Anti-LGBTQ legislation forces some transgender people to flee their states

ABC NEWS

Yesterday 

When Texas officials announced their intentions to launch child abuse investigations involving people who provide gender-affirming care for their transgender children, Susan’s heart dropped.

Susan has a 7-year-old transgender daughter, Elsa, whose parents asked that she be referred to by a pseudonym for safety reasons, who they say may one day need such care.

Elsa's parents describe her as wise beyond her years. She had expressed that she was a girl from an early age and guided her parents through her gender journey – asking to wear dresses, change her name, and to be referred to as a “daughter” by her parents.

“When she was 3, one day, she told me, ‘I'm a girl person,’” Susan said in an interview with ABC News. It was National Daughters Day, “and she said, ‘Can I be your daughter?’ – which made me cry.”

Susan and her husband Brian, who asked that their last names not be used for safety reasons, decided the family needed to move out of Texas in light of the child abuse investigation threats. They say they weren’t sure how far the government would go to separate families like their own or affect Elsa’s access to care as she gets older.

Her family is not alone. Across the country, advocacy groups say some families are packing up and moving out of their home states that have implemented anti-LGBTQ legislation to get to a place with greater protections for the community, according to queer advocacy groups nationwide.

But Elsa didn’t want to leave, telling Susan, “‘But mommy, I can handle anything as long as we're together,’” Susan said.

Susan told her: “I feel the same way. I think we could handle anything when we're together. But the reason that we have to go is that they could make it so we can't be together anymore.”



Elsa is a trans girl, who is using a pseudonym for her safety. She and her family moved out of state due to the threat of child abuse investigations into families providing gender-affirming care to trans children.© Obtained by ABC News

As a transgender kid in a conservative region, Susan said Elsa could feel the growing tensions concerning people like her – she told her parents to “just let them hurt me,” instead of moving out of state.



“It just kind of reveals how much damage all this causes to trans people, to their families, to people that support them, to people that haven't even figured out who they are yet,” said Brian.

Elsa’s family has since moved to Washington and said LGBTQ acceptance in the community has been like day-and-night between the two states, Susan said.

Manny Santiago, the executive director of the Washington State LGBTQ Commission, said it's a bittersweet feeling to know that the state has become a safe space for families with LGBTQ members, while others implement restrictions.MORE: Fight for transgender equality transcends generations

Washington has nondiscrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people, bans on conversion therapy, trans inclusive policies for health insurance, and more.


Elsa, a trans girl, can be seen drawing on the sidewalk with her sibling.© Obtained by ABC News

“I had to leave my country because of many things – amongst them, homophobia,” said Santiago, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico.

“On the one hand, it’s great that they have a place that they can go to and find support and protections, but it's also really hard to leave home, whatever home is for you, wherever home is for you.”

Laws in place

Jamie, another parent who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym for safety reasons, moved their family from Texas to Colorado to protect her gender nonconforming teenager.

They said the move took up a lot of their savings -- a costly but important decision families say they had to make.

“That did not feel like normal teenage stress, in Texas,” said Jamie in an interview with ABC News. “Knowing that your governor and the top officials in your state literally don't want you to exist – That's a different kind of stress. It felt very genocidal there.”

Texas has officially banned gender-affirming care for transgender people under 18 and has placed restrictions on public performances that drag performers say could be used to target them.

Texas legislators said this effort is “about protecting children,” Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News before signing the bill.

Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican who backs the bill, has said: “We protect children against lots of things. We don’t let them smoke. We don’t let them drink. We don’t let them buy lottery cards. … And so we are doing the right thing.”

But parents like Jamie and Susan – and medical researchers at several major national medical associations – assert that gender-affirming care is safe and effective. Some, like the American Medical Association, deem it "medically necessary."

Studies, including research in JAMA Surgery, have shown that gender-affirming care can be life-saving for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, promoting positive mental and physical health and well-being.

Abbott’s office has not yet responded to ABC News’ requests for comment concerning people fleeing the state.

Adults lose access to gender-affirming care in Florida

In Florida, new legislation bans gender-affirming care for transgender patients under 18 who are just starting their treatments.

The law also mandates that adult trans patients sign an informed consent statement, see a physician in person to receive care instead of using online medical services or seeing a health practitioner of another kind.

State funds, including social support such as Medicaid and economic assistance programs, may also not be used for gender-affirming care.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is now running for president, has said the legislation aims to “let kids be kids,” asserting that gender-affirming treatments are being pushed onto children.

“We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago? Now this is something? They’re having third graders declare pronouns? We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida,” DeSantis said. Historians, however, say gender non-conforming people have existed throughout human history.

Still, some transgender adults in the state say they have been dropped from their doctors due to the new restrictions and requirements.

Sage Chelf and Nova Banks, two transgender Florida residents who say they have been left scrambling for treatments by their providers, say they feel forced to leave the state and are raising money to make their exit.

Nova Banks is a transgender woman who is trying to move out of Florida for a fresh start after new restrictions were placed on gender-affirming care in the state.

© Courtesy Nova Banks

Nova Banks, a 27-year-old transgender woman, has been taking hormones for about a year and has felt more comfortable in her body than she ever has.

“Recently, people automatically say ‘she’ and ‘her’ … and just that alone was so fulfilling,” she said.

Without her hormones, she’s been stressing about what she looks like, how she’s presenting, and how people are addressing her – especially in a community she said has felt increasingly hostile toward her as a transgender woman.

“If I just start over, at least to have a community that supports people like me,” Banks said. “And at least I can go to the girls bathroom without even having to think that I'm gonna get in trouble or someone's gonna like call the police on me.”

Chelf didn’t begin transitioning until a year and a half ago. She says it took her so long to consider medically transitioning because of “how it’s shoved into our minds our entire lives that being trans is a horrible thing.”

Being able to transition has been incredibly affirming, the 30-year-old said, but without that, she said it would be “hard to deal with the hate.”MORE: Pride organizers promise safety at festivities amid anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Chelf's timeline to move to Illinois with her long-distance girlfriend has been sped up in light of recent legislation.

“The breaking point was definitely when I called my doctor to get my routine blood test and she ended up telling me that because of new legislation, they can’t provide gender-affirming care to LGBT patients anymore,” Chelf said.

Equality Florida, which is the state’s largest LGBTQ organization, has issued a travel advisory for the state.

“People are worried about what it means to have a government telling you where to go to the bathroom and deputizing your neighbors to police who's in what stall,” said Brandon Wolf, the press secretary of Equality Florida.

“People are very worried about the attacks on health care and what that means for their children. I think people are very concerned about their family's safety.”

DeSantis’ office has not yet responded to ABC News’ requests for comment concerning people fleeing the state.


Elsa, who is using a pseudonym for her safety, poses in front of the Texas capitol building.© Obtained by Abc News

Families make moves for their children

Debi Jackson has long been an advocate for her nonbinary child, testifying against anti-LGBTQ legislation in Missouri alongside them.

Now, she hopes to give her child a fresh start in an accepting environment that offers them a chance to truly be a kid instead of an advocate for their community. The legislation has impacted their child’s mental health, according to Jackson.

“They deserve to have a life where they don't have to think their government is coming after them,” Jackson said.

“They deserve to be able to go back to thinking about their schoolwork and hanging out with your friends and playing video games,” she continued. “And they haven't had that for the last several years.”

Missouri recently banned gender-affirming care for people under 18 and barred Medicaid for paying for adult trans care.

Jackson and her family are moving out of Missouri, a plan that has been in the works for years since state legislators first began to express concerns or speculation concerning gender-affirming care.

“Because we don't know what's going to happen and because we don't trust them, it's time to go,” Jackson said. “I don't want my child to have to live through another one of the years of ‘what ifs.’”

Meet the LGBTQ activist who challenged his Caribbean country’s anti-sodomy law and won

Orden David poses for a portrait, in St. John’s, Antigua, Monday, May 15, 2023. David took his Caribbean nation’s government to court over its anti-sodomy law and won in 2022. 

(AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski) 

By Luis Andres Henao - Associated Press - Sunday, June 11, 2023

ST. JOHN‘S, Antigua — For years, Orden David was persecuted in his native Antigua and Barbuda — a frequent complaint by many LGBTQ people who fear for their safety across the conservative and mostly Christian Caribbean, where anti-gay hostility is widespread.

David was bullied and ridiculed. One time, a man stepped out of a car, made a comment about how a gay man was walking on the street late at night, then hit him in the head. More recently, another stranger struck him in the face in broad daylight, knocking him out. That’s when he had enough.

Facing ostracism and risking his life as the public face of the LGBTQ movement, David took his government to court in 2022 to demand an end to his country’s anti-sodomy law.

“I realized that with our community, we’ve gone through a lot and there’s no justice for us,” Orden told The Associated Press. “We all have rights. And we all deserve the same treatment.”

Last year, a top Caribbean court ruled that the anti-sodomy provision of Antigua‘s sexual offenses act was unconstitutional. LGBTQ-rights activists say David‘s effort, with the help of local and regional advocacy groups, has set a precedent for a growing number of Caribbean islands. Since the ruling, St. Kitts & Nevis and Barbados, have struck down similar laws that often seek long prison sentences.

“It’s been a legal and historic moment for Antigua and Barbuda,” said Alexandrina Wong, director of the local non-governmental organization Women Against Rape, which joined the litigation coordinated by the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality.

“Our Caribbean governments are getting a good grip of what the world looks like and how we can reshape our history and … the future of the Caribbean people,” Wong said.

The ruling said Antigua‘s 1995 Sexual Offences Act “offends the right to liberty, protection of the law, freedom of expression, protection of personal privacy and protection from discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told the AP that his government decided not to challenge the ruling: “We respected the fact that there should be no discrimination within society,” he said. “As a government, we have a constitutional responsibility to respect the rights of all and not to discriminate.”

The law stated that two consenting adults found guilty of having anal sex would face 15 years in prison. If found guilty of serious indecency, they faced five years in prison.

Such laws used to be common in former European colonies across the Caribbean but have been challenged in recent years. Courts in Belize and Trinidad and Tobago have found such laws unconstitutional; other cases in the region are pending.

Same-sex consensual intimacy is still criminalized in six Caribbean countries, according to Human Rights Watch and the London-based organization Human Dignity Trust. The countries include Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica, which some LGBTQ-rights groups consider the Caribbean nation most hostile to gay people.

“Governments in these jurisdictions should be pro-active and repeal these laws now, instead of waiting for members of the LGBT community to force legal change,” said Téa Braun, chief executive of Human Dignity Trust. “With three successful judgments last year and further legal challenges in the Caribbean ongoing, it is only a matter of time before these laws fall across the region.”

Jamaica’s government has argued that it doesn’t enforce its 1864 anti-sodomy laws, but activists say keeping these laws on the books stokes homophobia and violence against the LGBTQ community in several Caribbean countries.

LGBT people in such countries, face “a constitution that criminalizes them on one end, and a religion that says they’re an abomination,” said Kenita Placide, executive director for The Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality.

“It has created a culture of stigma and discrimination, which has now led to violence,” she said. “And in each of those countries, including Antigua, we’ve seen LGBT persons who’ve fled because of certain levels of violence.”

Growing up, Orden David was bullied in school and discriminated against outside its walls. People took photographs of him and posted them on social media, called him slurs and attacked him physically.

“What pushed me to go forward with this litigation case, to challenge the government, is that experience that I’ve gone through in life,” David said, adding that in 2019 he was knocked out by a stranger who hit him on the face while he was working in a hospital.

Discrimination against LGBTQ people persists in the Caribbean. Some conservative lawmakers and religious leaders oppose the abolition of anti-gay laws invoking God in their arguments and calling gay relationships a sin.

“I don’t think that God created man and woman to engage in that way,” said Bishop Charlesworth Browne, a Christian pastor who is president of the Antigua and Barbuda Council of Church Leaders. For years, he has campaigned against easing the country’s anti-gay laws.

“It’s not just a religious issue. It’s a health issue,” Browne said. “It’s for the sake of our children, the health of the nations, the preservation of our people.”

Some major Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church, say all sexual activity outside of a marriage between a man and a woman is sinful. Other houses of worship, including many mainline Protestant churches and synagogues, have LGBTQ-inclusive policies.

When LGBTQ activist Rickenson Ettienne also was brutally attacked in Antigua for being gay, his church community sang and prayed for him outside the hospital while he recovered from a cracked skull. “It was traumatic,” he said of the assault. “But even with that experience, I found out that there’s humanity, there’s the human side of people.”

Although David didn’t face outright intolerance at the Christian church where he grew up singing in the choir, he grew disenchanted by some parishioners who tried to introduce him to the scientifically discredited practice of so-called gay conversion therapy. He eventually stopped attending, but believes in God and prays at home.

“Christians need to realize that everybody’s human at the end of the day. And if you’re going to push Christianity and then think that being a homosexual is a sin … then you should put yourself in that same category, as a sinner,” he said.

“Christians are supposed to love, accept and encourage people, not push people away … that’s one of the things that I really don’t believe in: When Christians use the word ‘hate,’” said David. He has the Chinese word for “love” tattooed on his neck, and says that loving people is his “number one goal.”

Working for Antigua’s AIDS Secretariat, he tests people for sexually transmitted diseases, distributes condoms and counsels them on prevention, treatment and care. He’s also president of Meeting Emotional and Social Needs Holistically, a group that serves the LGBTQ community. And he volunteers. On a recent night, he walked across dark alleys of downtown St. John’s to hand out condoms to sex workers.

“It’s important to offer the services to the LGBTQ community, and especially to sex workers,” he said. “Because this population are more at risk.”

___

Associated Press journalists Jessie Wardarski in St. John‘s, Antigua, and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

___

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.

Malaysia: Countering hate speech

Malaysia|Gender and Sexual Diversity

ARTICLE 19
11 June 2023

People use their phones as they take part in a Women’s Day March to call for gender equality and recognition of LGBT rights, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 12 March 2023. 

Zahim Mohd/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In Malaysia, minority groups, including ethnic and religious minorities, migrants, and LGBTQI+ persons are most often victims of hate speech.

This statement was originally published on article19.org on 7 June 2023.

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of hate speech, nor is the term hate speech codified in international law. In reviewing definitions of hate speech from varying institutions, ARTICLE 19 has identified that the term to encompass any expression imparting opinions or ideas bringing an internal opinion or idea to an external audience. Hate speech can take many forms, including written, non-verbal, visual, artistic, etc, and may be disseminated through any media, including internet, print, radio, or television.

The discussion among Malaysian politicians surrounding hate speech centres around the limitation of alternative views that often holds consequences of criminal charges.

In Malaysia, minority groups, including ethnic and religious minorities, migrants, and LGBTQ+ persons are most often victims of hate speech. At the same time, the term hate speech is often instrumentalised by majority groups to silence expression that is protected under international law, including that which may be offensive. Individuals and groups who do not engage in hate speech but speak out against the government, State officials, or a religion are often penalised, and political dissent is silenced.

ARTICLE 19 presents a policy note on recommendations to address hate speech through a multi-stakeholder approach in place of laws that are overbroad and vague.

Read the policy note here
Additional materialshttps://www.article19.org/resources/malaysia-efforts-to-combat-hate-speech-should-not-trample-freedom-of-expression/
https://www.article19.org/resources/hate-speech-malaysia/
https://www.article19.org/action-on-un-standards-to-tackle-hate/
https://www.istanbulprocess1618.info/

What to know about Scottish National Party police probe after Nicola Sturgeon questioned

POLITICO unpacks investigation into pro-Scottish independence party’s funding following questioning of former leader.

Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

BY ANDREW MCDONALD
JUNE 11, 2023 

Nicola Sturgeon was released without charge pending further investigation Sunday night after being questioned by police probing the finances of the Scottish National Party she once led.

The arrest of Scotland’s former first minister marked the latest dramatic twist in a story which has dominated Scottish politics for months and plunged the pro-independence party into bitter infighting.

Here’s POLITICO’s guide to the investigation so far.

What is the investigation about?

To answer that, we have to go back to early 2017, and the fight for Scottish independence.

The Sturgeon-led SNP were in fine fettle — with senior party figures believing Brexit, which was opposed by a majority of Scottish voters in 2016, gave them cause to pursue a fresh referendum on breaking up the United Kingdom.

In that spirit, the SNP opened a new channel for donations to help drive their campaign for a new vote.

Around £482,000 was raised in just a couple of months. But Westminster’s own wild politics intervened, as Theresa May rolled the dice and called a snap election. While May herself was burned badly, the SNP lost 21 Westminster seats in that vote, a disappointing reversal for a party that had hoped to seize on Scottish anger at Brexit.

The party dropped the second referendum fundraising campaign just three months after it began — and stopped accepting donations. The SNP said the money would be “ring-fenced” for fighting a future referendum and that it would not be used to pay for their election campaign.

Another donation portal for a second referendum was then launched in 2019. Donations to this and the initial appeal would eventually total £666,953 — a number that would come up again and again in the coming years.

Despite repeated calls from SNP activists and independence supporters for a referendum, it has yet to materialize, with the party split on a strategy for achieving its biggest prize. And those who donated their hard-earned cash started to wonder what it was being spent on.

When the Electoral Commission watchdog published the SNP’s accounts for 2019, in 2020, they revealed that the party had just under £97,000 in the bank despite the “ring-fenced” fundraising. The SNP’s treasurer, Colin Beattie, promptly wrote to all donors, saying the funds “remain earmarked” for a referendum and were “woven through” the accounts.

The next year would see multiple high-profile resignations from the SNP’s officer ranks over what they claimed was a lack of transparency — including the resignation of Douglas Chapman, a member of parliament who had replaced Beattie as treasurer. Chapman said he wasn’t given enough information by the party to do his job.

For four days after Chapman quit, Sturgeon herself became interim treasurer. She would be replaced by the returning Beattie.
When did the police get involved?

Remember the name Sean Clerkin. He may just go down in history.

A serial protester whose previous claim to fame was chasing a beleaguered Scottish Labour leader into a sandwich shop, Clerkin made the initial complaint to Police Scotland about the use of donations.

After six more complaints, the police launched a formal investigation in July 2021.

Operation Branchform, as cops called it, was live.

Officers only began interviews with witnesses in 2023, after more than a year of evidence-gathering and research.

In the meantime, other details came to light which raised further questions for SNP top brass.

In December 2022, the Wings Over Scotland blog — run by a critic of the SNP under Sturgeon — revealed details of a loan the party’s then-chief executive Peter Murrell made to the SNP in 2021.

Murrell — who is Sturgeon’s husband — loaned, interest-free, £107,620 of his own cash to the SNP around six weeks after the 2021 Scottish parliament election.

Confirming the loan, which was declared late to the Electoral Commission, the SNP said it was a “personal contribution” to assist with “cashflow.” The SNP is yet to repay the loan in full.
Who has been arrested?

2023 has seen a flurry of dramatic developments in Scottish politics.

Sturgeon sent shockwaves in February when she announced her resignation as first minister and SNP leader at a hastily-arranged press conference in Edinburgh.

Citing the personal toll of the job and a desire to “free” her party — which still heads up Scotland’s devolved government — to pick its own independence strategy, Sturgeon said it had been a “privilege beyond measure” to serve.

It fired the starting pistol on a bitter race to replace her as SNP leader and first minister (Humza Yousaf won that one, by the way). But the real news was elsewhere.

On April 5 this year, Murrell — who was deposed as chief executive during the SNP’s leadership contest — was arrested in connection with the police probe.

Police Scotland confirmed they were conducting searches at a number of addresses, including Murrell and Sturgeon’s home in Glasgow and the SNP’s head office in Edinburgh.

Murrell was released without charge pending further investigation.

Just under two weeks later, Beattie — the SNP’s treasurer, remember — was arrested in connection with the investigation. He was also released without charge pending further investigation. The next day, he resigned his post as the man overseeing the SNP’s finances.

In-between those two arrests, the police also seized a luxury camper-van from outside the home of 92-year-old Margaret Murrell, Peter’s mother. It marked one of the more surreal moments of a genuinely jaw-dropping saga that has put Yousaf on the backfoot as he tries to lead the SNP through the crisis.

Then came Sturgeon’s arrest.

Police Scotland said Sunday that the former first minister had been “arrested as a suspect in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party.” According to the force, Sturgeon was questioned by detectives after being arrested at 10:09 a.m. Sunday, and was released from custody at 5:24 p.m. without charge, “pending further investigation.”

Sturgeon said in a statement Sunday night: “Innocence is not just a presumption I am entitled to in law. I know beyond doubt that I am in fact innocent of any wrongdoing.”

Trudeau reaffirms Canada's 

support for Ukraine

Christian Baha / June 10, 2023

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his surprise visit to Kiev on Saturday is meant to reaffirm Ottawa's commitment to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people during what he referred to as Russia's "brutal war."

Trudeau emphasized Canada's solidarity with the war-struck nation, promising further updates about this trip will come soon and that his followers should stay tuned for more information regarding the visit.

Joint address by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau to Canadian journalists at the Press Gallery Dinner in Ottawa

11 June 2023 - 20:12

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau:

Hello everyone. Bonjour à tous. 

I’m pleased to be joining you with my friend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tonight.

When I realized that I would be missing this year’s Press Gallery Dinner, I wanted to make sure that I could still speak with all of you.

Because the work you do is incredibly important. 

And because this a scary time for journalists, and for democracies.

En ce moment, les médias sont la cible d’attaques et la démocratie est en recul.  

Des journalistes se font harceler, censurer, menacer et même tuer. 

Des leaders dénigrent votre travail. 

Et les gens ont de moins en moins confiance en nos démocraties et nos institutions. 

The fourth estate is one of our most important democratic institutions. 

We cannot let it be weakened—by cynical politicians or by large corporations who want to shirk their responsibility to pay their fair share.

Whether you are a foreign correspondent who helps us see through the fog of war or a local reporter who covers city hall, your work matters. 

The stories and facts you report give people the information they need to make choices that affect them, deeply. 

Pour que la démocratie fonctionne, on doit tous se fier aux mêmes faits vérifiés. 

C’est de cette façon que les gens vont pouvoir comprendre ce qui se passe vraiment et avoir des vrais débats sur la meilleure façon d’avancer.

Ça ne pourrait pas être plus vrai ou plus important qu’à ce moment-ci de notre histoire.  

L’Ukraine – et les Ukrainiens – le comprennent mieux que quiconque. 

Tonight is an opportunity for us to express our gratitude for all those who are shedding a light on Putin’s brutal war.  

The brave women and men who continue to put themselves at risk so we may know the true extent of Russia’s crimes. 

Tonight, we salute you.

A free press is, unequivocally, essential to democracy. And vice versa.

You speak truth to power, and you give a voice to the voiceless. 

My friends, you make democracy stronger. 

And what a privilege it is for us to be able to live and work in a democracy.

Partout dans le monde, les populations font d’énormes sacrifices pour avoir ce privilège.

Alors, ne tenons jamais pour acquises les libertés que nous offre notre démocratie. 

Et continuons de travailler ensemble pour défendre et protéger ces libertés. 

I want to close by simply saying thank you.

Thank you for everything you do for our country, its people, and for the world.

And you know we all talk often about fighting for democracy.

Well, I’d like now to turn it to someone who knows a thing or two about fighting for democracy. 

Volodymyr!

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

Thank you so much, Justin.

I greet you all from Ukraine. Thank you for standing with us, with Ukraine.

This is often the case – and especially often with journalists and correspondents – when life challenges you to choose to become a hero. Sometimes it is much easier to avoid choosing and stay somewhere in the gray zone between the good and evil – just to pretend to be neutral. But everyone who does not avoid it, who defies the evil, who calls a spade a spade, can become a hero for more than just one day.

We live in times when our freedom depends on all of us – when the world should know the whole truth about every crime against freedom in one part of the world to keep the freedom everywhere else. The evil now claims not just one country but values – our values. It claims to destroy them.

And I thank you all for not tricking with the evil. 

Thank you for telling the truth about Russian war crimes! Thank you for using your power – probably the highest power in the modern world – the power to decide what holds people’s attention and what people know. Thank you for using your power to give guidance for people and humanity.

Thank you Canada and you, Justin, my friend, the friend of Ukraine, Mister Prime Minister! Thank you! 

Слава Україні!

Justin Trudeau: Героям слава!

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Thank you

Ukraine claims advances around Bakhmut as Trudeau visits Kyiv

By Patrick Hilsman

JUNE 10, 2023 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shake hands during a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday amid the Russian invasion.

 Photo by Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA-EFE

June 10 (UPI) -- Ukrainian forces claimed to have made advances around the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut on Saturday as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged more assistance during a surprise visit to Kyiv.

Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military's Operational East Command, said Kyiv's troops were successful in advancing up to 1,400 meters ( 0.8 miles) in various areas around the key Russian-occupied city in eastern Ukraine.

"In total, there were six combat clashes, in which our Defense Forces eliminated 138 occupiers, wounded 236, and took one prisoner," Cherevaty told official media.

Ukrainian forces also destroyed Russian war materiel including howitzers, mounted combat vehicles, an anti-aircraft gun, trucks and ammunition depots in the attacks, he said.

Cherevaty emphasized that Ukrainian forces had taken high ground around Bakhmut and that Russian forces were reinforcing their positions in a bid to hold off advances that appeared to be part of a long-expected Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian invaders in the eastern part of the country.

"Our main goal remains unchanged: to inflict maximum damage on the enemy, maximum losses on the enemy, and all tools are employed to this end," Cherevaty said.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Trudeau and Deputy Canadian Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland made a surprise trip to Kyiv where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made his clearest indication yet that the counteroffensive is indeed underway.

During his visit, Trudeau observed destroyed Russian vehicles on display in Kyiv and pledged an additional $500 million in aid as well as new sanctions aimed at 24 Russian individuals 17 entities.

The Canadian leader put blame for the collapse of the Kakhovka dam squarely on Russia.

"Russia is responsible and will be held accountable," he said.

Trudeau also pledged to extend Operation Unifier, the Canadian mission to train Ukrainian forces, through 2026.

"We are very grateful that we have such good friends of Ukraine and your people show such big support for all our people in Canada," Zelensnky told Trudeau.

During his visit, Trudeau attended a wreath laying ceremony at the Wall of Remembrance -- a collection of photos honoring those killed during the Russian invasion.

In remarks at a joint press conference with Trudeau, Zelensky told reporters, "Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine, at which stage I will not talk in detail."

The comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believes Ukraine's counteroffensive is already underway and that it is already failing.

Ukrainian demonstrators rally in Kyiv on February 12, 2022 to show unity amid U.S. warnings of an imminent Russian invasion. Photo by Oleksandr Khomenko/UPI | License Photo

WAR IS ECOCIDE

Ukraine’s dam collapse is both a fast-moving disaster and a slow-moving ecological catastrophe

Associated Press
June 11, 2023 

The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam was a fast-moving disaster that is swiftly evolving into a long-term environmental catastrophe affecting drinking water, food supplies and ecosystems reaching into the Black Sea.

The short-term dangers can be seen from outer space — tens of thousands of parcels of land flooded, and more to come. Experts say the long-term consequences will be generational.

For every flooded home and farm, there are fields upon fields of newly planted grains, fruits and vegetables whose irrigation canals are drying up.

Thousands of fish were left gasping on mud flats.

Fledgling water birds lost their nests and their food sources.

Countless trees and plants were drowned.

If water is life, then the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir creates an uncertain future for the region of southern Ukraine that was an arid plain until the damming of the Dnieper River 70 years ago.

The Kakhovka Dam was the last in a system of six Soviet-era dams on the river, which flows from Belarus to the Black Sea.

Houses are seen underwater in the flooded village near Kherson, Ukraine on June 10.AP

Then the Dnieper became part of the front line after Russia’s invasion last year.

“All this territory formed its own particular ecosystem, with the reservoir included,” said Kateryna Filiuta, an expert in protected habitats for the Ukraine Nature Conservation Group.
The short term

Ihor Medunov is very much part of that ecosystem.

His work as a hunting and fishing guide effectively ended with the start of the war, but he stayed on his little island compound with his four dogs because it seemed safer than the alternative.

Still, for months the knowledge that Russian forces controlled the dam downstream worried him.

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The six dams along the Dnieper were designed to operate in tandem, adjusting to each other as water levels rose and fell from one season to the next.

When Russian forces seized the Kakhovka Dam, the whole system fell into neglect.

Whether deliberately or simply carelessly, the Russian forces allowed water levels to fluctuate uncontrollably.

They dropped dangerously low in winter and then rose to historic peaks when snowmelt and spring rains pooled in the reservoir.

Until Monday, the waters were lapping into Medunov’s living room.

Now, with the destruction of the dam, he is watching his livelihood literally ebb away.

The waves that stood at his doorstep a week ago are now a muddy walk away.

Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky.AP

“The water is leaving before our eyes,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything that was in my house, what we worked for all our lives, it’s all gone. First it drowned, then, when the water left, it rotted.”

Since the dam’s collapse Tuesday, the rushing waters have uprooted landmines, torn through caches of weapons and ammunition, and carried 150 tons of machine oil to the Black Sea.

Entire towns were submerged to the rooflines, and thousands of animals died in a large national park now under Russian occupation

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Streets and trade port are seen underwater and polluted by oil in Kherson.AP

Rainbow-colored slicks already coat the murky, placid waters around flooded Kherson, the capital of southern Ukraine’s province of the same name.

Abandoned homes reek from rot as cars, first-floor rooms and basements remain submerged.

Enormous slicks seen in aerial footage stretch across the river from the city’s port and industrial facilities, demonstrating the scale of the Dnieper’s new pollution problem.

AP

Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry estimated 10,000 hectares (24,000 acres) of farmland were underwater in the territory of Kherson province controlled by Ukraine, and “many times more than that” in territory occupied by Russia.

Farmers are already feeling the pain of the disappearing reservoir. Dmytro Neveselyi, mayor of the village of Maryinske, said everyone in the community of 18,000 people will be affected within days.

“Today and tomorrow, we’ll be able to provide the population with drinking water,” he said. After that, who knows. “The canal that supplied our water reservoir has also stopped flowing.”
The long term

The waters slowly began to recede on Friday, only to reveal the environmental catastrophe looming.

The reservoir, which had a capacity of 18 cubic kilometers (14.5 million acre-feet), was the last stop along hundreds of kilometers of river that passed through Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural heartlands.

For decades, its flow carried the runoff of chemicals and pesticides that settled in the mud at the bottom.

Emergency workers evacuate an elderly resident from a flooded neighborhood in Kherson.

Ukrainian authorities are testing the level of toxins in the muck, which risks turning into poisonous dust with the arrival of summer, said Eugene Simonov, an environmental scientist with the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group, a non-profit organization of activists and researchers.

The extent of the long-term damage depends on the movement of the front lines in an unpredictable war.

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Russian troops ‘swept away’ by flooding from Ukraine dam collapse

Can the dam and reservoir be restored if fighting continues there?

Should the region be allowed to become arid plain once again?

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrij Melnyk called the destruction of the dam “the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster.”

The fish and waterfowl that had come to depend on the reservoir “will lose the majority of their spawning grounds and feeding grounds,” Simonov said.

Downstream from the dam are about 50 protected areas, including three national parks, said Simonov, who co-authored a paper in October warning of the potentially disastrous consequences, both upstream and downstream, if the Kakhovka Dam came to harm.

It will take a decade for the flora and fauna populations to return and adjust to their new reality, according to Filiuta.

And possibly longer for the millions of Ukrainians who lived there.

Oil slicks seen in aerial footage stretch across the river from the city’s port and industrial facilities  

It will take a decade for the flora and fauna populations to return and adjust to their new reality

In Maryinske, the farming community, they are combing archives for records of old wells, which they’ll unearth, clean and analyze to see if the water is still potable.

“Because a territory without water will become a desert,” the mayor said.
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Further afield, all of Ukraine will have to grapple with whether to restore the reservoir or think differently about the region’s future, its water supply, and a large swath of territory that is suddenly vulnerable to invasive species — just as it was vulnerable to the invasion that caused the disaster to begin with.

“The worst consequences will probably not affect us directly, not me, not you, but rather our future generations, because this man-made disaster is not transparent,” Filiuta said. “The consequences to come will be for our children or grandchildren, just as we are the ones now experiencing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, not our ancestors.”

 

Ukraine's Kherson Region Faces 'Ecological Catastrophe' Amid Ongoing Fighting

A flooded cottage in the village of Odradokamyanka that had earlier been damaged by shelling. Photo: Andre Luis Alves (RFE/RL)

June 11, 2023 
By Aleksander Palikot

ODRADOKAMYANKA, Ukraine -- The cemetery in this riverside steppe village got flooded within hours of the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam, located five kilometers upstream on the Dnieper River. Three days later, when Mykhailo Boyarskiy, a farmer from the nearby Kozatske village who used to visit his family graves here, came to the cemetery, he saw wooden crosses and granite monuments covered with mud and rotting weed. An otter was swimming meters away, and the smell of dead fish was in the air.

The breach of the Russian-held Soviet-era hydroelectric dam in the early hours of June 6 unleashed a torrent of water that flooded villages and sparked the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from both sides of the Dnieper River in Ukraine's southern Kherson region. It also caused what many fear is one of Europe's biggest environmental disasters in decades.

Unlike some villages located at a lower altitude down the Dnieper, Odradokamyanka got flooded only to a limited extent. Three days after the dam breach, several houses remained under water, and its artificial lakes spilled deep into the surrounding fields.

"It turns out we kicked them out of here just to get this mess in return," Boyarskiy said in a characteristic mixture of Ukrainian and Russian that is widely spoken here, referring to the Russian troops driven out of the region by the Ukrainian Army last autumn.

The partly flooded cemetery in Odradokamyanka in the Kherson region.

Two of Boyarskiy’s friends who preferred not to disclose their identity -- middle-aged farmers taking care of the local animal stock -- were in the village the night the Nova Kakhovka dam was destroyed.

The men with faces tired from lack of sleep said that, after they heard a loud bang, they went to the riverbank with a thermographic camera and saw torrents of water cascading downstream. The farm livestock and wild animals from the other side were trying to swim to the higher right bank of the Dnieper, they said, but the rushing current and whirlpools drowned them.

Russian Soldiers 'Washed Away'

They also said a Russian reconnaissance group that was approaching the Ukrainian-controlled territory with a boat -- a typical occurrence on this part of the Dnieper, which has effectively turned into a front line -- was caught by surprise by the flood and sought rescue on one of the river's multiple islands. "But ultimately, the water washed Russian soldiers away from the treetops," one of the men said.

Boyarskiy came to Odradokamyanka with his comrade Eduard Laktyonov to bring humanitarian aid to some of the 300 remaining in a village that had more than 3,300 residents before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Most of those who stayed cannot move out because of old age and poor health.

Mykhailo Boyarskiy (left) and Eduard Laktyonov help the residents remaining in the frontline villages in the Kherson region.

The mutual exchange of fire across the Dnieper did not stop despite evacuations and rescue missions continuing in the Kherson region. Plumes of smoke hover above the steppes amid the sounds of outgoing and incoming artillery rounds.

"The locals struggle to get by with shells and missiles coming every day and night," said Kostyantyn Kyrychenko, 41, one of the few younger people remaining in the village, which has electricity only from a gasoline power generator and a very limited amount of drinkable water pumped from a local well.

Kostyantyn Kyryczenko is staying in Odradokamyanka despite the near-constant shelling.

His wife and daughters left for the Czech Republic, while both his son and his brother are serving in the Ukrainian Army. He stays in the village to help older people. His house got partly destroyed by the shells that fell close to it, and he only has a dugout cellar to hide in.

"The only thing I need is for you to bring me new pair of glasses finally," he told Boyarskiy, who handed over a box with food and other products as Kyrychenko gave him a freshly caught fish in exchange.

According to several residents, the Russian Army is shelling Odradokamyanka with mortars, artillery rounds, and missiles, and attacking it with planes daily. Numerous private houses, the school, the village council, other buildings, and an unknown soldier's monument, have all been razed to the ground.

A building in Odradokamyanka razed to the ground as a result of air attacks.

The civilian population of the Kherson region, which first survived the brutal Russian occupation and later lived alongside daily shelling and air attacks, is now bound to face what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as "an environmental bomb of mass destruction."

Entire Ecosystems 'At Risk'

This threat is felt acutely in the nearby Kamyanska Sich National Nature Park, a nature reserve named after a historical fortified Cossack settlement that was located in the area, which sits on the bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir.

Ukraine's environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, said that, in some places, the water in the reservoir had moved almost 160 meters away from the shore. Its banks will turn into salt marshes and will not be suitable for the existence of any living things for decades, he said. Ukrainian officials estimate that about 28,000 fish have already died due to the draining.

The water level is declining in a river in the Kamyanska Sich National Nature Park.

The director of the Kamyanska Sich park, Serhiy Skoryk, who spent the last months demining the site after the Russian occupation, is now occupied with controlling the water level and easing the collateral damage caused by the flooding.

Three days after the dam's breach, he and his team were removing boxes with explosive materials left by Russians and uncovered under a destroyed bridge after the water level dropped. Dried mussel shells were cracking under the boots of his team pulling the green box with TNT.

The Kamyanska Sich National Nature Park is one of 60 protected areas that suffered because of the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam, Ivan Moysiyenko, chief of the Botany Department at Kherson State University and a member of Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, told RFE/RL.

The water level has risen in artificial lakes surrounding Odradokamyanka village.

The flooding of areas in the lower Dnieper below the destroyed Nova Kakhovka dam and the drying of the areas above it, as well as the contamination of the Black Sea, will put entire ecosystems of flora and fauna at risk of irreversible loss, he said.

According to Moysiyenko, more than 19 endangered species listed in the Red Data Book and dozens of species protected by the Berne Convention will disappear from these places forever. Hundreds of species and hundreds of thousands of animals and plants will be affected, and in the case of some endemic species, as much as 20 percent of the world population could be extinct, he said.

The environmental disaster will affect territories that have never been under water, such as the Oleshky Sands National Nature Park, Europe's biggest desert, and destabilize places such as the UNESCO-protected Black Sea Biosphere Reserve.

"This is an international ecological catastrophe, and as long as the fighting goes on, not much can be done for the environment," Moysiyenko said.

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  Aleksander Palikot

  Aleksander Palikot is a Ukraine-based journalist covering politics, history, and culture. His work has appeared in Krytyka Polityczna, New Eastern Europe, Jüdische Allgemeine, and beyond.