COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Saudi money has reshaped boxing but how do we justify the human cost?


In a defining week for Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk and boxing, the glitz of a unifying world heavyweight contest sits uncomfortably against a backdrop of human rights concerns

View image in fullscreenTyson Fury attends Monday’s media day as the hype machine for Saturday’s lucrative heavyweight clash moved into high gear. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA


Donald McRae in Riyadh

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 14 May 2024 

Just after five o’clock on Monday morning, at the very start of fight week in Riyadh, a beautiful and hauntingly insistent call to prayer rang out across this corner of the city. Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk may still have been asleep, allowing themselves to rest a little longer before a defining fight for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world late on Saturday night.

It would take another seven hours for the temperature to climb to a high of 42C and so, in the calm stillness, there was time to think of more than the glory and pain of heavyweight boxing. A few days earlier I had asked Dr Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi if he still carried hope that his brother Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a retired schoolteacher, could be saved after he had been sentenced to death for a series of seemingly innocuous posts on social media.



‘Boxers must know the morality of supporting Saudi’ – gay exile Wajeeh Lion

“It is part of our Islamic religion not to despair and to submit to God’s will,” al-Ghamdi, a Saudi academic and political dissident now living in exile in Britain, told me. “If [execution] happens we are prepared.” Last week, too, when reflecting on her 29-year-old sister Manahel being jailed in Riyadh for 11 years by an anti-terrorism court, after being arrested for “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights” in a series of online posts, Fawzia al-Otaibi told the Guardian that, when hearing the shattering news, “the world became dark before my eyes”.

Al-Otaibi, who also lives in political exile in Britain, added: “For the first time, I hated the fact that I was created a woman in my country. A country that had destroyed me and my family and turned our lives into an unbearable hell for the crime that we are women who want our right to life.”

During the 35 years I have written about boxing I have sometimes felt embarrassed by my lingering obsession with a business where men and women are paid to hurt each other. But the courage and skill, the resolve and resilience, of the best fighters is often inspirational and moving. It also helps that boxers are usually the friendliest and most open of all sportsmen and women when articulating their doubts and fears, hopes and dreams.

View image in fullscreen

Manahel al-Otaibi walking in western clothes in the Saudi capital Riyadh in 2019. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images


These reflections now seem as redundant as they are romantic. It feels more urgent to try to understand how boxing is changing because of its lucrative and tangled relationship with the Saudis. When Saudi Arabia first began to show sustained interest in boxing it seemed natural to protest against the alliance between two such contrasting entities. Concern about state repression merged with despair of boxing’s residual chaos. Yet the unlikely partnership has sparked some surprising developments.

Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority that has vast resources in bankrolling these plans, is a serious and committed fan. He has the will and the economic might to force boxing to change. For too long bitter rivalries between promoters, and the greed of sanctioning bodies, had prevented the best fights from being made. The idea that Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn could be persuaded to talk to each other, and then engage enthusiastically in joint promotions, would have been dismissed as outlandish last year. Alalshikh smoothed away their feud, just as he ignored the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO to produce a series of enticing and interesting fight cards. The most significant of these is the first world heavyweight title unification contest this century – between Fury and Usyk.

Alalshikh has also indicated a willingness to tackle boxing’s insidious problem with doping. Thomas Hauser, the esteemed boxing writer and Muhammad Ali’s biographer, wrote a feature in the Guardian that resembled an open letter to Alalshikh. Hauser urged him to leave a legacy in which he made “enormous strides in cleansing boxing of illegal performance enhancing drugs”.

The response from Alalshikh on X was positive. After thanking Hauser for his article he stressed that “I am ready to listen to all of your suggestions in the future”.

Yet, in Riyadh, I cannot shake thoughts of so many Saudi men and women who are either on death row or in prison for expressing their belief in freedom on social media. Last week, I spoke to Dana Ahmed of Amnesty International in Lebanon. Ahmed documents oppression in Saudi Arabia and, first, she acknowledged that “there have been positive steps to give women more freedom … but there is still a long way for Saudi Arabia to go when it comes to women’s rights”.

Ahmed said, up to January, Amnesty “has documented the cases of 69 individuals prosecuted solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia. At least 32 were prosecuted for peacefully expressing their opinions on social media. In light of fears of reprisals, people are afraid of reporting cases of prosecutions or interrogations for their expression publicly. Therefore, the number of such prosecutions is likely much higher.”

View image in fullscreen

Turki Alalshikh (left), chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, chats to José Mourinho during a fight in December. Photograph: Richard Pelham/Getty Images


The case of al-Otaibi is harrowing. When Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, came to power in 2017, he was praised publicly by al-Otaibi who was already an activist for women’s rights. She proclaimed that, under Bin Salman, she felt free to dress and express herself how she liked. Her view soon darkened.

Sixteen months ago, al-Otaibi was charged on a number of “criminal” counts that included expressing support of women’s rights on social media and posting Snapchat photos of herself shopping while wearing dungarees rather than the traditional abaya. The situation worsened when the case was moved to a court specialising in terrorism-related offences.

Al-Otaibi’s fate only became known this month when Saudi officials confirmed to the UN that she had been sentenced to 11 years for “terrorist offences”. Her eldest sister, Maryam, who is serving a travel ban, lives in fear of her own arrest. Fawzia, the third al-Otaibi sister, fled Saudi after being asked to go alone to a prison in Riyadh in September 2022.

View image in fullscreen

Oleksandr Usyk speaks to the media on Monday during the buildup to a fight that promises to unify boxing’s heavyweight division. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

On 1 May, Fawzia al-Otabi, responding on X to her sister’s imprisonment, said: “Can you believe that they have imprisoned her, tortured her, broken her foot, terrorized her, and accused her of terrorism? Just because she is a woman advocating for women’s rights. Why have my rights become terrorism, and why is the world silent?”

Manahel al-Otaibi is being held in al-Malaz prison, less than 10 miles from the luxurious hotel where some of the key figures in the Fury-Usyk fight promotion are staying this week in Riyadh. The hotel is 40 miles from al-Ha’ir prison where Mohammad al-Ghamdi was incarcerated after he had been sentenced to death by the specialised criminal court on 10 July 2023. His brother told me last week that al-Ghamdi is now held at Dhahban prison in Jeddah. He was found guilty of terrorism for posts on two different X accounts. The first account had eight followers, while the second was followed by two people. While he was critical of the crown prince, most of his posts apparently focused on the need for economic reforms and complaints about rising prices and lengthening queues in supermarkets.

Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, who is due to be executed in Saudi Arabia. Photograph: -

For Saeed al-Ghamdi, “the worst thing is that he was arrested for a few tweets, which were barely seen by the police officers, and they were tweets criticizing the increase in milk prices”.

The Guardian approached a representative of the Saudi Arabian government for comment but had not received a reply by the time of publication.

Asked to describe his brother before his arrest, Saeed al-Ghamdi said: “He was a very peaceful person who was generally unconcerned with the [political] situation because he was busy with his home, his family, and the illnesses that have accompanied him since his childhood.”

He added: “We hope that his health is fine, especially after he received a pillow and a quilt after a previous prisoner had left them in Dhahban prison. But he went through solitary confinement for several months, and medical neglect, with his family prevented from bringing him the bedding he needs. For rational, free people this is torture and so my brother was exposed to all of these things that violate human rights.”

Saeed al-Ghamdi is far more politically outspoken than his brother and he argues that “repression in Saudi Arabia has not diminished. It’s increasing. Manahel al-Otaibi was sentenced to 11 years in prison for charges that the authorities say are related to ‘terrorism’. Most of the peaceful detainees are charged with terrorism. The so-called terrorism law is written in a way that is not Islamically or legally correct because it is broad and vague.”


Tyson Fury’s father left bloodied after clash with member of Usyk’s entourage

Asked for his thoughts on the boxing this weekend, al-Ghamdi said: “If it happens that some of them [involved in the promotion] did not know about the oppressive situation of the regime, or were tempted by money, they can claim their humanity by abandoning the participation while they are in Saudi Arabia – or by publicly demanding that the state abolish the security trials and these imprisonments.”

Of course the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world will not be derailed by a sudden fit of political conscience. There is too much money and personal glory at stake. But, in the heat and tumult of fight week, the grim and mostly silent fate of Mohammad al-Ghamdi, Manahel al-Otaibi and other political prisoners in Saudi Arabia remains unchanged.

My Palestinian keffiyeh is a symbol of my identity. I should not be afraid to wear it in public

Arwa Mahdawi

Tue 14 May 2024

I wear the traditional black and white scarf to celebrate my heritage. That’s enough to make you a target in the US today


What’s black and white and a threat all over? A keffiyeh, of course. It may look like a harmless piece of fabric, but it’s actually a weapon of mass distraction. According to an awful lot of anti-Palestinian voices, the mass graves and forced “full-blown famine” in parts of Gaza are not what you should be outraged about now. The thousands of dead children and calls for ethnic cleansing in Gaza are not what should be keeping you up at night. No, what should really upset you are people wearing keffiyehs – the traditional black and white scarf that has long been a symbol of Palestinian identity.

Being a British-Palestinian living in the US has never been a barrel of laughs. Anti-Arab bigotry has long been normalised in the US – although it’s hard to quantify the extent of this because the FBI did not properly track anti-Arab hate crimes between 1992 and 2015. Long before this current iteration of violence in Gaza, I’d grown used to people telling me Palestinians were terrorists while simultaneously proclaiming that “Palestinians don’t exist”: a phenomenon I’ve dubbed Schrödinger’s Palestinian.

Still, while the demonisation and erasure of Palestinians is nothing new, it feels like there’s now a concerted effort to outlaw any expression of Palestinian identity whatsoever: whether that be flags, keffiyehs, or watermelons. (Watermelons have become symbols of Palestine as a way to bypass attempts to censor the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag.) In March, for example, the Museum of Modern Art in New York denied entry to two people because one of them had a keffiyeh in their bag – after a public outcry, the museum later apologised and said it had mistaken the scarf for a banner. The Ontario legislature has banned people from wearing keffiyehs within the chamber. And, last week, the Eurovision song contest rebuked the Swedish-Palestinian singer Eric Saade for compromising the “non-political nature of the event” by wearing a keffiyeh around his wrist during his performance.

“I got that keffiyeh from my dad when I was a little boy, to never forget where the family comes from,” Saade later said on Instagram. “Back then I didn’t know that it would one day be called a ‘political symbol’.” Saade added: “I just wanted to … wear something that is authentic to me – but the EBU [the European Broadcasting Union] seems to think my ethnicity is controversial.”

Of course it’s controversial, Eric! You can’t get a cup of coffee as a Palestinian without someone making it controversial. You certainly can’t wear a traditional scarf. Back in 2007, when the keffiyeh had a moment as a mainstream fashion item, Urban Outfitters, which was marketing it as an anti-war scarf, stopped stocking it partly because of pressure from pro-Israel groups who smeared it as a terror symbol. At the time, a director of the pro-Israel group Stand With Us told the Jerusalem Post that she thought someone in Urban Outfitters’ buying department might have a “political agenda against Israel and Jews”. Now Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, is going one step further and trying to make keffiyehs synonymous with hate symbols. Last month he went on MSNBC’s show Morning Joe – one of Joe Biden’s favourite news programmes – and compared the keffiyeh to the Nazi swastika. The host, Joe Scarborough, didn’t push back on this outrageous comparison. Nor did the five other people on the news panel. Instead, the session was wrapped up and Scarborough told Greenblatt: “Thank you so much.”

Whipping up hatred against symbols of Palestinian identity has dangerous consequences. Last November three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont were shot; it’s thought that they may have been targeted because they were wearing keffiyehs. Around the same time, a British-Indian man living in Brooklyn was attacked in a playground while with his 18-month-old, because he was wearing a keffiyeh. A woman called him a terrorist, threw her phone and a hot cup of coffee at him and said she hoped that “someone burns your child in an oven”.

Cowardly though it may be, the anti-Arab atmosphere in the US has made me afraid of wearing my own keffiyeh out of the house. Particularly, as I recently had a very unpleasant interaction when wearing my watermelon sweater (the same one Ben Affleck’s daughter was criticised for wearing). Still, being worried about getting harassed on the street is nothing compared with what people in Gaza and the West Bank are dealing with. Please don’t let hate-mongers try to distract you: it’s not keffiyehs or protesting university students that you should be outraged by, it’s children being starved to death.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

India, gangs … or both? Who is behind assassinations of Canadian Sikhs?

Arrests in killing of Canadian Sikh activist offer glimpse of the nexus of underworld crime and alleged Indian hit squads


Leyland Cecco and Ahmar Khan in Toronto, 

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 14 May 2024 

Less than half an hour after the prominent Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead outside a temple in British Columbia, Moninder Singh addressed a crowd near the site of the brazen attack.

“Make no mistake: this is a political assassination,” Singh told the agitated crowd in June 2023. “And it’s been carried out by India.”

Reaction from Delhi, more than 11,000 kilometres away, was starkly different. The government had long considered Nijjar a “terrorist” and Indian media wrote off the killing as a “fratricidal gang-world slaughter”.

In the months since, the two narratives – of an India-ordered assassination and an underworld hit – appeared at odds.


India says Canada has offered no evidence it was involved in death of Sikh separatist

But the recent arrest of three men for their alleged involvement in the killing of Nijjar has suggested that there is an element of truth to both of those claims. A fourth man, already in custody in the province of Ontario on firearms offences, was charged on Sunday.

The men are allegedly linked to a sprawling criminal network with operations in Canada. And with more arrests expected, investigators and government officials remain confident that India’s government used a tactic they claim it has often employed closer to home: using contract killers from a local gang to carry out a political assassination.

Charges against Karanpreet Singh, Kamalpreet Singh, Karan Brar and Amandeep Singh have done little to calm a lingering sense of fear within the Sikh community.

On a recent afternoon, devotees streaming into the Dixie Gurdwara in Mississauga, Ontario, were reluctant to speak on the record about Nijjar’s killing, but many said the issue loomed large over the community.

“Everyone, bro – everyone is talking about it, but we don’t want to say too much because of what the government can do,” said Jasdeep Singh, an international student from Punjab.

Nijjar was a vocal proponent of Khalistan, a potential independent Sikh state in India, and before his killing the activist had organised a series of symbolic referendums. The Khalistan movement is banned in India and India’s high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, recently accused pro-Khalistan activists in Canada of crossing “a big red line” that New Delhi sees as a matter of national security.

“Indians will decide the fate of India, not the foreigners,” he said.

For many Sikhs in Canada, Nijjar’s murder exposed the reach and ambition of India’s nationalist government, and its willingness to pursue and kill “terrorists” outside the country’s borders.

“It shows you the length to which this government is willing to go to shut down any level of dissent. They are even willing to work with enemies, people on the outs, have them go through the legal system – to attack us. It shows us that we’re doing something right,” said Mo Dhaliwal, a Sikh activist and the co-founder of the Poetic Justice Foundation.

View image in fullscreenKaran Brar appears by video link as members of the Sikh community attend court in Surrey, British Columbia, on 7 May in a courtroom sketch. Photograph: Felicity Don/Reuters

Indian intelligence has previously been accused of recruiting criminal gangs to carry out extrajudicial killings in Pakistan. Since 2020, Pakistan intelligence has accused India of carrying out up to 20 targeted murders of terrorists and dissidents hiding out in the country, with Pakistan intelligence reports alleging that Indian agencies often recruited criminal gangs and local gangsters to carry out these murders.

Canadian investigators believe the three men charged with Nijjar’s murder are low-level operatives of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, a notorious group implicated in global extortion schemes. Bishnoi was jailed in 2014, but has reportedly been able to continue to conduct and expand his criminal empire from behind bars.


Canada: second Sikh activist’s house hit by gunfire this month

Bishnoi is believed to exert control over hundreds of members across north India in recent years and, with operations in North America, exert influence through the sizable Punjabi diaspora.

The gang has been implicated in several high-profile crimes, including the 2022 killing of the popular Canadian Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala.

Investigations by Indian police into the Bishnoi gang’s operations found members were often recruited through social media, where gang leaders post images of weapons and piles of cash, glorifying the gangster life. Punjab police also found that young men were often being recruited by being promised a “new life” in Canada.

Street gangs and organised crime syndicates with links to south Asian communities have long had a presence in British Columbia and Ontario and the Indian government’s decision to use those existing networks is a “marriage of convenience”, said Queen’s University assistant professor Amarnath Amarasingam, who specialises in extremism and social movements.

“India will pay whoever will do the shooting and gangs like the Bishnoi gang will essentially kill whoever pays them to kill,” he said.

Canadian investigators are also probing whether the three men were involved in three other homicides – including the shooting of an 11-year-old boy in the city of Edmonton, where the men were arrested.

Using a gang based in the Punjab, whose members arrived on student visas, would be intended to create the perception of domestic score-settling and administrative oversight, instead of a government-ordered assassination, said Amarasingam.

While it remains unclear whether the Bishnoi gang itself outsourced the killing of Nijjar – or how high the orders came from within the Indian government – the strategy has proven successful outside India’s direct borders.

“At this point, for broader political and economic reasons, there doesn’t seem to be any consequences for the people who kind of call the shots at all,” said Amarasingam.

Nearly a year after Nijjar’s death, mounting pressure within Canada to mend relations and restore trade talks with India has angered activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

US prosecutors say that Pannun, the chief legal counsel for Sikhs for Justice, was the target of a foiled assassination attempt overseen by an unnamed Indian government agent who directed a middleman to recruit a hitman in the US, where Pannun lives. Pannun argues that Canada must do more to confront an increasingly aggressive India.

“The use of gangs as foot soldiers has India’s fingerprints all over it,” he said. “But arresting lower-level players and removing intelligence agents isn’t enough to end the transnational campaign of violence. Indian diplomats must also be held accountable, otherwise [Indian prime minister Narendra] Modi’s government will feel they can come to Canada, kill a Canadian and get away with it.”

After the arrests of the three men in Canada, India’s foreign minister reiterated his government’s belief that Ottawa is allowing criminals to operate in Canada.

“Somebody may have been arrested; the police may have done some investigation. But the fact is [a] number of gangland people, [a] number of people with organised crime links from Punjab, have been made welcome in Canada,” said the foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, adding that Canada had also given shelter to pro-Khalistan activists. “These are wanted criminals from India; you have given them visas … and yet you allow them to live there.”

For Moninder Singh, the use of existing criminal networks to attack the Khalistan movement is a “new reality” for activists.

“When I look at these three individuals, I only see India,” he said. “They’re just faces: three were hired today and another three could be hired tomorrow.”

A year before his friend was murdered, Singh – a spokesperson for the British Columbia Gurdwaras Council – was also warned about a possible attempt on his life. He was recently warned again by police of a “very real” risk of assassination, but remains undeterred.

He avoids public places when possible. He has stopped grocery shopping. And he cannot attend key moments of his children’s lives.

“You make up excuses – ‘Dad’s gonna go to work’ or ‘Dad’s gonna go for his community meeting right now and can’t come to your recital.’ And then after a while, your kids stop asking, because they know you won’t be there. That’s the hardest and the saddest part of this whole thing,” he said.

“I made the choice to speak out for Khalistan and I don’t want sympathy. It’s an unfortunate thing to have to accept living in a country like Canada, where this stuff shouldn’t happen. But I’ve chosen this path and I’m committed to it. I’ll either see Khalistan or I’ll die trying.”

Niger’s prime minister blames US for rupture of military pact


Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine says in interview that US troops ‘stayed on our soil, doing nothing while terrorists killed people’


Edward Helmore

Tue 14 May 2024 

THE GUARDIAN

Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, Niger’s prime minister, has blamed the US for a rupture in an important military pact between the two countries that allows US forces to station in the west African nation.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Zeine said US officials had attempted to dictate which countries Niger could align with, had failed to justify the presence of US troops in the country while “doing nothing” to counter an Islamist insurgency in the region.

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Zeine told the Post. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us. We have seen what the United States will do to defend its allies, because we have seen Ukraine and Israel.”


US confirms Russian forces deployed to same Niger airbase as American troops

Last year, a military coup d’état ousted Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. Washington then froze security support and paused counter-terrorism activities run out of Air Base 201, where the US conducts drone surveillance of the Islamic State and al-Qaida-affiliated groups in the Sahel and stationed more than 1,000 military personnel.

Last month, the US acted on Niger’s demands that US troops leave and agreed to withdraw its forces.

The cancellation of the US-Niger security pact has stirred fears of a loss of US influence and a replacement by Russian power in west Africa. Neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, where Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has established a presence, are already considered to be close to Moscow.

After last July’s coup in Niger and before his assassination in August, the Wagner group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, issued a statement welcoming the new military government and offering it Wagner’s services.

US diplomats and military officials made a counter-offer designed to keep cooperation in place, but Russia has dispatched troops to the capital, Niamey. Russian and US troops now occupy opposite ends of an airbase.

In his interview with the Post, Zeine revealed the extent of the breakdown in US-Niger relations.


Zeine said leaders of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or CNSP, were unhappy that the US had frozen military support but kept US troops in the country.

Gen Michael Langley, head of the US Africa Command, told a Senate armed services committee meeting in March that while the US was no longer conducting counter-terrorism operations from Niger, a US military presence in the region was necessary to counter Russian encroachment.

“I’d say that a number of countries are at the tipping point of actually being captured by the Russian Federation as they are spreading some of their false narratives across Libya,” he said. “At [an] accelerated pace, [the] Russian Federation is really trying to take over central Africa, as well as the Sahel.”

Zeine said that the US response to Niger’s coup contrasted with responses from Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates that had welcomed the new leadership in Niamey with “open arms”.

“Nigeriens were saying, ‘Americans are our friends, they will help us this time to annihilate the terrorists.’ But there was radio silence,” Zeine told the newspaper, adding that Niger would have not looked to Russia for help if the US had responded to requests for more support, including for planes, drones and air defense systems.

But he also said he had told the US delegation that Niger still desired economic and diplomatic relations with the US. “If American investors arrived, we would give them what they wanted. We have uranium. We have oil. We have lithium. Come, invest. It is all we want.”

Zeine told the Post he took offense at remarks by Molly Phee, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who he said had directed Niger to resist engaging with Russia and Iran if it wanted to continue its security relationship with the US and threatened sanctions if Niger pursued a deal to sell uranium to Iran. Zeine said that “absolutely nothing” has been signed with Iran.

The Niger leader said he had told Phee that she had “come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.”

In a response, a US official told the Washington Post that the message relayed to Niamey was “delivered in a professional manner, in response to valid concerns about developments”.

‘Impunity is growing’: French celebrities call for law to crack down on sexism and sexual violence

Writers, actors, journalists and politicians published petition in Le Monde after learning 94% of complaints were dismissed in 2022


Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Tue 14 May 2024 

THE GUARDIAN

More than 140 French public figures from literature, film, journalism and politics are calling for the introduction of a wide-ranging law against sexist and sexual violence in France, saying the country has failed to adequately respond to the #MeToo movement.

Personalities including the bestselling writers Camille Kouchner, Leïla Slimani and Vanessa Springora as well as the actors Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani, Emmanuelle Béart and the actor-director Judith Godrèche, told Le Monde: “Despite the courage of victims, impunity is growing.”


Judith Godrèche calls out French film industry’s sexual violence before parliament

In a petition, published in Le Monde, they said France is “abysmally” lagging behind in terms of the reaction of society and the legal system to the pervasive problem of sexist and sexual abuse. “It’s unacceptable that the rate of dismissals of complaints of sexual violence reached the delirious rate of 94% in 2022,” the petition said.

They called for a far-reaching rethink of policy on rape and sexual assault in France.

The petition said: “We demand an all-encompassing law to clarify, among other things, the definitions of ‘rape’ and ‘consent,’ to introduce the term ‘incest,’ to try serial rapists for all known rapes, to extend protection orders to rape victims, to facilitate the gathering of evidence, to create specialised police units, to prohibit investigations into victims’ sexual histories, to allow immediate and free access to psychological trauma care, to finally provide the financial means for this public policy and the organisations that implement it.”

In an unprecedented move, 100 of the signatories – including Binoche, Godrèche, the actor Vahina Giocante and the writer Christine Angot – posed for a series of group photographs in Le Monde.

The actor Anna Mouglalis, who had the idea for the photo, said she wanted to take action after seeing that the proportion of rape accusations that were dismissed in France rose from 86% in 2016 to 94% in 2022.

“While the fight against sexual and sexist violence is supposed to be the major cause of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, in reality impunity continues to grow,” she told Le Monde. She said it was not just a case of a single profession being affected, but of “systematic violence running through the whole of French society”.

The manifesto was published on the first day of the Cannes film festival, and as the French film industry is coming to terms with recent allegations of rape and sexual assault. A short film by Godrèche entitled Moi Aussi, or Me Too, highlighting the stories of survivors of sexual violence, will premiere at the festival.

Godrèche has become a leading voice in France’s #MeToo movement after accusing the directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon of sexually assaulting her while she was a teenager. Both men have denied the allegations. Prosecutors have launched an inquiry.

Gérard Depardieu, one of France’s best-known actors, will face a criminal trial in October over the alleged sexual assaults of two women on the set of a film in 2021. He is also under formal investigation in another case after the actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her at his Paris home in 2018. He has denied all allegations.

On Monday, the French magazine Elle published allegations of rape, assault and sexual harassment by nine women against the influential French film producer Alain Sarde, who has produced films by directors from Jean-Luc Godard to Roman Polanski. In a statement to French media, Sarde’s lawyer denied all allegations.

Police fire teargas at protesters and MPs brawl as Georgia passes ‘foreign agents’ bill

View image in fullscreenTens of thousands of people protested in Tbilisi against a bill that has been seen as an impediment to Georgia’s EU ascension. Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

Vote to adopt bill a ‘serious obstacle’ to Georgia’s bid to join EU, European Commission warns

Daniel Boffey in Tbilisi

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 14 May 2024 
Georgia protests – latest updates


Riot police have used teargas in an attempt to disperse protesters outside Georgia’s parliament while MPs brawled inside, as a “foreign agents” bill was passed into law.

The bill – condemned as a Kremlin-inspired act of repression – was backed by 84 MPs to 30 despite western pressure and the rolling protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi.


A number of protesters were treated by medics after teargas was used on a noisy but seemingly peaceful crowd of a few thousand people, while squads of police dragged individuals away.

The violence spread into the chamber, with a dozen MPs fighting and one MP, from the governing Georgian Dream party, being held back by security guards as he violently lurched at the chair of the main opposition, Levan Khabeishvili.

The police were initially successful in clearing the crowds from Rustaveli Avenue in front of the imposing parliament building but the officers soon retreated to whistles and jeers as the demonstration grew in the early evening.

A rendition of the national anthem, Tavisupleba, or Freedom, was sung by the many tens of thousands braving the rain followed by the playing on a tannoy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, also known as the anthem of Europe.

Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, issued a statement of solidarity as what appeared to be the largest crowd since the government introduced the controversial bill in March gathered to protest.

“Dear Georgian people,” Nausėda’s statement said, “we hear you and stand with you in your struggle for the European future of Georgia. Nobody has the right to take your European dream away. Nobody has the right to silence the will of the people to live by values.”
Clashes at Georgian parliament as 'foreign agents bill' passes – video

Under the legislation adopted on Tuesday, media or civil society groups in Georgia that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad will have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”.

The US state department has called the bill “Kremlin-inspired”, as it has echoes of legislation introduced into the Russian statute books in 2012 by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, which many people say has been used to silence critics.

The president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, has said she would veto the law, but the governing party has sufficient numbers in parliament to overrule her.

Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, earlier on Tuesday met the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Jim O’Brien, in Tbilisi to discuss Washington’s concerns.

The prime minister’s office said Kobakhidze had explained to O’Brien the “need to adopt the law” and reiterated the “readiness of the leadership team to carefully consider all legal comments of international partners within the framework of the veto procedure”.

Kobakhidze said on Monday that O’Brien had also requested a meeting with the billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, who is widely thought to drive government policy.

He said Ivanishvili – who made his fortune in Russia – rejected the request on the grounds that the US had frozen $2bn (£1.59bn) of his funds.

Georgian Dream is accused of unwinding the progress made since the 2003 Rose revolution, when a non-violent movement brought an end to an administration that was Soviet in style and corrupt in practice.

The party was elected 12 years ago after those who drove the changes in Georgian politics in the early 2000s were blamed for antagonising Russia, leading to an invasion and full-scale war in 2008.

The European Commission on Tuesday restated its position that the new law would undermine Georgia’s application to join the European Union. “EU member countries are very clear that if this law is adopted it will be a serious obstacle for Georgia in its European perspective,” it said.

Tina Bokuchava, the parliamentary leader of the opposition United National Movement said: “Today’s vote will focus minds on the urgent need for regime change in Georgia. With elections to look forward to in October, I am confident that the unity seen on our streets in recent weeks will prove a watershed moment in our nation’s history.

“Our rightful place is in Europe – but the Ivanishvili stranglehold must be broken first if this dream is to be realised.”

On Monday, students from 30 Georgian universities joined the protests and went on strike, backed by lecturers.

Irakli Beradze, 22, a student in Tblisi, holding up a sign saying “Russia can’t gaslight us, we have gas masks”, said that he and thousands of others “would not let Russia have our country”.

But in a speech on Tuesday, a Georgian Dream MP, Archil Talakvadze, called critics of the new law a “radical and anti-national political opposition united by political vendetta”.

“But nothing and nobody can stop the development of our country,” he added.

 

NATURE FIGHTS BACK!

Tanker Rescues Sailors off Gibraltar as Orcas Sink First Boat in 2024

ORCA LIBERATION FRONT 

Orcas off Spain (file image courtesy MITMA)

PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2024 1:46 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

The now infamous pod of orcas swimming the waters near Gibraltar struck again this weekend sinking their first vessel of 2024. Scientists remain puzzled why this one pod of “killer whales” appears to have been repeatedly going after vessels in this region over the past four years. The supposition continues to be that this is “playful behavior.”

Two sailors issued a distress call on Sunday morning, May 12, while approximately 14 nautical miles from Cape Espartel near the southern entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. They told the authorities that they had felt sudden blows to the hull and rudder of their 15-meter (49-foot) boat the Alboran Cognac. The vessel had begun taking on water and they feared additional impacts could cause a more severe inflow that would hasten the loss of the boat.

The Spanish Coast Guard sent a helicopter and contacted the product tanker Lascaux (11,674 dwt) which was sailing in the area. The tanker registered in Malta was sent to assist the sailors.

The vessel was in Moroccan waters at the time and those authorities instructed the sailors to don their life jackets and turn on their AIS signal. They were also told to prepare a radio beacon in case it was required. The tanker was able to locate the boat and took the two sailors aboard. Their boat sank after the rescue and the two individuals were taken to Gibraltar where they recounted their tale.

 

Spanish authorities issued a map warning sailors of the danger zone

 

According to reports, while it was the first incident in 2024, at least seven vessels have been wrecked over the past four years. Five sailboats and two Moroccan fishing boats have reported incidents with the orcas.

Scientists believe it is a single pod of maybe 15 animals that inhabit the waters between the north of the Iberian Peninsula and the region around Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar. Some think that it is juveniles swimming with two adults and part of a larger herd of approximately 35 orcas. 

The scientists point out that the animals are highly intelligent. Although media reports have called these revenge attacks it is more likely instinct and playful behavior. 

Spanish authorities warn boats to not enter a zone around the strait between April and August when most of the encounters take place. In the event of interaction, whether it is a motor boat or a sailing boat, they advise do not stop the boat and navigate towards the coast, to shallower waters. 

 

We Need a #MeToo Maritime Library

Wiley Hall, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (file image)

PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2024 9:23 PM BY DENISE KREPP

 

 

My goal in 2024 is to build a #MeToo Maritime Library. To that end, I contacted the Maritime Administration last month asking the agency to create a section on its website focusing on the history of sexual harassment and sexual assaults in the maritime community, and I offered to share my collection of documents for inclusion.  I met with a MARAD official last week to discuss the offer.  I will make a similar ask of the US Coast Guard this summer.

When I was in college at The George Washington University, I worked the circulation desk at Gelman Library. I helped fellow students find books to complete their papers. It might be 10pm, but I loved digging for arcane information only found in the library’s database. 

The experience taught me that personal papers, stored in public libraries, help historians better understand why decisions are made, the unknown individuals involved in the decision-making process, and how seemingly unrelated facts can impact national policy decisions.

I’ve collected #MeToo Maritime documents for over thirteen years, starting with the memo I signed in September 2011 as the Maritime Administration Chief Counsel requesting a Department of Transportation Inspector General investigation into sexual harassment and sexual assaults of US Merchant Marine Academy students at the school and at sea.

Additional documents include testimony before Congressionally mandated panels, essays, correspondence, books, and speeches. Thirteen years of history and it continues to grow.

The MARAD representative inquired if I would support placing the documents at the US Merchant Marine Academy.  Absolutely, I responded.  I want current students to understand why I asked for the IG investigation in 2011 and to follow the trail of history from that document to the current processes in place to stop sexual harassment and assault at the school and at sea.

I’m not the only one to have collected #MeToo Maritime documents. Others have them as well and I will be encouraging those who have built similar collections to consider donating them to MARAD.  The more documents placed at Kings Point, the more knowledge students will have on an important part of maritime history.

When I testified in 2014 before a congressionally mandated panel, I testified as a former Maritime Administration Chief Counsel and as a Coast Guard JAG. My collection includes Coast Guard documents and I will be encouraging the Coast Guard this summer to create a similar collection of documents at the US Coast Guard Academy.

In June 2022, Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg stated “(n)ow is a time, long past time indeed, when we must confront the unique challenges around sexual assault and harassment present across the maritime sector, and impacting students at this Academy.”  I agree with Secretary Buttigieg that it long past time to address this scourge and building #Metoo Maritime libraries at the US Merchant Marine Academy and at the US Coast Guard Academy can make that goal a reality.

K. Denise Rucker Krepp is a former Maritime Administration Chief Counsel. Krepp started her federal career as a Coast Guard officer. She helped create the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. The views expressed in the article are solely the author’s.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

 

Berlin’s Oldest Passenger Vessel Enters a New Green Era Powered by Torqeedo

PUBLISHED MAY 13, 2024 12:46 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

[By: Torqeedo]

Kaiser Friedrich, a vessel steeped in history, was built in 1886. It recently marked its return to service with a ceremonial christening in central Berlin. In a bid to preserve its legacy, its owners refitted the historic 30-meter vessel with a modern, emission-free electric drive system by the world leader in electric mobility on the water, Torqeedo.

The Kaiser Friedrich, a twin-screw steamship, plied Berlin’s waters for almost 80 years before it was decommissioned in 1967 and converted into offices and residential space. In 1986, the German Museum of Technology purchased the 100-ton boat and restored it to its original appearance. For several years, the Kaiser Friedrich once again delighted guests with historical city tours until its engines, which used over 150 liters of diesel per hour, made operation both ecologically and economically unviable. The museum reclaimed the boat in 2012 and started the search for Kaiser Friedrich’s next chapter.

In 2022, Volker Marhold and Julius Dahmen, who both have experience converting historic boats to electric propulsion, purchased the Kaiser Friedrich. In close collaboration with Torqeedo’s Customized Solutions team, the conversion to an ultra-efficient electric drive system with twin Deep Blue 50 kW inboard motors and a 400 kWh Deep Blue battery bank was expertly completed by the Tangermünde Shipbuilding and Development Company in Genthin, Germany.

Starting on 13 May, Berliners and visitors to the “Athens on the Spree” can enjoy an eco-friendly city tour on board this legendary passenger vessel. At night, the city’s most famous boat transforms into a floating beer garden during the 3.5-hour Old Berlin Beer Evening. Online booking is available at www.kaiserfriedrich.berlin.

Mr. Dahmen, co-owner of the 138-year-old vessel and operator of Berliner Welle, a company that provides a variety of historic boats for excursions and events, said: “Whisper-quiet, environmentally conscious and free of local emissions, the Kaiser Friedrich will again be available to the people of Berlin. This is the third Berliner Welle excursion boat that we have converted to Torqeedo electric drives, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration.”

“The Kaiser Friedrich is a longtime maritime landmark of the city,” said Mr. Marhold. “And now it is also a symbol of transformation towards the mobility of the future. And what a wonderful future for Berlin’s oldest passenger vessel, which can now once again welcome passengers  to celebrate life with them while enjoying breathtaking views of our beautiful city.”

“Torqeedo’s electric drive and energy management systems for commercial vessels are transforming the world’s waterways,” said Fabian Bez, CEO of Torqeedo GmbH. “Major cities like Berlin are taking measures to reduce boating and shipping’s ecological, health and climate impacts. But it’s not just happening in urban areas: Lake Constance is working toward a holistic decarbonization strategy, and we see similar efforts implemented around the globe.”

“An electrification project of this size and historical significance is an important step forward,” continued Bez. “Commercial vessels of all sizes can be cleaner, quieter, and healthier for our natural and human environments. The technology is here today. It’s time to go electric.”

The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.

Viewpoint: Modernising the regulatory ecosystem for nuclear-powered ships

14 May 2024

The maritime industry stands on the brink of a new era, writes Mikal Bøe. With the rise of new nuclear technologies, the sector can finally address the dual challenge of meeting global climate goals and improving energy efficiency.

Mikal Bøe (Image: Core Power)

More than 80% of all goods traded worldwide are transported at sea. Shipping is the backbone of global trade. Globalisation of trade, prosperity of nations and economic progress is highly dependent on an efficient and safe maritime sector. Now, the industry must dramatically reduce and eventually eliminate its emissions, and only nuclear power can achieve those goals.

We know nuclear at sea works well. Over 700 reactors have operated at sea, enduring the harsh environments of the world's choppy oceans. But there are no nuclear-powered commercial ships in service today because the reactor technologies available are unsuited for civilian maritime transportation.

We must therefore build new technologies and we must modernise the regulatory ecosystem to allow those new technologies to do their important work.

The ecosystem of rules which apply to nuclear-powered ships require solutions to three main challenges:

1. The International Maritime Organization's (IMO) Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) Chapter VIII contains the Code of Safety for Nuclear Merchant Ships, which was adopted by the IMO Assembly through Resolution A.491.XII in 1981. The Code is based solely on pressurised water reactors (PWRs), or naval reactors. Because emergency planning around a mobile high-pressure reactor cannot be achieved in nearshore environments, these cannot be commercially insured which prevents ships from calling in ports. Without port calls, ships are redundant. Hence, the IMO standards need revision to allow for new nuclear technologies which can.
    
2. Strict export control restrictions for naval nuclear propulsion in countries with nuclear navies (UK, USA, Russia, China, etc), referencing the same naval reactor technology as set out in A.491.XII, are assumed to apply to all maritime nuclear propulsion solutions, until a clear distinction can be shown between military and civil applications. National export control rules must therefore be modernised to allow for maritime civil nuclear propulsion, whilst still providing adequate security and safeguards provisions. Modernised rules will spur changes in ship building and vessel ownership.
    
3. Nuclear liability conventions (Vienna and Paris Conventions) both exclude nuclear propelled ships, again based on the same foundations as set out above. We therefore need a modern liability convention that allows commercial insurability of nuclear-powered ships. This was attempted with the Brussels Convention of 1962, but it was never ratified, again for the same reasons. With new nuclear technologies that are commercially insurable, and a clear separation in export control rules between naval and civil nuclear propulsion, a revised and modern liability convention will be adopted.

For all this to be possible, these new nuclear technologies must satisfy three main criteria to be fit-for-purpose in nuclear-powered ships.

• The Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) around the reactor must be minimal, preferably contained entirely within the confines of the ship's hull. This will facilitate the development of commercial insurance and open the door for port calls.
   
• There must be no need for refuelling of reactors in commercial ports. Handling the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle in busy ports is a showstopper, at least for now.
   
• The nuclear power system must be passively safe under all conditions and meet or exceed the highest standards set for security and safeguards by design.

New nuclear technologies which meet these criteria open the possibility of nuclear propulsion for large, ocean-going ships. The Fourth IMO GHG Study (2020) identifies over 12,500 ships (container, tanker, bulk carrier, cruise, reefer) where the case could be made for using nuclear propulsion.

Shipowners, shipyards, trading houses and banks which control almost 5000 ships have to date made financial investments in companies building these new nuclear technologies and the industry now has nuclear-powered ships on the radar for commercial launch in the 2030s.

Modular construction in shipyard production is a key strategy for scaling nuclear deployment. Both nuclear-powered ships and floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) can be centrally manufactured using common parts and components. This allows complete predictability of both cost and delivery times, an unusual feature in the nuclear industry.

The newly formed Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization (NEMO), of which Core Power is a founding member, is spearheading the essential work to assist governments and international organisations with the modernisation of the entire regulatory ecosystem for nuclear-powered ships and FNPPs.

Modernising A.491.Xii is now on the agenda at the IMO. Members of US Congress are pressing for export control rules to be modernised, and both insurers and re-insurers are engaging to establish commercial insurability of nuclear-powered ships. Our aim is to have a fit-for-purpose ecosystem of rules and regulations established by 2030.

Mikal Bøe is CEO of Core Power and Vice Chairman of NEMO.