Vatican airs dirty laundry in trial over London property

By NICOLE WINFIELD

The sun sets behind St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. The Vatican’s sprawling financial trial may not have produced any convictions yet or any new smoking guns. But recent testimony in May 2022 has provided plenty of insights into how the Vatican operates.

(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)


VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s sprawling financial trial may not have produced any convictions yet or any new smoking guns as prosecutors work through a first round of questioning of the 10 suspects accused of fleecing the Holy See of tens of millions of euros.

But testimony so far has provided plenty of insights into how the Vatican operates, with a cast of characters worthy of a Dan Brown thriller or a Shakespearean tragicomedy. Recent hearings showed a church bureaucracy that used espionage, allowed outsiders with unverified qualifications to gain access to the Apostolic Palace and relied on a pervasive mantra of sparing the pope responsibility — until someone’s neck was on the line.

Here are some revelations so far in this unusual airing of the Vatican’s dirty laundry:

WHAT’S THE TRIAL ABOUT?

The investigation was borne of the secretariat of state’s 350 million-euro ($370 million) investment in a London property, which was such a debacle that the Vatican sold the building this year at a cumulative loss of more than 200 million euros ($210 million).

Prosecutors have accused Italian brokers, the Vatican’s longtime money manager and Vatican officials of swindling the Holy See out of tens of millions in fees and commissions and of extorting it of 15 million euros (nearly $16 million) to finally get control of the London building.

Pope Francis wanted a trial to show his willingness to crack down on alleged financial impropriety. Three years on, though, the investigation has cast an unwelcome spotlight on some of Francis’ own decisions and how Vatican monsignors managed a 600 million-euro ($630 million) asset portfolio with little external oversight or expertise.

WHAT ABOUT THE TANGENTS?

The original investigation has spawned tangents, including one in which a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, is accused of embezzlement for having donated 125,000 euros ($130,000) in Vatican money to a Sardinian charity run by his brother.

Linked to him is another codefendant, Cecilia Marogna, a security analyst who is accused of embezzling 575,000 euros (over $600,000) that Becciu had intended as payment to liberate a Colombian nun held hostage by al-Qaida militants. They both deny wrongdoing, as do the other defendants.

SPIES, SPIES EVERYWHERE

Marogna’s story, detailed for the first time last week, is a remarkable tale which, if corroborated, would be a chapter of its own in the storied history of Vatican diplomacy.

She and Becciu say she gained entry in the Apostolic Palace on the basis of an email she wrote Becciu in 2015 about security concerns. Based on her grasp of geopolitics and apparent connections to Italian intelligence, she became an adviser to Becciu, then the No. 2 in the secretariat of state.

According to her statement, Marogna became a conduit to Becciu for everything from Russian emissaries seeking the return of holy relics to efforts by Catalonia’s separatist leader to establish a channel of communication with the Vatican.

Becciu testified that he turned to Marogna in 2017 after a Colombian nun was kidnapped in Mali, and Marogna suggested that a British intelligence firm could help liberate her. Becciu testified that Francis approved spending up to 1 million euros for the operation and insisted that it be kept secret even from the Vatican’s own intelligence chief.

The tale suggests Becciu, with the pope’s approval, created a parallel Vatican intelligence operation using an Italian freelancer.

It’s not the only instance of espionage that pose questions about the Vatican’s status as a sovereign state: Becciu testified last week that Francis himself ordered the ouster of the Vatican’s first auditor general because he had hired an external firm to spy on the Vatican hierarchy, whom he suspected of wrongdoing.

In previous testimony, a Vatican official told prosecutors that Becciu’s replacement, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, had brought members of the Italian secret service into the Holy See t o sweep his office for bugs, again bypassing the Vatican’s own gendarmes.

MONSIGNOR PERLASCA MAKES A CAMEO APPEARANCE

No figure in the trial is as intriguing as Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who was the chief internal money manager in the secretariat of state, responsible for the Vatican’s equivalent of a sovereign wealth fund with estimated assets of 600 million euros (around $630 million).

It was Perlasca who recommended certain investments or advised against them, and it was he who signed the contracts in late 2018 giving Italian broker Gianluigi Torzi operative control of the London property. The basis for the extortion charge against Torzi is prosecutors’ allegation that he pulled a fast one on the Vatican to gain that control and only relinquished it after getting paid 15 million euros (nearly $16 million).

Perlasca was at first a prime suspect in the case. But after his first round of questioning in April 2020, Perlasca fired his lawyer, changed his story and began cooperating with prosecutors.

Despite his involvement in all the deals under investigation, Perlasca escaped indictment. Last week, the tribunal let him join the trial as an injured party, enabling him to possibly recover civil damages.

Hours after tribunal president Giupseppe Pignatone admitted him as a civil party, Perlasca showed up at the tribunal unannounced, sat in the front row of the public gallery and declared “I’m not moving.”

Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi immediately objected and Pignatone ordered him to leave, which he did.

SPARE THE POPE AT ALL COSTS

Many of the defendants have testified that, at key junctions, Francis wasn’t only informed of the issues but approved them, including the crucial moment in which the Vatican had to decide whether to try to sue Torzi to get the London property or pay him off.

Several witnesses and defendants have said Francis wanted to “turn the page” and negotiate a deal. Prosecutors say Francis was essentially duped by his own underlings, and they subsequently obtained from Francis four, secret executive decrees giving them carte blanche to investigate in ways the defense says violated the suspects’ legal guarantees and basic human rights.

But blaming the pope marks an unusual development, since Vatican culture generally seeks to spare the pope responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

Becciu explained this tradition during his testimony by invoking its Latin phrase “In odiosis non faceat nomen pontificis,” roughly meaning that the pope shouldn’t be drawn into unpleasant matters.

Becciu responded to a question about why the pope only approved of financial decisions orally, not in writing.

“I’m from the old school … where you try to protect the pope, protect his moral authority without involving him too much in earthly matters. This doesn’t mean not informing him, but not giving him the responsibility for certain decisions,” he said.

Becciu kept to that until Francis released him from the pontifical secret so he could testify in his own defense. Becciu then revealed that Francis himself had authorized the Colombian nun liberation operation and had ordered the resignation of the auditor-general.

The week ended with the testimony of one of Perlasca’s deputies, Fabrizio Tirabassi, who explained how investment decisions were made and the origins of the London property deal. His lawyers said Tirabassi’s testimony proved that there was no crime in the deal.

“The only mystery of this story is why someone wanted to have a trial about an issue that the hierarchs of the Holy See wanted to conclude with a deal,” the lawyers said.

Report: Top Southern Baptists stonewalled sex abuse victims

UNLIKE CATHOLICS THEY WERE NOT PROTECTING CELIBACY

By DEEPA BHARATH, HOLLY MEYER and DAVID CRARY

This Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 file photo shows the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn. Leaders of the SBC, America's largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, according to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday, May 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)


Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, according to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday.

These survivors, and other concerned Southern Baptists, repeatedly shared allegations with the SBC’s Executive Committee, “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC,” said the report.

The seven-month investigation was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to last year’s national meeting pressed for a probe by outsiders.

“Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC’s response to these reports of abuse ... and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC,” the report said.

“In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy – even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation,” the report added.

The report asserts that an Executive Committee staffer maintained a list of Baptist ministers accused of abuse, but there is no indication anyone “took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches.”

The most recent list includes the names of hundreds of abusers thought to be affiliated at some point with the SBC. Survivors and advocates have long called for a public database of abusers.

SBC President Ed Litton, in a statement Sunday, said he is “grieved to my core” for the victims and thanked God for their work propelling the SBC to this moment. He called on Southern Baptists to lament and prepare to change the denomination’s culture and implement reforms.

“I pray Southern Baptists will begin preparing today to take deliberate action to address these failures and chart a new course when we meet together in Anaheim,” Litton said, referring to the California city that will host the SBC’s national meeting on June 14-15.

Among the report’s key recommendations:

— Form an independent commission and later establish a permanent administrative entity to oversee comprehensive long-term reforms concerning sexual abuse and related misconduct within the SBC.

—Create and maintain an Offender Information System to alert the community to known offenders.

— Provide a comprehensive Resource Toolbox including protocols, training, education, and practical information.

—Restrict the use of nondisclosure agreements and civil settlements which bind survivors to confidentiality in sexual abuse matters, unless requested by the survivor.

The interim leaders of the Executive Committee, Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, welcomed the recommendations, and pledged an all-out effort to eliminate sex abuse within the SBC.

“We recognize there are no shortcuts,” they said. “We must all meet this challenge through prudent and prayerful application, and we must do so with Christ-like compassion.”

The Executive Committee is set to hold a special meeting Tuesday to discuss the report.

The sex abuse scandal was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting hundreds of cases in Southern Baptist churches, including several in which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry.

Last year, thousands of delegates at the national SBC gathering made clear they did not want the Executive Committee to oversee an investigation of its own actions. Instead they voted overwhelmingly to create the task force charged with overseeing the third-party review. Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, appointed the panel.

The task force had a week to review the report before it was publicly released. The task force’s recommendations based on Guidepost’s findings will be presented at the SBC’s meeting in Anaheim.

The report offers shocking details on how Johnny Hunt, a Georgia-based pastor and past SBC president, sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife during a beach vacation in 2010. In an interview with investigators, Hunt denied any physical contact with the woman, but did admit he had interactions with her.

On May 13, Hunt, who was the senior vice president of evangelism and leadership at the North American Mission Board, the SBC’s domestic missions agency, resigned from that post, said Kevin Ezell, the organization’s president and CEO. Ezell said, before May 13, he was “not aware of any alleged misconduct” on Hunt’s part.

The report details a meeting Hunt arranged a few days after the alleged assault between the woman, her husband, Hunt and a counseling pastor. Hunt admitted to touching the victim inappropriately, but said “thank God I didn’t consummate the relationship.”

Among those reacting strongly to the Guidepost report was Russell Moore, who formerly headed the SBC’s public policy wing but left the denomination after accusing top Executive Committee leaders of stalling efforts to address the sex abuse crisis.

“Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse,” Moore wrote for Christianity Today after reading the report. ”As dark a view as I had of the SBC Executive Committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.

According to the report, Guidepost’s investigators, who spoke with survivors of varying ages including children, said the survivors were equally traumatized by the way in which churches responded to their reports of sexual abuse.

Survivors “spoke of trauma from the initial abuse, but also told us of the debilitating effects that come from the response of the churches and institutions like the SBC that did not believe them, ignored them, mistreated them, and failed to help them,” the report said.

It cited the case of Dave Pittman, who from 2006 to 2011 made phone calls and sent letters and emails to the SBC and Georgia Baptist Convention Board reporting that he had been abused by Frankie Wiley, a youth pastor at Rehoboth Baptist Church when he was 12 to 15 years old.

Pittman and several others have come forward publicly to report that Wiley molested and raped them and Wiley has admitted to abusing “numerous victims” at several Georgia Southern Baptist churches.

According to the report, a Georgia Baptist Convention official told Pittman that the churches were autonomous and there was nothing he could do but pray.

The report also tells the story of Christa Brown, who says she was sexually abused as a teen by the youth and education minister at her SBC church.

When she disclosed the abuse to the music minister after months of abuse, she was told not to talk about it, according to the report, which said her abuser also went on to serve in Southern Baptist churches in multiple states.

Brown, who has been one of the most outspoken survivors, told investigators that during the past 15 years she has received “volumes of hate mail, awful blog comments, and vitriolic phone calls.”

After reading through the report, Brown told The Associated Press that it “fundamentally confirms what Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors have been saying for decades.”

“I view this investigative report as a beginning, not an end. The work will continue,” Brown said. “But no one should ever forget the human cost of what it has taken to even get the SBC to approach this starting line of beginning to deal with clergy sex abuse.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

One tiny company is wrecking the American solar industry – why?

A small US solar panels manufacturer is pushing for high tariffs on imports. This threatens the Biden administration's climate goals and the industry as a whole.


The demand for rooftop solar panels has been rising across the United States

The American solar industry is on its knees, and the unlikely culprit is one tiny, struggling company you've probably never heard of.

Auxin Solar is a solar panel manufacturer based in San Jose, California. It supplies just 2% of America's solar modules.

Yet a petition filed by the company to the US Department of Commerce in February could be responsible for severe disruptions to future solar installations in the US — cutting them nearly in half this year and next, according to the biggest solar trade group in the country.

"The largest concern for the solar industry is uncertainty," Marcelo Ortega, renewables analyst at Rystad Energy, told DW.

Auxin Solar's petition prompted the department to launch a probe into whether US solar companies are skirting decade-old tariffs on Chinese solar imports. Solar installers, which compose much of the US industry, are threatened with tariffs up to 250%.

Critically, levies may be imposed retroactively on installers' purchases — a possibility that is grinding the American solar industry to a halt.
Auxin Solar — who?

The company at the center of the crisis for American solar was practically unknown until February when it filed its petition.

Founded in 2008, Auxin Solar claims an annual production capacity of 150 megawatts, though co-founder and CEO Mamun Rashid told the Wall Street Journal that the firm is currently operating at 30% capacity.

The company has been under financial stress for years. Rashid said he cashed out his investment and sold his beloved Porsche to keep the manufacturer going. Auxin Solar did not make Rashid available for comment despite several calls and emails.

"We have available capacity and with sufficient purchase orders, we can quickly scale up. But we need a fair price that allows us to cover our costs and pay our employees a fair wage," Rashid told the Financial Times.

First Solar has developed, constructed and currently operates many of the world’s largest grid-connected PV power plants

The probe shaking American solar

The Commerce Department launched the probe in April, investigating allegations by Auxin Solar and other US manufacturers that American solar installers are circumventing tariffs on Chinese solar products.

Firms are accused of using suppliers in Southeast Asia that are essentially fronts for Chinese manufacturers.

Back in 2012, the Obama administration imposed tariffs on Chinese solar imports in order to help domestic production. But instead, manufacturing moved to Southeast Asian nations like Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. The US now receives over 80% of its solar panels from these countries, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Industry killer or savior? Rashid told the Washington Post "it's an existential moment for us." Auxin Solar cannot compete with Chinese and Southeast Asian manufacturers, but the CEO claims the petition is not just for his own company.

"I'm here to try to create a foundation for reshaping the entire solar supply chain, because I believe very strongly that renewable energy will dominate our grid and solar will be the dominant renewable energy."

On the other side of the debate are solar industry leaders, renewable energy advocates and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, who emphasize the damage these tariffs could impose on the industry. The research firm Rystad Energy dropped its 2022 solar capacity projections for the US from 27 gigawatts before the announcement of the probe to less than half that — 10 gigawatts. Meanwhile the SEIA warns the tariffs threaten 100,000 industry jobs.

SOLAR ENERGY AROUND THE WORLD: FROM MINI-GRIDS TO SOLAR CITIES
Drinking water from the sun
The village of Rema in Ethiopia operates a solar pump with a connected water tank. The well is far away from the village, and the water used to have to be piped to the village with a diesel pump. But this was often broken or there was not enough fuel. Since 2016, a solar pump has been supplying water to the 6,000 inhabitants, many of whom also need the water for their fields.
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Ortega of Rystad Energy said that "coal plants scheduled to retire in the next two years are already postponing their decommissioning dates over fears of solar capacity not coming online in time to meet the electricity generation these plants are supplying."

The pushback on Auxin Solar has been intense — to the point of harassment, according to Rashid. Some critics have questioned the motives of the company, as well as the prospects of its survival even with the tariffs imposed.

As for the legitimacy of Auxin Solar's claims, Mary E. Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C, told DW that we would have to wait and see what the Commerce Department probe finds.

However, she noted that the allegations "are entirely plausible," as Chinese companies have set up shop in Southeast Asia in response to other Trump-era tariffs.

Auxin Solar is not without its defenders in the industry. A policy vice president at First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the US, told the WSJ that clearly some companies "are afraid that the department will find that Chinese solar manufacturers are, in fact, engaged in circumvention and will hold them accountable for their unfair and unlawful trade practices."

Testing Biden's priorities

The chaos has revealed a serious tension in the Biden administration's agenda.

A carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 is a key pillar of Biden's climate plan, but confronting Chinese trade practices has also been a consistent desire of the administration, especially under the supply chain pressures of the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine.

The question the Commerce Department must consider is whether or not solar panels and cells assembled in Southeast Asian countries are "substantially transformed" from inputs coming from China.

According to Lovely, if the department rules in Auxin Solar's favor there could be ramifications beyond the solar industry.

"There is a chance to set a precedent that could be dangerous," she said. It could lead to "tariff claims on a whole bunch of other goods made with Chinese inputs across Asia, and possibly even goods made in the United States."

Olaf Scholz: Germany will work to restart Ukrainian grain exports to Africa

Starting a three-day tour of Africa, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of the impact of Ukraine's war on the continent. He said Berlin would help restore grain exports from Europe to avoid a worsening food crisis.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday said Berlin will actively work to push for the restart of grain exports to Africa from Ukraine that have been halted as a result of Russia's invasion.

He also spoke of the need to ensure the steady transfer of fertilizers out of Africa.

Scholz was speaking in Dakar ahead of a meeting with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the beginning of a three-day trip to Africa — his first since taking office six months ago.

Ahead of Scholz's visit, the former German ambassador to Moscow said Russian President Vladimir Putin is deliberately aiming to trigger a famine in the Middle East and Africa.

The Kremlin's goal is to destabilize Europe through a massive refugee influx, Rüdiger von Fritsch told Sunday's edition of the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Senegal's Sall calls for Ukraine de-escalation

Sall, meanwhile, told a joint news conference that Africa wants de-escalation and peace in Ukraine through dialogue.

"We do not want to be aligned on this conflict, very clearly, we want peace. Even though we condemn the invasion, we're working for a de-escalation, we're working for a cease-fire, for dialogue ... that is the African position," he said.

As chairman of the African Union regional grouping, Sall said he would visit Moscow and Kyiv in the coming weeks.

The consequences of the war in Ukraine are expected to be a major topic during Scholz's trip. The Russian blockade of Ukrainian grain exports has exacerbated
the food crisis on the continent, especially in East Africa.
Collaborations on natural gas, renewables touted

Scholz also said Germany wants to help Senegal to develop a gas field off the coast of West Africa.

"We have started exchanging ideas about this, and following these talks we will continue to do so very intensively at the technical level," Scholz said.

According to media reports, BP, the operator of the field, believes it holds 425 million cubic meters of natural gas.

Sall said Senegal was "interested in supplying gas to the European market."

Germany also wants to collaborate more with Senegal on solar and wind energy projects, the chancellor said, as well as liquified natural gas (LNG).

Senegal made considerable gas reserve discoveries last decade and is trying to set itself up as a meaningful exporter, although this could take time

The move comes as Germany seeks to cut its reliance on Russian energy in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.

Senegal plans to start exporting LNG in the fall of 2023, but its current orders are for delivery to Asia.

Media reports said it could take several years for the country to ramp up deliveries to help replace Russian gas exports to Europe.

Earlier, Sall complained that the global move away from financing fossil fuel projects like natural gas development was harming African nations.

Scholz agreed that it was not acceptable for developing countries to be prevented from exploiting their natural resources.

Dakar is the first stop on Scholz's trip, before he moves on to Niger and South Africa.

mm/aw (Reuters, dpa)

Stepan Bandera: Ukrainian hero or Nazi collaborator?

The Mariupol fighters revere him, Russian soldiers hunt his supporters. The myth surrounding Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera is at the heart of Russia's assault on Ukraine. Who was he?

ANTI-SEMITE, WHITE NATIONALIST LIKE 

SIMON PETLURA BEFORE HIM


Stepan Bandera remains a divisive figure for many Ukrainians

"Bandera is our father, Ukraine is the mother. We will fight for Ukraine!" sings a young woman in camouflage uniform, carrying a machine gun, in a video that Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol shared on social networks in early May.

The video seems to have been recorded in a bunker at the Azovstal Steelworks, the city's last stand for Ukrainian resistance to Russian troops. "Azov" fighters were on site, too, a regiment founded by radical nationalists that was later put under Ukraine's Interior Ministry.

Stepan Bandera, killed by Soviet intelligence agents in West Germany more than 60 years ago, is probably the best-known Ukrainian nationalist. His name became a symbol long before the war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine since February 24.

Russia's top prosecutor has asked the Supreme Court to designate the Azov Regiment, seen here in 2014, as a terrorist group

For parts of Ukraine society, Bandera is a hero and role model. Russian propaganda portrays him as an enemy against whose supporters they have been fighting for decades. Russia's military regards the use of his name as a kind of clue to literally hunt down Ukrainians in the occupied territories. Ukrainian media are full of eyewitness accounts of how the Russians chased down Bandera supporters among Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians alike.

Whoever is deemed to be a supporter faces torture or death. When Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the war against Ukraine in his May 9 speech in Moscow, he spoke of an inevitable confrontation with "neo-Nazis, Banderites."
Life and death of a radical fighter

Bandera's life is closely linked to western Ukraine, which was then part of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The son of a priest was born in 1909 in the village of Staryi Uhryniv, now in the province of Ivano-Frankivsk. Bandera studied in Lviv and joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which fought underground for independence.

In the 1930s, Bandera was convicted of being a co-organizer of politically-motivated murders in Poland and was released only after the start of World War II. The OUN split into two groups, and Bandera became leader of the more radical wing, OUN-B. While Nazi Germany was preparing for the attack on the Soviet Union, Bandera's comrades-in-arms joined the German leadership with two Ukrainian battalions named Nightingale and Roland.

Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine. Adolf Hitler rejected the idea of Ukrainian independence, and Bandera was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until 1944.

The OUN-B continued to fight for independence in Ukraine with the help of its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Nazis and the Soviets persecuted and killed OUN-B fighters. After the war, Bandera lived in Munich until he was killed in 1959 by a KGB agent using cyanide.

Bandera cult in present-day Ukraine

(AND FOR THE POST WWII DIASPORA IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE)

Ukrainian emigrants in the West revered Bandera. In western Ukraine, a veritable cult emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union; there are museums, monuments and streets named in his honor.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, in particular in the east, many people believed in Soviet historiography. They did not take a favorable view of Bandera, and saw him exclusively as a Nazi collaborator. Under pro-Western politician Ukrainian Viktor Yushchenko, who became president in 2005, Bandera was awarded the title "Hero of Ukraine." His successor, pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, had the title revoked.


German troops were on the offensive in June 1941

Bandera's supporters parade through the capital, Kyiv, every year on his birthday with a torchlight procession. In 2016, Kyiv renamed the avenue called Moscow Prospect after the nationalist, calling it Bandera Prospect. While the view of Bandera has becom more positive over the years, Ukraine remains divided over the issue. A survey by the Democratic Initiative Foundation in April 2021 found that one out of three Ukrainians, 32%, considered Bandera's acts as positive, and just as many took the opposite view.
Ukraine that Bandera wanted

The Bandera cult is an "expression of selective memory and politics of history," said Andreas Umland, an expert at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies. It is about remembering that Bandera was a radical fighter for independence who served time in a Polish prison and a German concentration camp and was murdered by the KGB, he told DW.

"What people do not remember is that both at the beginning and at the end of World War II, the movement that Bandera led, the OUN, cooperated with the Third Reich for various reasons," Umland said.

Many Ukrainians are supportive of Bandera's actions

Experts have two explanations, said Umland. One group believes the cooperation was forced, while others argue there was an ideological closeness. Both are true, said Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, a Bandera biographer and historian at the Free University of Berlin.

"Of course Bandera wanted a Ukrainian state, but he wanted a fascist state, an authoritarian state, one where he would have been the leader," said Rossolinski-Liebe.

Both Umland and Rossolinski-Liebe point out another dark side in the history of the Bandera movement, the involvement of OUN fighters in the murders of civilians, Jews and Poles, in the regions of Galicia and Volhynia. However, they said Bandera personally had no part in the murders.

"The OUN joined the Ukrainian police, in 1941, and helped the Germans murder Jews in western Ukraine," said Rossolinski-Liebe, adding he had found no evidence that Bandera supported or condemned "ethnic cleansing" or killing Jews and other minorities. It was, however, important that people from OUN and UPA "identified with him," he said.

Hugely popular, despite controversial image

Bandera was not a "Nazi," but a "Ukrainian ultranationalist," Umland argued, saying Ukrainian nationalism at the time was "not a copy of Nazism." Rossolinski-Liebe takes a different view, saying Bandera can be called "a radical nationalist, a fascist."

The German-Polish historian disagrees with Ukrainian colleagues who say Bandera's supporters fought Nazis just as much as they fought Soviets. "The USSR was the OUN's most important enemy," said Rossolinski-Liebe. He pointed out that the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs waged a brutal battle against Ukrainian nationalists — about 150,000 people were killed and more than 200,000 deported.


A recent poll found that a majority of Ukrainians still view Bandera favorably

Selective memory is not something that's unique for Ukraine — it happens in other countries too, Umland said. He pointed to a prominent example from Germany, where churches and streets are named after Martin Luther — although it's known that he hated Jews.

Honoring Bandera damages Ukraine's image because it strains the relationship with Poland and Israel, said Umland, adding that Israel's reticence concerning Russia's current war against Ukraine is one of the consequences. Among Ukrainians, the war seems to have brought about a radical change with regard to Bandera. In April, researchers from the Rating group, a Ukrainian research organization, found that 74% of Ukrainians now view the historical figure favorably.

This article has been translated from German

Number of displaced people passes 100m for the first time, says UN


‘Staggering milestone’ calls for urgent international action to address underlying causes of conflict, persecution and the climate crisis, says high commissioner for refugees

UNHCR personnel providing help for Ukrainian refugees in Krakow, Poland last month. Photograph: Dominika Zarzycka/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock


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Diane Taylor

Mon 23 May 2022

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said the global number of forcibly displaced people has passed 100 million for the first time, describing it as a “staggering milestone”.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said the grim new statistic should act as a wake-up call for the international community and that more action is needed internationally to address the root causes of forced displacement around the world.


Officials said that the number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution had risen to an unprecedented level due to the war in Ukraine along with other deadly conflicts.
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“One hundred million is a stark figure – sobering and alarming in equal measure,” said Grandi. “This must serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes.”

The figure hit 90 million at the end of 2021, propelled by a range of conflicts including in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Nigeria.


‘People are dying’: Ethiopians escape war only to face hunger in Somaliland

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Eight million Ukrainian people have been displaced within their home country as a result of the war, along with more than six million refugee movements registered from Ukraine.

“The international response to people fleeing war in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Grandi. “Compassion is alive and we need similar mobilisation for all crises around the world. But ultimately humanitarian aid is a palliative, not a cure. To reverse this trend the only answer is peace and stability so that innocent people are not forced to gamble between acute danger at home or precarious flight or exile.”

The term “displaced person” was first used during the second world war, in which more than 40 million people were forcibly displaced.

A report from the House of Lords library in December 2021 cites UNHCR statistics that the number of people forcibly displaced globally exceeded 84 million by mid-2021. This was an increase from the estimated 82.4 million at the end of 2020. Armed conflicts, violence and human rights violations were leading causes. The report also noted that the Covid-19 pandemic, disasters, extreme weather, and the other effects of climate breakdown had created additional challenges for displaced people.
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UNHCR reported that, by the end of June 2021, the number of refugees under its mandate had surpassed 20.8 million, an increase of 172,000 on the end of 2020. More than half of those who were granted international protection were from five countries – Central African Republic (71,800), South Sudan (61,700), Syria (38,800), Afghanistan (25,200) and Nigeria (20,300).

Syria continued to account for the world’s largest refugee population. Venezuelans were the second largest group and Afghans made up the third largest group.

The three countries hosting the most displaced people were Turkey with 3,696,800, Colombia with 1,743,900 and Uganda with 1,475,300.

On 16 June UNHCR will release its annual Global Trends report outlining a full set of global, regional and national data for 2021 along with more limited updates to April 2022.

'This is an atrocity': fears grow that Russian blockade may unleash famine




Odessa's port and warehouses are currently holding more than four million tonnes of grain from the last harvest 

(AFP/Genya SAVILOV)

David STOUT
Sun, May 22, 2022, 

Staring out over Ukraine's seemingly endless wheat fields near Odessa, Dmitriy Matulyak has a difficult time imagining that so many people may starve soon as another bountiful harvest nears.

The war has been hard on the 62-year-old farmer.

On the first day of invasion, an airstrike hit one of his warehouses, incinerating over 400 tonnes of animal feed as Russian troops fanned out from their bases in the Crimean Peninsula and seized large chunks of southern Ukraine.

"My voice trembles and tears come to my eyes because of how many people I know that have already died, how many relatives are suffering and how many have gone abroad," he tells AFP.


But worse may still lie ahead.

The Russians never stormed the beaches in the nearby port of Odessa as feared, but their ongoing blockade of the Black Sea has been ruinous -- unleashing economic devastation in Ukraine and threatening famine elsewhere.

Silos and ports across Ukraine are now brimming with millions of tonnes of grain with nowhere to go as the country is slowly suffocated by the siege.

In Ukraine's balmy south, the summer harvest is set to begin in the coming weeks, but few know where exactly they will put this season's wheat, stirring fears that large portions of the grain and other food products will be left to rot.

"It's savagery for one country to have food spoiling like this and for other people to be left poor and hungry," says Matulyak. "This is an atrocity. It’s savagery. There is no other way to put it."

- 'Malnutrition, mass hunger and famine' -

While much of the war's focus remains on the grinding battle of attrition in eastern Ukraine, the Black Sea blockade may trigger the most wide ranging consequences from the conflict yet, with experts issuing increasingly dire warnings about surging food prices and potential famine.

Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine served as one of the world's leading breadbaskets -- exporting roughly 4.5 million tonnes of agricultural produce per month through its ports, including 12 percent of the planet's wheat, 15 percent of its corn, and half of its sunflower oil.

The war and its ongoing blockade has largely brought the trade to a halt, with alternative routes by rail and truck unable to tackle the enormous logistical and financial hurdles needed to move so much produce to international markets.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been unequivocal on the matter, saying last week that the war "threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity".

What might follow would be "malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years", he warned.

To date, over 20 million tonnes of food products remain stuck in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities.

In southern Odessa, the crisis can be felt acutely. The port remains idle with nothing coming in or going out for months now.

For generations, the economic might of Eastern Europe's fertile agricultural heartlands were largely marshalled in Odessa, with its sprawling port and rail hub connecting the region’s wheat fields to the coast.

That centuries-old link has now been severed.

The city's port and warehouses are currently holding more than four million tonnes of grain, all of which came from the last harvest.

"We won't be able to store this new harvest in any way, that's the problem," says Odessa mayor Gennady Trukhanov.

"People will simply die of hunger," he says if the blockade continues.

- 'Relevant weapons' -

Ukraine's economy has also been ravaged as a result, with World Bank estimates predicting the war and crippling naval siege would likely trigger a 45 percent decline in the country's GDP this year.

And while Ukraine's land forces have proven resilient against a larger, better armed enemy, the Russians continue to enjoy almost complete superiority at sea.

"Unfortunately, Ukraine has traditionally overlooked the issue of maritime security," explained the country's former defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk in a paper published by the Atlantic Council.

"While the democratic world has taken up the challenge of arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression on land, international involvement in the war at sea has been more limited."

Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the world to intervene, begging for the "relevant weapons" that could help bring the Russians to heel and end the blockade.

"It will create a food crisis if we do not unblock the routes for Ukraine, do not help the countries of Africa, Europe, Asia, which need these food products," the president argued.

But even if given the needed arms, it could take months or longer to kickstart trade again if the war rages on, with shipping companies unlikely to send their fleets into an active conflict zone.

For farmers like Matulyak who were born in the Soviet Union and once enjoyed "brotherly" ties to Russia, the ongoing conflict and its fallout is hard to swallow.

"Of course it would be good if all these issues could be resolved by some diplomatic peaceful means," he says. "But we have already seen that Russia does not understand the normal values people hold."

ds/har/yad

Rising star of African art hits on colonialism, tyranny and beauty of black





Currently, Ba says he is focused on solutions, a theme apparent in his Dakar biennale exhibit (AFP/JOHN WESSELS)

Lucie PEYTERMANN
Sun, May 22, 2022, 11:28 PM·4 min read


In a serene studio filled with birdsong, Omar Ba takes off his shoes and gets down on his hands and knees. Then the renowned Senegalese artist begins to paint a five-metre-long canvas a deep, dark shade of black.

This is how Ba, a rising star in the world of contemporary African art, starts most of his works, which question the state of the world and Africa’s place in it.

"On black backgrounds, I feel that the drawing will be much more readable and clear for me," he said from his airy workspace at the end of a pathway strewn with shells from the nearby Lac Rose.

"I feel in perfect union with what I am doing because I find myself in front of this colour, which I find noble and magnificent."
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Ba, 45, is a top sensation at the 14th Dakar Biennale, which opened Thursday. His work touches on colonialism, violence, but also hope.

"We see the colour white as the neutral colour, the pure colour, the innocent colour," he said. "Black is always associated with what is dirty, what is dark ... and that can affect the person who lives these cliches."

- Enigmatic, hallucinatory, poetic -

Ba has 20 pieces currently on display at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and an exhibition opening in New York in September. In November, the Baltimore Museum of Art will host a retrospective of his work.

Enigmatic, even hallucinatory, and intensely poetic, his work is inhabited by dream-like visions with shimmering colours and hybrid creatures with the head of a goat, a ram or Horus, the falcon-headed Egyptian deity.

His creatures embody the traumas inherited from colonialism, tyranny, violence, North-South inequalities.

"These characters are half-man, half-animal," he said. "It is a nod to the natural within the human being, who I think behaves like an animal in the jungle -- we try to dominate others to be able to exist."

In his 2021 "Anomalies" exhibition in Brussels, Ba painted imaginary heads of state with their hands resting on a book symbolising a constitution, a way to castigate the slew of African leaders who have recently modified constitutions in order to stay in power.

"We see that Africa wants to go elsewhere, wants to move," he said. "There are wars, overthrown heads of state, dictatorships ... the African artist should not remain indifferent to what happens in this continent -- we must try to see what we can do to build, pacify and give hope."

Currently, Ba says he is focused on solutions, a theme apparent in his biennale exhibit.

One of his festival pieces features two figures with trophies for necks standing on an enormous globe and shaking hands. They are surrounded by laurel branches, symbolising peace.

"It speaks of reconciliation, unity and an Africa that wins -- not an Africa that always asks or begs, but an Africa that participates in the concert of nations," he said.

The biennale, hosted in his home country for more than three decades, holds special significance for Ba. It was in Dakar where, after abandoning training to be a mechanic, he switched to art studies.

- Painting 'reinvented' -

Since his first exhibition in Switzerland in 2010, Ba, who now lives between Senegal, Brussels and Geneva, has also exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

For the past few years, he has worked from the peace and quiet of his Bambilor studio, in the middle of a mango plantation, an hour's drive from Dakar, sharing the land with cows, ducks and exotic flowers.

"Omar Ba has reinvented painting," said Malick Ndiaye, the biennale's artistic director.

"It is an innovative and powerful work that we are not used to seeing in terms of the technique he uses, the materials he uses and the composition and arrangement."

Highly sought-after by collectors, Ba is represented by the Templon Gallery, which has previously exhibited Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cesar and Andy Warhol.

"His work is much more complex than most things you see -- his treatment of subject matter, his use of bestiary and colour are strikingly strong and beautiful," said gallerist Mathieu Templon.

"He is one of the African artists with the most aesthetic and political work."

Ba's work has featured in the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection and the Louis Vuitton Foundation for the Contemporary Art’s collection.

Speaking ahead of the biennale, the continent's largest contemporary art event, Ba said he was pleased to see young African artists "beginning to enter very large galleries and exhibit in museums that are recognised internationally."

"We must try to make Africa an essential place for art," he said.

lp/lal/prc/bp

REST IN POWER

Miss.Tic, renowned pioneer of French street art, dies aged 66

FRANCE 24 

Miss.Tic, a pioneer of French street art whose provocative work began to appear in Paris's Montmartre neighbourhood in the mid-1980s, died on Sunday aged 66, her family said.

© Bertrand Guay, AFP

 MIS. TIC AND MODESTE BLAZE

Radhia Novat – the daughter of a Tunisian father and a mother from Normandy in western France – grew up in the narrow streets of Montmartre in the shadow of Sacre-Coeur basilica in Paris, where she first began stencilling sly and emancipatory slogans.

Her family said she had died of an unspecified illness.

One of the founders of stencil art, she was known for her graffiti of enigmatic female figures, particularly a character with flowing black hair resembling the artist herself.

As news of her death spread, French street artists and other cultural figures paid tribute to her work.

On Twitter, street artist Christian Guemy, alias C215, hailed "one of the founders of stencil art". The walls of the 13th arrondissement of Paris – where her images are a common sight – "will never be the same again", he wrote.

Another colleague known as Jef Aerosol said she had fought her final illness with courage in a tribute posted on Instagram.

And France's newly appointed Culture Minister, Rima Abdul Malak, saluted her "iconic, resolutely feminist" work.

Miss.Tic's work often included clever wordplay which is almost always lost in translation. Her art became a fixture of walls across the capital.

"I had a background in street theatre, and I liked this idea of street art," Miss.Tic said in a 2011 interview.

"At first I thought, 'I'm going to write poems'. And then, 'we need images' with these poems. I started with self-portraits and then turned towards other women," she said.

Miss.Tic also drew the attention of law enforcement over complaints of defacing public property, leading to an arrest in 1997.

But her work came to be shown in galleries in France and abroad, with some acquired by the Paris modern art fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, according to her website.

And cinema buffs will recognise her work on the poster for Claude Chabrol's 2007 film "La fille coupee en deux" ("A Girl Cut in Two").

For a spell she was a favourite of fashion brands such as Kenzo and Louis Vuitton.

"So often it's not understood that you can be young and beautiful and have things to say," she told AFP in 2011.

"But it's true that they sell us what they want with beautiful women. So I thought, I'm going to use these women to sell them poetry."

Her funeral, the date of which is still to be announced, will be open to the public, said her family.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Palestinian wins world weightlifting championship in Greece

In a first, Palestine wins gold and bronze medals at the weightlifting world championships despite the great challenges facing the sports sector in the Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Hamada of Team Palestine competes during the Weightlifting - Men's 81 kg Group B on day eight of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo International Forum on July 31, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. - Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Hadeel Al Gherbaw
May 21, 2022

Mohammed Hamada, a 20-year-old weightlifter from the Gaza Strip, is the first Palestinian athlete to represent Palestine globally during his participation in the 2022 IWF Weightlifting Junior World Championships held in Heraklion, Greece, during the first two weeks of May.

The sports field in Gaza faces many challenges, including the lack of large sports clubs that provide the necessary training for such individual Olympic sports, the lack of freedom of movement to and from Palestine, and the difficulty of obtaining visas for travel to some European countries.

Hamada, who returned from Greece on May 13, told Al-Monitor, “I started weightlifting when I was 12 years old, and my brother Hussam is the one who supported me to pursue this sport since he is the head and coach of the Palestine national weightlifting team of the Gaza Sports Club. I participated in many Arab and international tournaments, namely in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.”

He added, “Everyone suffers in the Gaza Strip, not just athletes. I faced many challenges, including the lack of many sports clubs and the lack of opportunities in the Gaza Strip. Athletes need a special diet, vitamins and nutritional supplements to help them build their bodies, and I am still a student; I do not work, and I rely on my father for all these costs. My father is a government employee, and his monthly salary is not enough to support nine people. Three of my brothers are also involved in bodybuilding and weightlifting and need nutritional supplements. Sometimes we would borrow money to buy supplements and vitamins.”

Hamada continued, “The club and the Palestinian Olympic Committee have refined my skills and motivated me to represent Palestine in world championships. [Before participating in the championship in Greece,] I traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Russia and partook in a 45-day intense training in boot camps. I underwent a general training period from January to March in Ras al-Khaimah in the UAE, and then we moved to Russia to the cities of Sochi and Chekhov from April until the competition in May.”

“This training greatly helped refine my skills, although we faced great challenges in obtaining visas for these countries, especially amid the war between Russia and Ukraine. But we were able to coordinate with the Palestinian Foreign Ministry and managed to succeed,” he said.

Hamda added, “I was going there (Greece) to win the gold medal and nothing else. When I told my friends about the championship, they were very worried because of the war in Russia, but I told them that we in Gaza are always accustomed to war and must travel to win and represent Palestine in such a world championship. And although I was fasting during Ramadan, I managed to win.”

Hamada explained the competition: “We started off as eight competitors from different countries in the 102 kg weight category; each of us had only three attempts. My first attempt was 156 kg and the second was 160 kg, which put me in fourth place. I only had one more shot, and the numbers close to the 160 kg category were taken by my fellow competitors. I had never lifted more than 165 kg, so this was a big risk for me. But I trained a lot to reach this competition and championship, so I had to take a chance and raise the weight to 168 kg.”

“I was very confident that I was going to win. When they called out my name, my coach and brother Hussam told me, ‘Mohammed, Palestine is waiting for you.’ This phrase pushed me to lift a weight of 168 kg, and I snatched the gold in weightlifting and the bronze in the clean and jerk competition after lifting 193 kg," he added.

Hamada dedicates his wins to Palestine and the spirit of the Palestinian martyrs and to Awad al-Aboudi, the Jordanian weightlifting champion who died last year.

Hamada’s brother Hussam told Al-Monitor, “Participating in this championship was a great responsibility for me because he is both my brother and my trainee. This was a national mission for us. Palestine should win in a global Olympic sports competition.”

“The International Olympic Committee has set the qualification system for the Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris in 2024, and this means that I will now be training my brother to qualify to participate in this very important competition for us. However, we have several competitions in the meantime, including the Arab Championship in Bahrain in October, the Asian Championship for juniors in Uzbekistan in July, the Islamic World Championship in Turkey in August and the Qatar Championship with the Asian Cup in December,” he said.

Hamada’s father, Khamis, told Al-Monitor, “I was watching the competition, and when they announced that my son had won, I started dancing and crying tears of joy. I never expected this to happen and for my son to win this world championship. Our family is very proud that our son is a Palestinian hero.”

Vice president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee Asaad al-Majdalawi told Al-Monitor, “Palestine has never won such a championship. This is Palestine’s first victory with a gold and bronze medal. Of course, I expected Hamada to win because his victory did not come by chance. Rather, it was proceeding according to a sports plan that we set in the Olympic Committee in coordination with the Palestinian Weightlifting Federation. For many years, we had been planning to prepare an Olympic champion, and his victory came through a cumulative process through previous participation and intense training.”

Majdalawi added, “All of us in Palestine feel proud despite the great challenges that the sports sector faces in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of freedom of movement to and from Palestine. But we and our youth were able to reach a global rank that will be a major addition to the history of Palestinian sports.”