NATO NATION BUILDING FAIL

UN report: Libya faces serious security threat from foreign fighters, Russia's Wagner Group

By Euronews with AP • Updated: 28/05/2022 - 14:50

Forces loyal to Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, one of Libya’s two rival prime ministers, secure the streets of Tripoli on 17 May 2022 - 

 Copyright AP Photo/Yousef Murad

Libya faces a serious security threat from foreign fighters and private military companies, especially Russia's Wagner Group which has violated international law, a UN expert report said.

The experts also accused seven Libyan armed groups of systematically using unlawful detention to punish perceived opponents, ignoring international and domestic civil rights laws, including those prohibiting torture.

In particular, "migrants have been extremely vulnerable to human rights abuses and regularly subjected to acts of slavery, rape and torture," the panel said in the report to the UN Security Council obtained late Friday.

The oil-rich North African nation plunged into turmoil after a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was later killed.

It then became divided between rival governments: one in the east, backed by military commander Khalifa Hifter, and an UN-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli. Each side is propped up by different militias and foreign powers.

In April 2019, Hifter and his forces, backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, launched an offensive to try and capture Tripoli.

His campaign collapsed after Turkey stepped up its military support for the UN-supported government with hundreds of troops and thousands of Syrian mercenaries.

An October 2020 cease-fire deal led to an agreement on a transitional government in early February 2021 and elections were scheduled for the last 24 December aimed at unifying the country.

But they were cancelled and the country now has rival governments with two Libyans claiming to be prime ministers.

A decade since Gaddafi, Libya's election raises fears of new violence

Hope for progress in Libya as factions agree interim presidential council

The cease-fire agreement called for the speedy withdrawal of all foreign fighters and mercenaries but the panel said "there has been little verifiable evidence of any large-scale withdrawals taking place to date."

The report said Chadian opposition groups operate from Libya and Sudanese fighters have been recruited by Hifter.

Wagner mercenaries accused of crimes against civilians

Turkish-backed Syrian combatants have been seen by the panel in government military camps in Tripoli, while Hifter-affiliated Syrian fighters operate alongside the Wagner Group's mercenaries in the strategic northern city of Sirte and nearby Jufra.

At least 300 of these Syrians have returned home and not been replaced by Hifter, the report said.

The panel said it continues to investigate the deployment of Wagner fighters and the transfers of arms and related materiel to support its operations.

The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it.

But the US identifies Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Wagner's main financier and the group has been hired in a number of conflicts to serve the interests of the Russian government.

Who are the Russian mercenaries waging war in Libya?

EU sanctions Russia's Wagner Group over human rights abuse claims

The panel said it considers a Samsung electronic tablet left on a Libyan battlefield by a Wagner mercenary and obtained by the BBC in early 2021 to be authentic.

It contained maps of the locations of 35 unmarked anti-personnel mines in the Ain Zara area of south Tripoli which was then a frontline area under Hifter's control, supported by Wagner.

Several mines had never been reported as being in Libya before and their transfer, therefore, violated the UN arms embargo, the panel said. It added that a booby-trapped mine exploded during a clearance operation killing two civilian experts.

The report claims that the authors also received information about the recovery of anti-tank mines from positions primarily occupied by Wagner in south Tripoli.

The panel said the failure to visibly mark the anti-personnel and anti-tank mines and issue warnings of their locations to civilians in the areas was a violation of the international humanitarian law by Wagner.

Russia supports withdrawal of foreign fighters from Libya

Russia, China blocking report into Libya conflict arms embargo violations

The Wagner tablet also contained a list of requested items including drones and tanks that would violate the arms embargo if delivered, the panel said, but it did not know if any of it had.

The panel said it identified 18 arms transfers and four examples of military training between March 2021 and late April 2022 that violated the UN arms embargo.

Among the examples it cited was the Luccello, a ship flying the Comoros flag that delivered 100 armoured vehicles to Hifter in Benghazi.
'Turning a blind eye to rape'

The experts said four migrants suffered human rights abuses in secret detention facilities controlled by human traffickers in the areas of Tazirbu in the Libyan desert and Bani Walid near the northwest coast.

They said victims were enslaved, severely beaten, deliberately starved and denied medical care.

"Two former female detainees, who were 14- and 15-year-old girls at the time, further testified to the panel that multiple perpetrators repeatedly raped them, subjected them to sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence during the period of over 18 months in a secret detention facility in Bani Walid," the report said.

'They sprayed the room with bullets': migrants in Libyan detention centres living in fear

Libya's detention centre closures: lancing lawlessness or consolidating poltical control?

The panel said it also found that guards responsible for protecting the most vulnerable migrants in the government-run Shara al-Zawiya detention centre "took a direct part in or turned a blind eye to consistent acts of rape, sexual exploitation and threats of rape against women and girls" detained there between January and June 2021.

UNDER REPORTED

School Shooting: Thousands of Students Walkout in Protest Across US

May 27, 2022

Hundreds of students attend protest march in Chile

 Last updated: 11 hours ago

Hundreds of students protested in Santiago, Chile on Friday, demanding that food subsidies and funds for structural improvements to public schools be allocated in the country's budget. At one particularly violent intersection police were forced to use their water cannon trucks to put out a bus set on fire by a group of protesters. No arrests had been made and no one was reported as injured. Recently inaugurated President Gabriel Boric's approval ratings have dropped with some pollsters registering his popularity now at 24% after his apparent willingness to appeal to the military for assistance in domestic security issues. As a student leader, Boric often led protests against inequality that rocked the country that was once seen as a bedrock of political stability in the region. As a candidate, he vowed to bring a seismic shift in the political landscape. Now some of his voters are disappointed that change appears slow and the students are returning to the streets to register their displeasure.

Coal India to import coal for first time in years as power shortages loom: Report

Coal India: India is expected to face a wider coal shortage during the third quarter of 2022 due to expectations of higher electricity demand.


Reported By:| 

Edited By: DNA Web Team |

Source: Reuters |Updated: May 28, 2022


Coal India, the world`s largest coal miner, will import the fuel for use by utilities, a power ministry letter seen by Reuters showed on Saturday, as shortages raise concerns about renewed power outages.

It would be the first time since 2015 that the state-run company has imported the fuel, highlighting efforts by state and federal officials to stock up to avoid a repeat of April, when India faced its worst power cuts in more than six years.

"Coal India would import coal for blending on government-to-government (G2G) basis and supply ... to thermal power plants of state generators and independent power producers (IPPs)," the federal Power Ministry said in the letter dated May 28.

The letter was sent to all utilities and top federal and state energy officials including the federal coal secretary and the chairman of Coal India.

India is expected to face a wider coal shortage during the third quarter of 2022 due to expectations of higher electricity demand, stoking fears of widespread power outages.

The power ministry said in the letter the decision was taken after nearly all states suggested that multiple coal import tenders by states would lead to confusion and sought centralised procurement through Coal India.

India stepped up pressure on utilities to increase imports to blend with local coal in recent days, warning of cuts to the supply of domestically mined coal if power plants did not build up coal inventories through imports.

But the power ministry on Saturday asked states to suspend tenders that are "under process". "The tenders under process by state generators and IPPs for importing coal for blending may be kept in abeyance to await the price discovery by Coal India through G2G route, so as to procure coal at least possible rates," the ministry said.

Coal inventories at power plants have declined by about 13% since April to the lowest pre-summer levels in years.

Unhappy birthday, Andrei Sakharov

NINA L KHRUSHCHEVA 

28th May 2022

The Kremlin’s negation of the Nobel laureate’s legacy represents another step backwards which could lead to nuclear war.

Celebrated in Brussels, Sakharov has been airbrushed from history in Russia

 (CC-BY-4.0, European Parliament)

This month, Andrei Sakharov—the Soviet nuclear physicist turned anti-nuclear activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate—would have been 101. As the Russian billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska recently noted, Sakharov, ‘like no one else, understood the true consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and the senselessness of the arms race. He consistently advocated one principled position: for peace.’

As the Russian military ravages Ukraine with its ‘special military operation’, peace has become a dangerous word in Russia. Calls for it have got thousands arrested, with one man being detained simply for holding a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Moscow’s Red Square. So, kudos to Deripaska for speaking out on its behalf.

Of course, refraining from nuclear war is not the same as securing peace. Rather, as Sakharov, who helped create the Soviet thermonuclear bomb, knew all too well, it means avoiding annihilation. As he wrote in 1968, ‘A thermonuclear war cannot be considered a continuation of politics by other means (according to the formula of Clausewitz). It would be a means of universal suicide.’
Khrushchev unmoved

Seven years earlier, Sakharov had pointed this out to my great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, as he tried to dissuade the Soviet premier from producing and testing the very weapons he had helped the USSR to acquire. He may have thought he could get through to Khrushchev, who had, after all, carried out a de-Stalinisation campaign and freed prisoners from the gulag a few years earlier.

But Khrushchev was unmoved by Sakharov’s pleas and even outraged at his impudence. ‘You make your bombs and test them,’ the premier told the physicist. ‘Don’t try to tell us what to do or how to behave.’ In any case, Khrushchev testily noted, the USSR had carried out only 83 tests, compared with America’s 194.

To be sure, Khrushchev agreed with Sakharov that a nuclear war would bring total annihilation and never dreamed of starting one. But he also believed that nuclear parity and brinkmanship—as exhibited in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962—were politically necessary. In his memoir, he argued that as long as the west was developing nuclear weapons, it was only reasonable that the Soviets did the same. But he also expressed regret at his rudeness toward Sakharov, a ‘moral crystal’ who ‘was driven by universal good’ and devoted to ‘the preservation of all possible conditions for a better life for people’.

That rudeness had consequences, or so the Politburo claimed when it ousted Khrushchev in 1964. His problem, they argued, was not only that he made hasty and untested decisions—what his colleagues labelled ‘voluntarism’—but also that he had treated Sakharov poorly. The claim was rich: after Khrushchev was ousted, Sakharov soon became persona non grata among the Soviet establishment, because of his calls for intellectual freedom and other rights.
Nuclear war risk

More than 30 years after his death, Sakharov is again being suppressed—and the risk of nuclear war is again rising. Last December, the Kremlin shut down Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest civil-rights groups, which Sakharov and other Soviet-era dissidents created in 1987 to expose the scale of Stalin-era repression, including tens of millions of deaths in the gulags, and to campaign for the rights of political prisoners and victims of oppression.

Sakharov is being academically cancelled as well. On May 21st, during Moscow State University’s Day of Physics—which, incidentally, was established during the Khrushchev era—the physics department ‘postponed’ lectures on Sakharov’s life and achievements. They were busy with other matters, they explained. Really? With nuclear threats and accusations dominating public discourse in Russia, Ukraine and the west nowadays, what could possibly be more relevant?

As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has warned that the risks of nuclear war are ‘very significant’, while assuring us that the deployment of nuclear weapons is out of the question for Russia. Given that Lavrov insisted with a straight face that Russia had not invaded Ukraine two weeks after Russian tanks rolled into the country, his assurance here may be more worrying than comforting.

Inflamed discourse

Compounding the risks is the inflamed discourse that has taken shape in both western and Russian media, fanned by politicians and public figures on all sides. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says the whole world should prepare for the possible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. US officials have echoed these warnings, noting that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, might feel compelled to take that step if he believes he has run out of options.

But such warnings can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Even the White House press secretary recently highlighted the need to tone down the nuclear rhetoric. Leaders on all sides could benefit from reading some Sakharov.

Still, nowhere is awareness of Sakharov’s legacy more important than in Russia. While some Russian elites grumble about the war in private, few have dared question it openly. Deripaska, who is among the oligarchs the west has sanctioned for his alleged proximity to the Kremlin, has emerged as a rare exception. With careful but pointed statements—such as his comment that Sakharov’s 1983 article ‘The Danger of Thermonuclear War’ has become relevant again, and that humanity needs to ‘grow up’—he has highlighted the true recklessness of nuclear posturing.

From rising repression to economic destruction to a rapid brain drain, Russia has incurred heavy losses from Putin’s war. Forgetting Sakharov’s legacy represents yet another step backwards. One hopes that it will not be a step toward universal suicide.

copyright Project Syndicate 2022, ‘Unhappy birthday, Andrei Sakharov’



Nina L Khrushcheva
Nina L Khrushcheva is professor of international affairs at the New School in New York and co-author of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (St Martin's Press).

Safety illusion: Fortress schools won't solve America's tragic mass shootings

Alison Mau May 29 2022

"We Will Buy Them Back And We Will Destroy Them" - PM Jacinda Ardern On Gun Control In New Zealand

Jacinda Ardern discusses the Texas school shooting and gun control with Stephen Colbert.

Alison Mau is a senior journalist and editor of the #MeTooNZ project.

OPINION: By today's standards, I had a dangerous childhood. Roaming the neighbourhood until after dark, taking the tram to school from the age of five, getting into unsupervised trouble left, right and centre.

This was the way of the 1970s; we were told to "go and play", and expected to disappear without question while the adults got on with adult things. According to family legend, our beloved German Short-haired Pointer saved my life, twice, when I’d made "poor decisions" on family outings in the countryside (those are stories for another day).

At school, there was only concrete under the monkey bars we hung on every lunchtime; if you hadn't broken an arm by the time you graduated you were considered one of the very lucky ones. A knee-height bluestone fence was the only thing separating the grassed playgrounds and asphalt netball courts from the street. You could walk onto the school grounds from multiple entry points; this was not considered an issue, because the emphasis was on keeping schoolchildren in. Leave the school without permission and you risked being sent to the principal's office for "the strap".


JAE C. HONG/AP
Pastor Daniel Myers kneels in front of crosses bearing the names of Tuesday's shooting victims while praying for them at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, May 26, 2022.

No-one considered a need to keep unwanted, potentially dangerous people out.

I was bullied at school, by pretty much everyone, from the day I started until well into my high school years thanks to a run-of-the-mill but rather obvious physical deformity (I had my ears surgically pinned back when I turned 15). My most valuable safety asset was an older sister willing to defend me in the playground.

School was uncomfortable, often upsetting, but never did I feel unsafe. I certainly never feared for my life.

WILLIAM LUTHER
A state trooper walks past the Robb Elementary School sign in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, following a deadly shooting at the school.

As someone raised in that era, I've found one of the most poignant and frustrating parts of the reporting in the wake of the mass shooting of children in Uvalde, Texas this week, has been the discussion around the school's security measures - and how they must have failed.

According to news reporting, the Uvalde school district had doubled its security budget in recent years, to comply with state legislation brought in after eight students and two teachers died in a shooting at Santa Fe high School in Houston in 2018.

The result sounds like a fortress rather than a primary school.

Uvalde District had armed police officers, software to monitor social media, a threat reporting system and threat assessment teams, monitored entrances, and yes, fences to keep potentially dangerous people out. Teachers were required to lock classroom doors. Still, the 18-year-old shooter found an unlocked back door at Robb Elementary, and entered with a plan for deadly havoc.

No doubt the person who left that door unbarred will be found and questioned and blamed. And yet after Santa Fe, officials admitted none of these measures would have guaranteed safety from a person determined to carry out a deadly plan. They doubled down anyway. Texas Governor Greg Abbott​ put the focus on "hardening targets" - shorthand for making schools virtually impenetrable.

Santa Fe was one of the schools in the process of arming teachers and staff when the 2018 shooting took place. There were another 15 school shootings in the US that year, and according to a Washington Post database more than 300,000 American students have experienced gun violence in their schools since the Columbine shooting in 1999.

Abbott also promised action on tightening gun laws, and then did an apparent 180-degree turn, signing off on a permitless carry Bill in 2021. The result has been another generation of young kids, in yet another town, who can no longer feel safe at school as I did.

DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS/AP
Democrat Beto O'Rourke, who is running against Texas Governor Greg Abbott for governor this year, interrupts a news conference headed by Abbott in Uvalde, Texas.

There's been plenty of analysis this week on what has made the US such a stark outlier internationally when it comes to gun violence, and particularly mass shootings. This analysis has been going on for years; in 2017 a New York Times piece dove into the data, coming up with one answer - it's not mental health, it's not video games, it's not the overall level of violent crime - it's all the guns. Americans make up 4% of the world's population but own 42% of the guns, and studies have found that has a clear connection to the odds of it experiencing a mass shooting.

"American crime is simply more lethal", the piece concluded. "A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process."

This is - incredibly, unfortunately - a partisan issue. The New York Times this week asked all 50 Republican senators whether they would now support two Bills that passed in the House last year, that would allow stronger background checks for gun buyers. Most of them declined to answer, or said they would not. Many leaned on the need for more information - as if the research, and the litany of tragedies stretching back decades, does not exist.

That feeling you had when you heard about the Uvalde killings? Sick to your stomach, and yet deeply unsurprised? The only truly surprising, breakthrough moment, will come if and when lawmakers agree that gun control is necessary, and urgent.

MORE FROM
ALISON MAU • SENIOR JOURNALIST AND #METOONZ EDITORalison.mau@stuff.co.nz

Nearly 40 percent of women in Turkey subjected to violence, says HRW senior Turkey researcher



By Turkish Minute
- May 28, 2022

Around four out of 10 women in Turkey have suffered physical and/or sexual violence during their lives, said Emma Sinclair Webb, Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior Turkey researcher with the Europe and Central Asia division, in an interview with her colleague Birgit Schwarz, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

In the interview, Sinclair introduced a new report prepared by HRW titled “Combatting Domestic Violence in Turkey: The Deadly Impact of Failure to Protect.” According to the report, the Turkish state failed to provide effective protection from domestic violence.

Webb said this was unacceptable as nearly 40 percent of women suffered from violence or stalking. Moreover, hundreds of femicide cases were recorded each year by women’s rights groups and independent media.

Webb explained that the Turkish government had a very conservative approach to combatting violence.

“Turkey’s president is on record opposing gender equality and it has been written out of government policy,” she said. “So while we are seeing government efforts to tackle violence against women, the government simultaneously undermines its own efforts by not seeing the fight against domestic violence as part of promoting women’s rights or ensuring gender equality.”

Emphasizing that although Turkey had laws protecting women against domestic violence, Webb said there was an enormous problem with enforcing these laws and prosecuting perpetrators of violence.

She explained that courts issue a fine or suspend sentences on the condition that the perpetrator does not reoffend within five years. “The authorities are failing to undertake effective risk assessments and don’t ensure the orders are observed. This leaves domestic violence survivors at risk even when they have reported abuse,” Webb added.

Webb said most femicides could possibly have been prevented had authorities paid attention to the women’s previous complaints.

In one case, Ayşe Tuba Arslan complained 23 times about her husband’s abusive behavior. Arslan was killed after divorcing him, but only three weeks before her death was her husband prosecuted for publicly threatening to “shoot and kill” her. However, the sentence was suspended on condition that he did not repeat the offense.

According to Webb, in order to better protect women authorities need to be more consistent in collecting data. “Police and courts need to get better at risk assessment and at spotting warning signs,” she said. “And breaches of restraining orders need to be penalized more resolutely.

Webb added that social media had become instrumental in raising public awareness against gender-based violence but said it was worrying that authorities needed such public pressure to take action.

Femicides and violence against women are serious problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day.

According to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu), 280 women were murdered in Turkey in 2021.

Webb said the Istanbul Convention was very important for combatting gender-based violence and establishing equality.

The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, is an international accord designed to protect women’s rights and prevent domestic violence in societies and was opened to the signature of member countries of the Council of Europe in 2011.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sparked outrage in Turkey and the international community after he issued a decree in March 2021 that pulled the country out of the international treaty, which requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.

Since Turkey’s withdrawal from the treaty, Turkish authorities have been pressuring women’s rights organizations over their activist work.

Pakistan: Violence against women rampant regardless of rural-urban divide

ANI
28 May, 2022

Karachi [Pakistan], May 28 (ANI): Amid growing violence against women in Pakistan, another case of two Pakistani-origin Spanish sisters Arooj Abbas and Aneesa Abbas being allegedly tortured and shot dead has been registered as they failed to get their respective husbands’ visas to settle with them in Spain.

The incident took place in the Nathia village of Gujrat district in Pakistan’s Punjab province earlier this month.

Both the sisters, who are Spanish nationals, were married to their cousins in Pakistan more than a year ago, and were not happy with their marriages, reported Just Earth News, citing the police officials.

Cases of honour killing are frighteningly regular in Pakistan, especially in areas close to the tribal regions in the north and west.

More than 470 cases of “honour” killing were reported in Pakistan in 2021, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

In 2016, the murder of Qandeel Baloch, known as “Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian”, by her brother Waseem Azeem sparked national outrage and demands for changes to the law. Azeem strangled her in her home in the Punjab province after she shared photos on Facebook of herself with a Muslim cleric.

Azeem was sentenced to life imprisonment but was acquitted in February this year after his parents sought his release. His lawyers used what is known as the Qisas and Diyat law to circumvent the new legislation.

According to Just Earth News, Pakistan is the sixth-most populated country in the world. But it’s one of the world’s worst performers when it comes to gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 gender gap report.

In a derogatory remark in 2021, Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said, “Men are not robots, ladies wearing small clothes impact them,” thereby subscribing to a view long refuted by a significant body of research that shows that sexual violence is a consequence of perpetrators dehumanising female bodies.

Other leaders and ministers have often defended jirga-ordered ‘honour killings’ in their provinces as ‘custom’.

In the name of honour killing, murder committed on the pretext of family honour, women in Pakistan continue to suffer in the hands of perpetrators legitimising their actions through a misplaced sense of justice.

According to a Supreme Court judgment in 2020, Pakistan has one of the highest per capita honour killings in the world. However, by using words like ‘honour’, the Pakistan society not only downplays the atrocity of the crime but legitimises it with a belief that ‘bad character’, particularly pertaining to a woman, needs to be punished or it will tarnish the community at large. (ANI)

This report is auto-generated from ANI news service. 

ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

Victoria's Secret bankrolls largest-ever wage theft settlement for garment factory

by Ryan King, Breaking News Reporter
| May 28, 2022 

Over 1,000 Thai employees for a garment company connected to Victoria's Secret and other top fashion brands received an $8.3 million settlement this month, the largest-ever wage theft settlement for a single garment factory, a nonprofit group said.

The roughly 1,250 workers were laid off during the pandemic from supplier Brilliant Alliance Thai, which ultimately folded in March 2021 without offering severance pay. The factory agreed to dole out $8.3 million, a record-breaking settlement, according to the Solidarity Center, which advocates workers' rights.

“Low-wage garment workers left destitute by injustice meted out by global supply chains is nothing new,” David Welsh, the Thailand country director of the Solidarity Center, told the Associated Press.

 ”What’s new is they did not accept their fate — and won.”

Victoria’s Secret agreed to help finance the settlement by providing a loan to the defunct supplier's owner, according to a recent Reuters report.

"Over several months, we had been in active communication with the factory owners to facilitate a resolution," Victoria’s Secret said in a statement obtained by the Hindustan Times. "We regret they were not ultimately in a position to conclude this matter on their own so to ensure the workers received their full severance amounts owed, Victoria's Secret agreed to advance the severance funds to the factory owners."

The factory produced lingerie and other clothing products for multiple top U.S. brands, such as Lane Bryant and Torrid. When the company folded during the pandemic, the laid-off workers did not receive severance pay as required under Thai law, per multiple reports.

Victoria's Secret appears to be the only major brand that contributed to the settlement, though it is not clear how much it contributed. The Washington Examiner reached out to the company for comment.

Thailand ordered Clover Group, the factory's owner, to pay severance within 30 days of letting the workers go, but it declined, arguing it had insufficient funds to pay them and asked to have 10 years to pay them back. For over a year, the workers fought back with help from the Triumph International Union.

Advocates hope the victory will set a precedent for other workers.

"We want more brands to do the same because sadly this will not be the last of its kind — there will be many, many more cases," Welsh added.

Shanghai residents rebel against anti-COVID lockdown


Shanghai's chaotic and inconsistent lockdowns are being challenged by increasingly angry residents. 

The New Daily@TheNewDailyAU

May 28,2022

Six days ago, Shanghai residents in an upper-income apartment complex did what was until recently unthinkable by leaving their homes against orders and demanding an immediate end to a seven-week lockdown ordeal.

What happened next was also unthinkable: they were set free.

The story of a small triumph quickly spread on chat groups across the Chinese city this week, sparking one question in the minds of those who remain confined to their homes: Should we do the same?

By the end of the week, more residents had confronted management in their complexes, and some had won at least partial freedom from the consequences of Beijing’s aim to totally eliminate the coronavirus.

Other groups have not been so restrained, with Time magazine reporting workers at Apple’s Shanghai fabrication plant this week battled guards amid demands their seven-week ordeal locked inside the factory immediately end.

Reports of increasing unrest have also emerged involving Beijing students and in other cities

.

Before COVID, shoppers swamped Shanghai’s Apple store. 

Now Apple’s locked-down workers want out. 

While it is unclear how widespread they are, the incidents reflect the frustration that has built up after more than seven weeks of lockdown, even as the number of new daily cases has fallen to a few hundred in a city of 25 million people.

They are also a reminder of the power of China’s neighbourhood committees that the ruling Communist Party relies on to spread propaganda messages, enforce its decisions and even settle personal disputes.

Such committees and the residential organisations under them have become the target of complaints, especially after some in Shanghai and other cities refused to allow residents out even after official restrictions were relaxed.
Arbitrary rules

More than 21 million people in Shanghai are now in ‘precaution zones’, the least restrictive category.

In theory, they are free to go out. In practice, the decision is up to their residential committee, resulting in a kaleidoscope of arbitrary rules.

Some are allowed out, but only for a few hours with a specially issued pass for one day or certain days of the week. Some places permit only one person per household to leave. Others forbid people to leave at all.

“We have already been given at least three different dates when we are going to reopen, and none of them were real,” Weronika Truszczynska, a graduate student from Poland who posted vlogs about her experience, said.

‘No one believed it’

“The residential committee told us, ‘You can wait a week, we are going to reopen probably on June 1’,” she said. “No one believed it.”

More than a dozen residents of her complex, many under umbrellas on a rainy day, confronted their managers on Tuesday, two days after the Sunday night breakout at the upscale Huixianju compound.

The residents, who were mostly Chinese, demanded to be allowed to leave without time limits or restrictions. After the demands were not met, some returned to protest a second day. This time, four police officers stood watch.

On Thursday afternoon, community representatives knocked on the doors of each resident with a new policy: Write their name and apartment number on a list, take a temperature check, scan a barcode – and they were free to leave.

“We got the possibility of going out just because we were brave enough to protest,” Truszczynska said.

The party’s strict anti-virus campaign has been aided by an urban environment in which hundreds of millions of people in China live in gated apartment compounds or walled neighbourhoods that can be easily blocked off.

The front line for enforcement are the neighbourhood committees, responsible for keeping track of every resident in every urban household nationwide and enforcing public health and sanitation rules.
Incentive to over-enforce

Many tend to err on the side of over-enforcement, aware of the example made of public officials who are fired or criticised for failing in their pandemic prevention duties.

The importance of the committees dwindled in the 1990s as the Communist Party relaxed restrictions on the movement of citizens, but they have been undergoing a resurgence in an ongoing tightening of societal controls under President Xi Jinping.

The incident at Huixianju prompted others to speak out. In a series of videos that circulated this week, about two dozen people march toward the Western Nanjing Road Police Station, chanting “Respect the law, give me back my life”.

Residents of a compound in Jing’an district saw the gates of neighbouring compounds open over the past month – yet theirs remained locked.

On Wednesday, about two dozen gathered at the gate, calling out to speak with a representative.

“I want to understand what are the neighbourhood leaders planning?” one woman asks in a video of the incident.

Another resident points out they should be free by now, since the compound has been case-free for a while.

“Didn’t they say on television that things are opening up? We saw it on television,” an older man says.

The next day, the community issued one-day passes – residents were allowed out for two hours on Friday, with no word on what would happen after that.

Shanghai authorities have declared a June target for life to return to normal.

-with AAP