Police officer in Capitol riot died from natural causes, says coroner

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2021, file photo, a U.S. Capitol Police officer holds a program during a ceremony memorialising U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, as an urn with his cremated remains lies in honor on a black-draped table at the center of the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. © Demetrius Freeman, AP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

The police officer who died following the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of president Donald Trump in January was killed by two strokes, the Washington city coroner ruled Monday.

Brian Sicknick was one of five people, and the only police officer, who died in direct connection to the January 6 insurrection, when hundreds of pro-Trump rioters attacked and overran police to force their way into the seat of US government, shutting the building down.

Initial reports, later ruled incorrect, said Sicknick had been hit by a fire extinguisher. Later reports tied his death to being sprayed with chemical irritants like bear spray or pepper spray.

But the city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Monday that Sicknick, 42, had died from "natural" causes.

The official report attributed the Capitol Police officer's death to "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis" -- a particularly devastating form of stroke with a high death rate, caused by blockages in the brain.

It noted that he had been sprayed with a chemical substance at about 2:20 pm during the assault on Congress. At 10:00 pm, he collapsed at the Capitol and was taken to the hospital. Almost 24 hours later he died while still in the hospital.

The report made no link between the spray and Sicknick's collapse.

Francisco Diaz, the chief medical examiner, told The Washington Post there was no evidence that the officer had an allergic reaction to the chemicals, nor did he show any other internal or external injuries.

However, Diaz told the Post that "all that transpired played a role in his condition."

Sicknick's collapse and death supported widespread accusations that Trump and his followers had contributed to the death of a policeman, and the FBI had investigated those involved for possible murder charges.

Many of the hundreds arrested after the attack have been charged with assaulting and injuring dozens of law enforcement officials who were defending the Capitol.

Four others died that day. One woman, Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who embraced conspiracy theories, was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to break through a security door inside the Capitol. SINGLE SHOT TO THE HEAD FROM A DISTANCE AS IF SHE HAD BEEN SINGLED OUT

Last week the Washington federal prosecutor ruled that the officer was legally justified in opening fire on Babbitt.

Of the three others who died, two men suffered from heart attacks or strokes; while a woman died from an amphetamine overdose, according to the coroner's office.

 BS THE LAST ONE WAS CRUSHED TO DEATH ON THE RUSH FOR THE SAME DOORS THAT BABBITT WAS SHOT THROUGH

In the days after the attack on the Congress, two Capitol Police officers died by suicide.

(AFP

HAVE THE ICC TRY THEM

France ‘bears significant responsibility’ for Rwandan genocide, US report says

Issued on: 19/04/2021 - 

In this file photo taken on April 07, 2021 images of victims are displayed at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda. © Simon Wohlfarht, AFP

Text by: FRANCE 24

 
France "bears significant responsibility" for enabling the genocide in Rwanda and still refuses to acknowledge its true role in the 1994 horror, said a report commissioned by Kigali that was released Monday.

The damning report, commissioned in 2017 and running to nearly 600 pages, labels France a "collaborator" of the extremist Hutu regime that orchestrated the pogrom of some 800,000 people, and outright rejects the position that Paris was blind to their genocidal agenda.

The years-long investigation by US law firm Levy Firestone Muse said France knew a genocide was coming but remained "unwavering in its support" of its Rwandan allies, even when the planned extermination of the Tutsi minority was clear.

"It is our conclusion that the French government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide," states the Muse report, which drew on millions of pages of documents and interviews with more than 250 witnesses.

It found no evidence, however, that French officials or personnel directly participated in the killing of Tutsis.

France has long been accused of not doing enough to halt the massacres, and the Muse reports follows the publication last month of a separate inquiry into the same events commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Duclert Commission, named after the historian leading that investigation, concluded that France bore "overwhelming responsibilities" over the genocide and acknowledged a "failure" on its part, but no complicity in the killings.

But the Muse report asserts greater French culpability, saying the Duclert Commission stopped short of explaining what France was responsible for, and erred in concluding that Paris "remained blind" to the looming genocide.

"The French government was neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide," the report stated.

Paris and Kigali look forward to ‘new relationship’

More than a quarter of a century on the issue still poisons relations between France and Rwanda under President Paul Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel who has ruled the mountainous nation in Africa's Great Lakes region since the aftermath of the genocide.

Rwanda, a small but strategic country of 13 million people, is "ready" for a "new relationship" with France, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Vincent Biruta told AP.

"Maybe the most important thing in this process is that those two commissions have analysed the historical facts, have analysed the archives which were made available to them and have come to a common understanding of that past," he said. "From there we can build this strong relationship."

A top official in Macron's office on Monday welcomed the report as a "decisive step" which showed "the willingness expressed by Rwandan authorities to write a shared history and, above all, to look to a common future".

He also noted "unprecedented political trust" reached between Paris and Kigali as Rwandan officials have shown signs that they agree with the "irreversible rapprochement approach" taken by France.

Macron is considering traveling to Rwanda in the coming months, said the official, who spoke anonymously in accordance with the French presidency's policies.

'Indispensable collaborator'

The genocide between April and July of 1994 began after Rwanda's Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, with whom Paris had cultivated close ties, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6.

Within a few hours extremist Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis, and some moderate Hutus, with a scale and brutality that shocked the world.

Victims were felled with machetes, shot, or massacred while seeking shelter in churches and schools, while sexual violence was rife.

The Muse report said nobody worked closer with Habyarimana than France under then leader Francois Mitterrand, who was most to blame for the "reckless enabling" of the radical Hutu regime as it prepared for genocide.

France provided critical military and political support to the regime to protect its own strategic interests in Africa, the report said, and ignored internal warnings of a looming slaughter even as hateful rhetoric and violence against the Tutsi surged.

"Only the French government was an indispensable collaborator in building the institutions that would become instruments of the genocide. No other foreign government both knew the dangers posed by Rwandan extremists and enabled those extremists...", the report states.

"The French government's role was singular. And still, it has not yet acknowledged that role or atoned for it."

Kagame welcomed the recent Duclert Commission as "an important step toward a common understanding of what took place" but said a decades-long effort by France to avoid responsibility had caused "significant damage".

The Muse report accused France of concealing documents, obstructing justice and spreading falsehoods about the genocide in a deliberate campaign to "bury its past in Rwanda".

"The cover-up continues even to the present," the report added, saying French authorities refused to cooperate with their inquiry or turn over critical documents pertinent to their investigation.

Rwandans for too long "have watched the French government avoid the truth and fail to acknowledge its role and responsibility", it stated.

On April 7 - the 27th anniversary of the start of the genocide - France ordered the opening of key archives concerning the work of Mitterrand between 1990 and 1994, including telegrams and confidential notes that were sources in the Duclert investigation.

The Muse report noted that the recent disclosure of some documents related to the Duclert Commission suggested "a move toward transparency".

(FRANCE 24 with AFP & AP)

Russia says to launch own space station in 2025

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

Launched in 1998, the ISS is one of the most ambitious international collaborations in human history HO NASA/Roscosmos/AFP/File

Moscow (AFP)

Russia's space agency said Tuesday it hoped to launch its own orbital station in 2025 as Moscow considers withdrawing from the International Space Station programme to go it alone.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said work had begun on the fist module of a new station, after officials warned that Russia was considering pulling out of the ISS, one of the few successful examples of cooperation with the West.

The announcement came with tensions soaring over espionage claims, a Russian troop build-up along Ukraine's borders and the deteriorating health of President Vladimir Putin's imprisoned critic Alexei Navalny.

"The first core module of the new Russian orbital station is in the works," Rogozin said in a statement on messaging app Telegram.

He said Russia's Energia space corporation was aiming to have the module "ready for launch" in 2025 and released a video of Energia staff at work.

Launched in 1998 and involving Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency, the ISS is one of the most ambitious international collaborations in human history.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov said in recent days that Moscow was considering whether to leave the ISS programme from 2025 because of the station's age.

Roscosmos said on Monday that a decision on quitting the ISS had not yet been made.

"When we make a decision we will start negotiations with our partners on forms and conditions of cooperation beyond 2024," the space agency told AFP in a statement.

Russia lost its monopoly for manned flights to the ISS last year after the first successful mission of US company Space X.

Despite its much-lauded history -- Russia this month marked the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in orbit -- the country's space programme has struggled in recent years.

Rogozin has announced a series of ambitious plans in recent years but his agency has struggled under funding cuts, with analysts saying Putin is more interested in military technology than space exploration.

© 2021 AFP

The female trail-blazer shaking up Samoan politics

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

Fiame Naomi Mata’afa's fledgling party came from nowhere and is seeking Samoa's first change in government for almost 40 years

Handout Fa’atuatua I le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST)/AFP

Apia (Samoa) (AFP)

Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, a veteran powerbroker with ties to royalty, has taken the starring role in a Pacific island political drama that could see her unseat one of the world's longest-serving democratic leaders and become Samoa's first female prime minister.

In a plot twist that would have been unthinkable a year ago, the 64-year-old's fledgling FAST party came from nowhere to win 25 seats in the 51-member parliament in elections earlier this month.

With a sole independent set to determine its outcome, Mata'afa will need to be at her persuasive best during negotiations as she seeks Samoa's first change of government in almost 40 years.

But even if her leadership bid fails, the woman once referred to as "the devil" by current Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, has succeeded in transforming Samoan politics.

Malielegaoi's Human Rights Protection Party has ruled since 1982 and he has been in charge for 22 years.

Mata'afa, who served as his deputy before resigning last year, has helped forge a viable opposition in just nine months, ending decades of Samoa operating as a one-party democracy.

She has also put women front and centre in a region where politics has traditionally been a male preserve -- Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands is still the only woman to have lead a Pacific island nation when she was president from 2016-20.

"I don't think it's just (becoming) prime minister, it's in any field... The message for women, particularly young women, is that once you open the door you can do this," she told New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ.

- 'Regal bearing' -

The rise of Mata'afa's FAST Party may appear to have happened overnight, but its leader has been in parliament for 36 years.

Her family are part of the tama-a-'aiga -- Samoa's royal lineage -- and have been steeped in the island nation's political life for generations.

Mata'afa's grandfather helped draft Samoa's constitution and her father was the nation's first prime minister after independence from New Zealand in 1962.

Her mother also served as a lawmaker and diplomat.

After graduating from Wellington's Victoria University, Mata'afa entered parliament in 1985, representing the same Lotofaga electorate her father and mother had previously held.

She was an integral member of the HRPP government, becoming Samoa's first female cabinet minister in 1991 and has held several portfolios including education, women, social development, justice and environment.

Outside parliament, she has held many senior positions including pro chancellor and chair of the University of the South Pacific, where she holds an honorary doctor of letters.

She is recognised on the global stage as a leading voice in the fight for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Her pioneering feminist credentials were enhanced in 2016 when she defeated a male opponent in a party vote to become Samoa's first female deputy prime minister.

That role ended abruptly when she resigned in September last year over a suite of controversial laws introduced by the government to control the judiciary.

Mata'afa said the legislation, also strongly condemned by the legal fraternity in Samoa and internationally, proved her fear that the government was "sliding away from the rule of law".

She also expressed concerns over electoral reforms, prompting Malielegaoi's "devil" remark.

Mata'afa has been vocal on the world stage too, chiding Australia as "patronising" in 2019 for trying to dictate Samoa's policy on China. / Live news

The female trail-blazer shaking up Samoan politics

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 05:28

Modified: 20/04/2021 - 05:27

Fiame Naomi Mata’afa's fledgling party came from nowhere and is seeking Samoa's first change in government for almost 40 years

Fiame Naomi Mata’afa's fledgling party came from nowhere and is seeking Samoa's first change in government for almost 40 years Handout Fa’atuatua I le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST)/AFP

4 min

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Apia (Samoa) (AFP)

Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, a veteran powerbroker with ties to royalty, has taken the starring role in a Pacific island political drama that could see her unseat one of the world's longest-serving democratic leaders and become Samoa's first female prime minister.

In a plot twist that would have been unthinkable a year ago, the 64-year-old's fledgling FAST party came from nowhere to win 25 seats in the 51-member parliament in elections earlier this month.

With a sole independent set to determine its outcome, Mata'afa will need to be at her persuasive best during negotiations as she seeks Samoa's first change of government in almost 40 years.

ADVERTISING

But even if her leadership bid fails, the woman once referred to as "the devil" by current Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, has succeeded in transforming Samoan politics.

Malielegaoi's Human Rights Protection Party has ruled since 1982 and he has been in charge for 22 years.

Mata'afa, who served as his deputy before resigning last year, has helped forge a viable opposition in just nine months, ending decades of Samoa operating as a one-party democracy.

She has also put women front and centre in a region where politics has traditionally been a male preserve -- Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands is still the only woman to have lead a Pacific island nation when she was president from 2016-20.

"I don't think it's just (becoming) prime minister, it's in any field... The message for women, particularly young women, is that once you open the door you can do this," she told New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ.

- 'Regal bearing' -

The rise of Mata'afa's FAST Party may appear to have happened overnight, but its leader has been in parliament for 36 years.

Her family are part of the tama-a-'aiga -- Samoa's royal lineage -- and have been steeped in the island nation's political life for generations.

Mata'afa's grandfather helped draft Samoa's constitution and her father was the nation's first prime minister after independence from New Zealand in 1962.

Her mother also served as a lawmaker and diplomat.

After graduating from Wellington's Victoria University, Mata'afa entered parliament in 1985, representing the same Lotofaga electorate her father and mother had previously held.

She was an integral member of the HRPP government, becoming Samoa's first female cabinet minister in 1991 and has held several portfolios including education, women, social development, justice and environment.

Outside parliament, she has held many senior positions including pro chancellor and chair of the University of the South Pacific, where she holds an honorary doctor of letters.

She is recognised on the global stage as a leading voice in the fight for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Her pioneering feminist credentials were enhanced in 2016 when she defeated a male opponent in a party vote to become Samoa's first female deputy prime minister.

That role ended abruptly when she resigned in September last year over a suite of controversial laws introduced by the government to control the judiciary.

Mata'afa said the legislation, also strongly condemned by the legal fraternity in Samoa and internationally, proved her fear that the government was "sliding away from the rule of law".

She also expressed concerns over electoral reforms, prompting Malielegaoi's "devil" remark.

Mata'afa has been vocal on the world stage too, chiding Australia as "patronising" in 2019 for trying to dictate Samoa's policy on China.

She is also a passionate advocate for action on climate change, which threatens the Pacific islands through rising seas and increasingly intense weather events such as cyclones.

In an editorial last year, the Samoa Observer said Mata'afa was one of the few politicians in the country untainted by scandal, also praising her "regal bearing" and quiet authority.

"When (she) speaks, she exercises the power of understatement," it said.

She is also a passionate advocate for action on climate change, which threatens the Pacific islands through rising seas and increasingly intense weather events such as cyclones.

In an editorial last year, the Samoa Observer said Mata'afa was one of the few politicians in the country untainted by scandal, also praising her "regal bearing" and quiet authority.

"When (she) speaks, she exercises the power of understatement," it said.

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
‘Dramatic deterioration’ in press freedom since start of pandemic, RSF says

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

People stand in front of a tarp in Paris depicting Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni who was sentenced to prison for his coverage of the mass protest movement that toppled Algeria's longtime president. © Stéphane DE SAKUTIN, AFP/File

Text by: FRANCE 24


There’s been a “dramatic deterioration” of press freedom since the pandemic tore across the world, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its annual report published Tuesday.

The group’s new World Press Freedom Index, which evaluated the press situations in 180 countries, painted a stark picture and concluded that 73 percent of the world’s nations have serious issues with media freedoms.

It said many countries have used the coronavirus pandemic, which erupted in China in late 2019, “as grounds to block journalists’ access to information, sources and reporting in the field".

This is particularly the case in Asia, the Mideast and Europe, the media group said.

“Journalism is the best vaccine against disinformation,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire wrote in a statement.

“Unfortunately, its production and distribution are too often blocked by political, economic, technological and, sometimes, even cultural factors.”

Issues have also arisen from a drop in public trust in journalism itself. The group said 59 percent of people polled in 28 countries claimed that journalists “deliberately try to mislead the public by reporting information they know to be false".

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

50 years after Papa Doc, Haiti democracy still work in progress

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

A protestor moves from the fire during a demonstration on February 14, 2021 in Port-au-Prince Reginald LOUISSAINT JR AFP/File


Port-au-Prince (AFP)

When Haitian strongman Francois Duvalier died, his subjects had no choice on their next president -- his 19-year-old son took over. The vote to approve him as successor was officially 2,391,916 to zero.

Half a century has passed since the April 1971 death of the elder Duvalier but Haiti is still struggling to achieve democracy, with the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation again embroiled in twin crises of political illegitimacy and rampant violence.

Dubbed Papa Doc due to his background as a physician, the elder Duvalier was democratically elected in 1957 but soon built a ruthless authoritarian state that is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people in its quest to maintain power.

Papa Doc also built a fearsome personality cult, reviving voodoo traditions to cast himself as a spirit of the dead and claiming through propaganda posters to have been selected by Jesus Christ.

Papa Doc also knew how to play the United States, which was panicked over Fidel Castro's revolution in nearby Cuba. When "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier took over as the world's youngest leader, the United States was fully onboard thanks to the Duvaliers' fervent anti-communism.

The US ambassador, Clinton Knox, even had a T-shirt with the likeness of Baby Doc "so he could show the opposition, both overseas and inside the country, that he was their choice," said historian Pierre Buteau.

Baby Doc, however, faced opposition as protests erupted across Haiti in the mid-1980s. In 1986, the United States finally parted ways with Baby Doc, who went into exile in France where he spent most of the rest of his life.

Democracy came to Haiti with the 1991 election of reformist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but he was twice ousted in military coups.

Haiti again faces question marks as President Jovenel Moise insists he is president through February 2022, rejecting claims by the opposition that his term ended in February 2021.

- 'You don't just move on' -

Moise is championing a June referendum that would consolidate powers around the presidency amid soaring violence and kidnappings -- including the abductions of seven Catholic clergy members -- that last week prompted the cabinet to resign.

"You don't just move on from one day to the next following a dictatorship that lasted 30 years and infected all of the country's institutions with a goal of staying in power as long as possible," said sociologist Laennec Hurbon.

The 1987 constitution set a 10-year ban on political participation by the Tontons Macoutes, the paramilitary unit -- named for a bogeyman in Haitian folklore -- that brutally enforced the Duvaliers' rule.

Mobs carried out lynchings in which suspected militia members were burned alive with the rubber wheels around their necks. The attacks came to be known as "Pere LeBrun", after a local tire dealer.

But the Tontons Macoutes did not face trial and still enjoyed quiet relations with US intelligence as they joined the front lines of opposition to Aristide.

"There was no conventional justice for the atrocities of the Macoutes, but there was justice by the people through Pere LeBrun," Buteau said.

With no formal accounting for crimes under the Duvaliers, the cruelty of the regime is being quickly forgotten in a country where more than half the population was born after Baby Doc fell. School textbooks do not even cover Haitian history after 1957.

"The problem in Haiti is that the memories of the dictatorship are very weak," Hurbon said. "Many people continue to say that things were better in '86."

- Politics for enrichment -

The fall of the Duvaliers ended the idea of one-party rule. But it in turn triggered an avalanche of smaller parties motivated more by self-interest than broad ideas or constituencies.

The last presidential election had no fewer than 54 candidates.

"You can set up a party with 20 people. Today there are certainly more than 250 political parties," Hurbon said.

"Many people believe they can obtain a better economic situation through the state and effectively we see people entering the political system for corruption."

The end effect is little democratic participation by the general public, with just 21 percent voting in the last elections in 2016.

One shift came in 2018 when young people took to the streets en masse demanding answers on what successive administrations did with $1.6 billion contributed by Venezuela under its Petrocaribe initiative.

Haiti's High Court of Auditors responded by producing three voluminous reports on rampant mismanagement of the money but Moise, named in one of them, clipped the wings of the court in November through a presidential decree.

Amid the political and economic vacuum, armed gangs have become a force to themselves in the poorest parts of the capital Port-au-Prince, contributing to the sharp rise in kidnappings for ransom.

The political standoff lets the governing class avoid any trial over Petrocaribe corruption, the goal of the 2018 protests, Buteau said.

"There are no longer large demonstrations because people are hungry and tired and hardened by poverty. In the face of insecurity, they are afraid."

© 2021 AFP

A page turns in Cuba as Raul Castro makes way for next generation

Issued on: 16/04/2021 - 

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel (with his arm raised) stands next to Raul Castro, first secretary of the island's Communist Party, on May 1, 2019 in Havana. © AFP

Text by: Cyrielle CABOT

Raul Castro is due officially to step down from Cuban political life during the country's Communist Party congress that begins Friday. He is expected to cede the post of party secretary-general, the country's most powerful role, to Miguel Diaz-Canel, who took over from Castro as Cuba's president in 2018. The move represents a new step in the transition of power from the Castro family to a new generation born after the 1959 revolution.

More than 60 years after Fidel Castro entered Havana and took power, Cuba is poised for public life without a member of the Castro clan. The 89-year-old Raul, a fellow leader of the 1959 revolution who first took over Cuba's presidency from his ailing older brother in 2006, will attend his final Communist Party congress as secretary-general this weekend. At the close of the four-day event, Castro will hand over the reins to its freshly elected chief, with his protégé Diaz-Canel the favourite in line for the role.

"Raul Castro's departure from political life has been expected for a long time," Cuba specialist Stéphane Witkowski, of the Institute for Higher Learning on Latin America (IHEAL) in Paris, told FRANCE 24. "It represents a step in the process of generational transition between those who lived through the 1959 revolution and the new generation."

"Indeed, the date surely wasn't chosen randomly," the specialist noted, coinciding as it does with the 60th anniversary of the failed landing attempt at the Bay of Pigs by 1,400 anti-Castro paramilitaries trained and financed by the CIA. "It's highly symbolic," said Witkowski.

The transition between generations

Cuba's political transition had already seen a decisive line crossed in 2018 when Castro ceded the country's presidency to Diaz-Canel. The former minister for Higher Education, who turns 61 next week, incarnates a new generation that came of age after the revolution.

That succession, under Cuba's one-party system, was meticulously prepared and, significantly, Castro retained a political role. He remained secretary-general of the Communist Party, a post that had until then been combined with the country's presidency.

A woman wearing a face mask as a precautionary measure against Covid-19 walks by a banner with pictures of leaders of the Cuban Revolution and President Miguel Diaz-Canel (L), in Havana on March 3, 2021. © Yamil Lage / AFP

And yet, according to Cuba's constitution, the Communist Party is the ultimate political force governing society and the State. "It is really the supreme authority that defines political directions during its congress, which is held every five years," Witkowski explained. So even with the powers separate, the party under Castro retained control of Cuba's progress.

Over the past three years, Diaz-Canel's presidency therefore represented continuity, following Castro's lead. His government carried on with the principal reforms begun previously, for instance in moving to end Cuba's dual currency system. In January, Diaz-Canel's government went ahead with vast economic reforms aiming to unify the two local currencies while significantly revaluing wages, pensions and consumer prices.

>> Flashback: Miguel Diaz-Canel, the face of post-Castro Cuba

Diaz-Canel is the favourite to take on the role of new party secretary after Castro. "Nothing is decided. It happens by vote, during the congress," Witkowski explained. "But in all likelihood, it will be him."

What role for Raul Castro?

It remains to be seen what role Castro will occupy going forward. During the party's last congress, in 2016, when asked about his plans for life after politics, he said he wanted to retire to "look after the grandchildren" and "read books like the rest of the historic generation".

Still, it is difficult to imagine Fidel Castro's younger brother completely disappearing from the political stage. "He seems to be in tune with his brother's model," Witkowski said of Raul. "Fidel Castro also gave up his political roles one after the other. He then adopted a neutral status, as an advisor. Indeed, he presented himself as 'a wiseman'. So perhaps Raul Castro will also take on an advisory role, but his intentions so far have not been made clear."

Raul Castro and Miguel Diaz-Canel. © Ismael Francisco, AFP

Former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray, for his part, finds it impossible to imagine Castro totally withdrawing from Cuban political life. "He will always be there,' Alzugaray told Agence France-Presse. "It could become a model similar to what happened in China when Deng Xiaoping no longer had a position but he was still alive and so he had to be consulted on everything. He had the last word."

The most serious economic crisis in 30 years

The new generation at the helm in Cuba will have its work cut out with the island nation facing challenges on multiple fronts amid its most serious economic crisis in more than 30 years.

Weakened by the Covid-19 pandemic that has brought valuable tourism to a halt, and amid US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, Cuba's GDP plunged 11 percent in 2020. In recent months, Cubans have been waiting hours for supplies as supermarkets suffer shortages.

The country's leadership will also be dealing with growing opposition spurred along by the late-2018 arrival of mobile internet via 3G. In a nation that had previously been among the least connected in the world, the Internet has unleashed expression in Cuba, allowing the population to voice its demands and to take to the streets to demonstrate, phenomena previously unseen on the island. Indeed, one point on the agenda at this weekend's Communist Party congress is exploring a way to be "more efficient in fighting against political-ideological subversion" on social media.

>> Cuba may soon become smallest country to develop its own Covid-19 jabs

"There will be many challenges," Witkowski explained. "In terms of the economy, they need to manage this reform ending currency duality, to reduce agricultural dependence and to keep attracting further foreign investment.

"And they will also, of course, need to continue coping with the Covid-19 pandemic, even though, from a public health perspective, the experience has been relatively positive."

Cuba regularly lauds its management of the crisis, having registered only 88,445 cases, including 476 deaths, among its population of 11.2 million.

"What will also need to be determined is what's next in the revolutionary process. What will become of the process of institutionalising the 1959 revolution?" asked Witkowski.

"Raul Castro is a figure who had an impact on an entire people," said Witkowski. "From now on, Cuban politics enters a new phase. It will be up to this new generation to take up the torch and prove its legitimacy."

This article has been translated from the original in French.

Cuba’s Communist Party appoints Diaz-Canel as leader, replacing Raul Castro


Issued on: 19/04/2021 

Text by: NEWS WIRES


Cuba's ruling Communist Party elected President Miguel Diaz-Canel to succeed Raul Castro as party first secretary, the most powerful position in the country, on the final day of its congress on Monday.

The succession marks the end of six decades of rule by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, who led Cuba's leftist 1959 revolution, in a transition to a younger generation that worked its way up the party ranks rather than forging itself through guerilla warfare.

Diaz-Canel, 60, who already succeeded Castro as president in 2018, had been widely expected to be nominated first party secretary too. He has emphasized continuity since becoming president and is not expected to move Cuba away from a one-party socialist system.

"Diaz-Canel is not the fruit of improvisation but of the thoughtful selection of a young revolutionary who has all that is required to be promoted to higher positions," Castro said in a speech opening the congress on Friday, his military fatigues contrasting with his protege's civil garb.

Hundreds of party delegates gathered for the party's most important meeting, that takes place every five years to review policy and elect new leadership, in Havana.

Castro said at the last party congress in 2016 it would be the last presided over by the so-called historic generation of those who fought in the Sierra Maestra to overthrow the U.S.-backed government of dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The new policy setting Political Bureau will not include Jose Ramon Machado Ventura and Ramiro Valdes, two other famous proponents of that generation. The party has not yet announced who will replaced Machado Ventura, a communist ideologue, as deputy party leader.

(REUTERS)

How Black Lives Matter put slave reparations back on the agenda

Issued on: 18/04/2021 - 

A memorial sculpture (by artist Sandrine Plante-Rougeol) is unveiled in the gardens of Bordeaux's city hall, on December 2, 2019, to mark the International day for the abolition of slavery. © Georges Gobet, AFP

Text by: Grégoire SAUVAGE

The US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would create a commission to study the idea of reparations for slavery, an idea that has also been gaining ground in Europe since Black Lives Matter protests went global last summer.

Legislation to create a commission to study slavery reparations for Black Americans cleared a House committee in a historic vote this week, sending it on its way to a full House vote for the first time more than three decades after it was introduced. If the legislation, HR 40, is passed by the Democrat-controlled House, it would go to the evenly divided Senate, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

“Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation – and the hope that, one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future,” said Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a sponsor of the bill.

Some Republicans voiced opposition to the bill, arguing that the suffering wrought by slavery happened too long ago.

“No one should be forced to pay compensation for what they have not done,” said Republican Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio. “Paying reparations would amount to taking money from people who never owned slaves to compensate those who were never enslaved.”


Historical precedents

The idea of compensating the descendants of the estimated 4 million Africans forcibly brought to the United States between 1619 and 1865 was revived by the wave of protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020. But the first version of the legislative text advanced on Wednesday was drafted more than three decades ago.

Compensation to freed slaves was promised towards the end of the American Civil War in 1865, when Union General William Tecumseh Sherman famously promised them “forty acres and a mule”. But this vow was never kept. It took until the 1970s and the creation of the Reparations Coordinating Committee by Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree for the issue to re-emerge.

Proponents of reparations, however, remain divided about what form they should take. Some argue for more welfare programmes and an expansion of existing measures such as affirmative action. Others argue for direct financial compensation – citing fact that there is still severe economic inequality between Black and White Americans, and maintaining that the long-term effects of slavery and segregation are responsible. In 2019, the median annual income for an African-American household was $43,771 (€36,000) compared to $71,664 (€60,000) for White families.

Advocates of compensation have also cited historical precedents. In 1988, Republican president Ronald Reagan signed a 1988 law to pay $20,000 (€17,000) each to all surviving Japanese-Americans detained during the World War Two. In 2012, Barack Obama’s White House agreed to pay more than $1 billion to 41 Native American tribes over the federal government’s mismanagement of money and natural resources held in trust.

Partly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, demonstrators in Bristol in southern England toppled a statue of 18th-century slave trader Edward Colston and tipped it into the nearby harbour last June.

That same month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on former colonialist countries to “make amends for centuries of violence and discrimination, including through formal apologies, truth-telling processes and reparations in various forms”.

In 2013, the Caribbean Community (or CARICOM), an intergovernmental organisation of 15 states in the region, believes that France, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Denmark should pay compensation for their role in the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Senior politicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo demanded reparations from the country’s former colonial ruler Belgium after the 2020 publication of a letter of regret from Belgian King Philippe for atrocities committed during that era. They also called for the removal of statues of King Leopold II, known for his brutal rule of what was then Belgian Congo. DR Congo’s neighbour Burundi has been calling for years for €36 billion in compensation for atrocities committed by German and Belgian settlers from 1896 to 1962.

In 1999, a Truth Commission Conference held in Ghana estimated the total amount of reparations owed to African countries by former colonial powers at $777 trillion (€650 trillion).

An association of descendants of slaves filed a request with the French state for €200 billion in compensation in 2005 on the grounds that France’s historical participation in slavery was recognised as a crime against humanity in a 2001 law (known as the Taubira law). But a court ruled that this request was inadmissible because it was impossible to discern the amount due for events that happened so long ago. The judgement was confirmed by France’s two highest courts of appeal.

The Afro-Caribbean groups behind the demands rejected the court rulings on the grounds that France had compensated slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1848. The following year, the French state disbursed the equivalent of 7.1 percent of public spending to compensate the owners of slaves in Senegal, Madagascar, Reunion Island, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana.

In 1825, France imposed a considerable debt on Haiti – which had won independence in 1804 – as compensation for the French former owners of slaves there. The young Haitian republic was also forced to pay colossal interest on loans from bankers in Paris.

A French research initiative known as the Repairs project is building a database to log the names of those who received compensation as former slave owners and the amount paid to them.

The British Empire also compensated slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833.

Some historians note that a significant number of these former slave owners were “free people of colour” – former slaves who themselves became owners of slaves.

“We tend to see the history of slavery exclusively through the lens of White on Black racial oppression, but this is problematic because race is not the only criterion to be taken into account when thinking about the history of slavery,” said Myriam Cottias, director of the Paris-based International Slavery and Post-Slavery Research Centre (Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages et post-esclavages).

In light of this, it “seems to me that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to identify the right people to receive compensation”, Cottias continued.

In 2015, then French president François Hollande ruled out paying any compensation to the descendants of slaves. “It would be impossible to calculate because it was so long ago,” he said.

Private initiatives

While no country involved in the transatlantic slave trade has established reparations for the descendants of slaves, other initiatives have been set up. In the US, the local council of the prosperous town of Evanston in the Chicago suburbs voted in March to hand out $10 million (€8m) in compensation to its Black residents over the following decade.

In 2019, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., approved the creation of a fund to compensate the descendants of slaves sold to balance the university’s books in the 19th century. That same year, Glasgow University in Scotland announced that it would pay £20 million (€23m) to fund a joint venture with the University of the West Indies as a way of refunding the descendants of slaves for donations it had received centuries ago from slave owners.

In the private sector, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank and brewer Greene King have acknowledged responsibility for their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. So far, no French company has acknowledged involvement in slavery or offered compensation.

This article was translated from the original in French.

J&J Covid vaccine manufacturing halted at plant that ruined doses



Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

The entry sign to the Johnson & Johnson campus in Irvine, California: the Food and Drug Administration has requested the company halt manufacture at a facility in Baltimore where 15 million doses of the vaccine were reportedly ruined Mark RALSTON AFP/File


Washington (AFP)

The US Food and Drug Administration requested that production of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine be halted at a factory that previously reportedly ruined about 15 million doses of the shot.

The pharmaceutical giant told AFP at the end of March it had identified a batch of doses at a plant in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions "that did not meet quality standards," but did not confirm the specific number affected.

The New York Times later reported the batch consisted of about 15 million doses.

Emergent BioSolutions said in a regulatory Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday that the FDA had requested a pause on April 16 in production of the single-shot vaccine pending an inspection at the Baltimore, Maryland facility.

"On April 16, 2021, at the request of the FDA, Emergent agreed not to initiate the manufacturing of any new material at its Bayview facility and to quarantine existing material manufactured at the Bayview facility pending completion of the inspection and remediation of any resulting findings," the filing said.

Johnson & Johnson had said in March it was sending more experts to the site to oversee vaccine production, and that it expected to deliver 24 million additional shots through April.

The Emergent BioSolutions plant had not been authorized by US regulators at the time to manufacture a "drug substance" for the J&J vaccine, the pharmaceutical company said, but US media reported that it was expected to produce tens of millions of doses in the near future.

The J&J vaccine won praise for its single dosage and because it does not need to be frozen -- unlike the shots from Moderna and Pfizer -- making distribution much simpler.

The manufacturing pause is the latest setback for the vaccine in the United States, as regulators temporarily halted its use after authorities reported six cases of women developing blood clots along with low blood platelet counts, including one death, within two weeks of getting the J&J shot.

Europe's medicines regulator is expected to rule Tuesday on the J&J vaccine's safety, after its European use was also put on hold over blood clot fears.

© 2021 AFP

J&J and other drugmakers go on trial over US opioid crisis


Issued on: 20/04/2021 

Four drugmakers are on trial over claims they helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States JOHN MOORE GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File



San Francisco (AFP)

Four drugmakers, including Johnson & Johnson, went on trial Monday over claims they helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States through deceptive marketing that downplayed the risks of addiction.

J&J, Teva, Endo and Allergan are accused of trivializing the dangers of long-term use of opioid painkillers to boost sales in a lawsuit filed by several California counties and the city of Oakland.

The complaint seeks billions of dollars in damages to abate the public nuisance it says the drugmakers created.

"Defendants prioritized profits over lives and deceived the public about the real dangers of opioids," Santa Clara County attorney James Williams said in a statement.

Almost 500,000 people in the United States have died from overdoses involving prescription or illicit opioids over the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 50,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2019 alone.

The plaintiffs -- Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Orange counties, as well as the city of Oakland -- represent 15 million people, or 40 percent of the most populous American state. In addition to the damages, they are asking for measures to prevent deceptive pharmaceutical marketing practices in the future.

"While the use of opioids has taken an enormous toll on the State of California and its residents, Defendants have realized blockbuster profits. In 2014 alone, opioids generated $11 billion in revenue for drug companies like Defendants," the complaint said.

The lawsuit comes at a particularly bad time for J&J.

The pharmaceutical giant, also tainted by a scandal related to its talcum-based baby power, was hoping to restore its reputation with its coronavirus vaccine. But the shot has been suspended in the United States, pending an investigation, after reports that six women had developed serious blood clots.

Neither J&J nor any of the other companies responded to AFP's request for comment.

More than 3,000 lawsuits related to the opioid crisis have been filed in US courts.

In 2019, an Oklahoma judge ordered J&J to pay a $465 million fine for downplaying the risks of opioids. J&J is appealing.