NONFICTION

The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican

New York construction workers, May 8, 1970.Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times
By Clyde Haberman
July 1, 2020
THE HARDHAT RIOT
Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
By David Paul Kuhn

The nation, we keep hearing on television and in social media blather, is politically divided as never before. Nonsense. The ostensibly united states have been disunited many, many times, and “The Hardhat Riot,” by David Paul Kuhn, vividly evokes an especially ugly moment half a century ago, when the misbegotten Vietnam War and a malformed notion of patriotism combined volatilely. They produced a blue-collar rampage whose effects still ripple, not the least of them being Donald Trump’s improbable ascension to the presidency.

Let’s remember what the United States was like in 1970: a country torn apart after years of political assassination, unpopular war, economic dislocation, race rioting and class disharmony. The last thing it needed in 1970 was more open fighting in the streets. But that’s what it got on May 8, days after President Richard Nixon had expanded America’s Southeast Asia misadventure into Cambodia and Ohio National Guardsmen shot dead four students during antiwar protests at Kent State University.

Kuhn, who has written before about white working-class Americans, builds his book on long-ago police records and witness statements to recreate in painful detail a May day of rage, menace and blood. Antiwar demonstrators had massed at Federal Hall and other Lower Manhattan locations, only to be set upon brutally, and cravenly, by hundreds of steamfitters, ironworkers, plumbers and other laborers from nearby construction sites like the nascent World Trade Center. Many of those men had served in past wars and viscerally despised the protesters as a bunch of pampered, longhaired, draft-dodging, flag-desecrating snotnoses.

It was a clash of irreconcilable tribes and battle cries: “We don’t want your war” versus “America, love it or leave it.” And it was bewildering to millions of other Americans, including my younger self, newly back home after a two-year Army stretch, most of it in West Germany. My sympathies were with the demonstrators. But I also understood the working stiffs and why they felt held in contempt by the youngsters and popular culture.

New social policies like affirmative action and school busing affected white blue-collar families far more than they did the more privileged classes that spawned many antiwar activists. For Hollywood, the workingman seemed barely a step above a Neanderthal, as in the 1970 movies “Joe,” about a brutish factory worker, and “Five Easy Pieces,” in which a diner waitress is set up to be the target of audience scorn. (Come 1971, we also had “All in the Family” and television’s avatar of working-class bigotry, Archie Bunker.)

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It was, too, an era when New York was changing fast and not for the better. Corporations decamped for the suburbs and warm-weather states. Kuhn notes how between 1967 and 1974 the number of Fortune 500 headquarters in the city fell to 98 from 139. Whites moved out in droves. Crime rose, and if you proposed getting tough on felons you risked being labeled a racist. Roughly one in three city residents was on public assistance. Municipal finances were in tatters. In short, 1970 New York was a caldron of misery, one rare bright spot being its basketball team, the Knicks, neatly integrated and en route to its first championship.

Kuhn quotes the estimable Pete Hamill as observing back then that the workingman “feels trapped and, even worse, in a society that purports to be democratic, ignored.” One could go further. Many blue-collar workers felt scorned — by the wealthy, by the college-educated, by the lucky ones with draft deferments, by every group that qualified as elite. They sneered back, especially at the patrician New York mayor. The way many of them referred to Lindsay, you’d have thought his first name was not John but, rather, an all-too-familiar obscenity.

Understanding hard-hat resentment, however, does not translate into excusing the violence that hundreds of them inflicted that May 8, the 25th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in World War II. Self-styled paragons of law and order, they became a mob, pounding and kicking any antiwar youngster they could grab, doing the same to bystanders who tried to stop the mayhem and justifying it in the name of America. Kuhn ably and amply documents the cowardly beating of women, the gratuitous cold-cocking of men and the storming of a shakily protected City Hall, where the mayor’s people, to the hard hats’ rage, had lowered the flag in honor of the Kent State dead.


“A tribal tension had infused downtown,” Kuhn observes. Among the tribes were the police, who were anything but New York’s finest that day. Mostly, they stood aside while the hard hats ran amok; examples of their nonfeasance abound. Some of them even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hard hats moved menacingly toward a Wall Street plaza, a patrolman shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!” Yet the police were never held accountable for failing to stop the marauding, and “few hard hats owned up to the extent of their violence.”

Kuhn favors straightforward journalistic prose, with few grand flourishes. In setting scenes, he tends toward a staccato, some of it overdone: One speaker “exuded Establishment. The jacket and tie. A WASP face with a Roman nose. The side-swept hair, straight and trim with delicate bangs, a tidy mustache, pinkish skin.” Hardly every antiwar protester merits his go-to characterization of them as potty-mouthed hippies.

But over all, this is a compelling narrative about a horrific day. In their fury, the hard hats left more than 100 wounded, the typical victim being a 22-year-old white male collegian, though one in four was a woman; seven police officers were also hurt. Kuhn concludes that while the workers plainly came loaded for bear, their tantrum was essentially spontaneous and not, as some believed, part of a grand conspiracy.

That said, they were just what some conservative strategists were looking for. Patrick Buchanan, then a Nixon aide, said of blue-collar Americans in a memo to the boss, “These, quite candidly, are our people now.” He wasn’t wrong. Republicans have since catered as ever to the rich but they have also curried favor with working-class whites, while Democrats seem more focused on others: racial minorities, gays, immigrants. Thanks in good measure to white blue-collar disaffection, Trump in 2016 narrowly won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, a hat trick he may yet pull off again in November.

In a way, Vietnam continues to cast its shadow. A short walk from those 1970 streets of chaos, there is a memorial to the 1,741 New Yorkers who died in the war. Its dominant feature is a wall of thick glass etched with reflections on combat, including part of a haunting letter sent home from Vietnam in 1968. “One thing worries me — will people believe me?” The Navy lieutenant Richard W. Strandberg wrote. “Will they want to hear about it, or will they want to forget the whole thing ever happened?”

Indeed, most Americans forgot about Vietnam long ago. The same has been true about the shameful hard-hat riot of 1970. Until now.




Clyde Haberman, United States Army 1968-70, is the former “NYC” columnist for The Times.

THE HARDHAT RIOT
Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
By David Paul Kuhn
Illustrated. 416 pp. Oxford University Press. $29.95.

As U.S. Confronts Anti-Black Racism, Latinos Wonder Where They Fit In

Latinos are enthusiastically backing Black Lives Matter protests, while pushing for an acknowledgment of the systemic racism they face, too.

LaShae Brown of the Black Phoenix Organizing Collective led a training session in Phoenix. In Arizona and elsewhere, many Latinos have joined Black Lives Matter protests.Credit...Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times

By Jennifer Medina July 3, 2020


PHOENIX — “Tu lucha es mi lucha,” several signs declared at a recent Black Lives Matter protest near the Arizona State Capitol. Your struggle is my struggle. The sea of faces included young Latinos who had marched before, during the immigrant rights movement in the state a decade ago, when Joe Arpaio championed draconian policies as the sheriff of Maricopa County. There was no doubt in these protesters’ minds: Their fights against racism are bound up together.

“Black and brown” has been a catchphrase in Democratic politics and progressive activist circles for years, envisioning the two minority groups as a coalition with both electoral power and an array of shared concerns about pay equity, criminal justice, access to health care and other issues. The ongoing protests about police violence and systemic racism encompass both communities as well — but the national focus has chiefly been about the impact on Black Americans and the ways white Americans are responding to it.

Many liberal Latino voters and activists, in turn, are trying to figure out where they fit in the national conversation about racial and ethnic discrimination. They have specific problems and histories that can be obscured by the broad “Black and brown” framework or overshadowed by the injustices facing Black Americans. For some, there is also a history of anti-Black racism in their own community to contend with, and a lack of inclusion of Afro-Latinos, who make up 25 percent of Latinos in the United States.

And while Latinos want people to understand how systemic racism in education, housing and wealth affects them, they are also grappling with an entrenched assumption that racism is a black-and-white issue, which can make it challenging to gain a foothold in the national conversation.

They often find themselves frustrated and implicitly left out.

“We are made to feel unwelcome here no matter what we’ve done or how long we’ve been here,” said Cynthia Garcia, 28, who attended the protest and whose parents immigrated from Mexico. As a child in Phoenix, she said, she regularly heard racist slurs aimed at her family and now hears the same words used against her own school-age children. She said it was important to march, both to “show up for ourselves, and to say this is wrong.”

The searching conversations among Latinos about race are unfolding at a moment when urgent concerns about health, policing and immigration are colliding. They are also taking place ahead of an election in which Latinos are expected to be the largest nonwhite voting bloc and could prove critical in battleground states like Arizona, Florida and North Carolina.

The coronavirus pandemic has torn through Black and Latino communities at disproportionately high rates, in part because so many are considered essential workers in agricultural fields, meatpacking plants, restaurants and hospitals across the country.

And as protests erupted across the country over police killings of Black people, two cases involving Latino men prompted new outcries last week: An 18-year-old security guard was shot and killed by Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies and, in Tucson, newly released police body camera footage showed a man dying while handcuffed, pleading with officers for water.

For decades, Latinos have chafed over aggressive policing tactics, including at the hands of Latino officers. In the last several years, hundreds of Latinos, mostly men, have been killed by the police in California, Arizona and New Mexico, among other states, though national statistics are hard to come by. Now, activists are pushing for a more explicit conversation about over-policing in Latino communities.

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“We’ve always known that police brutality is a Black and brown issue, a poor people’s issue,” said Marisa Franco, the executive director of Mijente, a Latino civil rights group.

“Right now it is imperative for non-Black Latino communities to both empathize with Black people and also recognize that it is in our material interest to fundamentally change policing in this country,” Ms. Franco said.

In New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Philadelphia and many other cities, thousands of young Latinos have shown up to Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks. Sometimes, they speak only quietly about their own concerns of anti-Latino racism.

Other times they are more overt. In Phoenix, activists wore face masks emblazoned with “Defund Police” — the last three letters marked in red to emphasize ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An artist passed out a silk-screened Aztec-style painting that showed a black jaguar and a brown tiger, each blending into the other, his own symbolism of the moment.


A demonstrator held up a sign in Spanish at a protest against police brutality in New Haven, Conn.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images


Last week, the police in Tempe, Ariz., approved a $2 million settlement with the family of Antonio Arce, a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the back and killed by an officer in January 2019. Immigrant rights activists routinely point to the fact that local police departments often carry out immigration enforcement, leaving many Latinos terrified to call the police out of fear of potential deportation.

The fear and anger has been especially acute in the era of President Trump, who five years ago announced his candidacy by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. The suspect in the deadliest anti-Latino attack in modern American history, in El Paso last year, used similar language in his manifesto.

Before voting in favor of a Democratic congressional police overhaul package last week, Representative Joaquin Castro spoke of Hector Santoscoy, a Mexican man who was killed by a San Antonio police officer in 1980.

“There’s no doubt that the African-American community has borne the biggest brunt of police brutality, but it’s also clear that Latinos have suffered as well,” Mr. Castro said in an interview. “There’s a kinship of experience as a community.”


Yet illuminating and addressing discrimination faced by Latinos remains a challenge, Mr. Castro said. While many Americans at least learn the basic history of slavery and Jim Crow racism against Black people, there remains a lack of fundamental knowledge about Latino history, which can make it difficult to discuss how social policies have been harmful.

“Many Americans don’t know exactly where you fit in,” Mr. Castro said.

In conversations with her three children about race, Alma Aguilar, 31, has been clear about her own experience: “We are not treated the same way as white people,” she tells them.

“People pretty much tend to attack us,” said Ms. Aguilar, who attended a small protest near her home in the Phoenix suburbs. “When my son grows up, I don’t want him to be killed by a police officer because he looks a certain way, because he’s a brown boy.”

Even the term “brown” can oversimplify matters, given that it is often used to describe people from multiple continents and different cultures, whose skin color can range from ivory to sienna. It can also be used to refer to some people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. The opposite of a monolith, Latinos include undocumented immigrants and those whose families have been in the United States for centuries.

At a time when Mr. Trump has made his anti-immigrant language and policies a centerpiece of his administration, some Latinos — perhaps especially young ones — see themselves as part of a broader fight for racial equity.

“Many Latino youth, they are making the connection, they are pressing their families to have difficult conversations,” said Chris Zepeda-Millán, a professor of Chicano studies and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In one indication that Latinos are reacting to the current moment with urgency, a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that 21 percent of Hispanic voters said they had participated in Black Lives Matter protests, nearly identical to the 22 percent of Black voters who said they had done so.

But some activists have privately wondered whether the recent police killings of Latinos have received enough attention, and whether there is broad acknowledgment that they, too, suffer from police brutality and systemic racism.

Jonathan Jayes-Green, a longtime activist who in 2015 created UndocuBlack, an organization designed to bring attention to issues of immigration and racial justice, said he had seen a notable shift among Latinos, both in their desire to protest and their willingness to confront racism among themselves.

That activism could be seen when dozens of Latino political leaders recently signed an open letter calling on Univision and Telemundo, the largest Spanish-language news networks based in the United States, to improve their coverage of the protests and to “use their platforms to dismantle racism, colorism and anti-blackness in our own Latino community.” Mijente circulated a similar petition.

Anti-Blackness has deep and complicated roots throughout Latin America, where fair-skinned people are frequently viewed as the ideal and receive better treatment. And those views have often carried over to the United States, where some believe that assimilation is the path to equality.

“Historically we’ve tended to aspire to the American dream, to aspire to whiteness,” said Mr. Jayes-Green, who is Afro-Latino. “Latinos have a real active role to play in this fight. We can show that these fights are not separated and that we can be active conspirators in fights against anti-Blackness.”

Many liberal Latino activists have been pushing for huge changes in policing for years, particularly in large urban centers. In many large cities, there is a history of coalitions among Black and Latino community groups fighting for police overhauls, with mixed success.

“The police has always represented this outside force that could harm us,” said Rafael Návar, who said he was roughed up by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as a teenager.

But policing, Mr. Návar pointed out, is only part of the struggle for Latinos, who make up roughly 18 percent of the country’s population.

“This is a huge moment to expand consciousness around our own community, to recognize the contradiction of what kind of power do we and don’t we have in this country, that despite our size, we don’t even have basic needs met,” Mr. Návar said. “This country does not eat without our community, yet the people doing the work can’t keep their own family safe. The lack of power has to make us ask: What kind of respect do we have? How do we organize to have dignity?”

Like several of his friends and cousins, Victor Ortiz, 22, attended protests daily for more than two weeks. Many of their parents are working in jobs that force them to leave their home during the pandemic.

“So it’s like either way, your family is at risk,” he said. “It the same for Black folks, we know that. We have to show up for each other.”

Latinos hardly have the kind of deep political infrastructure that African-Americans have built up over decades, with many organizations working toward similar goals. Many liberal Latino activists view the Black Lives Matter movement, and the current wave of protests, as a model.

Ysenia Lechuga, 28, who brought a “tu lucha es mi lucha” sign to several recent demonstrations in Phoenix, said she found Black activism “inspiring.”

“I can come here and preach about immigrants and all the issues that we go through,” Ms. Lechuga said of attending the Black Lives Matter protests. “We get racially profiled, we get beat down.”

She thinks the current movement will have a “ripple effect” that will reach her community, too. “Everything is going to start to change,” she said.

U.S. Is 'Out of Control' Under Trump, 75 Percent of Americans Think: Poll

BY JAMES WALKER ON 7/3/20

Three quarters of Americans believe the country is "out of control" amid a spike in new coronavirus cases and widespread unemployment, new polling data shows.

A survey published by Yahoo! News and YouGov on Thursday found that 75 percent of Americans believed their country was out of control, compared to just 14 percent who felt it was under control.

A further 11 percent of all polled U.S. adults said they were "not sure" whether the country was "out of" or under control.


Older voters were more likely to say the U.S. was "out of control" amid the ongoing pandemic. Eighty-one percent of those aged 65 and older told pollsters the country was in a fiasco, while 68 percent of those aged 30 to 44 felt the same way.

Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Spirit of America Showcase in the Entrance Hall of the White House July 02, 2020 in Washington, DC.CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

YouGov pollsters also found that opinion was slightly divided along partisan lines, with 82 percent of Democrats saying the country was out of control, compared to a little under two thirds of Republicans.


Eighty-one percent of independents further said America was out of control, while just 12 percent of the polled swing voters felt the U.S. was under control.

The downbeat assessments on the country's standing came as almost two thirds of U.S. adults (65 percent) said they believed the coronavirus pandemic was getting worse.



By comparison, just 16 percent of polled Americans felt the COVID-19 pandemic was getting better in the U.S. as Florida, Texas and Arizona reported influxes of new cases this week.

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Respondents took a similar view on the economy, with more than six in ten (61 percent) believing it was getting worse, despite an official report recording the return of 4.8 million jobs last month.

A further 21 percent told pollsters they felt the economy was improving, while 18 percent felt there had been no change on that front.

Asked who they would vote for in the presidential election as views on the economy and public health soured, 45 percent told pollsters they would be backing Biden, while 40 percent opted for President Donald Trump.

Although the overall head-to-head poll numbers did not favor Trump, his rating among independent voters looked good for his campaign. Thirty-eight percent of the swing voters said they would back the president in November, putting him three points ahead of Biden among the demographic.

A combined 13 percent of U.S. adults said they would be voting for a third party candidate, or had not yet decided.

The new poll from Yahoo! News and YouGov surveyed more than 1,500 U.S. adults between June 29 and July 1. Its margin of error stands at 3.2 percentage points.

Sea turtles find protection by Senegalese fishermen
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Senegalese fishermen have gone from catching turtles to protecting them

 Seyllou AFP

Joal-Fadiouth (Senegal) (AFP)

In a classic case of "poacher turning gamekeeper", the fishermen of Senegal have joined forces to protect one of the ocean's most endangered species -- the sea turtle.

Three species can be found on the Senegal coast in west Africa. The most populous is the green turtle and they are joined by the loggerhead and leatherhead which can weigh over 600 kilogrammes.

They are all beautiful creatures but each is threatened by pollution, poaching and, even now, the fishing net.

"Once we were the biggest eaters of turtles, now we have become their biggest protectors," says Abdou Karim Sall, a fisherman who is now the manager of a protected marine zone through which the turtles pass.

Some 30 years ago, turtle meat was sold in the streets of Joal, one of the most important fishing ports in Senegal, and in Fadiouth, the port's sister village built on an artificial island made from heaps of shells.

"We ate them in the street, we cooked them at home," says the 56-year-old Sall who leads the management committee for the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of Joal-Fadiouth, two hours south of Dakar.

Founded in 2004, and backed by the government, local authorities and several associations, the MPA stretches over 147 square kilometres (57 square miles) and is made up of sandy beaches along a marine strip eight kilometres wide, as well as a network of mangroves and an area of savannah.
It is an area for the protection of endangered migratory species, such as the sea turtle.

Its objectives are the conservation of biodiversity, as well as the improvement of fishing yields and socio-economic benefits for the local population.

The sea turtles navigate their way along this tropical stretch of the Atlantic during their migration of more than a thousand kilometres between the volcanic archipelago of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, just south of Senegal, where they return to lay eggs when they reach sexual maturity.

The green turtles are predominantly herbivorous while the other species like to snack on crab and sea urchin.

They all graze on the sea grass beds that grow abundantly in the shallow waters of the Senegalese "Petite cote" (small coast), especially in front of Joal.

Through their presence the turtles help maintain a fragile biotope, a breeding ground and nursery for many species of fish and this, in turns, boosts the economy -- the fishing sector directly or indirectly supports about 500,000 Senegalese.

- Trapped in a net -

The sea turtles' long voyage is not without risk.

Plastic is an increasing danger as they often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish which is one of their favourite foods, even for the green turtle. And, in spite of the efforts of Sall and the other protectors, they also get caught in fishermen's nets.

On a dugout canoe with a multicoloured hull at the limit of the protected area, four young bare-chested lads haul in their nets. It is the start of the migration period and they have snagged a 100-kilogramme turtle.

It takes a big pull to haul it in. They untangle the turtle from the nets and release it back into the water.

"It's not to our advantage to eat them, because they help save marine species. Wherever you find turtles you will find shrimp and octopus in abundance," explains the boss Gamar Kane.

Since 2000, Sall, as head of the local fishermen's association and manager of the MPA, has made local populations aware of the protection of turtles, in particular by organising "cinema debates".

Even former turtle sellers have been "converted" by receiving "three small canoes to take tourists to sea," he said.

According to Sall, turtle numbers have "decreased by around 30 percent in the past 20 years" but the 500-odd visitors who come each year are almost guaranteed a memorable photo of some of the thousands that still line the coast. With luck, they might also spot a manatee (sea cow) grazing peacefully in the depths.

Rather than imposing restrictions, the MPA is trying to educate the communities in the economic benefits so that they join the project.

"It's after they are told: 'It's an endangered species'," he says.

- Protect the nests -

From June to October, a few dozen turtles stop to lay eggs on the beaches of Joal. About 20 MPA agents and village volunteers protect their nests with fences.

About 45 days later, "people come at 6:00 am so that predators do not take the young", says Sall.

The danger lies largely at the feet of monitor lizards who like the eggs, the birds who swoop down just after the young turtles have hatched and the monkfish who move in once they enter the sea. The chances of survival for a young turtle are no greater than one in a thousand, says Sall.

But the fisherman-conservator agrees, "awareness has not worked 100 percent".

"Not all fishermen have turned away from turtles and when the fishing is not good, some even hunt them," he says.

They can take dozens a day, or more, to pay for fuel for their outbiard engines. And there remains a taste among the human population for turtle flesh -- and other parts.

At the end of June, the corpse of a young green turtle was found on a beach in Dakar, its belly cut down its entire length.

"Its tail and reproductive system were removed for 'medicinal' reasons," said Charlotte Thomas, an official with the Senegalese NGO Oceanium.

The struggle to protect the sea turtle goes on.

© 2020 AFP

NYAH NYAH PROVE IT
Morocco asks Amnesty for proof it used spyware on journalist
Issued on: 03/07/2020 - 

Amnesty has accused Morocco of putting spyware on the phone of Omar Radi, a journalist jailed over a social media post whose case has sparked protests STR AFP

Rabat (AFP)

Morocco's prime minister has demanded Amnesty International provide evidence to support its allegations that Rabat used spyware to bug a journalist's phone.

Amnesty said in June the Moroccan authorities used software developed by Israeli security firm NSO to insert spyware onto the cellphone of Omar Radi, a journalist convicted in March over a social media post.

The Pegasus software can switch on the phone's camera and microphone as well as access data.


If the international watchdog fails to provide evidence, the kingdom "will take the necessary steps to defend its national security" and "clear up public opinion" on the allegations, Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani said in a statement carried by the Moroccan Press Agency on Thursday.

Last week, the Moroccan authorities said they summoned the local director of the London-based group to demand proof about the "serious and tendentious accusations", but did not get a response.

Without proof, Amnesty's allegations amount to "an unjust international defamation campaign dictated by an agenda having nothing to do with human rights", the statement said.

It went on to denounce the organisation's "systematic and continual persecution against Morocco's interests".

In addition, Morocco "does not have at its disposal NSO technology", a senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to the Israeli security firm.

Rabat said last week it was investigating if Radi received foreign funding for intelligence services.

Thursday's statement said the journalist is "undergoing a judicial investigation for suspected breach of state security, because of his links to a liaison officer of a foreign country".

It said the alleged foreign agent has "worked under diplomatic cover since 1979 in several regions of tension" around the world.

Last week, Radi told AFP the legal action was connected to the Amnesty report, denouncing the allegations against him as "ridiculous".

Amnesty said he had been "systematically targeted by the Moroccan authorities due to his journalism and activism".

In March, he was given a four-month suspended sentence for criticising a judge in a tweet.

NSO is being sued in the US by messaging service WhatsApp over alleged cyber-espionage on human rights activists and others.

The Israeli firm says it only licenses its software to governments for "fighting crime and terror" and that it investigates credible allegations of misuse.

© 2020 AFP

Canada, Sweden pave way for compensation talks with Iran on downed plane
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Mourners lit candles in Toronto, Canada in early January 2020 at a vigil honoring the victims of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 Geoff Robins AFP/File
MANY OF THE IRANIAN CANADIAN VICTIMS WERE FROM EDMONTON
Ottawa (AFP)

Canada announced Thursday an agreement to launch negotiations with Iran on compensation for the families of the foreign victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane shot down in January, with Sweden expressing confidence Tehran would pay.

An international "coordination and response group" of countries whose nationals died on the plane signed a memorandum of understanding, formally paving the way for negotiations with Tehran, according to a Canadian government statement.

The countries -- Canada, Britain, Ukraine, Sweden and Afghanistan -- each had citizens die when Tehran's armed forces mistakenly shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.


"The five states created the legal structure necessary to start these negotiations," Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told AFP.

"It is a first step -- necessary but only a first step -- to begin negotiations to obtain reparations for the victims' families," he said.

Earlier in the day, Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde told news agency TT that Tehran had agreed to compensate the families of foreign victims.

There is "no doubt" that Iran would follow through on the compensation, she said, adding that it was still unclear what sums would be paid out.

"We have signed an agreement of mutual understanding that we will now negotiate with Iran about amends, compensation to the victims' next of kin," Linde said.

Ukraine, the group's designated speaker on the negotiations, will be responsible for proposing a date to launch the talks in Tehran, Champagne said.

"These kinds of negotiations generally take several months or even years," added Champagne, whose country chairs the coordinated group.

"Iran had indicated to us its desire to start negotiations. I always judge Iran not by its words but by its actions," he warned.

The 176 victims of the crash, which occurred shortly after taking off from Tehran airport on January 8, were mostly Iranian-Canadians.

Of countries apart from Iran, Canada was the hardest hit, with a total of 85 victims (both citizens and permanent residents).

The Islamic Republic admitted days after the downing that its forces accidentally shot the Kiev-bound jetliner.

At the end of June Iran officially enlisted the help of France's BEA air accident agency to download and read the data on the flight recorder.

Ottawa had been demanding that Iran, which does not have the technical means to extract and decrypt the data, send the plane's black boxes abroad.

© 2020 AFP

Little-known archives discreetly testify to Europe's wars
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Former OSCE Documentalist Alice Nemcova looked after the archives of the OSCE from 1991 until last month Michal Cizek AFP

Prague (AFP)

They are gathering dust on shelves, but could make war criminals tremble: the archives of the OSCE, an international organisation addressing security-related concerns, are increasingly becoming a source for those who seek to prove abuses committed during conflicts in Europe.

The field reports of the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- stacked in an elegant white villa on a leafy hill on the outskirts of Prague -- document conflicts on the continent since 1975.

No media have until now been allowed access, according to the OSCE, as the organisation -- set up during the Cold War to build trust between the West and the Soviet Union -- usually doesn't seek publicity to continue collecting information from the ground as much as possible.


But it is here that famous prosecutor Carla Del Ponte combed through documents for the 2002 indictment of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

- Precedent set -

Documentalist Alice Nemcova, who reigned over this universe of cardboard boxes enclosing billions of yellowed A4 sheets from 1991 until last month, has seen the collection gain in importance over the years.

"The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) set a precedent by wanting to access our files," the 63-year-old told AFP.

"Mrs Del Ponte kept asking for more. She received four metal boxes filled with testimonies and photos of mass graves," Nemcova recalled.

The UN established the ICTY in 1993 to try perpetrators of war crimes committed in the ethnic violence that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Milosevic, who faced 66 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia, was never convicted as he died in prison in 2006 during the trial.

However, others accused by the tribunal have been found guilty and jailed.

"The International Criminal Court (ICC) also made a request concerning Georgia in 2012," Nemcova revealed.

Four years later, the Netherlands-based ICC launched an investigation into the conflict between the Caucasus country and Russia.

The Kosovo Force (KFOR), the NATO-led troops tasked with protecting Kosovo for the past two decades, also applied for access to the OSCE in 2017, as did the Red Cross, which was looking for people who had gone missing in conflicts.

- 'Invaluable source' -

The OSCE is an important source of information because it "specialises in questions of democracy, freedom and minority rights" and is a constant presence on the ground over an area larger than that of the European Union or NATO, said researcher Nicolas Badalassi.

From Vancouver to Vladivostok, the Vienna-based OSCE has 57 member states, and its archives are "enormous", said Badalassi, who lectures contemporary history at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence, France.

OSCE is the only international organisation to have immediately gone to the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian-made missile over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.
A trial opened in March in the Netherlands against four men -- three Russians and one Ukrainian -- accused of downing the plane.

The OSCE has had observers in the rebel-held eastern Ukraine for years to monitor the conflict there.

"In the future, it is clear that the reports in Ukraine since the start of the war in 2014 will be an invaluable source for justice," Badalassi said.

"In fact, I don't see anyone else describing the crisis as seen from the inside. Besides, observers have even been kidnapped -- to hinder their work."

Even after the Cold War, the OSCE also maintained offices in many countries and regions, including those accused of authoritarianism, such as Chechnya and Belarus.

It also sends election observers regularly to monitor polls around the world.

But not everyone looks towards the OSCE archives kindly.

A former rebel leader once tried to have his name deleted from its search engine. "He must not have had a clear conscience," Nemcova said.

© 2020 AFP

Hong Kongers scrub social media history in face of security law

Issued on: 03/07/2020 -
 

Legal analysts and rights groups warn the broad wording of the law will choke civil liberties and free speech in Hong Kong Philip FONG AFP

Hong Kong (AFP)

Hong Kongers are scrubbing their social media accounts, deleting chat histories and mugging up on cyber privacy as China's newly imposed security law blankets the traditionally outspoken city in fear and self-censorship.

China's authoritarian leaders enacted sweeping new powers on Tuesday -- keeping the contents secret until the last minute -- after more than a year of often violent protests in a financial hub increasingly chafing under Beijing's rule.

Certain political views such as wanting independence became outlawed overnight and legal analysts and rights groups warn the broad wording of the law -- which bans subversion, secession, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces -- will choke civil liberties and free speech.


Despite assurances from Beijing that political freedoms would not be hindered, many Hong Kongers moved to delete digital references of their opposition to China's ruling Communist Party, which uses similar laws on the mainland to crush dissent.

"I changed my profile name and switched to a private account so that my employer will not be able to see future posts which they deem to be offensive to China or have breached the national security law," Paul, an employee of a large company whose management he described as "pro-Beijing", told AFP.

He said he would be "very careful" about posting in the future, fearing colleagues or even friends might report him, and asked not to be identified.

- VPNs and deleted chats -

After the law came in, many Hong Kongers took to Twitter and other social media platforms such as Telegram and Signal to either announce their departure or share tips on internet safety.

"We will clear all the messages for your safety," one popular Telegram group used by pro-democracy protesters wrote. "Please watch out for what you say."

One lawyer with pro-democracy leanings messaged an AFP journalist asking for their entire WhatsApp history to be deleted.

Another announced they were moving all communications to Signal, which they felt was a more secure messaging app.

Beijing has said some serious cases will be prosecuted on the mainland, dismantling the legal firewall that has existed between Hong Kong's judiciary and China's Communist Party-controlled courts since the 1997 handover from Britain.

Local police have been granted wider surveillance powers to monitor suspects, including wiretapping and accessing digital communications, without a judge's approval.

The new law also allows China's feared security agencies to set up shop in Hong Kong for the first time.

Beijing says it can now prosecute national security crimes committed outside it borders -- even by foreigners -- raising concerns that people visiting of transiting through Hong Kong could be arrested.

Companies providing virtual private network (VPN) tools -- which can make internet access more secure -- have reported a spike in downloads since the law was announced.

Billie, a 24-year-old assistant to a district councillor, said he started using a VPN in May when China announced plans for the new law.

He culled many of his social media followers and removed some "sensitive" posts -- even though Beijing's new law is not supposed to be retroactive.

"I feel very ashamed and embarrassed. I never wanted to do so, but I felt I have to, in order to survive," he told AFP, also asking for anonymity.

"A part of me is gone."

- 'Lennon Walls' removed -

It is not just digital walls being scrubbed.

Several pro-democracy restaurants and shops have taken down their "Lennon Wall" displays expressing support for protests or criticism of China's leadership.

Gordon Lam, a pro-democracy activist prominent within the city's catering sector, told AFP at least one restaurant sought his advice after police visited and warned their display "might violate the national security law".

"It seems the government is using the national security law to put pressure on the yellow economic circle," Lam said, using a local phrase to describe businesses that support calls for democracy and are popular with protesters.

The first arrests under the new security law were made during protests on Wednesday when thousands defied a ban on rallies, many chanting slogans.

Most were arrested for having flags and leaflets in favour of Hong Kong independence, a clear signal that even possession of such items was now illegal.

Others vowed to avoid censoring themselves.

"It's not that I am not at all worried," Chow Po-chung, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote on Facebook.

"I just don't want to be overly worried and live in fear all the time. Because once fear takes root in our minds, we can't live up to what we want for ourselves."

© 2020 AFP

US sanctions on ICC staff are unprecedented, says Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda

Issued on: 02/07/2020 -
 

© FRANCE 24 screengrab

By:Marc Perelman

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), tells FRANCE 24’s Marc Perelman that the decision to sanction the ICC officials investigating alleged war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan is "a naked attempt to interfere with the course of justice".

Bensouda describes the US decision as an “unprecedented and coercive” move against the court and its judicial independence, noting that such sanctions are usually reserved for terrorists and drug traffickers.

Despite the economic and legal pressure the court has come under, Benouda said she is determined to continue her investigations, which include probing suspected crimes carried out by Israel in the Palestinian Territories, despite the pressure Israel is also putting on the court.

Click on the video player to watch the full interview.

French court to rule on reopening probe of former Rwandan president's assassination



Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana (C) was killed when his plane was shot down in 1994, triggering the genocide of some 800,000 in the east African country. AFP/File

Text by:NEWS WIRES

A French court will decide Friday whether to reopen an investigation into the assassination 26 years ago of Rwanda's president in a plane downing that triggered the country's 100-day genocide.

The appeals court in Paris has been asked to revisit a 2018 decision to throw out the probe against nine members and former members of incumbent President Paul Kagame's entourage in a case that has poisoned relations between the two countries.

A plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana, from Rwanda's Hutu majority, was shot down in Kigali on April 6, 1994, unleashing a killing spree that would leave 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, dead.

The plane was struck by at least one missile as it came in to land at Kigali, also killing Burundi's president Cyprien Ntaryamira, another Hutu, on board.

A probe was opened in France in 1998 after a complaint by families of the French plane crew.

Ties broken

The investigation initially focused on allies of Kagame, a Tutsi who led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement that came to power after defeating the extremist Hutu regime.

Kagame, who became Rwanda's president in 2000, broke diplomatic ties with Paris between 2006 and 2009 after France issued arrest warrants for his allies.

Then in 2012, a report by French experts pinpointed the camp of Kanombe, controlled by Habyarimana's army, as the missile launch site -- shifting the investigation's focus.

Kigali said that finding vindicated its belief that the attack was carried out by Hutu extremists who believed Habyarimana was too moderate and who opposed the Arusha peace process then under way.

As investigations dragged on, Kagame accused France ahead of the genocide's 20th anniversary in 2014, of having played a "direct role" in the killing.

And in November 2016, Kigali launched an inquiry into the alleged role of 20 French officials in the genocide that began hours after the plane was brought down.

'Past is behind us'

France has always denied the allegations and last year, President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a panel of historians and researchers to look into the claims.

In December 2018, French judges dropped their probe for lack of evidence.

Families of the victims of the missile attack, including Habyarimana's widow Agathe, lodged an appeal against that ruling.

If the appeals judges agree Friday, the investigation can be reopened, or some or all of the suspects directed to appear before a criminal court for trial.

At a January hearing, however, prosecutors urged the court to confirm the 2018 decision to abandon the case.

Kagame agreed.

"I believe that the past is behind us," he told the Jeune Afrique weekly news magazine this week.

"Reopening a classified file is to invite problems," he said. "If things are not definitively clarified, our relations are likely to suffer one way or another."

(AFP)