K2

Bad weather halts Pakistani army search for missing climbers

ISLAMABAD — Bad weather on Monday forced Pakistani army helicopters to temporarily halt their search for three mountaineers who went missing while attempting to scale K2, the world’s second-highest mountain

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

The search was stopped just hours after it resumed for the third consecutive day, with officials uncertain when weather conditions would improve enough for it to resume again. Friends and family of the three — Pakistani climber Ali Sadpara, John Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile — grew increasingly concerned for their fate in the harsh environment.


The three lost contact with base camp late on Friday and were reported missing on Saturday, after their support team stopped receiving communications from them during their ascent of the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2 — sometimes referred to as “killer mountain.”

Located in the Karakorum mountain range, K2 is one of the most dangerous climbs. Last month, a team of 10 Nepalese climbers made history by scaling the K2 for the first time in winter.

Waqas Johar, a district government administrator, said on Twitter that almost 60% of K2 was under clouds. The search and rescue team was unable to find any clue of the climbers' whereabouts so far, he said, adding it will attempt again once the weather improves.

Earlier, Sadpara’s son said in a video statement released to the media that the chances of the mountaineers' survival in the harsh winter conditions were extremely low. Sadpara, an experienced climber, had earlier scaled the world’s eight highest mountains, including the highest, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, and was attempting to climb K2 in winter.

“Miracles do happen and the hope for a miracle is still there,” said Karar Haideri, secretary at the Pakistan alpine Club. He said a statement from the authorities was expected later on Monday.

Sadpara's son Sajid Ali Sadpara, himself a mountaineer who was part of the expedition at the start but later returned to base camp after his oxygen regulator malfunctioned, said their chances after “spending two to three days in the winter at 8,000 (meters' altitude) are next to none."

The younger Sadpara praised the rescue and search efforts but said “as a climber, I know that ... only a miracle can save their lives.”

The younger Sadpara's oxygen regulator had malfunctioned when he reached K2's most dangerous point, known as Bottle Neck, earlier last week. There, he waited for his father and two other climbers for more than 20 hours but with no sign of them, he descended.

Since the climbers went missing, Iceland's foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, has spoken to his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, by telephone. According to Pakistan's foreign ministry, Qureshi assured him that Pakistan would spare no effort in the search for the missing mountaineers.

Although Mount Everest is 237 metres (777 feet) taller than K2, the K2 mountain is much farther north, on the border with China, and subject to worse weather conditions, according to mountaineering experts. A winter climb is particularly dangerous because of the unpredictable and rapid change in the weather.

Winter winds on K2 can blow at more than 200 kph (125 mph) and temperatures can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit). In one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents ever, 11 climbers died in a single day trying to scale K2 in 2008.

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Associated Press writer Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this story.

Munir Ahmed, The Associated Press

Search for 3 climbers on K2 in Pakistan to continue Monday


ISLAMABAD — The search for three missing climbers will resume early Monday on K2, the world’s second highest mountain, Pakistani officials said Sunday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Onboard the army helicopter was Sajjid Sadpara, the son of the missing Pakistani climber, Ali Sadpara, and the Nepali leader of the winter expedition. Also missing are John Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile.

The three lost contact with base camp late Friday and were reported missing Saturday after their support team stopped receiving communications from them during their ascent of the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2 mountain, sometimes referred to as “killer mountain.”

The military said a ground search has also been initiated from the K2 base camp.

Karrar Haideri, a top official with the Alpine Club of Pakistan, said army helicopters will resume the search that began a day earlier.

A military statement elaborating the day search and rescue operation said despite "extremely challenging conditions," the army helicopters searched Abruzzi Spur and other routes but no trace of the missing climbers so far.

It said the success of the search efforts depend on the weather. Choppers flew up to the limit of 7,800 metres over the K2.

K2, located in the Karakorum mountain range, is one of the most dangerous climbs. Last month, team of 10 Nepalese climbers made history by scaling the K2 for the first time in winter.

“The base camp received no signals from Sadpara and his foreign companions after 8,000 metres ... A search is on and let's pray for their safe return home,” Haideri told The Associated Press.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying Iceland's foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, spoke to his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, by telephone. Qureshi assured him that Pakistan would spare no effort in the search for the missing mountaineers.

Sadpara and his team left the base camp on Feb. 3, a month after their first attempt to scale the mountain failed because of weather conditions.

Although Mount Everest is 237 metres (777 feet) taller than K2, the K2 mountain is much farther north on the border with China and subject to worse weather conditions, according to mountaineering experts. They say a winter climb is particularly dangerous because of the unpredictable and rapid change in weather conditions.

Winter winds on K2 can blow at more than 200 kph (125 mph) and temperatures can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit). In one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents ever, 11 climbers died in a single day trying to scale K2 in 2008.

Haideri said Sadpara’s son, Sajid, had returned to the base camp safely after his oxygen regulator malfunctioned at 8,000 metres.

Chhang Dawa Sherpa, who heads the Seven Summit Treks expedition company and also was the leader of winter expedition, tweeted that two army helicopters along with Saijd Sadpara, Elia and himself found no trace during their two days of aerial searches.

Sherpa said on Saturday around noon, Ali’s son Sajid reported that they were together and in good shape to head toward the summit. But due to a problem with his oxygen regulator Sajid had to return from their location, known as Bottle Neck. Sajid waited for them for more than 20 hours with the belief that they were heading to the summit and would return. With no sign of them, Sajid descended.

Sajid Sadpara said on Twitter “It was around 11 AM they were going up and I am sure they have done the summit and on descend they might have faced (a) problem.”

Haideri, the Alpine club official, was hopeful that Sadpara's company will help his other companions survive rough conditions.

He noted Sadpara's experience as a mountaineer who has climbed the world's eight highest mountains, including the highest, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, and was attempting to climb K2 in winter.

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Asim Tanveer contributed to this story from Multan, Pakistan.

Zarar Khan, The Associated Press

REST IN POWER

Jackie Vautour, advocate against Kouchibouguac land expropriation, has died

Karla Renic 

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tim Clark Jackie Vautour (bald, behind the stove)

 talks strategy with friends in his tiny hut in Kouchibouguac National Park, N.B.

 on April 3, 1980.

The Acadian man remembered for his decades-long fight against the expropriation of land for Kouchibouguac National Park has died.

According to his family, 92-year-old Jackie Vautour passed away after finding out he had liver cancer just days ago.

“A lot people are going to miss him. He’s a hero, he’s a legend,” his son Edmond Vautour said.

“I spoke to him for a few minutes on the phone and he told me he didn’t have long to live.

“He told me that he did all he could," Edmond said.

In his last conversation with his father, Vautour assured Jackie that he has done enough to make an impact.

Read more: Wolastoqey Nation filing lawsuit against N.B., Canada to seek Aboriginal land title

Beginning in 1969, about 250 families were displaced from villages on New Brunswick's eastern shore to create the park, which was authorized under the signature of Jean Chretien, who at the time was minister of Indian affairs and northern development.

Since then, he had been in legal battles with the government, claiming Kouchibouguac is on traditional Indigenous land — not Crown land as defined in the National Parks Act — with title falling to Indigenous communities first.

Vautour received a settlement in 1987 but remained in his cabin in the park, and over the past decades, he had challenged the expropriation in the courts.

In 2015, he filed a lawsuit on his own behalf, and on behalf of a long list of plaintiffs identifying themselves as Indigenous residents of Kouchibouguac territory, as well as hereditary Mi’kmaq Chief Stephen Augustine and several Mi’kmaq people of the area. The lawsuit called for damages for infringing on that title and for the removal of families who once lived in the area.

Then in 2017, he filed with New Brunswick's Court of Appeal, to argue a previous ruling that there was no evidence of Métis historically residing in that area.

On Jan. 28, 2021, the court dismissed his appeal in a written decision.

"In a series of legal proceedings involving Jackie Vautour, courts found the expropriations and the creation of the Park were lawful," the judge wrote.

"It is plain and obvious that a matter that attempts to relitigate that which has been conclusively determined in all levels of court, after a fulsome trial, does not disclose a reasonable cause of action."

Edmond Vautour said his father was not surprised when his appeal case was rejected, claiming there’s a problem with the justice system.

“He had new evidence to bring into court … and they refused to hear it. It’s pretty bad but he was not surprised at all.”

All this time since the expropriation, Jackie Vautour and his wife lived in a small cabin in Kouchibouguac, with no power or water.

“He said that he would die on this land — and he did,” Edmond said.

Although his father has passed, the fight for land title rights is not over.

“My father’s goal was to have the rights of the people, have the people be heard, have the people get back their lands, and to recognize all the suffering the people went through.”

Vautour said Jackie had a good heart.

“He’s a man that never talked badly about anybody. He was always there to help.”

He also said the community has shown kindness after Jackie's passing, saying that he was a hero.

Read more: Canada’s school systems are failing to address colonial past: educators

Alexandre Cédric Doucet, president of the Acadian Society, said Monday that Vautour never gave up on his battle to remain on his family's land, and he became a symbol that inspired the generations that followed.

"His struggle will forever be etched in our memories, the legacy of a dark part of contemporary Acadian history," Doucet said in a release.

"Having had the opportunity to meet Jackie a few times, I can personally testify to the strength and determination of this man, who was, in many ways, greater than life."

Edmond Vautour said he heard suggestions of a petition to change the name of one New Brunswick's airports to his father’s name.

“I was really surprised to hear that. … His name could never be forgotten for all the rights he stood up for.”

Edmond said he is committed to continuing his father’s legacy and has been especially involved in the last five years.

“Before he passed, he wanted to make sure I was going to continue if I wanted — and I said yes.”

-- With files from The Canadian Press.

REST IN POWER

Ex-Chicago Teachers Union leader Karen Lewis dies at age 67


CHICAGO — Karen Lewis, a former Chicago Teachers Union president and onetime mayoral hopeful, has died at age 67, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Known for her fiery speaking style, Lewis seriously considered a challenge against then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel before she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2014. She continued to face health problems, suffering a stroke in 2017 and undergoing brain surgery the following year.

Her longtime spokeswoman and friend Stephanie Gadlin confirmed the death Monday in a statement but did not disclose the cause or circumstances.

Lewis' tenure as union president saw mass school closings and bitter contract talks. In 2012, she led the first teachers’ strike in 25 years, often going after Emanuel, whom she once described as the ”murder mayor” because of the city's violence.

“She bowed to no one, and gave strength to tens of thousands of Chicago Teachers Union educators who followed her lead, and who live by her principles to this day,” the union said in a statement. “But Karen did not just lead our movement. Karen was our movement.”

Lewis grew up on the city's South Side, the child of two public school teachers. She graduated from Dartmouth College, often noting she was the only Black woman in the 1974 graduating class.

She taught chemistry for nearly two decades in Chicago and was active in union leadership. Lewis became union president in 2010 and stepped down in 2018 because of her health.

Lewis' death drew condolences from numerous leaders, including the city's current mayor, Lori Lightfoot, and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. On Twitter, Emanuel said that though he and Lewis often disagreed, their "regular conversations were a benefit to me and to the city of Chicago.”

In her departure letter from the union in 2018, Lewis urged teachers to keep fighting.

“In my fight against brain cancer, I am reminded through my faith that when storms come, the brave do not jump overboard,” she wrote. “They do not abandon ship, nor do they panic. Even if the captain is down and storm clouds are gathering, the rest of the crew must steer the ship on its charted course.”

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Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen

Sophia Tareen, The Associated Press

Karen Lewis, fighter for public education, charismatic ex-leader of Chicago Teachers Union, dies

Lewis had considered running against then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2014 but decided against it after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

By Stefano Esposito Updated Feb 8, 2021,
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CTU President Karen Lewis with teachers and supporters, on a 1 day strike called by the Chicago Teachers Union at King College Prep. Friday, April 1, 2016. Brian Jackson/Sun-Times

A visionary. A legend. A brawler. A friend. An opera lover.

Just some of the ways people remembered Karen Lewis, the charismatic former head of the Chicago Teachers Union whose death was announced Monday.

“Our union is in deep mourning today at the passing of our sister, our leader and our friend, President Emerita Karen GJ Lewis,” the Chicago Teachers Union said in a statement. “We are sending heartfelt condolences to her husband, John Lewis, and her surviving family and friends. She will be dearly missed.

“Karen taught us how to fight, and she taught us how to love. She was a direct descendant of the legendary Jackie Vaughn, the first Black, female president of our local. Both were fierce advocates for educators and children, but where Jackie was stately elegance, Karen was a brawler with sharp wit and an Ivy League education.”


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Later in the day, current CTU President Jesse Sharkey tweeted: “Rest in Power Karen Lewis — you united us and helped us see our own power, and you did it with your humor, your humanity and your courage. You always gave of yourself so freely. We love you and may your memory be a blessing.”

In a statement on Twitter, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said: “Amy and I are saddened to learn of Karen Lewis’ passing. Our deepest condolences go out to her family, loved ones, friends and CTU family during this extremely difficult time.”


Gov. J.B. Pritzker called Lewis “a fighter who possessed a sense of humor, smarts and charisma that few in the public sphere could match. She believed to her core in bettering her members’ lives and improving the lives of Chicago’s children. Her legacy will long endure — may her memory be a blessing.”


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, also in a tweet, said: “Jane and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Karen Lewis. She lived her life on the front line of the struggle for justice in education, and to honor her memory we must recommit ourselves to building the fairer future students and families deserve

In 2012, Chicago teachers went on strike for the first time in 25 years, fueled by their anger against then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who persuaded the Illinois General Assembly to raise the strike threshold, stripped them of a previously negotiated 4% pay raise and offered schools and teachers extra money to waive the teachers contract and immediately implement his longer school day.

The strike damaged Chicago’s reputation and turned Lewis into a folk hero with the guts to fight City Hall.

“The 2012 teachers’ strike changed the course of Chicago and our entire country,” SEIU Illinois State Council President Tom Balanoff said in a statement Monday. “Karen’s leadership inspired teachers across the country to fight for quality public education that their communities deserve.

“Through her work and vision, Karen transformed CTU into the powerful organization it is today and reminded the world how unions are a potent force for the common good. Her legacy lives on through the millions of working people she inspired to fight for collective justice.”

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle echoed that theme in praising Lewis: “She was a leader, a fighter and a visionary, fiercely committed to the values of equity + justice. She was a leading voice on public education in not just the city of Chicago, but in our country. Rest in power.”

In 2014, Lewis considered running against Emanuel. When cancer derailed that plan, she endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who didn’t win but is now a U.S. congressman.

“I was blessed by Karen’s trust and confidence to fight for working people and the communities we represented,” Garcia said in statement Monday. “In 2015 she encouraged me to run for mayor of Chicago when her own bid was cut short by medical complications. I am humbled she supported me.”

Lewis’ passions extended far beyond the education and politics.

“She spoke three languages, loved her opera and her show tunes, and dazzled you with her smile,” the CTU said, “yet could stare down the most powerful enemies of public education and defend our institution with a force rarely seen in organized labor.”

REST IN POWER

Rennie Davis, 'Chicago Seven' activist, dies at 80

DENVER — Rennie Davis, one of the “Chicago Seven” activists who was tried for organizing an anti-Vietnam War protest outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in which thousands clashed with police in a bloody confrontation that horrified a nation watching live on television, has died. He was 80

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

RENNIE DAVIS  SECOND FROM LEFT

Davis died Tuesday of lymphoma at his home in Berthoud, Colorado, his wife, Kirsten Liegmann, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

A longtime peace activist, Davis was national director of the community organizing program for the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society and was a protest co-ordinator for the Chicago convention.

Some 3,000 anti-war demonstrators clashed with police and Illinois National Guardsmen on Aug. 28, 1968, near the convention. Police clubbed demonstrators and carried out mass arrests. Davis himself was seriously injured and taken to a hospital. An investigative commission later described the clash as a “police riot.”

Davis and four co-defendants — Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and David Dellinger — were convicted of conspiracy to incite a riot during the “Chicago Seven" trial in 1969 and 1970. A federal appeals court overturned the convictions, citing errors by U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman.

Co-defendants John Froines and Lee Weiner were acquitted. An eighth defendant, Bobby Seale, was tried separately, convicted of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. That conviction also was overturned.

Davis was “one of the most important nuts and bolts organizers of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and the early 1970s,” said David Farber, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Kansas who has written four books about the 1960s — including “Chicago ’68” — which details the anti-war protests in Chicago.

Unlike the more famous members of what became known as the “Chicago Seven” — including Hoffman and Rubin — Farber said Davis “was not a celebrity, but he was a very essential organizer for the anti-war movement.”

“He was the one negotiating with the (Mayor Richard J.) Daley administration, trying to get permits and the right to march and rally," Farber said. “He was the hands-on organizer ... doing very practical, pragmatic things.”

He said the protest became famous not because of how many people showed up “but because a commission later determined that there had been a ‘police riot.'" And because of the TV coverage of the Democratic Convention, “images of this protest were seen all over the United States and indeed all over the world,” Farber said.

Police targeted Davis and beat him on the head with batons, Farber said.

“It became a famous example of how a local government could stop protests from happening. It’s very relevant today,” Farber said.

In 1971, Davis also organized a mass demonstration against the Vietnam War that was designed to tie up traffic in Washington, D.C.


UNLIKE JERRY RUBIN VENTURE CAPITALIST WITH NO SOUL RENNIE GOT SOUL FROM MAHATMA JI A 15 YR OLD FEUDALIST GURU

Davis' wife said his legacy goes well beyond his pacifist activism. He moved to Colorado, where he studied and taught spirituality and entered the business world, selling life insurance and running a think-tank that developed technologies for the environment. He became a venture capitalist and a lecturer on meditation and self-awareness, Liegmann said.

She said he pursued a spiritual path designed to create awareness of the planet even as he was dispensing business advice as a venture capitalist.

“Everybody knows him as the ’60s activist, and really what he would want to be remembered for is his vision for a new humanity — the magnificence of who we are,” Liegmann said.

Davis was born on May 23, 1940, in Lansing, Michigan, and raised in Berryville, Virginia. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned a master’s degree from the University of Illinois.

Davis got his start as one of the key community organizers for Students for a Democratic Society in the mid-1960s, Farber said. Davis was originally based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but helped oversee community organizing projects nationwide.

In the early 1970s, Farber said Davis became disillusioned with the more violent course the anti-war movement was taking.

“One of the things people always said about Rennie Davis was that he was a gentle man. He was not a rabble rouser, he was not an angry, hostile person. He deeply believed in a more just and fair and equitable society and pursued it nonviolently all his life,” Farber said.

In addition to Liegmann, Davis is survived by three children from previous marriages: daughters Lia Davis, 44, and Maya Davis, 28; and a son, Sky Davis, 26; as well as three siblings and two grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Liegmann said a public memorial would be held at a future date over social media.

“He is so beloved that I owe that to the world,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

___

This story was first published on Feb. 3, 2021. It was updated on Feb. 5, 2021, to correct Rennie Davis' date of birth. He was born on May 23, 1940, not May 26, 1940.

James Anderson, The Associated Press

ISRAEL COLONIALIST EXPANSION

In thrice-demolished village, a Mideast battle of wills

It looks like the aftermath of a tornado

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

There are dirt plots where there used to be makeshift homes; tent poles stacked like firewood; fencing and scrap metal scattered across a desert valley greened by winter rain; a cold firepit and a pile of kitchen essentials where a cooking tent once stood.

This is what remains of the herding community of Khirbet Humsu in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli forces demolished it for the third time in as many months. On Wednesday, just minutes after the army left, Palestinian residents were at work repairing their fences — hoping to gather their sheep before dark, knowing the army might return the next day.

“We build it up and they tear it down,” said Waleed Abu al-Kbash as he stretched fencing between two posts. “Where am I supposed to go? I have a thousand head of sheep.”

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state. Khirbet Humsu, perched on the rolling highlands above the Jordan Valley, is part of the 60% of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli military control as part of interim peace agreements from the 1990s.

Israel planned to annex the Jordan Valley and other parts of the occupied West Bank last year after getting a green light from the Trump administration, but it put annexation on hold as part of a U.S.-brokered normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates.

It still maintains complete control over the territory, leaving Bedouin communities like the one at Khirbet Humsu at constant risk of displacement. Shepherds who rely on seasonal rains and scattered springs are also at the mercy of an arbitrary cycle of demolition and rebuilding.

The first time Israel demolished Khirbet Humsu was in early November, as world attention was focused on the U.S. election.

B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said Israeli forces demolished 18 tents and other structures that housed 74 people, including many children. They also demolished livestock pens, storage sheds, cooking tents, solar panels, water containers and feeding troughs, and confiscated 30 tons of livestock feed, a vehicle and two tractors. The U.N. said it was the single largest demolition of its kind in the past decade.

Israeli forces returned on Monday and again on Wednesday, using bulldozers and heavy equipment to demolish structures that had been rebuilt and carting away others on large trucks. Most of the families have stayed in the area through each demolition, quickly setting up tents with the help of activists and aid workers after the soldiers leave.

Israel said in November that the structures were built without permission, which the Palestinians and rights groups say is almost never granted. Just a few kilometres (miles) away on either side are two large Jewish farming settlements, with rows of greenhouses, animal enclosures and irrigated fields.

COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank, said it informed residents of Khirbet Humsu that the area is in a military firing range and reached an agreement with them to move the community to another area. It said residents voluntarily dismantled structures on Monday but then refused to move, leading the military to confiscate them.

Residents who spoke to The Associated Press seemed unaware of any agreement with the military.

Amit Gilutz, a spokesman for B'Tselem, said that even if there were an agreement, it would have been made under duress as Israel controls the area and can demolish at will. Either way, he says it amounts to forcible transfer, a war crime under international law.

Gilutz said the displacement was a test for the new U.S. administration. President Joe Biden has vowed to adopt a more even-handed approach to the conflict and hopes to revive peace talks. Gilutz said Israel would view the administration's silence as a “green light.”

“This is not an isolated case,” he said, referring to other Bedouin communities across the West Bank where residents are unable to build and have little if any access to electricity or water because of Israeli restrictions.

“For the most part, Israel avoids actually loading people up on trucks and dumping them elsewhere," he said. "Rather, what it does is it makes life impossible for these people so that they leave, as if by their own choice."

The displacement has broader implications. Area C encompasses most of the agricultural land in the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, which the Palestinians say they would need to develop a viable, independent state. Rights groups say that by consolidating its grip on the land — with or without formal annexation — Israel puts a two-state solution even further out of reach.

Israeli leaders have long argued that the keeping the Jordan Valley is essential for protecting Israel's narrow coastal heartland.

Nidal Abu al-Kbash, another member of the extended family in Khirbet Humsu, believes the military wants to clear them away so it can build settlements and training bases on the land, which is fertile and has a freshwater spring. He too was at work Wednesday repairing fences.

“We have no alternative, he said. ”We're not leaving."

Joseph Krauss, The Associated Press

Nigerian film about Islamist insurgency aims at Oscar glory


By Angela Ukomadu and Abraham Achirga

© Reuters/HANDOUT Women are seen smiling in a wedding scene in "The Milkmaid", Nigeria's feature film submission for Oscar award in Taraba State, Nigeria

LAGOS/ABUJA (Reuters) - Ten years ago, Desmond Ovbiagele abandoned his career in investment banking to pursue his dream of making films. Now the Nigerian director's movie about the jihadist insurgency in his country has been put forward as an Oscars contender.


"The Milkmaid" tells the story of two sisters who are abducted from their village during a deadly attack by militants in northeast Nigeria. It has been submitted by Nigeria as its entry for international feature consideration at the Academy Awards.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce its nominations for the Academy Awards on March 15.

"Even having made it this far is a huge encouragement to filmmakers who don't necessarily want to tell the most commercial type of stories," Ovbiagele - who wrote and directed the film - told Reuters in an interview in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos.

The insurgency by militant group Boko Haram has killed more than 30,000 people and forced about 2 million to flee their homes since 2009. The group attained global notoriety in 2014 with the abduction of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

"I felt it was important that we put some backstories and some personalities behind all these casualty statistics," said Ovbiagele.

The film has already won five Africa Movie Academy Awards, including Best Film. Although Nigeria is an English-speaking country, it is eligible for the Oscars best international film category because the characters address each other in the Hausa, Arabic and Fulfulde languages spoken locally.

Anthonieta Kalunta, lead actress in the movie, said she hoped those judging "The Milkmaid" would see the film as being told from "a very beautiful perspective", despite the subject matter.

For Ovbiagele, the film's success will draw attention to the plight of hidden victims.

"The victims of insurgency were not getting the attention that I felt they truly deserved," he said.

(Reporting by Angela Ukomadu in Lagos and Abraham Achirga in Abuja; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

PBS chief defends filmmaker Ken Burns, touts diversity

LOS ANGELES — The chief executive of PBS rejected a filmmaker’s argument that public TV's 40-year relationship with documentarian Ken Burns has come at the expense of diversity.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

President and CEO Paula Kerger was asked Tuesday about an essay by filmmaker Grace Lee, who contended that public TV's deep attachment to Burns, whose series include “The Civil War” and “Baseball,” slights viewers of colour.


“I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to work with Ken Burns, whose legacy is extraordinary and as we look forward, has a very rich pipeline of programs that he’s bringing to public television,” Kerger said in a virtual Q&A with the Television Critics Association.

“We create lots of opportunities for many filmmakers,” Kerger said. Burns “mentors a number of filmmakers who now have quite established careers ... and he has a deep commitment to mentoring diverse filmmakers.”

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She said she “respectfully disagrees” with Lee's arguments in a essay last fall for the Ford Foundation. Among them: that PBS decision-makers and funders have an interdependence with “one white, male filmmaker” who represents “one man’s lens on America,” as Lee put it.

Noting that she was a producer on PBS’ “Asian Americans" last year, Lee wrote that she takes seriously whether public TV reflects the diverse audience it was founded to serve because “I largely owe my documentary career to PBS.”

Kerger, who called Lee a “very talented filmmaker,” said PBS has worked with her on a number of projects “and I envision we’ll continue to work with her.”

Kerger said PBS is intent on fostering a culture of inclusion and ensuring that diverse voices are part of “every aspect of content creation." Among the upcoming projects she highlighted: a May film about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, which decimated a Black business district in Oklahoma.

Burns is known for sweeping, award-winning examinations of chapters and issues in American history, including “The Vietnam War” and “The Central Park Five.” Through a spokesman, he declined comment on Lee’s comments.

In a separate panel with TV critics Tuesday about “Hemingway,” a documentary about writer Ernest Hemingway directed by Burns and Lynn Novick and airing on PBS in April, Burns was asked about choosing the subjects for his occasional film biographies.

A reporter noted they have featured prominent white people, including artists and political figures, but focused on Black athletes, among them pioneering greats Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson and coming this fall, Muhammad Ali.

Burns said Louis Armstrong deserves his own lengthy documentary but was a central figure in “Jazz,” an example of biography as “one constituent building block” of broader historical films.

As for who gets singled out, “it has be done with your gut,” Burns said, then echoed a comment by Novick, his longtime colleague. “As Lynn said, they choose us."

"The stuff that’s coming up is incredibly diverse in every sense of the meaning of that word,” Burns said.

Lynn Elber, The Associated P

Terry Glavin: 

Myanmar’s 'democratic transition' 

came to a halt the day Suu Kyi was elected

© Provided by National Post In a file photo from Dec. 10, 2019, supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi rally in Yangon as Suu Kyi prepared to defend Myanmar at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against accusations of genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

It’s bad enough that Myanmar’s generals have reverted to type, engineered a coup, headed off the first meeting of the re-elected National League for Democracy government and locked up the former honorary Canadian citizen Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto head of government since 2015.


It will only make matters worse if Joe Biden’s simultaneously-elected U.S government reverts to the type of approach to Myanmar championed by the White House the past time Biden’s Democratic Party ran the American show. That was when Barack Obama’s administration happily ignored warnings from human rights organizations, rushed to lift sanctions on the regime and threw its arms around the charming and glamorous Oxford-educated Suu Kyi.

Those warnings proved tragically prescient, straight away. Suu Kyi set about ingratiating herself with the worst elements in Myanmar’s ethnic Burmese majority by enthusiastically supporting a genocidal scorched-earth misery her military partners in government decided to inflict upon the Muslim Rohingya people in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.

Within two years of Suu Kyi’s 2015 landslide win, more than 700,000 Rohingyas had been driven into squalid, makeshift refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, joining close to 250,000 Rohingyas ethnically cleansed from Myanmar in earlier pogroms. Two years after that, in December 2019, the Nobel Peace Prize winner stood before the judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and denied that her government’s crimes against humanity in Rakhine had ever occurred.

Suu Kyi also denies the Rohingya people even exist. No matter how absurd the Myanmar military bloc’s claim about election-day fraud may be — that’s the coup pretext the armed forces’ commander-in-chief has resorted to — the military’s Union Solidarity and Development Party has a point in its claim that what occurred in November was not an election that was “free, fair, unbiased and free from unfair campaigning.”

Suu Kyi’s National League swept last November’s polls, taking 396 of the parliament’s 476 seats. But the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh didn’t get to vote, and neither did the Rohingya people remaining in Myanmar. That’s partly because of Myanmar’s racist citizenship laws. It’s also because of a spurious decision by an election commission dominated by Suu Kyi’s party that the Rohingyas in Rakhine, along with Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin, Karen, Mon, Chin and Shan minorities, lived in “conflict areas” too dangerous to allow polling.

© K.M. ASAD/AFP/Getty Images Rohingya refugees from Rakhine state in Myanmar walk near Ukhia, at the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, as they flee violence, in a file photo from Sept. 4, 2017.

Several prominent minority candidates were barred from running in the election. Private news organizations were crippled by rules ostensibly enacted for pandemic-related public health purposes. The state-dominated media enforced election-commission rules that effectively censored opposition party campaign broadcasts. Election scripts were subject to approval or rejection by Suu Kyi’s Ministry of Information.

Journalists are routinely arrested in Myanmar. Internet access to more than 200 news sites was blocked last year. Reporters Without Borders ranks Myanmar 139th out of 180 on its Press Freedom Index.

There has been quite a bit of florid language making the rounds about the terrible blow the coup has dealt to Myanmar’s “democratic transition.” The High Representative of the European Union, along with the foreign ministers of the G7 — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan — have asserted their commitment to what they call Myanmar’s democratic transition and to “unrestricted humanitarian access to support the most vulnerable,” which Suu Kyi’s government and the military have refused all along.

An easier case could be made for the proposition that Myanmar’s “democratic transition” came to an abrupt standstill the minute Suu Kyi was elected in 2015. Because her husband and children are British citizens, Suu Kyi was obliged to put a proxy in the president’s chair while she led the country in a post created for her — state counsellor. But she also had herself appointed minister for the president’s office, foreign affairs minister, education minister, and minister for electrical power and energy.

Surrounded by the incompetents and party hacks she’d appointed to senior positions, Suu Kyi’s government was a reluctant joint venture with the military, which the constitution allows to appoint the minister of defence, the minister of home affairs, and the minister of border affairs. One of every four seats in the national legislature is reserved for the military.

It was in the lead-up to Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in 2011 — the daughter of a hero of the Burmese national liberation struggle, Suu Kyi had been confined to her home for nearly 15 years — that a genuine flowering of democratic modernization unfolded in Myanmar.

© AFP via Getty Images Rohingya refugees are seen on a Bangladeshi naval ship as they are relocated to Bhashan Char Island in the Bay of Bengal, in Chittagong, on Jan. 29, 2021.

Eager to break Myanmar’s cycle of debilitating violence, ethnic warfare and poverty, and desperate to convince the U.S. and its Western allies to lift sanctions on the half-century-old military regime, the armed forces had introduced a dizzying array of reforms. Restrictions on labour unions were lifted. Media censorship was dramatically scaled back. Hundreds of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, were released.

The United States and its allies enjoyed crucial leverage back then, but the Obama administration, over the objections of senior State Department analysts and human rights groups, rushed ahead to rehabilitate Myanmar and end the country’s pariah status. In July 2012 — only weeks after a gruesome pogrom drove 120,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh — the Obama White House lifted a tranche of sanctions on the regime. Later that year, after another orgy of anti-Rohingya violence, Obama paid a visit to Myanmar — the first American president to do so.

In the months before the calamitous 2016 election of Republican Donald Trump, Obama lifted almost all of what remained of the U.S economic sanctions on Myanmar. Other Western countries, Canada included, followed suit. Emboldened by their newfound impunity, Myanmar’s generals put Rakhine state to the torch, murdering thousands of Rohingyas. Suu Kyi was content to go along with the terror.

It wasn’t until October 2018 that the Senate and the House of Commons voted to revoke Suu Kyi’s honorary Canadian citizenship, awarded to her in 2007.

It’s hard to see what good it would do now to simply reinstate the earlier economic sanctions on Myanmar, a move the Biden administration says it’s considering. Suu Kyi has pulled Myanmar into Beijing’s comforting orbit. China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping visited Suu Kyi in Myanmar a year ago. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was Suu Kyi’s first guest as Myanmar’s foreign minister, and Wang was back in Myanmar last month, pushing a massive infrastructure investment that would extend Beijing’s overland trade access to the Indian Ocean.

Thanks to China’s veto, the United Nations Security Council couldn’t even manage to say anything untoward about what has happened in Myanmar this week.

Myanmar’s generals say they’ll only hold total power for a year or so, and then perhaps Suu Kyi will be back. Unless something dramatic erupts in the political culture of Myanmar’s Burmese majority, that is how things will likely unfold, and in the meantime, it will be like Suu Kyi never left.

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Pariah with benefits: US aiding Saudi defence despite chill

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden laid out a tougher line on Saudi Arabia than any U.S. president in decades. He said he would make the kingdom “pay the price” for human rights abuses and “make them in fact the pariah that they are.”

© Provided by The Canadian Press

But if Biden is making Saudi Arabia a pariah now, it's a pariah with benefits.

While Biden announced Thursday he was making good on his campaign commitment to end U.S. support for a five-year Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, his administration is making clear it won’t abandon U.S. military assistance for the kingdom and plans to help Saudi Arabia strengthen its own defences.

His approach reflects the complexity of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. While Biden is taking a tougher line than his predecessors, he and his foreign policy team recognize the U.S. can’t allow relations to unravel. They see the importance of maintaining aspects of a military, counterterrorism and security relationship seen as vital for security of both nations.

“The United States will co-operate with Saudi Arabia where our priorities align and will not shy away from defending U.S. interests and values where they do not,” the State Department said in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press.

The aligned priorities have included a longstanding U.S. emphasis on playing a lead defending the kingdom and its oil from attacks that would jolt the world’s energy markets and economies. U.S. leaders also see Saudi Arabia as a regional counterweight to Iran.

Biden said Thursday that the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen has “created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” He said he would stop arms sales related to the Yemen offensive, but gave no immediate details what that might mean. The administration already had said it was pausing the Trump administration's sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia.

At the same time Thursday, Biden also reaffirmed that the United States was committed to co-operating in the kingdom's defence.

That will include helping protect Saudi Arabia's territory, critical infrastructure and shipping routes from the kingdom's opponents in neighbouring Yemen, the Houthis, the State Department said. The Biden administration has yet to spell out how it plans to boost defence of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia points to missile and drone strikes and other cross-border attacks launched by Houthis in Yemen.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat and critic of U.S. involvement in the Saudi air campaign in Yemen, agreed that the U.S. may still have a security interest in helping guard the kingdom.

“Our focus should be providing basic defensive capabilities to help Riyadh defend itself from external threats, not fighting those threats for the Saudis," Murphy said.

But the U.S. should provide no “additional military support to Saudi Arabia unless we can clearly conclude that support...will not be used as irresponsibly as it has been in Yemen,” Murphy said. He called the kingdom an important partner nonetheless, and said he would work with the administration to reset relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

International criticism of Saudi Arabia has mounted since 2015, under King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia that year led the United Arab Emirates and others in launching a war targeting Houthi rebels who had seized territory including the ancient city of Sanaa in Yemen, the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country. Saudi-led airstrikes since then have killed numerous Yemeni civilians, including schoolboys on a bus and fishermen in their fishing boats. The stalled war has failed to dislodge the Houthis and is deepening hunger and poverty. International rights advocates say Yemen's Houthis also have committed abuses, including repeated attacks on civilians.

The CIA and others also hold the crown prince responsible for the murder and dismemberment of a U.S.-based Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. The kingdom has imprisoned women who requested government permission to drive and other peaceful advocates. It detained numerous businesspeople and members of the sprawling royal family.

Saudi Arabia has been conciliatory as the Biden administration settles in. It said Thursday it welcomes international diplomacy in the Yemen conflict. Its leaders stress the shared history and co-operation on intelligence, education and other matters. On Thursday, in what was seen as the latest gesture to Biden, the kingdom conditionally released two dual Saudi-American citizens held in a crackdown on civil society and shortened the sentence of a third, the State Department said. The latter, Dr. Walid Fitaihi, had been convicted of “disobedience” to the government.

"I believe we will have a great relationship with them, because all the pillars upon which the relationship stands are still there," Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told Saudi-funded Al Arabiya television about Biden officials.

It was the Obama administration — focused at the time on closing a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia's rival, Iran — that greenlighted Saudi Arabia's military offensive in Yemen. American involvement with Saudi Arabia's command and control was supposed to minimize airstrikes on civilians, but often did not. Yemeni survivors displayed fragments showing it was American-made bombs that hit them. Some of those same Obama officials have since expressed regret, and are now in the Biden administration as it moves to end involvement with the offensive.

It's not yet clear how far Biden will go in fulfilling his campaign pledge to stop the multibillion U.S. arms trade with Saudi Arabia.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Democracy for the Arab World Now rights advocacy organization, said she was pleased at the administration's messaging so far involving Gulf countries and the Yemen war. The organization was founded by Khashoggi shortly before Saudis killed him

Whitson said she would watch to see if the U.S. maintained arms sales to the kingdom simply by rebranding offensive weapons as defensive, however.

Ultimately, stepped-up U.S. pledges to help Saudi Arabia build up its defences could give the kingdom the face-saving cover it needs to give up on its Yemen offensive, said Steven Cook, a Middle East researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.

It could be “convincing the Saudis to declare victory and go home is really the only way,” Cook said. “Hold our nose and do it.”

Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press