feel very differently about Poland.

Duda has also been pushing for additional US troops in Poland. He's offered to build a Fort Trump in Poland. And just this week, President Trump confirmed he has plans to move more than 9,000 US forces out of Germany, sending some — not clear how many — to Poland. So if that does happen, what will be the upshot for NATO and security on Europe's eastern flank?


Everybody in Europe would like to see the US commit more troops and be more present. The disturbing piece of the story is that it seems as if Trump's reasoning for moving troops out of Germany isn't to do with security or to do with calculations about where those troops would best be placed. It seems like it's some kind of revenge against Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who refused to come to Washington recently, saying that she didn't think the timing was good and it wasn't a good moment to have an international meeting in the middle of the pandemic.





Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu leave after the Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2020. The military parade, marking the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, was scheduled for May 9 but postponed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Credit:

Ekaterina Shtukina/Sputnik/Pool via Reuters

So from the West, Trump talks about pulling out of NATO. In the east, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been offering up a revised history lesson. Putin just published in a conservative magazine a 9,000-word essay on World War II, defending the Soviet non-aggression pact with Hitler. He describes the occupation of Baltic states as "with consent." How is it going over in Eastern Europe?


What he's referring to is the Hitler-Stalin Pact. The two dictators actually divided Europe up between them. And so Hitler invaded western Poland. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland. And Putin now wants to rewrite that piece of history and somehow imply that it was Poland's fault, that Poland got invaded and that it was somehow the Baltic states agreed to be invaded. There is no historical justification for it at all. Nobody is sure why it is that Putin has chosen to make this argument right now. I think it's part of a bigger effort that he's been making in recent years to rewrite the history of the 20th century in order to make the Soviet Union more heroic and to make our memories of it more heroic and triumphant.

Related: This pact between Hitler and Stalin paved the way for WWII

Putin's essay was being pushed precisely during this week of the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow, which was postponed because of the coronavirus. Is Putin in a position to celebrate "great power status" at this moment?


The kind of argument he's been making to the Russian people over the last several years is, "OK, your wages are not going up. The economy is not great. There's a lot of corruption. But I'm making Russia great again. I am restoring Russia. I'm putting her back in the center of world politics where she belongs. And you should keep me in power for that reason." But the point of your question is correct. Russia remains a very dangerous, but medium-sized power. The Russian economy is weak, and it's weakened partly by low oil prices. But it's also weakened by really profound corruption and very profound inequality as well, which has caused a lot of discontent. There have been, just under the radar, on and off over the last couple of years, quite a lot of protests and a lot of dissent, not just in the big cities, not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but all over the country. And he's very anxious to damp that down.

Related: Coronavirus postponed Russia's Victory Day. For Putin, it's a problem.

I'm just curious. In Warsaw, is talk of this revisionist history making Poles at all nervous?


So whenever the Russians start to revise history, Russia's neighbors become nervous because Russia has used historical revisionism as an excuse to invade its neighbors in the past. Right now, that seems unlikely. It doesn't seem that Russia wants to pick a fight with the United States and with NATO at this exact moment. But, you know, we began this conversation by talking about the American president's weak commitment to NATO. Maybe this is something that Putin sees in the future he'll be able to take advantage of.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Former US ambassador: Israel would be 'making itself an international outlaw' with West Bank annexation
June 26, 2020 · By The World staff

A general view picture shows a section of Itamar, a Jewish settlement, in the foreground as Nablus is seen in the background, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank June 15, 2020.
Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israel continues to push forward with plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Israel has occupied the territory on the west bank of the River Jordan since 1967. Decades of talks between Israelis and Palestinians have left the territory's status unresolved.

The annexation process could start as soon as next week, despite widespread condemnation from Palestinians, US-Arab allies and numerous foreign governments. But the Israeli government's plan is bolstered by the Trump Administration’s peace plan released earlier this year, which indicates that the United States would be supportive of annexation.

At a UN Security Council meeting Wednesday, Secretary-General António Guterres called on Israel to abandon its plans, calling this “a watershed moment.”

"If implemented, annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law, grievously harm the prospect of a two-state solution and undercut the possibilities of a renewal of negotiations," said Guterres.

Related: Palestinian analyst says Trump's Middle East peace plan is a 'scam'

Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, is currently a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He spoke with The World to discuss the urgency behind Israel's push for annexation.

Marco Werman: What exactly is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considering here?

Martin Indyk: Starting on July 1, according to the government agreement that he signed with his partner, alternate prime minister Benny Gantz, he can bring to the cabinet a decision on annexation. [He] doesn't have to do it on July 1, but that opens the door to him doing it. Under the Trump plan, Israel would be able to annex 30% of the West Bank, which would include all of the Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley. That has never been proposed in any peace plan up till now.

Related: Israeli plans for annexation weigh heavily on Jordan Valley residents

The territory that Israel intends to annex is mainly in areas with Jewish settlements. But these areas also include Palestinian populations, so what would be their legal status?


It's unclear. It hasn't been specified as to what would happen to them. If he does the full annexation, then he would absorb something like 10,000 Palestinians who would be in those areas. There's talk about him doing a partial annexation, which could be all of the 131 settlements, but not the Jordan Valley.

Why now? What's the rush?

The rush is determined by the fact that there's an election in the United States. And if Israel goes ahead, Trump has indicated that he would recognize that annexation. The fear is that Trump will no longer be president after November and [former] Vice President [Joe] Biden [the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate] has already made it clear that not only would he not recognize it, but he might well withdraw the recognition.

Related: Israel's Arab citizens contemplate their future under the Trump peace plan

If Israel does end up going ahead with its annexation, what would be the international response?


Well, we've already heard from some European states, in particular British, French and Germans, that there will be consequences. They're not saying sanctions, but they are indicating that there will be consequences. The international community could, of course, try to pass resolutions in the Security Council. But as long as the United States is opposed to that, it would exercise its veto and protect Israel. It could go to the UN General Assembly, that's a much more difficult process. Overall, though, Israel will be in effect, making itself an international outlaw.

Related: Jared Kushner's peace plan that nobody loves

When you scrape away all the diplomacy, what is the American interest here? I mean, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday it was up to Israel to decide, even though it was the Trump plan that set things in motion. Why should this matter to Americans?


Secretary of State Pompeo's statement is, I think, a trick designed to suggest that the onus is on Israel when this wouldn't be happening if the United States wasn't prepared to green light it, and indeed under the agreement between Netanyahu and Gantz, they can't go ahead unless the United States green lights it. So it will very much be a Trump decision, not just an Israeli decision. Donald Trump is doing Israel no favor by encouraging it to go down this path, the path of annexation rather than separation from the Palestinians.

You were deeply involved in pursuing the two-state solution and keeping it alive personally. How would you feel about annexation and essentially the end of the two state solution?


After the last negotiations that I was responsible for under President [Barack] Obama, I could say that there was no way that a two-state solution is going to come about in my lifetime. So I've kind of come to terms with that. But I have felt very strongly that it's important, as I say, for Israel's future, that the option of a two-state solution be kept alive. For me, that is not just a sad moment, it's a tragic moment. Tragic for the Palestinians as well.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

As more journalists stand trial in Turkey, the truth becomes more elusive

Turkey is often cited by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the world’s largest jailer of media personnel in the world, alongside China and Egypt.

The World

June 26, 2020 · 4:30 PM EDT
By Durrie Bouscaren



A man reads a newspaper on a bench in Istanbul.
Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World

For nine hours on Wednesday, Özge Terkoğlu sat in the gallery of a Turkish courtroom hearing testimony against her husband, Barış Terkoğlu, the news director of OdaTV, an online TV channel.

Watching her husband take the stand, she fretted about his weight loss over the past three months he spent in prison.

Barış Terkoğlu is one of seven journalists from various media outlets facing charges over their coverage of the deaths of Turkish intelligence officers in Libya. An eighth defendant, a municipal worker in the western Turkish town of Akhisar, is accused of supplying pictures to the journalists of the funeral of one of the dead intelligence officers.

Related: Maria Ressa: Duterte's 'weaponization of the law' is a threat to democracy

The deaths weren’t a secret — it was discussed in Turkey’s parliament and on social media. But these writers were accused of breaking state secrecy laws; the charges were deemed so serious that even during the pandemic, the journalists could not be released. Instead, they languished alone in their cells.

It’s just the most recent example of how freedom of the press continues to shrink in Turkey — and the intense political pressure facing journalists to toe the line.


“He’s very courageous in terms of writing on topics that are very hard to touch, that disturb people that have power. All those things that we have to go through as a family, we can handle it. But we don’t deserve it.”Özge Terkoğlu, wife of jailed journalist

“He’s very courageous in terms of writing on topics that are very hard to touch, that disturb people that have power,” Özge Terkoğlu said of her husband. “All those things that we have to go through as a family, we can handle it. But we don’t deserve it.”

Turkey is often cited by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the world’s largest jailer of media personnel in the world, alongside China and Egypt.

Just this week, 19 Turkish journalists and media workers were scheduled for hearings for various offenses (including those on trial for breaking state secrecy laws), according to Expression Interrupted, a free speech tracking project. If things go as usual, some reporters will be released, others will pay fines and some cases will drag on for years.

Related: How Turkey's Erdoğan went from populist hero to strongman

In Terkoğlu’s case, the judges returned on Wednesday with a decision around 10 p.m. Three of the journalists, including Terkoğlu, were released while their trial continues. The others will likely remain in prison until the next hearing, which is scheduled for September.



Özge Terkoğlu and her husband, Barış Terkoğlu, are pictured with their young son.
Credit:Courtesy of Özge Terkoğlu

The ambiguity of the law and irregularity of how it is imposed is enough to make anyone rethink the work they do. Some reporters leave the industry or move abroad. Others establish alternative outlets online, like OdaTV.

Little by little, political influence is reshaping how Turkish readers understand news about Turkey and its relationship with the world.

“Maybe 95% of national media, especially newspapers and TV stations, are owned by media companies that are close to the government,” said Eylem Yanardağoğlu, an associate professor of New Media at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “What we call ‘mainstream media’ has almost disappeared.”

On any given newsstand in Turkey, a casual reader will find several national newspapers with various political bents. On TV, viewers can flip through multiple news channels, including CNN’s Turkish affiliate. It’s easy to get the impression that Turkey has a healthy, diverse media environment, but this does not reflect reality, Yanardağoğlu said.

This media consolidation ramped up as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began to crack down on political rivals after the Gezi Park protests in 2013. At the time, network TV stations famously showed nature documentaries to avoid covering the events. Journalists who did venture out to cover the protests suffered injuries by police and threats from government officials, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Three years later, following a bloody coup attempt on July 15, 2016, media arrests reached a nadir. At least 81 journalists were jailed in retaliation for their work the highest number in any one country counted at any time, according to CPJ.

“Using your pen to serve international smear campaigns is not journalism,” Erdoğan claimed in 2017, after coming under fire for the number of reporters languishing in Turkish jails.

Traditional media used to protect the public’s right to reliable information in Turkey, said Yanardağoğlu. Today, journalists who don’t toe the political line get pushed to alternative websites and social media, where the pay is lower, but there’s more freedom.


“This is creating new debates: Whose job is it to tell the truth? And is it the truth?” Eylem Yanardağoğlu, Kadir Has University

“This is creating new debates: Whose job is it to tell the truth? And is it the truth?” Yanardağoğlu said.

As Turkey’s digital news organizations jockey for flashy news that gets clicks, the reliability of online content suffers. Dedicated fact-checking organizations try to create some semblance of order, but it has become more challenging for everyday readers to discern truth from propaganda. Even a Turkish-language news service funded by the Russian government has attained a level of popularity, due to its ability to freely criticize Erdoğan.

Outside the courthouse, a group of colleagues and supporters of journalists on trial stood in the sun under a banner that depicts portraits of the six arrested writers with a cartoon of pencils turned into cell bars.


“Every single morning, believe me, you wake up at 4 in the morning listening to the door and wondering if [the police] are about to come to get you.” Zafer Arapkirli, journalist

“Every single morning, believe me, you wake up at 4 in the morning listening to the door and wondering if [the police] are about to come to get you, said Zafer Arapkirli, a former BBC presenter who now hosts his own online news program.

He wears a face mask with the phrase “susmayacağız” written over his mouth, which means “we will not be silent.”

“I’ve been working as a journalist in this country for 43 years now. And we’ve gone through these sorts of stages … where journalists were … silenced, where all sorts of democratic institutions were … crushed. But in the end, democracy will win,” he said. “We believe in democracy.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

'American exceptionalism': EU travel bans show US is abdicating global leadership, former CDC head says

The European Union is set to reopen its borders starting July 1. Right now, the bloc is still deciding who it wants to let in, and it does not look like people from the US will be among them. 

June 26, 2020 · By The World staff Producer Christopher Woolf

As countries around the globe start to reopen, the big question is how to do it safely. 

The European Union is set to reopen its borders starting July 1. Visitors from the US and Russia are among those that are restricted from entering Europe, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Earlier reporting this week from The New York Times that alluded to that prompted Dr. Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to tweet, "This is not what American exceptionalism is supposed to mean." 

This is not what American exceptionalism is supposed to mean. Until the US gets control of this virus, we will face barriers to travel and economic recovery. https://t.co/et7Dn7tdcC

— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) June 23, 2020

Frieden headed the CDC from 2009 to 2017. He's now president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, which focuses on preventing deaths from cardiovascular disease in low- and middle-income countries. Frieden joined The World's host Marco Werman from New York to talk about the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic. 

Related: Nicholas Burns: US' 'unusual absence' from world stage is bad for Americans

Marco Werman: Dr. Frieden, an interesting way to frame American exceptionalism. What did you mean in your tweet when you said that this is not what that's supposed to mean? 

Tom Frieden: Well, there's debate about what American exceptionalism is and different visions of it. But it was never supposed to mean that we continue to have tens of thousands of cases of COVID-19 disease every single day while Europe has essentially beaten the curve, and countries around the world are doing much better than we are. The key point here is that it's not a question of health versus economics. The only way we're going to get our economy back is to be guided by and fully support public health, so we can keep COVID-19 in its place and we can have more space in society. 

What do you make of the fact that this list puts the US in the same company as Russia and Brazil? Does that mean the US, Brazil and Russia, we're all at the bottom of the barrel? 

There are a lot of countries that aren't doing a good job, and there are a fair number of countries that are doing a really good job. I think the key is for us to continuously improve our response. We have great health departments around the country. We have very committed public health professionals. Congress has provided substantial resources. Now, we need to scale up our programs and show that we, too, can turn the tide and make huge progress against this pandemic. 

In parts of this country, we've done it. If you look at New York, New Jersey, many other places in the US, we have seen a huge decrease in cases. Now, we have to keep that up so we don't have large spikes. We know there are going to be clusters. That's inevitable. That's why we need really good public health systems to find those clusters early and stop them before they become outbreaks. That's what has to happen for us to be safer and for us to get our economy back. 

When you speak with colleagues overseas dealing with the pandemic, what do they say about how the US has handled the crisis? 

I get emails and text messages from all over the world just kind of shaking their head. What is happening? Why has the US response been so ineffective? Why isn't contact tracing scaled up? Why in the world has mask-wearing become a political statement in some places and for some people? I would say there's a kind of sadness and disbelief when people look at what's happening in the US now.

The US has for decades been a leader in global health. And now it's seen — unfortunately, accurately — as a laggard. I point out the need for federal leadership. I point out that public health has not failed in this pandemic. What has failed is the politicians' willingness to listen to public health advice and be guided by and support public health, because everywhere in the world where that is done, their communities do better. Fewer deaths and less economic destruction and devastation. 

How do you think the US handling of the pandemic is changing the way this country is seen around the world?

Well, I think it's done a lot of damage to our reputation as a leader, to our reputation as a country that could not only handle things here, but be relied on globally. When I think back to Ebola, the US led the global charge to protect the countries of West Africa and stop the epidemic there successfully. Now, the US is really not in that role.

Saying that we're going to leave WHO in the middle of a pandemic is not a sensible thing to do. Certainly, WHO needs to be better, but they're essential. And turning our backs on them is not going to help at this time. The US has a wonderful history of pragmatic, effective public health and political leadership. And if we get back to that, we can control this pandemic and the next one that comes along as well. 

I mean, you look at China, they recently had a cluster of more than 150 new COVID cases in Beijing. Officials sealed off neighborhoods, they launched a mass testing campaign, imposed travel restrictions. In the meantime, here in the US, we're getting reports that President Donald Trump wants to close 13 federally run testing centers just as infections are spiking in several states. Again, maybe the answer is obvious, but how does the US emerge from this and get on the list of responsible countries?

If we do the right thing, we'll get on the right list. I got an email this morning from a colleague in Australia. Incredibly impressive. They've got a cluster. They're ramping up testing. They're doing very intensive work. And really, the tale of two countries is the United States and South Korea. We've both had our first cases on Jan. 20.

If you had moved from the US to South Korea on that date, you would have been 70 times less likely to get killed by COVID-19. And these days, Korea is having 30 cases a day and they're really concerned about it. They're ramping up their efforts to clamp down on the virus. We have 30,000 cases, and there's still debate about whether people should wear masks. It's a little mind-boggling. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

SCOTUS rules some rejected asylum-seekers can't challenge decisions


The ruling says immigrants denied asylum under streamlined proceedings, cannot contest that decision in court.


June 25, 2020 · By The World staff Producer Amulya Shankar

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that immigrants denied asylum under streamlined proceedings cannot contest those decisions in court.

The case involved a Sri Lankan farmer named Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a member of the Tamil ethnic minority, who said he feared persecution. The justices ruled in favor of the Trump administration in its appeal of a lower court ruling that Thuraissigiam had a right to have a judge review the government's handling of his asylum bid.

The ruling, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, found that limiting judicial scrutiny in this rapid deportation case, known as expedited removal, did not violate key safeguards of individual liberty in the US Constitution. It is likely to impact thousands of potential asylum-seekers, who already face long odds in gaining asylum.

Related: Trump proposes harsh asylum rules disqualifying many applicants

Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, spoke with The World's host Marco Werman about the implications of the ruling.

Marco Werman: Explain what the Supreme Court actually upheld today and start, if you would, with these expedited hearings for asylum-seekers. What do they look like and how are they being used?


Sarah Pierce: When asylum-seekers come to the United States, whether that be to a port of entry or crossing the border illegally, as the Sri Lankan national did here, they're subject expedited removal proceedings, under which they're deported from the country without seeing a judge within at most a few weeks. While they're in those proceedings, they can claim a fear of returning to their home countries. And that triggers a preliminary asylum interview, also called a credible fear interview. The Sri Lankan national here had that credible fear interview and was denied. And he seeks to have a federal court review that denial. But there's a statute, a law, in place saying that federal courts could not review these decisions. And so he was contesting the constitutionality of that law, which the Supreme Court then upheld today.

To contest the constitutionality, he was basically bringing in a habeas corpus petition. How unusual is that at asylum proceedings?


It is unusual. A lot of these asylum-seekers don't yet have attorneys. They have not been in the United States a long time and they don't have the resources to go through with this full federal court review. But it definitely happens whether they're trying to get the facts of their case reviewed or if they think that they were denied on a legal error.

Related: US and Mexico are blocking kids from asking for asylum because of coronavirus

What was the rationale for this decision, then, at the Supreme Court today?


The Supreme Court ultimately found that foreign nationals like this one, who are detained shortly after entering the country illegally, they don't enjoy as many constitutional protections as other individuals in the United States. This is a pretty big hit for foreign nationals. They're saying that Congress and the executive, the political branches of our government, have the power to determine the rights that these individuals enjoy and they can't depend on the Constitution. So the fear is that this opinion could be expanded to take away other rights for this group of individuals.

Generally, how hard is it to be granted asylum in the US right now? Has it gotten more difficult because of the pandemic?


During the pandemic, it's essentially impossible if you're talking about asylum at the southern border because of the order that came down from the CDC. Anyone approaching the southern border is being expelled from the country rather quickly. The only individuals who are able to seek refuge in the United States during this kind of black hole period of the pandemic are those who proactively state to US Border Patrol agents that they have a fear of torture in their home country if they fear persecution or anything else, they still will be expelled as quickly as possible.

This interview has been condensed and edited. Reuters contributed reporting.

Centuries ago, Spanish writers challenged gender norms and barriers


Portrait of Sor Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), a nun of New Spain (Mexico) and contributor to the Spanish Golden Age. Credit:Miguel Cabrera/Wikimedia Common

Think "Spanish literature" and you might come up with "Don Quixote," by Miguel de Cervantes. But there's so much more to classic Spanish lit than "Man of La Mancha."

That’s the focus of "Both Wise and Valiant," an exhibition at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, which looks at some of the most important — but largely ignored — women writers of Spain's 16th and 17th centuries. The exhibit opened in March but closed due to COVID-19. Now the exhibit has reopened and will be on display through September.

“What is surprising is that we haven't known many of these female writers until very recently."Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez, curator

“What is surprising is that we haven't known many of these female writers until very recently. They are better known now, in the academic world, but not so much for the greater public. I think that’s something we have to keep working on, and that’s the idea of this exhibition,” said curator Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez, who is also a professor at the University of Iowa.

Related: In a new MoMA audio guide, security guards are the art experts





Catalina de Erauso, a writer known as "The Lieutenant Nun."
Credit:

Attributed to Juan van der Hamen/Wikimedia Commons

Rodríguez-Rodríguez explained that many of the women writers of the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain were nuns.

“In the convent, which you usually see as a space of confinement and lack of freedom — which it was, in many occasions for many of these women — at the same time, it opened up the opportunity to be in touch with books, in touch with time,” she said.

Life in a convent could provide surprising privileges often not accessible to other women.

“If you’re a woman who has to get married and is a mother or a wife, it’s not proper that you spend a lot of time writing, on reading and thinking about culture...” Rodríguez-Rodríguez explained.

Related: Barcelona opera reopens to full house — of plants

Some of the featured figures in the exhibit challenged norms around gender expression. Rodríguez-Rodríguez points to a writer known as ”The Lieutenant Nun,” Catalina de Erauso. De Erauso was born a woman in Spain and was confined at a young age to a convent, but escaped to the American colonies to live as a man — and as a soldier.

“Catalina de Erauso is one of these fascinating characters that we still need to keep thinking about and discussing because I think this person teaches us many different lessons, that they are good for our understanding of gender, even nowadays,” Rodríguez-Rodríguez said.





María de Zayas, novelist of the Spanish Golden Age
Credit:

Wikimedia Commons

Also featured in the exhibit is the friendship between novelist María de Zayas and playwright Ana Caro. Both were successful writers of the Spanish Golden Age who, nevertheless, faced many barriers because of their gender. To overcome those limitations, they promoted each other’s work in their own writing.

“I think that that’s a wonderful example of female solidarity in the middle of oppression — which is what they really had to go through,” Rodríguez-Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez-Rodríguez hopes the exhibit will help people rediscover these writers outside of academia.

Related: Art, poetry and ... zombies? The surprising cultural contributions of the 1918 influenza pandemic

“The canon has been very male-oriented for forever … or until very recently. It’s really time to make these women known — not only because they are women, but because they offer us wonderful texts, high-quality texts we have been missing since we have studied this time period,” said Rodríguez-Rodríguez. “This is a way we can make some change and give them the fair treatment they have been missing for centuries.”

As Lebanon’s financial crisis worsens, migrant workers are being dumped on the streets like ‘trash’


Human rights advocates say the migrants have little to no recourse, and that the situation is bound to deteriorate further as more people in the country cannot afford to pay domestic workers. The coronavirus restrictions also complicate matters.

June 26, 2020 · By Rebecca Collard

Ethiopian domestic workers wearing masks sit together with their belongings in front of the Ethiopian consulate in Hazmiyeh, Lebanon, June 8, 2020.  Credit: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

Outside the Ethiopian Embassy in Beirut, a dozen women gather under a small overhang to shelter from the sun. Their suitcases and bags are stacked against the wall. On the ground sits a piece of cardboard with “we want to go home” written in their native Amharic.

Until a few weeks ago, most of the women were living and working inside Lebanese homes as cleaners or caretakers of children and the elderly. But in recent weeks, as Lebanon’s economic crisis worsens, around 100 Ethiopian women have been dumped at the Ethiopian Embassy by their Lebanese employers.

Human rights advocates say these women have little to no recourse, and that the situation is bound to deteriorate further as more people in the country cannot afford to pay domestic workers. The coronavirus restrictions also complicate matters.

For the past two years, Masaret Shefara, who is from Ethiopia, has been working in the home of a family in Beirut. She made just $150 per month before the crisis. A few months ago, the family said they could no longer pay her and dropped her off at the embassy with no money and no way home.

Related: Lebanon's 'two crises': coronavirus and financial collapse

“I just want to go to Ethiopia,” she said, washing her feet and a pair of white socks with a bottle of water while other women rifled through their luggage nearby.

Most of the women have little or no cash. Some don’t even have their passports: Under a sponsorship system for migrant workers, which is known in the Middle East as kafala, employers in Lebanon often take the women’s passports away. Many have been sleeping outside the embassy.

There are around 250,000 domestic workers in Lebanon, which has a population of 6.8 million. Foreign workers from Africa and Asia have long traveled to Lebanon to do domestic jobs, lured by the promise of US dollars — hard and valuable currency that most workers send home to their families. The artificial peg of the Lebanese pound to the US dollar allowed even middle-class Lebanese with relatively low salaries to afford live-in, domestic help.

An Ethiopian woman looks through her bags outside the Ethiopian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Credit: Rebecca Collard/The World

But now, the Lebanese pound has lost three-quarters of its value against the US dollar.

That has sent the price of imported goods — which was already high — rising quickly. And it also means that employers like Shefara’s would now have to pay four times the amount in Lebanese pounds to get the US dollars they need to pay foreign staff. Lebanese pounds are useless in Ethiopia.

Employers say they simply can’t afford that.

Related: Foreign domestic workers stuck in Lebanon as economy spirals

Farah Salka, executive director of the Anti-Racism Movement in Lebanon, said the financial crisis has just brought attention to kafala, a racist system under which foreigners have been employed here for decades. Salka likens it to slavery.

“The sponsorship system allows you to employ a worker, they say, but basically it allows you to own a person in your house,” Salka said. “To make them work in whatever conditions you see fit.”

The kafala system ties a migrant worker’s immigration status to their employers as their sponsors.

Lebanese labor laws do not apply to foreigners hired under the kafala system, said Salka. That has left them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.


“Most of these sponsors are getting rid of their workers literally as though they are trash.”Farah Salka, Anti-Racism Movement in Lebanon

“Most of these sponsors are getting rid of their workers literally as though they are trash,” Salka said.

Many women are owed months of wages, and they have little recourse because they are in the country under the kafala system. Others have suffered forced confinement, physical and mental abuse — even rape. A 2008 Human Rights Watch report found that a domestic worker was dying every week in Lebanon — with suicide being the leading cause of death.

“Falling from high buildings,” a separate category, was the second.

“They need their money and they need to go back home,” Salka said.

But the Beirut airport is closed to regular traffic, due to COVID-19 measures. The women are stuck.

The World was not able to reach anyone at the embassy for a statement.

The Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on June 12 saying “making the recent surge in the number of COVID-19 patients in Ethiopia, attendees come to understand that Ethiopian migrants should be helped where they are to minimize the risk of infection,” but advocates say there has been little help.

Related: How Lebanon's 'WhatsApp tax' unleashed a flood of anger

Other women outside the embassy say they weren’t dropped here. Instead, they escaped from their employer’s house.

“I ran away here,” Asnagas Lelitho said. “I have my passport but no money.”

Lelitho hadn’t been paid in four months when she escaped and, like Shefara, she was only earning $150 per month. Minimum wage for Lebanese workers is around $450 per month.

Occasionally, people come by to try to lure the women to work in their homes, promising to pay in US dollars. No one is interested.

“I don’t want anything,” Lelitho said. “I just want to go to Ethiopia.”

Other Lebanese employers stop at the embassy to inquire about how they can send their domestic workers home. Some say they would never leave them outside the embassy.

“It’s terrible,” said one man stopping to inquire. “They're not animals.”



Former domestic workers from Ethiopia wait outside the Ethiopian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
Credit:

Rebecca Collard/The World

Under increasing pressure, Lebanon’s Ministry of Labor has promised to prosecute the employers who left women in front of the embassy. Employers “who left migrant workers stranded in front of the consulate will be punished by law and will be placed on a blacklist that prevents them from hiring foreign domestic workers again,” Labor Minister Lamia Yammine said in early June.

Ethiopian Airlines have organized repatriation flights, but most have simply no way to get the money. And the women would have to self-quarantine for two weeks once they reach Ethiopia, likely at a hotel — another monumental challenge.


“It’s a disaster. They can’t stay. They can’t leave. They can’t work. They can’t pay.”Farah Salka, Anti-Racism Movement in Lebanon

“It’s a disaster,” Salka said. “They can’t stay. They can’t leave. They can’t work. They can’t pay.”

Salka said it’s difficult to know how many women have been discarded by their employers with no way home, but it’s been hundreds this month alone. The majority are Ethiopian, but Lebanon also hosts tens of thousands more workers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and other African and Asian countries.

As the financial crisis worsens, more and more workers will be abandoned.

“What we are seeing at the Ethiopian consulate is only the tip of the iceberg of what is to come,” Salka said. “We are just at the beginning of the crisis. We haven’t even gotten midway yet.”

Education
Black history is ‘integral part’ of British culture, says Black Curriculum founder

What do students learn in the classroom about race and history? 

In the UK, an organization called The Black Curriculum has been pushing for Black history to be taught nationwide. June 24, 2020 ·By Amanda McGowan


A teacher reads children a story on the grounds of St. Dunstan's College junior school as some schools reopen following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in London, Britain, June 1, 2020. Credit: Simon Dawson/Reuters

Last Friday, the US celebrated Juneteenth — the day in 1865 when the news that slavery had ended finally reached Texas, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Many Americans probably did not learn the history of June 19 in school. But the protests that came together after George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis have brought attention to the way racism impacts every aspect of society — including what students learn in the classroom about race and history.

This reexamination isn’t just happening in the US. In the UK, an organization called The Black Curriculum has been pushing for Black history to be taught nationwide, as well as creating lesson plans and leading student workshops and teacher trainings.

Related: This African American in Ghana says making Juneteenth a federal holiday is a ‘small gesture.’ She urges police reform.

“In schools currently, the teaching of Black history is limited to Black History Month, which in the UK is in October,” said Lavinya Stennett, founder of The Black Curriculum.

theblackcurriculum

Our IGTV series, ‘Black British Women’ told the story of four inspirational women in Britain.
1. Olive Morris (top left) was a political activist, born in 1952 in Jamaica. Morris was an organisational and fighter against racism and sexism in the UK.
2. Lilian Bader (top right) was one of the first black women to join the British armed forces and was a Leading Aircraft-woman with the WAAF during WW2.
3. Mary Seacole (bottom left) was a nurse who greatly helped soldiers during the Crimean War.
4. Fanny Eaton (bottom right) is best known for her work as a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood between 1859-1867.
Did you enjoy our IGTV series? We now have a range of packages including podcasts, activities and animations available on our website! Visit www.theblackcurriculum.com/resources for more info

“What we see is a lack of narratives around Black people in Britain. That fundamentally is presenting a very false view of British history because we know Black people have been here since Roman times."Lavinya Stennett, founder, The Black Curriculum

“What we see is a lack of narratives around Black people in Britain. That fundamentally is presenting a very false view of British history because we know Black people have been here since Roman times,” she continued.

The Black Curriculum has created lessons around a number of topics in Black history, including arts and culture, migration, law and the environment.

Stennett says some of those were inspired by things she learned from her own culture but were never discussed in a school setting. She points to the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the largest street parties in Europe, which was created by a Black woman named Claudia Jones who was born in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I’m from a Jamaican background, and every year we have Notting Hill Carnival, and at home, we would play reggae music. So there were certain introductions in my personal life that I knew, in terms of my history and where it came from, but in terms of learning it at school there was no kind of introduction to that at all,” Stennett said. “That’s what our syllabus is about: It’s about bridging history with contemporary themes today.”

Related: Police reform requires culture change, not just diversity, advocates say

Stennett says learning this history in the classroom not only empowers students but also makes them excited to learn.

“When you’re confronted with new knowledge it can make you uncomfortable. But at the same time if you’re learning about your own identity and your own culture, it’s really powerful."Lavinya Stennett, founder, The Black Curriculum

“When you’re confronted with new knowledge it can make you uncomfortable. But at the same time if you’re learning about your own identity and your own culture, it’s really powerful,” she said.

Part of The Black Curriculum’s work recently has been to campaign for Black British history to be a nationwide requirement in schools. But Stennett says the organization received a response from the government Tuesday arguing that the national curriculum already provides teachers with the flexibility to teach Black history if they wish.

Stennett said the response was disappointing, but that The Black Curriculum’s work would continue.

“It just takes us back to why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Stennett said. “It’s really important that Black history’s not seen as an addition, but as an integral part of our culture. It’s British history. It’s not just for Black people and it’s not just about Black people. It’s about the nation and the future of Britain as well.”

Russia jails Pussy Riot manager for 15 days for petty hooliganism


June 22, 2020 ·
Producer Daniel Ofman
and The World staff

Anti-Kremlin activist Pyotr Verzilov poses for a photo before an interview with Reuters in Berlin, Sept. 28, 2018. Credit: Reinhard Krause/Reuters

A Moscow court jailed Pyotr Verzilov, an anti-Kremlin activist and associate of the Pussy Riot punk group, for 15 days on Monday after finding him guilty of petty hooliganism for swearing in public.

Verzilov, the publisher of the private MediaZona news outlet, was taken in for questioning by police on Sunday over a political rally last summer and held him for hours. He was attacked by an unknown male assailant after he was released.

Both men were later detained by police and Verzilov was charged with swearing in public, Verzilov's lawyer Leonid Solovyov was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying.

Writing on Twitter after his sentencing on Monday, Verzilov accused the police of staging the incident to provoke and jail him.

"The judge just sentenced me to 15 DAYS FOR SWEARING — but in actual fact, for a police provocation that included attacking me after being questioned for 13 hours in the Investigative Committee," Verzilov wrote in his Tweet.

TASS news agency cited a police source as saying Verzilov had planned to stage a prank on Wednesday when Russia marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II with a military parade on Red Square. Verzilov denied this in comments to the BBC's Russian Service.

Verzilov was one of four Pussy Riot activists who ran onto the pitch wearing police uniforms during the soccer World Cup final in Moscow in 2018, a stunt they said aimed to draw attention to human rights abuses.

Kirill Koroteev, a lawyer and the head of the International Practice of Agora, the group that has taken up Verzilov's case, spoke to The World's host Marco Werman about what happened.

Marco Werman: Kirill, before we get to the court case from earlier today, what is the timeline here? Just briefly explain what happened to Mr. Verzilov after he got arrested Sunday.


Kirill Koroteev: Police burst into his apartment. They broke the door. There he was arrested and taken to a police station where he was questioned for 13 hours approximately, without access to a lawyer, but then he was released. So he was walking away from the police station and noticed a person following him. And 10 minutes after his release, that person just attacked him, pushing him on the ground. That's when the police arrived and arrested him for the fight. Now, it turned out that the person who pushed Mr. Verzilov had no injuries, and only Mr. Verzilov had injuries. So, the police charged him with cursing in public instead.

So, let me get the straight. After 13 hours of interrogation, Verzilov was followed from the station. He was beaten up and then rearrested?

Exactly.

So, what was the verdict today in court?

The court sentenced him to 15 days in prison and decided not to hear the policeman who charged him and not to hear the person who attacked him. The court believed the police-written report saying that Verzilov cursed in public and the court did not believe Verzilov who said he didn't.

Why do you think this is happening right now to Pyotr Verzilov?

hat is happening is quite usual for the activists but the timing of his precise arrest is not very clear. It was rumored that he was going to stage some sort of interruption at the military parade on June 24, or at the voting on the constitution on July 1. But today in court, Pyotr Verzilov denied that and said he had no such intention.


What does this arrest and this whole ordeal tell you about the mindset of state authorities in Russia?

Well, during last year's Moscow protests and even previously, any major leaders would get arrested beforehand so that they spend the day of the protest in prison. It is quite a regular modus operandi for the Russian authorities. They just cannot operate otherwise than by breaching individual rights.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Reuters contributed to this report

Amid global protests, Jamaicans confront their own problems with policing 

Jamaica shares the US’ history of colonialism and slavery, and now has one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings. Activists there are thinking about what the global moment of police accountability could mean for their country. 


June 22, 2020 ·By Rupa Shenoy

People hold posters as they take part in a demonstration against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, at the Emancipation Park in Kingston, Jamaica, June 6, 2020. Credit: Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters


Earlier this month, Black Lives Matter protesters gathered outside the US Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, as part of the worldwide George Floyd protests.

The country’s historic newspaper, the Jamaica Gleaner, recorded the chants: “Say her name! Susan Bogle! Say her name! Susan Bogle!”

Bogle was a disabled woman in Jamaica who was allegedly accidentally killed by officers in her home two days after Floyd’s death in the US.

Related: This African American in Ghana says making Juneteenth a federal holiday is a ‘small gesture.’ She urges police reform.

“There is still a sense where people feel that they don’t get social justice,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in an address to the nation.

“The government will ensure that nothing in these matters will be hidden, nothing will be swept under the carpet. And that the social and economic status of the victim does not determine the outcome of justice.”Prime Minister Andrew Holness

“The government will ensure that nothing in these matters will be hidden, nothing will be swept under the carpet. And that the social and economic status of the victim does not determine the outcome of justice.”

Those reassurances were necessary because there are long-standing problems with policing in Jamaica. Human rights groups have found there’s a culture of fear, with officers carrying out extrajudicial killings, tampering with evidence and intimidating witnesses.

“To say that the Jamaican police is corrupt is not something that I have to say, and say, ‘Oh, don't say I said that,’ you know, that's openly acknowledged,” said Diana Thorburn, director of research at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute.

Related: ‘We need to talk about racism,’ these Middle Easterners say

She said that even though the police are widely seen as corrupt, many Jamaicans also believe the country needs law enforcement. Violent crime, pervasive in Jamaica, is fueled by, among other things, the country’s strategic location for smuggling drugs into the US. Just this month, two police officers were fatally shot by men with high-powered guns.

The incident horrified the public, Thorburn said, and reminded Jamaicans that in a society with one of the highest murder rates in the world, they need protection — even if it comes from a police force that’s had issues almost as long as it’s existed.


“Most analyses of the problem trace it back to the origins of the police force, which was as a colonial institution to keep down the formerly enslaved.”Diana Thorburn, Caribbean Policy Research Institute

“Most analyses of the problem trace it back to the origins of the police force, which was as a colonial institution to keep down the formerly enslaved,” she said.

The British used colonial Jamaica as a center for slave trading in the West Indies. Even after the country became an independent member of the British commonwealth in 1962, the historical disregard for Black life continued, said University of Pennsylvania professor Deborah Thomas, who has written books about human rights in Jamaica.

“It’s a hard sort of conceptual reality for Americans to understand, African Americans in particular, that you could have anti-Black violence in a majority-black country,” Thomas said. “But it doesn't go away because there's a Black person in power, because, in fact, the societies were built on this.”

Related: US protests highlight 'anti-black racism across the globe,' says South African political analyst

After Jamaica’s independence, the US stepped in, eager to make sure that a country in its backyard was secure during the Cold War. Then, during the war on drugs, Thomas said the US helped fund the militarization of Jamaica’s police. That drew international attention in May 2010, when the US pressured Jamaica to extradite the head of a gang who controlled a community called Tivoli Gardens, in Kingston.

Jamaica declared a state of emergency, and during the manhunt, police killed more than 70 people. Thomas directed a documentary about what happened at Tivoli and was surprised that the killings there weren’t a subject of conversation in Jamaica after Floyd’s death.


“The George Floyd stuff happens and people were going back and forth on social media about police violence in Jamaica, there wasn't really a robust conversation about Tivoli and/or a recognition that, in fact, this is what we're talking about — and this is the 10th anniversary exactly of this.”Deborah Thomas, University of Pennsylvania professor

“The George Floyd stuff happens and people were going back and forth on social media about police violence in Jamaica, there wasn't really a robust conversation about Tivoli and/or a recognition that, in fact, this is what we're talking about — and this is the 10th anniversary exactly of this,” Thomas said.

Instead, since Floyd’s and Bogle’s deaths, Holness has declared another state of emergency in response to violent crime, granting police powers to stop, search and detain residents without a warrant in certain areas.

Related: Video of police beating Indigenous chief fuels ongoing anti-racism protests in Canada

“These areas, if left unchecked, have shown historically that they can spiral to chaotic ends, even having national disruptive impact,” he said.

Meanwhile, there are fewer checks on police power. Jamaica’s Independent Commission of Investigations, which once arrested and prosecuted officers, no longer has that ability.

Rodje Malcolm, director of Jamaicans for Justice, said in the name of fighting crime, Jamaicans have given up on human rights for some people.

“But those people are viewed as expendable,” Malcolm said. “Those people are viewed as deserving it because they are from the communities where there is high crime.”

But in this global moment, sparked by Floyd’s death, Malcolm said Jamaicans might be able to consider other ways of policing that prioritize peace.

“It's possible a little bit more now because many Jamaicans can see in themselves as those Black people in the United States,” he said, “and it's simply about turning that gaze inwards to understand ... the ways that we perpetuate various similar systems and are OK with it.”