Press freedom pays a price in US-China media showdown

Washington and Beijing's tit-for-tat crackdown on foreign media could make work harder for US journalists in China. Experts say the principle of press freedom is being caught up in a geopolitical dispute.


On Monday, the US State Department announced that the US would cap the number of Chinese nationals allowed to work for five state-controlled Chinese media outlets in the US.

According to a State Department official, 100 journalists will be given work visas. This means 60 journalists will be cut from the outlets, all of which were classified as "foreign missions" by the US in February.

This comes after three reporters from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) were abruptly expelled by the Chinese government over the headline of an opinion piece on February 19.

At a press briefing last month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said the headline, which referred to China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, was discriminatory.

Read more: Opinion: Journalists' expulsion a sign of China's insecurity

Keith Richburg, director of the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Center and a former Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post, said taking action against Chinese media was something new for the US.

"Previous administrations always said they didn't want to go down the tit-for-tat path," Richburg told DW, adding that the US has wanted to demonstrate that it believes in press freedom while avoiding falling into a pattern of retribution.

However, under President Donald Trump, the US has taken a more transactional approach towards foreign policy.

Richburg said it wasn't surprising that the Trump administration reacted to the move against the WSJ journalists in China by restricting the number of Chinese journalists allowed to work in the US.

"On the one hand, China does treat foreign journalists unfairly," said Richburg. "But on the other hand, I think that the value of a free press is something we should not tamper with."

Read more: Conditions worsen for foreign journalists in China: survey

A 'cold war' mentality?

However, the US has said it will not immediately deport the Chinese journalists and they will not be barred from seeking employment elsewhere in the country. Chinese nationals working for other media outlets in the US won't be affected by the new rule, and the five outlets in question won't be prohibited from hiring employees from other countries.



WHERE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS DOESN'T EXIST
Africa's very own North Korea: Eritrea

Eritrea ranks second-last in the World Press Freedom Index. Reports from the disastrous state of affairs in Eritrea are rare, and many journalists have been forced to leave the country. Radio Erena is the only one to broadcast independent information to the people of Eritrea — from Paris.

On Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the move, saying the decision "severely interrupted Chinese media's normal reporting tasks in the United States."

"Based on the Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice, the US State Department suppressed the Chinese media agencies with political means in the United States for unexplained reasons," said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

Read more: Opinion: Freedom of speech under attack in Germany? Hardly.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasized that Beijing has imposed harsh surveillance, harassment and intimidation tactics against journalists from the US and other countries working in China.

"We urge the Chinese government to respect freedom of expression, including for members of the press," Pompeo said in a statement.

Press freedom in jeopardy?

Under the "foreign mission" designation, the US government considers employees of the five state-run media outlets to be employees of the Chinese state, rather than journalists.

Chiaoning Su, an assistant professor of journalism at Oakland University in the US, said that the US crackdown on Chinese media is a response to the rise of Chinese propaganda around the world.

"I think the whole series of events reflects Washington's attitude towards the rise of China's sharp power," Su told DW.

China is known by free press advocates to be one of the most restrictive places for foreign journalists to report from. Su said Washington's move could make working conditions for US journalists in China even worse.

Read more: How China's new media offensive threatens democracy worldwide

"China produces propaganda in the name of press freedom and that's when the US tries to restrict these activities," said Su, adding the China will be driven to respond to this by further restricting the work of foreign journalists.

"Ultimately, press freedom is the thing that pays the heaviest price."

Richburg said the US and China should find a way to calm things down, rather than embracing a combative approach.

"I think the US and China need to get back to the point where both sides can have different systems, while at the same time recognizing that sometimes they will criticize each other," Richburg said.

Only 3% enjoy open society, says Civic Atlas report

A truly open society exists for merely 3% of the world's population, according to a new "Atlas of Civil Society" published in Germany. In 38 countries, 3 billion live in fear of repression, surveillance and even murder.

Nations that enable and safeguard citizens' freedoms are becoming rarer, according to the five-category atlas compiled by CIVICUS, a Johannesburg-based global alliance, forBread for the World (Brot für die Welt), a large aid agency of Germany's protestant churches.

"Women are disproportionately often the targets of digital, psychological and indeed physical violence, right the way through to politically-motivated murder," the president of Brot für die Welt in Germany, Cornelia Füllkrung-Weitzel, said, as the study focused in particular on women this year.

Read more: Nation states — have they served their purpose?

CIVICUS researchers, using 2019 data, sorted 196 nations into five categories — open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.

Top group eroded

The top 43 nations, comprising 259 million persons, accounted for just 3% of the world's 7.7-billion population — down from 4% in the previous assessment based on 2018 data.

Remaining in the top "open" group are 13 EU members — including Germany, but only around half of the bloc, plus the departing United Kingdom — along with New Zealand, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Slovenia as well as a string of island nations.

Read more: Australia's newspapers go dark

Australia and Malta fall out of the "open" category into the second-placed "narrowed" category of 42 nations, placing them alongside 13 other EU nations, including Italy and France, as well as the United States and Japan.

Hungary among 'obstructed' category

Forty-nine countries were placed in the "obstructed" group, including Brazil, Malawi and Hungary.

Categorized as "repressed" societies were 38 nations with a combined population of 3 billion — almost 40% of the world's population, Nigeria and India were included, where residents fear intimidation, surveillance and even death, if they criticize those in power.

In the worst group where freedoms are deemed "closed" to 2 billion people, there stood 24 countries, including Egypt, China, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Their rulers escape prosecution; their critics are jailed, mistreated and killed, write the CIVICUS authors.

Defined by Bergson, Popper

The term "open society" was coined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1932 — during the onset of the Nazi German dictatorship.

The concept was developed further by Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper during his World War Two-exile in Christchurch, New Zealand.

ipj/msh (epd, KNA, dpa)

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India restores internet access in Kashmir, with conditions

For the past seven months, social media sites have been blocked and internet access restricted in India-administered Kashmir. However, authorities are now able to track internet users.



Indian authorities lifted a ban on social media and restored full internet access in Kashmir on Wednesday evening, seven months after the disputed region was locked down and stripped of its partial autonomy. The order, which still places certain restrictions on mobile internet services, is only valid till March 17, unless extended.

"We have already started switching the service on,” said an official at the state-run BSNL, one of the major internet service providers in the region. Another official at a private internet service provider in the main city of Srinagar also said on Wednesday that access to social media had been restored on its networks.

Several Kashmiris have been using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent government censorship. Soon after the ban was lifted, the Twitter handle of Mehbooba Mufti – one of the three main opposition leaders in Kashmir detained by the government since the August – called out the "futility" of the social media ban.

The Twitter handle is managed by Mufti’s daughter, Iltija. "My mother last tweeted on 5th August post abrogation of Article 370. Today as I tweet for the first time from Kashmir post decriminalisation of social media, Im swept by saudade & painful nostalgia. Will we ever heal? When will this nightmare end, (sic.)" she wrote.

Open access with conditions

Access to broadband internet in the restive region comes with a condition: MAC-binding. This forces a particular device to access internet from a specific IP address. If either the MAC (Media Access Control) address or the IP address changes, the device will not be able to access internet. MAC-binding will also enable authorities to trace a device on the basis of its online activity.

Read more: Kashmiris feel 'alienated' 6 months after India 'annexation'

Mobile internet services too will be availble only on post-paid connections. Pre-paid connections will not have access to internet "unless verified as per the norms applicable to post-paid connections," the order said. 

People lined up outside a government set-up internet cafe in Indian-administered Kashmir

Further, internet speed is restricted to second generation 2G networks, while the high-speed 4G networks will remain blocked.

Longest internet shutdown by a democracy

In August, authorities halted internet, landline and mobile services in what was then India’s only Muslim majority state. It imposed the unprecedented blackout under the pretext of security concerns. The administration in the territory said it feared the internet could be used to propagate terrorism and incite locals.

The internet shutdown in Kashmir was the longest such ban imposed by a democracy. India faced criticism from lawmakers in the European Union and the US, who repeatedly called on the government to curb restrictions.

Read more: Five excuses governments (ab)use to justify Internet shutdowns

Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an influential trade body, has estimated the cost of the six-month long communications clampdown at more than $2.4 billion (€2.2 billion) with nearly 500,000 job losses.

Internet restrictions in the Kashmir valley were partially eased in January, following a review order by the Indian Supreme Court. "Suspension of the internet for an indefinite period is not permissible, it can be for a limited time period and is subject to judicial review," the court said, adding that freedom of speech includes the right to internet access.

However, social media sites that allowed "peer-to-peer" communications remained blocked. In fact, Kashmiris initially had access to only about 300 government approved "whitelisted" websites.

adi/aw (AP, AFP)

India ends Internet blackout in Jammu and Kashmir

A journalist works online Wednesday in his office in Srinagar, Kashmir, after the Internet blackout was lifted. Photo by Farooq Khan/EPA-EFE

March 5 (UPI) -- India on Wednesday restored Internet access to government-controlled regions of Kashmir and Jammu, seven months after it was shut down when legislators controversially revoked their autonomy.

The government originally blocked all communications, from phone service to broadband Internet, anticipating backlash last August when it first stripped the special status from the areas. It has slowly lifted those restrictions since.

Those living in the region will again be able to get back online, but at slower 2G speeds.

Iltija Mufti, the daughter of detained Kashmir leader Mehbooba Mufti, said the government likely lifted the ban because it realized its futility, as many young people were able to get around the Internet blackout.

The government in New Delhi initially justified the block on terrorism and safety grounds, but the Indian Supreme Court ruled in January it represented a denial of free speech and demanded a more detailed reason.

Kashmir has long been a focal point of tension and sometimes violent struggles between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, which administers Azad Jammu and Kashmir to the north and west.

US-Taliban agreement — a male-dominated affair

The US-Taliban deal in Doha has been hailed as a landmark achievement, however the agreement provides no guarantee to upholding women's rights. What does it mean for the future of Afghan women? DW analyzes.





"We want peace and security in our country," said Khadija, who lives in Firozkoh district of Afghanistan's western Ghor province. "The Taliban and the Afghan government should sit down and make peace," the 47-year-old added.

On February 29, the United States and the Taliban signed a historic deal that has paved the way for a dialogue between the insurgents and Kabul.

The US-Taliban deal has already come under pressure, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani refusing to release some 5,000 Taliban prisoners, and the insurgent group resuming attacks on Afghan forces. The Pentagon, however, said Thursday that the US agreemeent with the Taliban still stands.

But what is there for Afghan women in the deal? What guarantees have the Taliban given to uphold women's rights?

Most Afghan women certainly do not want a return to the misogynistic Taliban rule. At the same time, they want the almost 19-year-long conflict to end. Many of these Afghan women have lost their fathers, husbands and sons in the war.

"How many more young men need to die?" asked Mehri, an elderly woman in Herat province. "The young people should be focusing on their education," she said.
Women missing from the peace process

"The actual work towards peace begins now," Masuda Sultan, an Afghan women's rights activist, told DW. "Women's rights issues will be part of the intra-Afghan talks," she added.

Women's participation in the Afghan peace process has so far been minimal, as was evidenced in the US-Taliban deal signing ceremony in Doha. President Ghani's delegation to Qatar included only one woman.

Read more: US-Taliban deal — a victory for Islamists?

While many Afghan women are not ready to compromise on their rights, some desparately want the war to end.

"Our research on the Afghan peace process shows that those who have the most to lose are the most critical of the process," said Magdalena Kirchner, head of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Foundation) in Kabul. "The well-educated Afghan women, who have achieved a lot, are unwilling to compromise now," she said, adding that many gains after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 have not reached a large number of Afghan women.

Kirchner urges foreign donors to ensure that women's rights are protected in Afghanistan.

Read more: US-Taliban deal: How Pakistan's 'Islamist support' finally paid off

Peace, but at what cost?

A large number of Afghans want peace, with 64% of those surveyed by the Asia Foundation in 2019 supporting reconciliation with the Taliban. However, the definition of peace — and at what cost it will be achieved — varies from person to person.

"We are desparate for peace," said Fatima, a housewife in Arghandab discrict of the southern Kandahar province. "It does not matter who comes to power. We just want peace," she asserted.

Masuda Sultan, who participated in a previous meeting with the Taliban, told DW that the Taliban were respectful toward them. "When I met them, I realized that they are humans too — with dreams and fears. All parties to the conflict want peace — a kind of healing to overcome the psychological damage of the war," Sultan said, adding that the post-deal opportunity for peace should not be missed.

Read more: Opinion: Goodbye to democracy in the Hindu Kush?

Last week, the US signed a historic peace deal with Taliban forces, aimed at ending 19 years of war. Many women in the country, like filmmaker Roya Sadat, are fearful a return to power of the Taliban could endanger the few gains they have made. 

Germany underestimated far-right terror for 'too long'

The threat of far-right terror in Germany has not been taken seriously, the head of Germany's parliament told lawmakers in the wake of the Hanau attacks. Wolfgang Schäuble said the violence did not occur in a vacuum.


Germany must admit that it underestimated the threat of far-right terror for too long, the president of the Bundestag told lawmakers on Thursday.

The country must do more to smash far-right networks, while also addressing the problem of Islamophobia in society, Wolfgang Schäuble told Germany's lower legislature.

Read more: After attack, Hanau takes a stand against racism

Schäuble, addressing a parliamentary debate on the Hanau attacks, called for "sincerity from the state, which must admit to having underestimated the extreme right-wing danger for too long."

"The decisive answer to this must be to uncover radical networks with all constitutional means and to smash right-wing extremist associations," said Schäuble, adding that the state must "finally get better at consistently enforcing the law".

DW's Michaela Küfner followed proceedings in the Bundestag and said that this was "the moment it was recognized that the [far-right] threat had, in teh past, been a lot larger than was publicly debated."

The perpetrator of the Hanau attack killed nine people with foreign roots at both a cafe and a shisha bar in the city. Authorities judged the murders to have been racially-motivated.

Schäuble said that such crimes "do not happen in a vacuum" but in a "poisoned social climate in which resentment towards 'otherness' — and the most absurd conspiracy theories — are stoked."

Minorities had been demonized to such an extent, Schäuble said, that hate campaigns — and even murder — were accompanied by "perverse applause on social networks."

Read more: 'Ferhat wanted to do something good for Hanau'

He also addressed the topic of Islamophobia. "Nothing justifies belittling, denigrating, persecuting, attacking people because of their origin or belief," said Schäuble, while adding that people's concern about immigration and social change needed to be taken seriously.



VIGILS ACROSS GERMANY AFTER HANAU SHOOTING
German president joins mourners

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (right) and his wife Elke Büdenbender, along with Hesse State Premier Volker Bouffier, laid wreaths near one the crime scenes in Hanau.

The killing spree in Hanau — near the city of Frankfurt — ended when the 43-year-old German gunman returned home, killing his mother before turning the pistol on himself. Thousands joined protests against far-right violence in the wake of the attacks, with many accusing the far-right Alternative for Germany(AfD), which holds 91 of 709 seats in Germany's lower house, of having fueled resentment.

Social Democrat lawmaker Aydan Özoguz told DW that the session had been important to show solidarity with the victims.

"It seemed to many people… that when you attack a Muslim, or when you attack a Jew, then it's only against that group," said Özoguz. "What was really quite clearly said today here from every party — almost, except for the AfD — is that it is an attack against democracy, it is an attack against the whole of society and we have to stand together."

During an emotional debate session, the AfD rejected any blame for the attack, claiming that the failure of mainstream parties had led to rising extremism.

A memorial service for the victims was held on Wednesday, attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

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Date 05.03.2020
Author Richard Connor
Related Subjects Terrorism, Alternative for Germany party (AfD)
Keywords Hanau, Wolfgang Schäuble, far-right, neo-Nazi, terrorism, terror, AfD

Gender equality: Most people are biased against women, UN says

A new study shows that almost 90% of people worldwide are biased against women and around half perceive men to make better leaders. And nearly 30% of people think it's justified for a husband to beat his wife.

Women around the world still suffer from widespread gender bias, according to a newly-published report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The study measures how people's social beliefs inhibit gender equality in areas including education, politics and the work force. It contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80% of the world's population.

Pedro Conceicao, director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, said that while progress has been made in giving women the same access to basic needs as men in education and health, gender gaps remain in areas "that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality."

Read more: Women and security policy: Representation rising, but parity far off

Figures reveal gender divideThe UNDP analysis found that despite decades-long efforts to close the gender divide, around half of the world's population feel that men make better political leaders, while over 40% think men make better business executives and have more right to a job when work availability is limited. Almost 30% of people think it's justified for a husband to beat his wife.

Women hold only 24% of parliamentary seats globally and they make up less than 6% of chief executives in S&P 500 companies, the study showed.

Countries with the highest numbers of people showing any kind of bias against gender equality are Jordan, Qatar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The countries with the lowest levels of gender bias are Andorra, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

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Noise pollution threatens health of one in five Europeans

One in every five Europeans is suffering from noise pollution so bad that it could harm their health, according to a new study. Road traffic was cited as the main cause, with the problem expected to grow worse.


The European Environment Agency said Thursday that noise levels were so bad in the European Union that the bloc was failing to meet its own standards.

"Notably, the objective set for 2020 ... of decreasing noise pollution and moving towards the WHO recommended levels for noise exposure will not be achieved," the agency said in a statement.

Noise levels for some 113 million Europeans are increasingly higher than those set by the World Health Organization (WHO), a report showed.

About a fifth of Europeans suffer long-term traffic noise so loud that it could damage their health, the EU's environmental watchdog said.

Rapid urban growth was cited as a major factor, with noise from roads the worst source of noise pollution. The sound of rail traffic, airplanes, and heavy industry were also blamed.

Read more: How can we recapture the silence?

Early deaths from heart disease

Worse still, the agency found that the problem was projected to increase "because of increased future demand for mobility."

Both the EU and WHO consider long-term noise levels above 55 decibels to be potentially damaging to health.

Read more: United in noise: How species deal with our racket

Exposure to noise pollution caused 12,000 premature deaths, the study said, and contributed to 48,000 cases of heart disease caused by a narrowing of the arteries. It was estimated that 22 million people were suffering "chronic high annoyance" and that 6.5 million people suffered chronic high sleep disturbance.

Noise was also said to be a contributing factor to cognitive disorders in 12,500 children across Europe.

Possible solutions included a reduction in traffic speeds and the introduction of smoother, less noisy road surfaces, the study found. It also encouraged more cycling, walking and use of electric vehicles.

German teen Naomi Seibt, the darling of climate change deniers 

IS A MEMBER OF THE AfD GERMANY'S FAR RIGHT PARTY AS ARE HER PARENTS

The German climate crisis sceptic Naomi Seibt in June 2019. 

© screengrab from YouTube
Text by:Sarah LEDUC

At 19, Naomi Seibt is on her way to becoming the voice of climate sceptics. Close to the far right in her home country of Germany, she has also been propelled by the Heartland Institute, an American think tank supported by allies of US President Donald Trump.

Climate sceptics have found their muse: Naomi Seibt, a German woman who denounces “climate alarmism” in videos she posts on her YouTube channel. In December, the Heartland Institute, an American think tank engaged against scientific consensus on climate change, gave Seibt top billing during its one-day forum on “climate reality”, which took place on the margins of COP 25, the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain.

One month later, the institute featured Seibt in a video posted on its own YouTube channel, entitled “Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: Whom Should We Trust?”

“Greta Thunberg took the world by storm with her doomsday climate predictions,” reads the video’s description. “Naomi Seibt, a rising star, advocates for proper scientific discourse over climate change. Who seems like the more reasonable advocate to you?”

‘I don’t want you to panic’

The media has cast Seibt as the “anti-Greta”, and it’s difficult to avoid the comparison. The activists are both eloquent and close in age: The Swedish Thunberg is 16, and Seibt is 19. Thunberg warns unceasingly of climate crisis, while Seibt warns against "climate change alarmism".

Without denying global warming, a trend which she thinks is overestimated, Seibt questions the impact of human activity on the phenomenon. In the Heartland video, she says that “climate change alarmism, at its very core, is a despicably anti-human ideology”.

She also hopes to reassure the young people who mobilise for the “Fridays for Future” protests initiated by Thunberg. “I would like that young people are not made to fear the future or to believe that the older generations are destroying the planet, that the animals are dying out or that nature is dying,” Seibt said.

Faced with Thunberg’s success, Seibt is inspired by its elements of language and communication. She has altered some of the Swedish activist’s now-famous phrases for her own purposes, transforming, for example, Thunberg’s “I want you to panic”, from the World Economic Forum in January 2019, to an oppositional “I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”

However, Seibt doesn’t like being compared to the author of her source material.

“The reason I don’t like the term ‘anti-Greta’ is that it suggests I am an indoctrinated puppet myself,” she told an interviewer.

Freedom of expression, the migrant crisis and the German far right

Seibt claims that, unlike Thunberg, she is not being indoctrinated. She places her fight under the virtuous flag of freedom of expression as against so-called group think, asserting her right to “express scepticism, based on science”.

The German activist says she started “being sceptical” in 2015. “But this had less to do with climate science than with the migrant crisis in Germany.” She claims to be critical of subjects that find consensus in “mainstream media”, such as immigration, feminism, gender theory, socialism, postmodernism and climate change. Issues that are “all linked in a sense and open the way to totalitarianism”.

German media call Seibt a sympathiser of Germany's far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, the third-largest political force in Parliament. She insists she’s not part of AfD; however, her first video posted on YouTube is a poem on courage written for a competition that AfD launched in April 2019. Seibt also was applauded at an AfD meeting in Münster in early February.

Last November, Seibt participated in a conference of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), a German think tank whose vice president, Michael Limburg, appeared on AfD’s list for the 2017 legislative elections. It was there that the Heartland Institute, which had hosted conferences with EIKE, first noticed her.

Interest from US climate sceptics

But why would an American think tank show so much interest in a teenage German activist? The Heartland Institute receives backing from influential Republicans, as well as Democrat William Happer, a scientist who served on the White House National Security Council between 2018 and 2019. Happer founded the CO2 Coalition, an organisation to defend the “vital role of CO2 in our environment”, and is known for having compared the “demonization of CO2” to the “demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler”.

According to the Washington Post, the Heartland Institute fears that “Germany’s strong will to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions is contagious”. The Post reported that a Heartland director wrote that Seibt was the “star” of its Climate Reality Forum in Madrid, and a person who would be well-placed to fight German climate policy.

Suspected of being manipulated despite her intentions, Seibt has responded by adopting Thunberg’s cri de coeur at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City last September. “How dare you?” Seibt asks in a video entitled “Message to the Media”. Time Magazine named Thunberg its 2019 Person of the Year, and her speech at the UN has millions of views on various YouTube channels; Seibt’s video, thus far, has less than 50,000. The comparison between the two activists ends there.

This article has been adapted from the original in French by Philippe Theise.

South Korea seeks criminal charges against Christian sect over coronavirus spread

03/03/2020
Lee Man-hee, founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus speaks during a news conference at its facility in Gapyeong, South Korea on March 2, 2020. © Yonhap via Reuters
Text by:Sébastian SEIBT

Investigators in South Korea are seeking to establish the extent to which 12 executives of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus can be held criminally responsible for the rapid spread in the country of COVID-19, the illness that results from the coronavirus.

He promises his disciples eternal life, fancies himself the new “messiah” and – as of Sunday – finds himself under investigation for homicide by wilful negligence. Lee Man-hee, 80, leads the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect often described as a cult and seen as largely responsible for the propagation of COVID-19 in South Korea. Eleven other executives of the movement are also in investigators’ sights.

Authorities want to know whether, due to its unorthodox religious practises and taste for secrecy, the Christian sect has put lives at risk during the coronavirus outbreak. With more than 5,000 people infected and at least 28 deaths to date, South Korea has registered the largest cluster of infections outside of China.

Patient No. 31

When the new coronavirus appeared in China in December, South Korea – a technologically advanced country with a well-organised public health infrastructure – thought it would be able to curtail the spread of the virus. Seoul had already succeeded in containing a 2015 outbreak of MERS, another coronavirus, which had surfaced in the Middle East in 2012.

But that was before South Korea encountered Patient No. 31. A 61-year-old woman who was a member of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the city of Taegu, she is considered to be at ground zero of the explosion of COVID-19 cases. Health authorities believe one in five of the people infected by the coronavirus can be linked to her.

The woman first went to hospital on February 7 after a minor traffic accident. During that exam, she complained of a pain in her throat. She then returned to hospital a few days later for treatment of a persistent fever.

Doctors twice recommended that she submit to coronavirus screening. Both times, the woman refused, the New York Times reported. But her health continued to deteriorate and, 10 days later, she could no longer refuse testing; on February 17, doctors examined her more closely and diagnosed a COVID-19 infection. They were never, however, able to establish how she had been exposed to the virus.

In the meantime, the patient had managed, twice, to leave the hospital temporarily to attend the Sunday gatherings of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. Each time, she had contact with a thousand fellow faithful, the Japan Times noted.

“Her behaviour is not surprising to people familiar with the church,” said Chung Yun-seok, a South Korean expert on religious cults. “To them, getting sick is a sin because it prevents them from doing God’s work.”

Cult of secrecy

The discovery of a hotbed of infection in Taegu and the link made with the Shincheonji Church of Jesus was a turning point in South Korea’s coronavirus battle. Authorities then came up against the very secretive practises of the sect. Aware of the group’s poor image within the country, the faithful often keep their membership secret from their relations, even from their parents.

“To Shincheonji members, their priority is not the safety issue but rather protecting" the church, Ji-il Tark, a Busan Presbyterian University theology professor who studies the group, told the Wall Street Journal. As such, in the province of Gyeonggi, the local government had to rely on some 200 volunteers from the movement in order to contact other followers, CNN reported, because Shincheonji members often don’t take phone calls from non-members.

The detective work necessary to identify everyone who came into contact with an infected member of the sect is all the more difficult under those circumstances. Church executives were accused of a lack of forthrightness: officially, they offered assurances that they were cooperating completely, but messages sent to members – later seen by South Korean media – advised them to lie about their membership in Shincheonji Church if contacted.

The group’s religious practises also lent to the rapid spread of the virus. They meet often in small halls, where they are huddled close together. Members aren’t allowed to wear any accessories on their faces – like glasses or protective masks – because they are considered insults to God, several former members of the movement told South Korean media.

Moreover, participating in weekly meetings is mandatory – rain or shine, and even in case of illness. Members of the movement must clock in when they arrive and when they leave a “working session”, which allows executives of the group to monitor devotees’ diligence. A cold or early signs of flu would not be considered sufficient to exonerate a member from doing his or her duty to preach the Good Word.

Petition to dissolve the movement

The movement is considered particularly aggressive in its proselytising. Several places of Catholic worship in the country have posted signs at the door forbidding access to Shincheonji Church of Jesus members, who are suspected of seeking to poach worshippers for their cause during mass, the South China Morning Post reported.

Sect leader Lee was vehemently criticised for his reluctance to cooperate fully with authorities in their efforts to slow the epidemic. For weeks, he refused to take the blame, saying even as recently as last week that COVID-19 was the work of those “jealous of the Shincheonji Church’s success”.

But after the launch of an official inquiry, the octogenarian finally came forward with a public apology, recognising that “although it was not intentional, many people have been infected”.

But is that mea culpa simply too little, too late? A petition signed by more than a million people has been presented to the South Korean government requesting the dissolution of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which counts more than 200,000 members.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

Eighty years after millions fled the German army, revisiting the ‘Paris Exodus’

04/03/2020

Millions of Parisians fled the French capital in June 1940. © LAPI/Roger Viollet
Text by:Charlotte WILKINS

In the summer of 1940, millions of Parisians fled the French capital in a matter of days to escape the advancing German army. Eighty years after “l’exode de Paris”, an exhibition at the Liberation of Paris Museum puts a neglected part of French history in the spotlight.

Bumper to bumper, roads thick with vehicles and their human cargo, they fled in the millions. Some wheeled bicycles laden with possessions. Others carried cardboard suitcases bound with string. Children helped push carts piled high with bags and bedding. Others carried canaries in cages or were covered in heavy fur coats.

Two million Parisians poured out of the capital in the early days of June 1940, swelling the numbers of those already on the road to eight million, a mass movement of people that promptly became known as “the exodus”.

The Parisians had packed in a panic, fleeing the advancing German army. They’d seen footage of the bombings in Spain. They’d heard the rumours about the Germans – that they were vicious brutes who would rape the women and cut their children’s hands off. And many were still traumatised by the memories of the First World War, when France’s Western Front saw years of trench warfare and the deaths of 1.3 million men.

The affluent residents of the city's 8th and 16th arrondissements (districts) were the first to leave. They fled by car with their mattresses tied to the roofs. Others sat tight and waited for instructions from their bosses. But soon, they too, gripped by the contagious fear, packed up and left, seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the Germans as possible.

A family flees Paris in June 1940 with all their worldly goods. © Roger Viollet

Only the elderly and the infirm remained, along with those, such as Paul Léataud, who were “determined to stay” and didn’t want “to risk finding nothing left when I get back”.

Scenes of chaos

The Liberation of Paris Museum’s first temporary exhibition draws on archive material: film reels and photographs, posters and newspapers, drawings and reminiscences to retrace the lives of those who fled.

It vividly captures the scenes of chaos. Photos showing station platforms thick with people trying to catch the last trains out of Paris sit alongside children’s drawings of the crowds at Gare de Lyon.

Harried mothers push bicycles laden with children, crowds gather outside makeshift evacuation notices and newspapers – which were briefly obliged to suspend printing – report on the escalating German offensive throughout Europe.

A drawing by a schoolgirl, Christiane Crosnier, shows refugees in Montoire sur le Loir, moving south on 17 June 1940. © Christiane Crosnier

Some scrawl graffiti on walls: “We lost Robert, Going to Poitiers”. Others recalled forgotten children crying by the side of the road or brutality encountered on the route. Some remembered lying face down in ditches or hiding in the woods to cheat death.

The refugees “brim over the pavements and appear to want to fill houses to bursting. All vestiges of apathy, reserve and self-control have gone", recalled Jean-Marc de Foville.

Photos of children carrying gas masks sit alongside aerial shots of a deserted, silent Paris as a seemingly endless line of people snaked out of the capital, and French democracy crumbled in a matter of days.

For the government, taken by surprise by the advancing German army, had made no official evacuation plan.

For months, ever since France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the Western Front had sat quiet and the so-called “phoney war” had lulled the French into a false sense of ease.

But on May 10, the Germans invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. On June 3, Paris was bombed for the first time. A week later, the Germans were just 30 kilometres from Paris and the government packed up and left, leaving the Parisians to fend for themselves.

Some fled on foot, others by bicycle as a trail of human cargo wound its way into the French countryside. © LAPI / Roger Viollet

‘People were abandoned’

“It wasn’t France’s finest hour,” said Hanna Diamond, the exhibition’s curator and author of “Fleeing Hitler: France 1940.”

“People were abandoned,” said Diamond, who explained that the exodus had been “glossed over” and buried in the events that followed, the more heroic narratives of Occupation, Resistance and Liberation.

“However we look at it, nobody knew what to do – the government fled… Who wants to hear about a humiliating defeat?”

Once out of the city and when the panic began to dissipate, some refugees described an almost holiday-like feeling of being on the road, a buoyancy that quickly faded when the petrol ran out and food supplies ran short. Cars were abandoned, railway stations were stacked high with lost property, and fur coats were of no use in those warm June days.

Women's faces etched with fear and fatigue during the flight from Paris. © The LIFE Picture Collection via Carl Mydans

Mothers became separated from their children, handing over exhausted toddlers to soldiers in lorries, or to others offering lifts, only to find that soldiers took a different path to the one they had expected.

The Red Cross estimated that some 90,000 children were separated from their parents during the exodus. Family reunions were made even harder to organise by the fact that many of the children were too young to communicate much about their parents, and the babies could say nothing at all.

Some officials, like Jean Moulin, the prefect in Eure-et-Loir, in Chartres, in whose memory the Liberation of Paris Museum is named, refused to leave his post.

Some refugees and French soldiers pillaged villages to survive. Others took advantage of the refugees streaming south with farmers selling glasses of water to those on the road.

But no one exploited the exodus more than Marshal Philippe Pétain, who became chief of state of Vichy France and collaborated with the Nazis in sending thousands of French Jews to the death camps in the years that followed.

‘My heart goes out to you’

As France was poised to fall to the Germans and the refugees continued to make their way south, Pétain was appointed prime minister of France. On June 22, 1940 he signed an armistice with Germany, offering collaboration between the Nazis and his newly appointed Vichy regime, established when the government relocated from Paris to the southern city of Vichy.

But in the uncertain days of June 1940, Pétain, known as the “Lion of Verdun” after his legendary role in the First World War, reassured the refugees that he was with them in their hour of need.

“‘You know, my heart goes out to you, refugees on the road. I'm here with you. I'm not like some who’ve gone to England,” said Pétain, in a dig at Charles De Gaulle, who led French opposition to the Nazis from London. “I’m here, I'm sharing this with you.”

Understanding the exodus is key to understanding the Vichy regime, explained Diamond, for whom the flight from Paris was a “foundational myth”.

“Pétain was this very well-established figure – and people thought, ‘Now the war is over for us, it’s a return to order’. They didn't know that that would mean an authoritarian regime and German occupation at the time, they were just terribly relieved that their ordeal was coming to an end, and we can really understand that.”

“He did milk it – he was very good at that,” said Diamond, who added that the archives contain hundreds and hundreds of letters from women writing to Pétain during the Vichy regime asking him to be their child’s godparent.

In the days that followed the signing of the armistice with Germany, refugees began to think about going home. Local governments, overwhelmed by the flood of refugees, encouraged them to do so.

A deserted Paris met with no resistance when it fell to the Germans on June 14, 1940. The refugees returned to the French capital to find German troops marching down the Champs-Élysées and swastikas adorning government buildings – and braced themselves for the next chapter in their wartime history: five years of occupation under German rule.

'1940: Parisian Exodus' runs at the Liberation of Paris Museum until August 30, 2020.

A CLASSIC