Exiled, jailed or silenced: Thailand’s youth protest leaders languish under prosecution blitz

(Clockwise from top left) Benjamaporn Nivas, Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, Bunkueanun Paothong and Patsaravalee Tanakitvibulpon. 

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF BENJAMAPORN NIVAS, TAN HUI YEE

Tan Hui Yee
Indochina Bureau Chief
Sep 15, 2024, 05:00 AM


BANGKOK - Benjamaporn Nivas, 19, sells bubble tea in Vancouver while taking adult education classes to make up for her interrupted schooling.

It has been two years since she has seen her friends and family in Thailand, and four years since she co-founded a student group to reform Thai education.

The mass protests she helped to lead eventually challenged the status quo and demanded reform of Thailand’s powerful monarchy.


But she paid the price for her activism.

“I never imagined I would end up so far away,” she told The Straits Times in a video call from Canada, where she received asylum after fleeing a possible lese majeste conviction in 2022.

“Sometimes I feel sad and miss home. But I am safe. There are things which I had to give up in exchange for that, and it was painful. But I have to keep going.”

Four years after student protests first broke out across South-east Asia’s second largest economy – challenging the then military-linked government and eminence of King Maha Vajiralongkorn – the young people who drew thousands of protesters onto the streets are grappling with prosecutions that have driven some into exile, others to incarceration and many more to silence.

Benjamaporn Nivas shows artwork she created in Canada about the Thai political situation. 

PHOTO: COURTESY OF BENJAMAPORN NIVAS

According to advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, more than 1,900 people have been charged – for taking part in public assemblies or expressing their political opinion – since youth protests first broke out in July 2020.

Among them were 272 people charged with lese majeste – an offence that carries a jail term of up to 15 years.

At least 126 of the 155 lese majeste cases known to be concluded so far have resulted in jail sentences. Prominent protest leader and activist lawyer Arnon Nampa, 40, is serving 14 years in prison for the royal insult cases against him concluded so far.

Arnon was the first activist at the protests to call for discussion about the King, who controls his own military units as well as billions of dollars of assets he took over from the Crown Property Bureau, an agency which managed assets on behalf of the palace.

For lese majeste defendants yet to be convicted, pre-trial detention in prison is common. Democracy activist Netiporn Sanesangkhom, who was facing lese majeste and other charges, died in detention in May at the age of 28, after a months-long hunger strike to protest against the justice system.

Some youth leaders have decided to skip town. Fugitive activist Panupong Jadnok, 27, reportedly arrived in New Zealand in August after missing a lese majeste-related court date months earlier. Parit Chiwarak, a 26-year-old student leader who goes by the nickname of Penguin, was saddled with 25 royal defamation cases when he skipped a court hearing in June. He is presumed to have fled Thailand.

Youth protest leaders who remain in Thailand say they are forced to structure their lives around a revolving door of court appointments and make peace with the ever-present possibility of losing their freedom.

Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, 25, is trying to cram studies for a master’s degree in human rights with attending court hearings for the 31 cases filed against her. Nine of them involve alleged lese majeste.

Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul has 31 cases filed against her. 

ST PHOTO: TAN HUI YEE


Rung, as she is known among friends, stunned the Thai public in August 2020 when she read out a list of 10 demands for monarchy reform before thousands of protesters just outside Bangkok. Among other things, it called for the monarch to be stripped of legal immunity and the royal budget to be reduced in line with economic conditions. It also demanded that the lese majeste law be abolished.

Then a sociology and anthropology undergraduate at Thammasat University in Pathum Thani province, Rung went on stage to speak at many other protests as part of a group called the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration.

But the resulting state surveillance, prosecution and body-shaming online attacks by conservatives left her “stressed and anxious”, she told ST.

“I am still an activist and human rights defender,” she said in an interview near her home in Nonthaburi province. “With the time that I have left, I will use it to study human rights and democratisation. If I am sent to jail, I would have some knowledge or skills that can protect other inmates in prison.”

Other youth leaders – spooked by state pressure on them and their relatives – have sworn off demonstrations.

Bunkueanun Paothong, a 25-year-old international relations undergraduate at Mahidol University, told ST: “A lot of protest leaders paid a price. I am no different. Even though I hate to admit it as much, I believe that now it’s not a price I can pay any more.”

He is instead focusing on his work in the Mahidol University student council, of which he is a member.

Bunkueanun Paothong is focusing on his work in the Mahidol University student council. ST PHOTO: TAN HUI YEE


He recalled “almost” losing his sanity after being constantly tailed by people he identified as police officers.

“I lost the ability to confidently walk and do things without being surveilled all the time,” he said.

New political developments have drawn public attention away from these youth leaders.

The street protests eased as Thailand emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic and held a general election in May 2023.

Coup leader and then prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha – a major source of public ire – was relegated to political obscurity after a disastrous showing by his political party in the 2023 general election. He is now a privy councillor.

Many people who took to the streets in 2020 to call for reforms later pinned their hopes on the progressive Move Forward Party, which won the 2023 election but was blocked by royalist factions in Parliament from forming a government.

The Constitutional Court deemed that Move Forward’s campaign to amend the lese majeste law was illegal – and dissolved the party on those grounds. This pushed the possibility of amending the draconian law even further back.

Meanwhile, election runner-up Pheu Thai Party has joined hands with parties across the political spectrum to form two coalition governments so far.

While the current government is helmed by 38-year-old Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, it is thought to be controlled by her father Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mr Thaksin, himself a former prime minister, spent 15 years in self-exile to evade graft-related charges but returned to Thailand in 2023 through what was seen as a political deal for lenient treatment. Tellingly, he prostrated himself before a picture of the King and Queen as soon as he returned.

Still, while fading from public consciousness, the youth protesters have left an indelible mark on Thai politics.

“The main legacy of the youth movement is their contribution to the ideological shift in Thailand,” said Dr Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, a Bangkok-based research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. “The popular mood back then – right in the middle of the pandemic – was a questioning of the status quo. There was real resentment against injustice and elite privileges.

“The movement voiced this in public, and it started the conversation about key institutions that undergird the status quo.”

She added: “Now that cannot be undone, regardless of the repression of the movement and the fact that there is currently no mass mobilisation against the elite.”

Some youth leaders say they can afford to wait.

Patsaravalee Tanakitvibulpon, 29, is fighting 15 protest-related charges – including three involving lese majeste. She has focused on campaigning work related to resources like land and water, which she feels are closely tied to Thailand’s power structure.

“I am still fighting, but the method that I have chosen is appropriate for the current circumstances,” she told ST. “Discussions about the monarchy are still taking place online even though there is no protest.”

Patsaravalee Tanakitvibulpon is fighting 15 protest-related charges – including three involving lese majeste. 

 ST PHOTO: TAN HUI YEE

While there have been efforts to introduce an amnesty Bill for victims of political prosecution, individuals accused of lese majeste are unlikely to get a reprieve under this move, said Dr Janjira, who is a member of a parliamentary committee looking into this.

This is because there is not enough support among legislators or even the public for amnesty on this controversial issue.

Despite the threat of jail, Rung is optimistic about political change in Thailand, simply because the biggest defenders of the status quo belong to the older generation.

“They are older than us. They will die before us,” she said matter-of-factly. “If we can maintain the idea of change, the idea of democracy, the idea of equality within our generation and the generation after us, maybe one day Thailand will become more diverse and more equitable.”

Benjamaporn, meanwhile, has no regrets despite being driven into exile.

“The Thai education system has gradually changed and students have become braver and more aware of their rights,” she said. “I am proud of what I had done. Even if I could turn back the clock, I still would have done what I did.”

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Kirill: Russian culture and the salvation of the world

by Stefano Caprio

Trying not to limit himself to the usual statements of state propaganda amid the universal conflict between Russia and the West, the Patriarch of Moscow spoke a few days ago in St Petersburg using philosophical and literary arguments to further explain the reasons why Russia today feels called to spread the “great values” that universal society has seemingly abandoned.

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill (Gundyayev) spoke at the 10th Forum of "Unitary Cultures" in St Petersburg, in the solemn hall of the Mariinsky Palace, home to the city's Legislative Assembly, centred on “Culture in the 21st century: sovereignty or globalism?" to reiterate the fundamental theses of the mission of the "Russian world" in our age.

Trying not to limit himself to repeating the usual statements of state propaganda in the context of the universal conflict between Russia and the West, the patriarch sought to further develop philosophical and literary arguments of why Russia today feels called to spread the “great values” that universal society appears to abandon.

It is, in some way, a matter of rediscovering the fundamental role of the Orthodox Church in militarist Russia, a role that Kirill had to yield to Putin in the phase of wars of the last 20 years, starting with the war with Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, and eventually the invasion of Ukraine.

The patriarch did not initially back the president in his radical confrontation, but in the last two and a half years of war he could not (or did not want) to do anything but support the justifications of the conflict in the defence of traditional values, which the degraded West would like to erase from the conscience of Ukrainians, Russians, and all peoples historically linked to the "spiritual beacon" of super-Orthodox Moscow.

The patriarchate has inspired this ideological line since the late 1990s, and now perhaps realises that it has gone too far in its claims to a global definition of “religious and cultural truth”.

It is no coincidence that Kirill began his speech by emphasising the identity of St Petersburg, whereby "the small homeland always remains the city on the Neva", which represents the westernmost part of the Russian identity, culturally even more than geographically. The people of St Petersburg, according to the patriarch, "have never lost their inner spiritual, cultural and intellectual bond with the city".

Unlike Kirill, President Vladimir Putin, who hails from Russia’s northern capital, represents the less evolved and erudite segment of the city, as Putin himself often claims, defining himself as a "man of the people" and certainly not as an intellectual from the aristocratic elites.

Thus, Kirill's speech takes on deeper and more courtly tones, stating that "a serious reasoning on culture must always be axiological, that is, about values", elevating the definition that concerns precisely "traditional values", reiterated by Putin and all Russian politicians almost without real content to the point of boredom.

Instead, "culture is what carries values within itself," explains the patriarch, otherwise, "without values no culture is preserved, which dissolves into dust... We know these cataclysms that have destroyed entire civilisations."

This is the challenge Russian Orthodoxy wants to throw at the whole world, namely the preservation of tradition as a guarantee of the survival of true civilisation, the “mechanism of transmission of values.”

Through a series of erudite quotes, Kirill comments on the very origin of the term "culture" starting from the concept of "cult", which justifies “the axiological approach: What has value is what is holy for society in its historical development.”

The prevalence of religion over philosophy itself is a theme very dear to Kirill, who in his argumentation criticises the main theorists of Western rationalism, from August Comte and Ludwig Feuerbach to Karl Marx, who is “well-known to us Russians.”




The patriarch has often linked this "positivist tendency" with the legacy of Latin scholasticism, a classic topic of theological polemics between Catholics and Orthodox, but now he is trying to go further, since "in our times this claim of philosophical superiority over religion is now recognised as inconsistent, especially after the end of the tragedy of humanist atheism of the twentieth century."

Today's challenge, according to Kirill, is to find a new meaning of life in world societies, dried up from the sources of true spirituality. Marxist philosophy stated that man “lives for future generations, but this is absurd, so what value can one’s personal life have?”

If man is only a "transmission belt", even those who come after us will live without giving any meaning to existence. This is "a destructive relationship with the human personality, with the rational being that God has destined for high purposes", says the patriarch.

There is a need for a new paideia, a process of education and rearing of man, the Greek term that gives rise to the very meaning of "culture".

Today's world is no longer capable of rearing, it does not even transmit "physical culture and the aesthetic sense"; instead, it is necessary today "to make every effort to defend and protect the very foundations of culture, like a farmer who does not forget the seeds in the ground, which would end up smothered by wild nature.”

This is precisely the image that the patriarch wants to promote, comparing the Russian care for values with the "uncultured forest" of the West and, in general, of universal society, in what he calls the raskulturivanie (раскультуривание), the “de-culturisation” of the world.

The Paris Olympics are an example of this degradation, with its irreverent symbolism and its gender diatribes. “When I looked at the images of the inaugural processions on the Seine,” the patriarch said, “I said to myself: ‘You cannot offend God this way! This is an incredible regression of Western civilisation, which seeks to smother all other cultures.”

People today, according to Kirill, "continue to use common words and follow habits, without asking themselves anything about their origin and meaning.”

To say thank you, Russians use the word Spasibo (СПАСИБО), which derives from Spasi Bog (СПАСИ БОГ), "God save”. There are many examples that the patriarch cites to indicate the roots of the sense of shared life, which must be found to avoid raskulturivanie, de-culturisation, and prevent it from becoming raschelovechivaniye (расчеловечивание), “dehumanisation” in which “culture loses its soul”.

The patriarch notes that "Christianity has never been the property of a single culture; it belongs to the whole world," and goes far beyond the concept of the "Christian world" because it values “every national culture as a treasure of the whole world”.

Russian culture is no exception, but having gone through particularly hard trials, "which it has been able to face with courage", it is today the culture that can "enrich the whole world" and counter “globalism that cancels and flattens different cultures, trying to make all men equal... These men will not be able to transmit values to future generations, in cancel culture, the culture of the click in which everything is allowed.”

Ultimately, Patriarch Kirill asks the question that divides the whole world today: “Should the culture of the twenty-first century be sovereign or global?” On a deeper level, “should it be a culture, or an anti-culture?”

It is a question of "what man must be today", and the answer he proposes is podvig (подвиг, feat), the monastic term that indicates the sacrifice a person makes for the common good.

Finally, turning to Pavel Florensky, martyr to Stalinist communism in the camps on Solovki Islands, he cites the words of the great Russian theologian: “Do nothing that does not have a true taste for life, because just doing things can make you lose the meaning of everything.”

Taking up the thoughts of other Orthodox ideologues, the Russian patriarch tries to avoid excessively trite and radical syntheses, turning to thinkers like the theologian and political scientist Aleksandr Shchipkov, whose recently published essay on the "Crisis of the theory and practice of actions to defend human rights" focuses on the “problem of conceptualising liberal (interpretations of) rights and the crisis of humanitarian institutions."

Russians insist on highlighting the weakness of the Western conception of freedom, which has been transformed into a "dogmatic doctrine", a "false metaphysics", that makes it impossible to regain the true freedom of the "values" for which Russia is fighting today.

There is a military war and an information war, but the Russian war is foremost a war of principles, calling for answers to the deepest questions in the contemporary world.

OPINION

Not all is well inside the Taliban

The recently announced vice and virtue law reflects efforts by the Taliban’s old guard to consolidate power at the expense of internal unity.

Lakshmi Venugopal Menon
Published On 14 Sep 2024

Members of the Taliban participate in a rally to mark the third anniversary of the fall of Kabul on August 14, 2024 [File: Reuters/Sayed Hassib]

On August 21, a strict public morality law was issued in Afghanistan. The 114-page document outlining the legislation contains provisions that cover transportation, media, music, public spaces and personal conduct. Among its most restrictive provisions are a ban on music and on women singing or reading aloud in public.

The announcement of the law provoked widespread condemnation internationally and raised questions about the direction in which the Taliban government is taking Afghanistan given past promises to ease restrictions on women.

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The law also caused a lot of unease in Afghanistan, even if opposition was not voiced publicly. This has prompted the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, to call for the group’s members to avoid division and embrace unity.

While the public morality legislation makes clear that the Taliban is pressing ahead with ultra-conservative policies in the face of international criticism, it also reflects growing tensions within its leadership.

Kandahar vs Kabul

In the lead-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, some Taliban officials sought to persuade the international community that a Taliban 2.0 had emerged, which held more moderate views on governance compared with the old guard’s highly conservative and stringent approach.

This new guard spoke the language of international diplomacy and made clear its desire to scrap more conservative policies to attract international support and secure legitimacy for the new Taliban government.

The formation of the interim cabinet, however, showed the first signs that the old guard was not ceding power. Promises of an inclusive government were not fulfilled, and some members of the old guard were given key roles, including Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the Taliban’s founders who was appointed prime minister; Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was appointed as his deputy; and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of another Taliban founder, Mullah Omar, who was made defence minister.

As the interim government took on the uneasy task of steering the country away from collapse, Akhundzada established his residence in Kandahar as another seat of power, declaring himself in charge of political, military and religious affairs.

Over the past two years Akhundzada has made clear he does not intend to step back from his hardline positions. In March 2022, on his order, girls and women were banned from attending secondary school and university.

He has also sought to concentrate power in his own hands and further tighten the old guard’s grip on the government. He ordered a number of cabinet reshuffles in which his loyalists were appointed.

In September 2022, Education Minister Noorullah Munir was replaced by Maulvi Habibullah Agha, one of the figures closest to the supreme leader. In May this year, Health Minister Qalandar Ebad, a trained doctor and the only technocrat in the Taliban government, was replaced by Noor Jalal, a hardline cleric and former deputy interior minister.

While Akhundzada appears in control, signs of growing internal divisions have surfaced. In February 2023, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani implicitly criticised him, saying, “Monopolising power and hurting the reputation of the entire system are not to our benefit. … The situation cannot be tolerated.”

In his Eid al-Fitr message this year, the interior minister again hinted at internal troubles. He called on the Taliban to avoid creating divisions with the Afghan people.

Akhundzada, for his part, urged Taliban officials during Eid to set aside their differences and serve the country properly. He has repeated this call for unity frequently, most recently during a rare trip to northern Afghanistan, in which he met with local leaders.
Dissent and silencing

The public morality law codifies rules that the Taliban promoted before but did not fully enforce. Now, the law empowers the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to monitor, censure and punish any Afghan citizen found in violation of it.

The announcement of this legislation demonstrates that the old guard of the Taliban led by the supreme leader have an upper hand in directing policy. This is yet another sign that the Taliban 2.0 is not a more “moderate” version of the group that ruled in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Previously, Taliban representatives who touted the Taliban 2.0 idea hinted behind closed doors at international forums that certain hardline officials could be replaced to appease the international community.

But developments over the past year, including the vice and virtue law, show that the old guard, who believe in the need for a rigid stance to maintain unity within the group, are suppressing the voices of the new guard, creating a culture of conformity through fear, replacement and sidelining.

In interviews I have conducted with current and former Taliban representatives who do not support some of the conservative policies of the Taliban government, some have shared that they have relocated their families to other countries. One of them said: “The family is more comfortable abroad and the children’s education can seamlessly continue.”

The lack of public response to the vice and virtue law may signal that disgruntled Taliban members who disapprove of it would not risk breaking the unity of the group over policy disagreements.

Silencing of dissent, however, does not help with the two major problems the Taliban is facing: growing dissatisfaction among the Afghan population and continuing international isolation.

The government in Kabul is feeling the pressure from the Afghan people, who are asking for services and jobs amid a collapsing economy and limited international assistance. That can be alleviated only by gaining international recognition of the Taliban government.

However, efforts of some Taliban members, including Haqqani, to reach out to the international community and seek engagement, more aid and investment are being undermined by Kandahar doubling down on policies like education bans for girls and women and the morality law.

In the end, Akhundzada’s strategy of consolidating power may have the opposite of the intended effect: It may sow more internal division that could lead to fragmentation or even rebellion.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance

.
Lakshmi Venugopal Menon
PhD candidate at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University
Lakshmi Venugopal Menon is a PhD candidate at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University. She was previously a Research Associate at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences.

EU naval mission attempts to salvage burning oil tanker in Red Sea

Story by Euronews

 • 22h • 

FILE - Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion burning in the Red Sea following a series of attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024© European Union's Operation Aspides/European Union's Operation Aspides

Anew attempt has begun to try to salvage an oil tanker burning in the Red Sea after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a European Union naval mission said on Saturday.

The EU’s Operation Aspides published images dated Saturday of its vessels escorting ships heading to the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion.

The mission has “been actively involved in this complex endeavour, by creating a secure environment, which is necessary for the tugboats to conduct the towing operation,” the EU said.

The Sounion came under attack from the Houthis beginning Aug. 21. The vessel had been staffed by a crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, who were taken by a French destroyer to nearby Djibouti.

The Houthis later planted explosives aboard the ship and detonated them. That’s led to fears the ship’s 1 million barrels of crude oil could spill into the Red Sea.

The Houthis have targeted more than 80 vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October. They seized one vessel in the campaign that also killed four sailors. One of the sunken vessels, the Tutor, went down after the Houthis planted explosives aboard it and after its crew abandoned it due to an earlier attack, the rebel group later acknowledged.


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Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets.

The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

PHILIPPINES

Siphoning of oil from sunken tanker completed




MANILA, Philippines — The siphoning of oil from the sunken MT Terranova was finished on Friday with an oil recovery rate of 97.43 percent, almost two months after it sank off the coast of Bataan province, according to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG).

The PCG said the contracted salvor, Harbor Star Shipping Services Inc., reported that it collected 1,415,954 liters of oil and an additional 17,725 kilograms of solid oily waste.

Harbor Star explained that “the remaining 37,867 liters, accounting for 2.57 percent of the total oil cargo, were lost due to various factors such as biodegradation, dissipation, absorption by sorbent booms, and unpumpable sludge left in the tanks.”

The recovered oil amounted to about 1.3 million liters of the original cargo, costing more than P100 million. Terranova, owned by Shogun Ships Co. Inc., capsized on July 25 in rough waters about 7 kilometers east of Limay town in Bataan province, leaving one of the 17 crew dead.

Climate march shuts down Hague motorway during police strike


THE HAGUE (AFP) – Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate activists blocked a major motorway running through The Hague yesterday, their “most disruptive” action yet to protest against billions of euros in Dutch fossil fuel subsidies.

The demonstration coincided with a police strike over pensions.

While officers were present in case of emergencies, they were not set to break up the protest as usually happens. Many of the activists had conducted a week-long march from Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands that culminated in the protest on the A12 motorway that serves The Hague.

XR said some protesters planned to take advantage of the police absence to camp out overnight in the motorway tunnels.

“We will keep coming back until the subsidies are abolished,” said XR spokeswoman Rozemarijn van ‘t Einde, adding that they amounted to between EUR39.7 and EUR46.4 billion per year.

Authorities have not ruled out shutting off large sections of the motorway to traffic to ensure the activists’ safety.

The XR group regularly targets the A12 motorway and police often arrest hundreds of protesters.

Extinction Rebellion activists block the A12 motorway near The Hague in the Netherlands. PHOTO: AFP

British man and Americans among 37 people sentenced to death on coup charges in Congo

Saturday 14 September 2024 

American Marcel Malanga, fourth right, stands with others during a court verdict in Congo on Friday.Credit: AP

A British man is among the 37 people who have been sentenced to death in Congo after being convicted on charges of participating in a coup attempt.

The defendants, most of them Congolese but also including three Americans, a Belgian and a Canadian, have five days to appeal the verdict on charges that include attempted coup, terrorism and criminal association. Fourteen people were acquitted in the trial, which opened in June.

The open-air military court in the capital, Kinshasa, convicted the 37 defendants and imposed “the harshest penalty, that of death” in the verdict delivered in French by presiding judge Freddy Ehuma.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office made the following statement on the case: “We are providing consular assistance to a British man detained in DRC and are in contact with the local authorities”.

“We have made representations about the use of the death penalty to the DRC at the highest levels, and we will continue to do so.”

It was unable to provide any further details about the man.

Richard Bondo, the lawyer who defended the six foreigners, disputed whether the death penalty could currently be imposed in Congo, despite its reinstatement earlier this year, and said his clients had inadequate interpreters during the investigation of the case.

"We will challenge this decision on appeal,” Mr Bondo said.

Six people were killed during the botched coup attempt led by the little-known opposition figure Christian Malanga in May that targeted the presidential palace and a close ally of President Felix Tshisekedi.

Malanga was fatally shot while resisting arrest soon after live-streaming the attack on his social media, the Congolese army said.

Malanga’s 21-year-old son Marcel Malanga, who is a US citizen, and two other Americans were convicted in the coup attempt. He told the court that his father had forced him and his high school friend to take part in the attack.

“Dad had threatened to kill us if we did not follow his orders,” Marcel Malanga said.

Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, left, Marcel Malanga and Tyler Thompson, all American citizens, attend a court verdict in Congo.Credit: AP

Other members of the ragtag militia recounted similar threats from the elder Malanga, and some described being duped into believing they were working for a volunteer organisation.

Marcel's mother, Brittney Sawyer, maintains that her son is innocent and was simply following his father, who considered himself president of a shadow government in exile.

In the months since her son's arrest, Ms Sawyer has focused her energy on fundraising to send him money for food, hygiene products and a bed.

He has been sleeping on the floor of his cell at the Ndolo military prison and is suffering from a liver disease, she said.

The other Americans are Tyler Thompson, 21, who flew to Africa from Utah with the younger Malanga for what his family believed was a free vacation, and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, 36, who is reported to have known Christian Malanga through a gold mining company.

The company was set up in Mozambique in 2022, according to an official journal published by Mozambique’s government, and a report by the Africa Intelligence newsletter.

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US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington on Friday that the federal government was aware of the verdict. The department has not declared the three Americans wrongfully detained, making it unlikely that US officials would try to negotiate their return.

“We understand that the legal process in the DRC allows for defendants to appeal the court’s decision," Mr Miller said. "Embassy staff have been attending these proceedings as they’ve gone through the process. We continue to attend the proceedings and follow the developments closely.”

Mr Thompson had been invited on an Africa trip by the younger Malanga, his former high school football teammate in a Salt Lake City suburb.

Other teammates alleged that Marcel had offered up to $100,000 (£76,000) to join him on a “security job” in Congo, and they said he seemed desperate to bring along an American friend.

Mr Thompson’s family maintains he had no knowledge of the elder Malanga’s intentions, no plans for political activism and didn’t even plan to enter Congo.

He and the Malangas were meant to travel only to South Africa and Eswatini, his stepmother, Miranda Thompson, told The Associated Press.

Get ready for the next Great Resignation as workers say they're burned out and yearning for joy

Workers in search of happiness are reassessing what success means to them

Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse

THE BIG ISSUE
14 Sep 2024

Illustration: Big Issue / orignial image: Shutterstock

Whatever happened to the Great Resignation? That remarkable spring in 2022 when 442,000 people in the UK handed in their notice and flocked to pastures new. It was a record number and still is. But it’s set to be broken.

Research shows that we’re on the precipice of the Great Resignation 2.0, with one survey suggesting that up to a third of UK workers could quit their jobs this year while another, conducted by auditor PwC, found that more people worldwide are considering resigning now than during the mass resignations two years ago. The Great Resignation? Record numbers of workers are switching jobs but vacancies rise again
Millions of Brits think their jobs are ‘meaningless.’ Could a four-day working work week fix that?

Eloise Skinner was one of those who took the plunge in 2022. Leaving her job as a corporate lawyer, she was spurred on by those around her making the change and handed in her notice – though it took guts. “The decision was a slow process,” she says. “I’d already been moving into a more self-employed way of working and lockdown had given me time to really think about what I wanted to do. There were quite a few people resigning around the same time as well, so I definitely didn’t feel alone.”

After leaving her job, Skinner retrained as a psychotherapist and though she says she “works with more intensity now”, it’s something she doesn’t mind as she enjoys her work a lot more. That seems to be the main driving force behind all resignations: finding more enjoyment, whether that’s in our work or personal lives.

“It’s like we’re all on this treadmill, running towards some nebulous idea of ‘success’ and then one day we look up and wonder, ‘Is this really it?”, Rychel Johnson, a mental health expert and clinical counsellor says. “Society has conditioned us to equate success with happiness; get the degree, land the job, climb the ladder – it’s a neat little formula we’re sold. But life has a way of throwing curveballs that make us question this equation.”

There’s a particular turning point when resignation becomes inevitable, Johnson adds. Burnout. “We’ve been sprinting so hard that we’ve forgotten how to walk, let alone smell the roses. And work guilt is like this constant background noise, making us feel bad for even considering a life beyond our career.”

So what do you do when you realise that success is not making you happy? Even if it’s something you wholeheartedly want, resignation is daunting.

“Giving up our careers creates a lot of change in our lives and truly learning how to feel more accepting of change is a skill that requires practice,” Dr Sophie Mort, a mental health expert for the Headspace app, says. “We can start by creating the space and time to reflect on and explore what we love and enjoy. Once we’ve spent some time reflecting, we might consider taking a local beginner class to try something new.”

She urges people to approach these new experiences with an open mind and go into them with zero expectations of being good at or even enjoying them. “This is simply a time to help us reconnect with ourselves and enjoy things outside of work,” she explains.

“We can use this time to explore and find new interests and passions that bring us joy – which is truly an incredible opportunity. It’s a time to reflect and ask ourselves important questions about our desires and needs, and what we want our lives to look like in all areas, not just work.”

To figure out what you might want to do, either hobby or work-wise, start by asking yourself some simple questions: What activities have I enjoyed in the past? What have I always been curious to do but never tried?

Skinner has found a whole host of things to do. As well as working as a therapist, she teaches and sits on the youth board of the UK’s national social mobility charity. She’s also written two books. In short, she’s not slowed down. But she has found more enjoyment in a career that genuinely brings her happiness – and gives her time for a few lie-ins and late nights.

Johnson reminds us that, “Happiness isn’t a destination we arrive at once we’ve ticked off enough boxes. What we can learn from this shift, from all these resignations, is the importance of balance and self-awareness. It’s not necessarily about abandoning ambition, but rather expanding our definition of what a rich, successful life looks like.”

And that doesn’t have to mean resigning. “Maybe success isn’t just about that corner office, but also about the joy of a weekend hike or the satisfaction of mastering a new recipe.”

Whether you’re resigning or just cutting down on hectic work hours, it’s likely you’ll experience work guilt. Unfortunately, it’s become the norm. “We’ve been led to believe that being constantly busy is a standard we should all strive to reach,” Dr Mort says.

To ease the guilt, she adds, “it’s important to remember that our value isn’t defined solely by our productivity and output.”

Horses help regenerate wildflower meadows

Joshua Askew
BBC News, South East

Lucy Evans
Scotney Castle has started using horses for mowing duties to help grow wildflower meadows

Time-honoured techniques are bringing nature back to life in Kent.

Scotney Castle, near Lamberhurst, is owned by the National Trust and has started using horses for mowing duties to help grow wildflower meadows on the estate.

The Oakwood Clydesdale horses - called Percy and Frank – are used as they cause less damage to the soil and wildlife when clearing vegetation compared to modern machines, the trust said.

They are also more environmentally friendly than heavy machinery since they do not need fossil fuels, it adds.


'Amazing to see'


After a small mowing test with the horses last year, Scotney Castle ranger Richard Newman said wildflowers began to “bounce back” quicker than when tractors were used.

"It was amazing to see. We noticed that the meadow bounced back, with more wildflowers,” he said.

"We believe this is mainly because the horses cause much less compaction of the soil, so the wildflowers are able to break through again quickly.”

He added: "The light fertilisation from horse manure is an added bonus.”

Lucy Evans
Scotney Castle, near Lamberhurst, is owned by the National Trust

The National Trust said mowing helped regenerate wildflowers as removing vegetation like grasses and nettles reduced the level nutrients in the soil - a condition favoured by wildflowers.

Flowers then attract insects and birds, which improve biodiversity, the trust adds.

Mr Newman said there was a long tradition of using animals on the land in the High Weald, where Scotney Castle is located.

He said that historically oxen were used by farmers to negotiate the deep valleys, small fields and numerous streams and rivers of the area.

"Sadly these older practices are dying out, but it’s worth trying to get them back again," he added.

U.K. Labour strategists advise Harris on winning from the center left

After Keir Starmer led the Labour Party to a big win in July’s election, U.K. strategists say they have relevant insights to share with Kamala Harris’s campaign.


Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally at Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte on Thursday. (Logan Cyrus for The Washington Post)

By Karla Adam
September 14, 2024

Washington Post

LONDON — Strategists linked to Britain’s Labour Party have been offering advice to Kamala Harris about how to earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the center left.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer didn’t meet with Harris when visiting the White House on Friday. But two of his former top advisers were in Washington this week briefing Democratic strategists and pollsters from the Harris campaign. Last month, a Labour Party delegation traveled to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention.

Since Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, she has expanded the universe of people helping with her campaign, bringing on board experienced hands from the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The British political gurus say they haven’t been recruited by the Harris operation and aren’t getting paid. But after Starmer led a revived Labour Party to a thumping election victory in July, British strategists say they have relevant insights to share.

Harris’s campaign has already been sounding a lot like Starmer’s. Like him, she is a former prosecutor who regularly cites that experience to portray herself as tough on crime and border security.

The two campaigns have deployed strikingly similar messaging. “Stop the chaos, turn the page, start to rebuild” was Labour’s slogan as it made a case against the Conservative Party that had been in power for 14 years. “We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page … and to end the chaos,” Harris said, trying to position herself as the change candidate in her debate with former president Donald Trump.

Keir Starmer launches Labour's general-election manifesto on June 13 in Manchester, England. (Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Crucially, the swing voters Labour sought to win over, and the Democrats are now trying to reach, are people who are concerned above all about the economy.

British pollster Deborah Mattinson, a former top adviser to Starmer, and Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former director of policy, jointly briefed Harris campaign staffers this past week on a target demographic they call “hero voters.”

In Britain, Ainsley told The Washington Post, these tended to be voters who had traditionally backed Labour but who had supported the 2016 Brexit referendum and the “Get Brexit Done” election campaign of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in 2019. They were struggling with daily living costs and wanted change.

“They felt like hope for a better life was getting out of reach,” said Ainsley, who now works with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) think tank in Washington.

Labour under Starmer won them back — partly by capitalizing on a strong anti-incumbent sentiment, but also by emphasizing economic issues, such as affordable housing and job security.

Christabel Cooper, a polling expert with Labour Together, a think tank with ties to the Labour Party, said the “ruthless targeting” of specific swing voters helped deliver an “incredibly efficient” vote. Labour won 63 percent of the seats in Parliament with only 34 percent of the vote share.

So who might be Harris’s hero voters? Ainsley and Mattison commissioned polling and focus groups that led them to a similar category of voters in the United States who expressed concern about the erosion of the middle class, frustration with the cost of groceries and general unhappiness with the status quo.

“They don’t love Trump, but they do believe he is offering change,” Ainsley said. At the same time, “they are open to Harris, but they want to see more of what her offer for them might be.”

To win them over, Ainsley said, Harris should articulate specific policies on core issues “over and over again,” like the tax benefits for young families and small businesses she brought up in the presidential debate.

Harris, like Starmer, has emphasized her middle-class upbringing. While Starmer wants to facilitate “wealth creation,” Harris would build an “opportunity economy.”

But the message shouldn’t be just about the economy, said Mike Tapp, a Labour lawmaker who was part of the contingent at the Democratic convention.

Others in the group included Morgan McSweeney, the brains behind Labour’s election campaign; David Evans, the general secretary of the Labour Party; Jon Ashworth, who runs Labour Together; and Lucy Rigby, another Labour lawmaker.

Tapp told The Post about speaking at an event on appealing to working-class voters. His advice? “To not ignore concerns around immigration and borders.” He noted that Harris was talking about taking on transnational criminal organizations much like Labour has pledged to “smash the gangs” that smuggle people into Britain illegally.

Starmer has repeatedly said he’d be ready to work with Harris or Trump — offering the sort of diplomatic niceties to be expected from a foreign leader.



But Jon Tonge, a politics expert at the University of Liverpool, said there was no doubt about Labour’s preferences in the U.S. presidential election. Labour and Democrats may not be ideological soul mates, but they are broadly similar in many areas. “Starmer will be hoping and praying for a Harris victory,” he said.

There have long been close links between the two political parties — though more often the advice has flowed in the other direction. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg worked for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband; consultant Bob Shrum worked with Blair; pollsters Joel Benenson and Pete Brodnitz advised Brown; and Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod worked with Miliband.

Labour insiders interviewed for this article said that when Starmer became party leader in 2020, and Labour was trailing in the polls, Labour strategists spoke with Democrats in the United States, as well as center-left parties in Australia, Germany and Norway.

Tonge agreed that emphasizing economic issues in battleground states was sound, but he stressed that Labour’s path to victory was complex — while the party did actively win back some swing voters, it also benefited from a populace that wanted to chuck out the incumbents and a splintering of the vote on the right.

There are, of course, also numerous differences between Britain’s parliamentary elections and U.S. presidential ones. Among those distinctions: A British party that fields contestants in all constituencies can spend just over 34 million pounds ($44.6 million); Harris raised $47 million in the 24 hours after Tuesday’s debate.

“We have a very different system,” said Benenson, the American pollster, who worked for Obama and with Labour’s Brown. “My advice to the Harris campaign, respectfully, would be to ignore advice and do what you’re doing. You’re winning.”



By Karla Adam

Karla Adam is a London correspondent for The Washington Post, which she joined in 2006. She is a former president of the Association of American Correspondents in London.follow on X @karlaadam