Poland accuses Putin of orchestrating Belarus border crisis to destabilise EU

Hundreds of desperate migrants are trapped in freezing weather on the Belarusian-Polish border, where the presence of troops has raised fears of a confrontation. 

© Leonid Shcheglov, Belta/AFP

Issued on: 10/11/2021 - 

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating a wave of migrants trying to illegally enter Poland from Belarus, saying the “attack” threatens to destabilise the European Union.

The accusation came as thousands of desperate migrants were trapped in freezing weather on the Belarus-Poland border, where the presence of troops from both sides has raised fears of a confrontation.

Western critics have for months said Belarus’s strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko is luring migrants from the Middle East to his country and then sending them across the border in retaliation for EU sanctions.

Morawiecki visited guards, troops and police at the border on Tuesday before turning his sights on Russia, Belarus’s main international backer.

“This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin,” Morawiecki told the Polish parliament.

He said migrants were being used as “human shields to destabilise the situation in Poland and the EU”.

Germany, which accused Lukashenko of “unscrupulously” exploiting migrants by sending them to the Polish border, called Wednesday for new EU sanctions against Belarus.

“Lukashenko must realise that his calculations are not working,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. “The European Union cannot be blackmailed.”

EU diplomats told AFP the bloc was working to expand the existing sanctions. The EU said it was also pushing more than a dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, to prevent their nationals from leaving for Belarus.

‘I am not a madman’

The EU accuses Lukashenko of trying to destabilise the EU by encouraging migrants to its borders—especially Poland and Lithuania—in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Belarus over his regime’s dismal human rights record.

“This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime,” European Commission spokesman Peter Stano told journalists Tuesday.

Belarus denies the claims and accuses Poland of violating human rights by refusing to allow the migrants in.

“We are not seeking a fight,” Lukashenko told the state news agency Belta.

“I am not a madman, I understand perfectly well where it can lead,” he added.

“But we will not kneel.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed Western military “adventures” in the Middle East for prompting migrants to flee the region.

“Why, when it comes to refugees heading to the European Union from Turkey, did the EU provide funding to keep them on Turkish territory?” he told reporters.

“Why can’t the Belarusians be helped in the same way?”



Border crisis

The crisis came to a head on Monday when hundreds of migrants attempted to cross the border but were blocked by rows of Polish police, soldiers and border guards behind barbed wire.

Both Poland and Belarus said Tuesday that between 3,000 and 4,000 migrants were now in an improvised camp at the border, near the Polish village of Kuznica.

Journalists have been blocked from the area, but videos released by Belarusian and Polish authorities showed the migrants massed along the razor-wire, huddling by fires and in tents as temperatures hovered around freezing.

The Belarusian border guard service said the migrants in the camp were mostly Kurds, that their physical and mental condition was “extremely poor”, and they lacked water, food and the means to wash themselves.

“The situation is aggravated by the large number of pregnant women and infants among the refugees, who must spend the night on the ground in negative temperatures,” it said.


Thousands of migrants have crossed or attempted to cross from Belarus into the eastern EU member states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in recent months.

Lithuanian lawmakers voted Tuesday to impose a state of emergency along the Belarus border, effective from midnight.

Some migrants who made it into Poland told AFP last month that they had been trapped in the woods for a week, with Belarus refusing to allow them to return to Minsk and fly home, while Poland would not let them cross to make asylum claims.

Warsaw has drawn sharp criticism for its hardline approach to the crisis that has seen guards routinely push back migrants and refugees on the border.

(AFP)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M SINKS SHIPS
US Navy boosts monitoring of subs after falsified steel tests


The Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Mexico undergoing sea trials in 2009 (AFP/Handout)

Tue, November 9, 2021,

The US Navy has stepped up monitoring of its submarines after a former metallurgist for a company that supplied steel for the vessels was found to have falsified test results.

Elaine Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, pleaded guilty on Monday to falsifying test results that measured the strength and toughness of steel used in navy subs, the Justice Department said.

Thomas, former director of metallurgy at Bradken Inc., a steel foundry in Washington state, admitted to carrying out the fraud for more than 30 years, assigning passing grades to steel that had failed tests.

Bradken is the leading supplier of cast high-yield steel used by prime contractors such as General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries to build submarine hulls.

The steel castings must meet "rigorous" navy specifications for strength and toughness and the Justice Department said about half of the Bradken castings had failed laboratory tests.

"(Thomas) falsified test results to hide the fact that the steel had failed the tests," the department said in a statement.

"Thomas falsified results for over 240 productions of steel, which represent a substantial percentage of the castings Bradken produced for the Navy," it said.

The fraud was discovered in May 2017 by a lab employee who found that test cards had been altered by Thomas and alerted Bradken management.

Thomas worked at the Tacoma foundry from 1977 to May 2017 and was named director of metallurgy in 2009. She pleaded guilty to falsifying tests from about 1985 until her retirement in 2017.

"Thomas's false statements and misrepresentations caused the prime contractor to install substandard components on naval submarines, and caused the Navy to accept those submarines and place them into service, thereby potentially placing naval personnel and naval operations at risk," the government complaint against Thomas said.

The US Navy had no immediate comment on Thomas's conviction but the Justice Department said the navy "has taken extensive steps to ensure the safe operation of the affected submarines."

"Those measures will result in increased costs and maintenance as the substandard parts are monitored," it said.

The Pentagon took delivery of dozens of submarines between 1985 and 2017, about 40 of which are still in service.

According to the complaint, Thomas told investigators that she had used her "engineering judgment" while changing the results of certain tests.

Thomas criticized a particular test that was conducted at -100 degrees Fahrenheit (-73 degrees Celsius) on the grounds that it was a "stupid requirement" and a "stupid number" to test because nothing operated at -100F in the water.

Thomas will be sentenced on February 14, 2022 by US District Court Judge Benjamin Settle. She faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

sl/cl/jh

Climate change and fires: Bolivia's forests in peril

Martín SILVA
Tue, 9 November 2021


The hyacinth macaw is listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 specimens left (AFP/AIZAR RALDES)

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air -- the equivalent of 192 million metric tons for Bolivia in 2020, according to Global Forest Watch 

(AFP/AIZAR RALDES)



In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species 

(AFP/AIZAR RALDES)


Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia between January and August 2021 (AFP/AIZAR RALDES)

The road through San Matias, Bolivia, is a no man's land. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of once lush forest are now a wasteland of twisted, carbonized tree stumps.

It is a protected area, but San Matias -- which also hosts subsistence farmers, cattle ranches and quartz mines -- burns every year as land is cleared for the next planting season.

The practice is legal during May and June, after the rainy season, with each farmer allowed to burn 20 hectares -- also in the reserve located in Bolivia's eastern Santa Cruz department, near the border with Brazil.

The limit is often deliberately exceeded, and the fines negligible. And increasingly, the fires just take on a life of their own, fueled by ever drier, hotter conditions.

"It came from that bush... over there!" said Antonio Tacuchava, 76, pointing to the spot where the most recent blaze came within a kilometer (0.6 miles) of his straw house in September.

A former farmer who now keeps a few chickens and other small animals for domestic consumption, Tacuchava is one of 130 families in Comunidad Candelaria, a hamlet at the gates of the San Matias park.

Locals raise cattle and grow corn, cassava, bananas and sugar cane on small plots.

- 'Like a match' -

Like the handful of large, commercial ranches in the park, the subsistence farmers take part in the annual burning at the start of the dry season -- before it gets too hot, dry and risky.

"A spark here, near these houses, is like a match," said Tacuchava, with his neat white moustache and sun-tanned face.

Yet despite their precautions, multiple out-of-control fires raged around the settlement from July to September this year.

Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched 2.6 million hectares of land in Santa Cruz in the first ten months of the year.

The Friends of Nature Foundation, a Bolivian NGO, estimates that forest fires destroyed more than 2.3 million hectares of forests and grassland in the country in 2020, and 6.4 million hectares in 2019.

According to the NGO Global Forest Watch, Bolivia in 2020 became the country with the third-largest loss of virgin forest after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- passing Indonesia for the first time.

It is a vicious cycle of climate change fueling forest fires, and vice versa.

- Fauna, flora at risk -

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air.

According to green group WWF: "To have any chance of restricting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement (on curbing climate change), more needs to be done to cut carbon emissions from forest fires."

As temperatures rise in step with greenhouse gas emissions, dwindling green vegetation and water resources make fires more likely.

Already, the WWF said, fires in many parts of the world are bigger, more intense and longer-lasting than they used to be.

In 2009, Bolivia's environment ministry estimated that at loss rates then, all the country's forests would be gone by 2100.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under former leftist president Evo Morales, who for years encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production.

Santa Cruz is the Bolivian department most affected by fires.

In San Matias park, which at 30,000 square kilometers (11,600 square miles) is the size of Belgium, the dirt roads are cracked and dry and lined with thousands of half-burnt trees that creak as they are slowly consumed from inside.

"Recovering from fires can take decades," Bolivian biologist Juan Carlos Catari told AFP.

"There are places that have lost more than half their wealth of flora."

- 'No water' -

At Santo Corazon, another settlement in San Matias some 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Comunidad Candelaria, residents say longer, more frequent droughts are making life difficult.

Dalcy Cabrera, a housewife of 36, opens a tap in her house, but nothing comes out.

"In times of drought, there is no water," she told AFP.

According to village chief Jorge Suarez, 54, "this year, we had no spring." The rains that usually mark the arrival of spring only came months later.

"It is worse for the animals that live in the forest," he said. "This worries me a lot."

According to Catari, "most large animals can escape the fires because they move quickly, but reptiles like lizards and snakes get caught in the fire and become intoxicated with smoke because they don't move fast."

In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species.

One of them is the hyacinth macaw, listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 individuals left.

There are some 300 in San Matias, trying to hatch eggs this year despite fires raging all around them.

Fire ash accumulates in bodies of water, asphyxiating fish and crustaceans that serve as food for other species including the park's many lizards, which are at risk of "a mass die-off," according to veterinarian Felix Rivas.

msr/yow/lbc/mlr/to

Escaped fox raised as a dog caught in Peru

Issued on: 09/11/2021 -

An Andean fox is seen walking on a road in Argentina in June 2020 

FRANCISCO RAMOS MEJIA AFP/File

Lima (AFP) – An escaped fox, whose owners thought it was a dog, has been caught and sent to a zoo after terrorizing a Lima neighborhood, Peruvian authorities said Tuesday.

The medium-sized, eight-month old Andean fox named Run Run wreaked havoc on small farms in the Comas neighborhood, eating ducks, chickens and guinea pigs much to the chagrin of its owners' neighbors.

"Following a patient pursuit, the Forest and Wildlife Service (Serfor) managed to catch the Andean fox, called Run Run, while it wandered close to the Comas district," said the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation in a statement.

Serfor officials used a tranquilizer dart to catch the fox after throwing it food on Monday night, the ministry said.

Run Run is in good health and has been taken to a Lima zoo, where the fox has quickly become the star attraction.

A local newspaper said Run Run devoured 15 guinea pigs and six chickens over the weekend alone.

Another newspaper spoke to a neighbor who said she had befriended the fox and had been feeding it grilled chicken.

The fox's former owners paid 50 soles (close to $15) to buy what they thought was a Siberian Husky for their daughter at a back street animal market where they were conned by animal traffickers.

"They said it's a wolf-dog, but we didn't know it was a fox. It ate normally, like any dog, but as it was growing it was clear that it wasn't a dog," Maribel Sotelo, who bought the animal for her daughter, told America Television.

The government says the Andean fox is a victim of wild animal trafficking, a crime that is punishable by three to five years in jail.

© 2021 AFP

Australian man, 60, uses pocket knife to fight off crocodile

Issued on: 10/11/2021

Saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded since they were declared a protected species in 1971, with recent attacks reigniting debate about controlling them 

WILLIAM WEST AFP/File

Brisbane (Australia) (AFP) – A 60-year-old Australian man escaped the jaws of a large crocodile by stabbing it repeatedly in the head with his pocket knife as it dragged him into a river, local authorities said Wednesday.

After surviving the terrifying attack at a remote riverbank in Australia's far northern Cape York Peninsula, the injured man drove himself to hospital, the Queensland state environment department said.

The man had gone fishing on his property last week near Hope Vale, about five hours' drive from Cairns, and shooed away a bull from the riverbank so he could take over the spot.

Then, the crocodile struck.

"He described seeing the crocodile seconds before it lunged at him, knocking him over as he was about to cast his fishing rod," the department said in a statement

He grabbed onto the branch of a mangrove tree in a desperate attempt to stay out of the river as the crocodile's jaws wrapped around his boots. But he quickly lost the tug-of-war and was pulled in.

"The man said that as he entered the water, he managed to retrieve his knife from his belt and stabbed the crocodile in its head until it let him go."

The man then scrambled up the bank and drove to Cooktown Hospital for treatment. He was later flown to Cairns Hospital, where he is still recovering a week later.

Wildlife officers who interviewed him Tuesday confirmed that his injuries were consistent with a crocodile attack.

They would not attempt to capture the reptile -- which was believed to be attracted to the area by the presence of the bull -- because it is too remote.

Saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded since they were declared a protected species in 1971, with recent attacks reigniting debate about controlling them.

The "salties", which can grow up to seven metres long and weigh more than a tonne, are a common feature of the vast continent's tropical north.

Known as "croc country", the area sees attacks relatively frequently but they are rarely fatal, with locals and visitors warned to keep their distance from waterways.

© 2021 AFP

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE

'Science and solidarity': Why Puerto Rico leads US in Covid vaccinations

Issued on: 10/11/2021 


San Juan (AFP) – Puerto Rico has an underfunded health care system, high levels of poverty and its infrastructure remains devastated by a major hurricane that swept through the island in 2017.

So how is the US territory leading the rest of the country in Covid vaccinations?

Experts credit the surprising success to two major factors: a sense of solidarity forged from past brushes with disasters, and a public health response untainted by political polarization seen on the mainland.

No fewer than 74 percent of the island's 3.2 million people are now fully vaccinated -- well above the US total of 58 percent -- but also ahead of wealthy and liberal northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Vermont.

"Everyone should get vaccinated," Jose de Jesus, a retired government employee, told AFP.

"You have to take care of yourself, you have to live life until you can," added the 74-year-old, who happily got a Moderna booster shot last week.

As a result of the high uptake, Puerto Rico is crushing its coronavirus curve, with daily cases currently running at three per 100,000 people compared to 22 for the country as a whole, and deaths at 0.1 per 100,000.

The situation is the complete opposite of what was expected at the start of the pandemic, when the odds seemed stacked against the Caribbean archipelago.

Puerto Rico's poverty rate is 43 percent, more than double that of Mississippi, the poorest US state.

Its government is facing an ongoing financial crisis that skyrocketed debt in 2017, and forced the imposition of a drastic austerity policy.

A hammer blow came in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, leaving nearly 3,000 dead. Many of the victims perished from a lack of resources and poor post-disaster response. The storm struck the island less than a month after Hurricane Irma passed by, causing vast power outages.

After that, protests in 2019 led to the resignation of a governor, Ricardo Rossello, and an earthquake destroyed nearly 8,000 homes in January 2020.

Lessons learned

"I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking the pandemic would be handled as badly as the responses to Hurricane Irma and Maria," Monica Feliu Mojer, spokesperson for the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico organization that advocates for science in Puerto Rico, told AFP.

Instead, though, the memory of these disasters has made "people do their part," creating a critical wave of unity to respond to the challenge.

The Puerto Rican government began vaccinating in December 2020, like the rest of the United States.

And in just a few weeks, professional groups, hospitals, universities, private corporations and non-profit organizations joined the effort, collaborations key to the later Covid vaccination campaign.

Paradoxically, the trauma of Hurricane Maria prepared Puerto Ricans to face the coronavirus.

The work of the NGO VOCES, which has administered more than 378,000 doses since January, is an example of this.

According to its founder, Lilliam Rodriguez, the organization began in 2013 to promote vaccinations against various diseases.

After the hurricane destroyed vaccine dose stockpiles, the NGO's mission changed. Instead of just advocating for immunization, it began receiving funding and vaccines, and its workers "went to the fields, to the neighborhoods, to administer them," Rodriguez recalls.

"That prepared us to develop skills of first responders in the area of public health and vaccination. What we're doing now is not very different to what we did after Maria," she adds.
Sticking to the science

Feliu Mojer points to another key to the success of the vaccination push.

Unlike what happened in the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico "has not politicized" the response to the pandemic.

"In the United States there is a relationship between people, their political party and their willingness to get vaccinated," says the expert, something that does not exist in Puerto Rico.

On the island, "the main parties are not organized around conservative or progressive ideologies, but status preferences" over the future of the island's political relationship with the United States, she explains.

That unity allowed the government to take tougher preventative measures over the summer, at the height of the global wave driven by the Delta variant.

The government reimposed restrictions like masking and ordered vaccination or weekly negative PCR test for public employees, as well as for workers and customers of certain businesses like restaurants and gyms. Public response was largely favorable.

The success "has been a combination of science and solidarity," sums up Feliu Mojer.

© 2021 AFP

Europe's battle to curb Big Tech

The so-called GAFAM are still targeted by the EU and US for a number of allegedly unfair practices 

JUSTIN TALLIS AFP/File

Issued on: 10/11/2021

Paris (AFP) – US tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft -- collectively dubbed GAFAM -- have been accused of not paying enough taxes, stifling competition, stealing media content and threatening democracy by spreading fake news.

As a European Union court rules Wednesday on a 2.4-billion euro ($2.8-billion) anti-trust fine on Google, we look at how the bloc has tried to regulate Big Tech.
Nobbling competition

The digital giants are regularly criticised for dominating the market by elbowing out rivals.

The EU has slapped a total 8.25 billion euros in fines on Google for abusing its dominant market position across several of its products.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg will rule Wednesday on Google's challenge to a 2.4-billion-euro fine imposed by the EU Commission in 2017 for abusing its power over its rivals in online shopping.

Microsoft was fined 561 million euros by the EU in 2013 for imposing its search engine Internet Explorer on users of Windows 7.

Amazon, Apple and Facebook are also the targets of EU probes for possible violations of competition rules.

The EU has also unveiled plans for mammoth fines of up to 10 percent of their sales on tech firms that break competition rules, that could even lead to them being broken up.

- Taxation -

Germany, France, Italy and Spain won a major victory in June when the Group of Seven (G7) agreed to a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15 percent mainly aimed at the tech giants.

For years they have paid little or no tax through complex tax avoidance schemes.

In one of the most notorious cases, the European Commission in 2016 found that Ireland granted "illegal tax benefits to Apple" and ordered the company to pay 13 billion euros plus interest to the Irish taxpayer.

After a EU court later ruled in favour of Apple, the Commission turned to the European Court of Justice to appeal.

The following year, Amazon was told to pay back 250 million euros to Luxembourg over similar abuses there.
Personal data

Tech giants are regularly criticised over how they gather and use personal data.

The EU has led the charge to rein them in with its 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, which has since become an international reference.

They must ask for consent when they collect personal information and may no longer use data collected from several sources to profile users against their will.

Amazon was fined 746 million euros in July by Luxembourg authorities for flouting the EU's data protection rules.

After having fined Twitter nearly half a million euros, the Irish regular opened a probe into Facebook in April after the personal data of 530 million users was pirated.

France has also fined Google and Amazon a total of 135 million euros for breaking rules on computer cookies.
Fake news and hate speech

Social networks are often accused of failing to rein in misinformation and hate speech.

The European Parliament and member states agreed to force platforms to remove terrorist content, and to do so within one hour.

EU rules now also forbid using algorithms to spread false information and hate speech, which some major platforms are suspected of doing to increase ad revenue.

- Paying for content –

GAFAM are accused by media outlets of making money from journalistic content without sharing the revenue.

To tackle this an EU law in 2019 created a form of copyright called "neighbouring rights" that would allow outlets to demand compensation for use of their content.

After initial resistance, Google signed agreements to pay for content with several French newspapers last year, a world first.

However, it did not stop the company being fined half-a-billion euros by France's competition authority in July for failing to negotiate "in good faith" with news organisations. Google has appealed.

© 2021 AFP

Nasa bumps moon landing back to 2025 at the earliest

Agency says funding issues, along with delays tied to 

Bezos legal challenge, will push back first landing in a half century

Nasa's Space Launch System, which will send astronauts to the moon on the Artemis missions. Photograph: Nasa/AFP/Getty Images


Associated Press
Wed 10 Nov 2021

Nasa has delayed putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration.

The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half century.

In announcing the delay on Tuesday, the Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, said Congress had not provided enough money to develop a landing system for its Artemis moon program and more money was needed for its Orion capsule. In addition, a legal challenge by Jeff Bezos’s rocket company, Blue Origin, stalled work for months on the Starship lunar landing system under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Officials said technology for new spacesuits also needed to ramp up before astronauts could return to the moon.


Nasa stacks Orion capsule atop Artemis 1 as moon mission nears

Nasa is still targeting next February for the first test flight of its moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, with an Orion capsule. No one will be onboard.

Instead, astronauts will strap in for the second Artemis flight, flying beyond the moon but not landing, in 2024. That would bump the moon landing to at least 2025, according to Nelson.


“The human landing system is a crucial part of our work to get the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface, and we are getting geared up to go,” Nelson told reporters. “Nasa is committed to help restore America’s standing in the world.”

Nelson made note of China’s ambitious and aggressive space program and warned it could overtake the US in lunar exploration.

Nasa’s last moon landing by astronauts occurred during Apollo 17 in 1972. Altogether, 12 men have explored the lunar surface.

During a National Space Council meeting in 2019, the former vice-president Mike Pence called for landing astronauts on the moon within five years “by any means necessary”. Nasa had been shooting for a lunar landing in 2028, and pushing it up by four years was considered at the time exceedingly ambitious, if not improbable.
Congress will need to increase funding, beginning with the 2023 budget, in order for Nasa to have private companies competing for the planned 10 or more moon landings by astronauts, Nelson said.

The space agency also is requesting a bigger budget for its Orion capsules, from $6.7bn to $9.3bn, citing delays during the coronavirus pandemic and storm damage to Nasa’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the main manufacturing site for SLS and Orion. Development costs for the rocket through the first Artemis flight next year stand at $11bn.

The vice-president, Kamala Harris, will convene her first National Space Council meeting, as its chair, on 1 December. Nelson said he had updated her on the latest schedule and costs during their visit to Maryland’s Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday.

 

SIMON WOLFE: World has been silent while African prize falls to pieces

Could it be that a policy of even-handedness had gone too far?

08 NOVEMBER 2021 - SIMON WOLFEBUSINESS DAY SOUTH AFRICA

At the time of writing last Monday, rebel forces were steadily advancing on Addis Ababa and nine factions have reportedly formed a political alliance to “push for a political transition in Ethiopia”. It looks like the game is up for Nobel peace prize laureate and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Abiy launched a full-scale military assault on the Tigray region in response to an attack by the Tigray People Liberation’s Front (TPLF) on army headquarters in November 2020. With military support from Eritrea, a long-time foe of the TPLF, he promised a swift victory. A year later, Abiy stands on a precipice. He declared a state of emergency on Wednesday and called on former soldiers to defend the capital against a possible attack.

The humanitarian situation in Tigray is overwhelming. There are credible reports of thousands of deaths and more than 1-million people displaced. The UN says aid supplies have not entered the region since mid-October. It is facing widespread famine.

This week a joint investigation by the UN and an Ethiopian state-appointed human rights commission found “serious abuses and violations of human rights, humanitarian and refugee law” by all sides, and said it “has reasonable grounds to believe that a number of these violations may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes”.

The attack on Tigray in 2020 was a major miscalculation by the federal forces. The TPLF, which ran the country for 27 years, had no intention of folding. “PM Abiy threw an ill-trained peasant army against a battle-hardened, formidable army with an iron will to fight and expected to win,” said Rashid Abdi, a Horn of Africa expert. Last week’s takeover of Dessie and Kombolcha by TPLF forces, which gives them access to an airport, and the alliance with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) is likely to change the balance of power.

With 100-million people and two decades of double-digit economic growth, Ethiopia plays a central role in the stability and security of the Horn of Africa. Its unravelling threatens a region that has already seen a military coup in Sudan in October and flailing regimes in South Sudan and Somalia.

Early on in his administration, US President Joe Biden addressed the AU summit of African presidents and reaffirmed his commitment to the continent. US support for Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the head of the World Trade Organization, the interest in the African Continental Free Trade Area, and the strongly worded statements by US secretary of state Antony Blinken against human rights abuses, indicated that America was truly “back”.

Events last week suggest the US dropped the ball. Up to now, the US deployed diplomacy and gentle threats to ease the tensions between the two sides. It refrained from singling out responsibility in an attempt to stay neutral. On Tuesday, the US finally made a move. Biden announced a suspension of Ethiopia’s special duty-free access in January 2022 under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), telling the US Congress that “Ethiopia’s “gross violations of internationally recognised human rights” made it ineligible for Agoa under the law.

If this suspension is enforced it would affect Ethiopia’s exports to the US of up to $200m each year. In response, and as a result of the TPLF’s march towards the capital, Ethiopia’s sovereign dollar bond and its Eurobonds plunged on Wednesday.

Other world leaders have finally woken up. The AU has been conspicuously absent to date, but the threat of Addis Ababa falling to the rebels has sent shock waves through the region, especially in Kenya where the fear is that the conflict will spill over the border.

The AU said on Thursday that commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat had met the US special envoy, Jeffrey Feltman, “to discuss efforts towards dialogue and political solutions to the conflict”. The UN Security Council reiterated calls for calm. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called for an East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development  meeting on November 16. It may be too little, too late.

Could it be that a policy of even-handedness went too far, even when reports from Tigray of aid blockages, famine, deaths, rapes and other human right violations made it clear the situation was unbearable? Could it be that the international community could not stomach the idea that a Nobel peace prize laureate had taken the country down the wrong path?

Even Facebook staked out a position — much to the anger of the Ethiopian government. It removed Abiy’s post on Wednesday that called on his fellow countrymen to “organise and march through [any] legal manner with every weapon and power ... to prevent, reverse and bury the terrorist TPLF”. A Meta spokesperson said it violated “our policies against inciting and supporting violence”. Social media has stoked ethnic tensions throughout the year.

What happens next is unclear. The ideal scenario would be for the two sides to lay down arms and reach agreement. That does not seem likely. There is talk of Abiy being deposed by his own government. He is seen as an increasing liability. The TPLF and OLA could capture Addis Ababa, but they would not have legitimacy to rule. They lost the seat of power in 2018 for good reason. The possibility of a broad political alliance to prepare for a post-Abiy transition may be the most promising option of stopping the bloodshed — if the more than 80 ethnic groups in Ethiopia can agree. 

Peaceful transitions are hard. Zambia is one of the few recent examples of a successful transfer of power with the election of Hakainde Hichilema in August 2021. Even then, it was far from certain that the incumbent, Edgar Lungu, would step down without a fight. Sudan, once feted for toppling Omar al-Bashir in 2019, is now in crisis. South Sudan fell into civil war just two years after independence. Most transitions in the region end in tragedy.

As the TPLF circles and Abiy entrenches his position, the world must act. It needs to use its diplomatic, financial and military powers to avert disaster. The fate of Ethiopia hangs in the balance.

• Wolfe, an international lawyer based in the UK, is MD of Marlow Strategy.

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk faces probe for insulting Turkey’s founder

Following an Istanbul court’s decision to launch an investigation into “Nights of Plague,” the recent novel by Orhan Pamuk, many writers and activists are rallying to support the Nobel laureate.

Turkish author and Nobel Prize in literature winner Orhan Pamuk attends the Vargas Llosa: Cultura, Ideas Y Libertad seminar at Casa de America on March 30, 2016, in Madrid, Spain. - Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

Nazlan Ertan
@NazlanEr

November 9, 2021

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s only Nobel Prize laureate in literature, faces judicial investigation once again after an Istanbul court decided to follow up on charges that Pamuk’s most recent novel, “Nights of Plague,” insults Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk.

The charges are being brought by Tarcan Uluk, a lawyer from the Aegean port city of Izmir, who says that Kolagasi Kamil, one of the main characters in the historical fiction, is a thinly veiled avatar of Turkey’s founder. “Nights of Plague” is set in Minger, an imaginary, multiethnic and multifaith Ottoman island on the Aegean Sea in 1901, as a pandemic hits the island and quarantine measures are imposed.

“The figure of Kamil (an ambitious and single-minded military officer whose meteoric rise makes him the president of the island) mocks the figure of Ataturk,” Uluk told Al-Monitor, explaining that he filed a criminal complaint to Izmir’s chief prosecutor’s office shortly after the novel came out based on penal code articles that protect Ataturk and national symbols of Turkey. “We demanded that this novel, which insults Ataturk and the Turkish flag … [be] pulled off the shelves immediately.”

Izmir prosecutors have passed the file to Istanbul on the grounds that the publisher of the novel was based there. Following the testimony of the author, the prosecutors decided on nonprosecution.

“We then appealed the nonprosecution, and a night court ruled earlier this week after studying the file that the investigation would be reopened," said Uluk, who defines himself as a staunch Turkish nationalist and an unyielding Kemalist. “I have to see the official verdict of the court yet, but I assure you that we will pursue the case till the end.”

Many activists, lawyers, artists and writers came out to extend their support to Pamuk and express their anger at the reversal of the nonprosecution decision, calling it a “disgrace.” The first reaction came from pianist Fazil Say. “The decision of nonprosecution given against him is reversed and an investigation is launched,” he tweeted, posting a photo of himself with Pamuk in 2005. “It is a disgrace for the country; it is total ignorance and archaism. What has been done to one of the world's most well-known authors is back to the dark ages.”

Zeynep Oral, the chair of PEN Turkey, expressed disbelief that the investigation was reopened. “Investigation on Orhan Pamuk? Wow. It is the jurists who do not read, who fail to understand what they read and cannot understand the basics of fiction that cause all the harm to this country,” she tweeted.

Oral’s words refer to other Turkish authors who had to face a judge to defend fictional characters. In 2006, writer Elif Shafak had to appear before a court to defend herself against charges of “insulting Turkishness” due to a comment made by one of the characters in her novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul.” Kemal Kerincsiz, a nationalist lawyer, had taken on Shafak for the remarks of a minor character, who said, “My father is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian … all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some Turk named Mustapha!”

Kerincsiz was also the name behind the 2005 trial of Pamuk for “insulting Turkishness” by telling a Swiss journal that “a million Armenians had been killed in these lands.” The case against Pamuk had been dropped on the first hearing.

When Pamuk’s “Night of Plague” was released in March, many nationalist and Islamist pundits rapped him for what they called the likeness between Kamil and Kemal Ataturk, accusing Pamuk of trying to curry favor with the West by attacking Turkey and Ataturk. Finally, Yapi Kredi Yayincilik (YKY), Orhan Pamuk’s publisher, issued a press release in April denying that the book belittled Ataturk, saying that Kamil was “a heroic figure for the people of the fictional island of Minger.”

The YKY release also included a statement that quoted Pamuk as saying that the novel, on which he worked for five years, “shows no disrespect to Ataturk and the heroic founders of the nation-states established from the ashes of Empire.”

“On the contrary, the novel was written with respect and admiration for these libertarian and heroic leaders. As those who read the book will see, Kamil is a hero of many virtues who is loved by the public,” Pamuk said in the release. According to the Turkish press reports, this was very much in line with the statement made to the prosecutor on charges brought by Uluk.

“It is tragicomic to invite a Nobel laureate to elaborate on the characters in his novel, to get him to comment, shed light or dismiss any resemblance to figures in power now or in the past. Such actions are in contradiction on freedom of expression, which … I believe should much more concern us than giving so-called protection to the people in power,” said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a human rights lawyer and commentator for Al-Monitor.

In an interview with independent news outlet Bianet in August, Pamuk said, “Kamil opposes the sultan, feudalism and the old regime when he says ‘long live freedom.’ The biggest, most magical, most powerful ideological concept is freedom. We understand that when Kamil calls out to the crowd in the square saying ‘long live freedom.’ This, of course, refers to lack of freedoms in today’s Turkey.”

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/11/nobel-laureate-orhan-pamuk-faces-probe-insulting-turkeys-founder#ixzz7Bnlp5PK0