BOLSONARO TRUMPISTA

The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup?

President Bolsonaro has warned of voter fraud and suggested he would dispute a loss in October’s vote, but the political establishment believes he lacks support to stage a coup.

President Jair Bolsonaro greeting supporters last month in Salvador, Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro has consistently attacked voting machines in the country as susceptible to fraud, leading to questions about his willingness to accept an election loss.

By Jack Nicas and André Spigariol
Jack Nicas and André Spigariol, correspondents in Brazil, spoke to more than 35 judges, generals, diplomats and government officials to understand the risk to Brazil’s election.
Aug. 22, 2022

BRASÍLIA — A simple but alarming question is dominating political discourse in Brazil with just six weeks left until national elections: Will President Jair Bolsonaro accept the results?

For months, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines as rife with fraud — despite virtually no evidence — and Brazil’s election officials as aligned against him. He has suggested that he would dispute any loss unless changes are made in election procedures. He has enlisted Brazil’s military in his battle. And he has told his tens of millions of supporters to prepare for a fight.

“If need be,” he said in a recent speech, “we will go to war.”

With its vote on Oct. 2, Brazil is now at the forefront of the growing global threats to democracy, fueled by populist leaders, extremism, highly polarized electorates and internet disinformation. The world’s fourth-largest democracy is bracing for the possibility of its president refusing to step down because of fraud allegations that could be difficult to disprove.

Yet, according to interviews with more than 35 Bolsonaro administration officials, military generals, federal judges, election authorities, members of Congress and foreign diplomats, the people in power in Brazil feel confident that while Mr. Bolsonaro could dispute the election’s results, he lacks the institutional support to stage a successful coup.

Brazil’s last coup, in 1964, led to a brutal 21-year military dictatorship. “The middle class supported it. Business people supported it. The press supported it. And the U.S. supported it,” said Luís Robert Barroso, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s former elections chief. “Well, none of these players support a coup now.”

People preparing for a motorcycle ride in Salvador, Brazil, held in support of Mr. Bolsonaro. 

Instead, the officials worry about lasting damage to Brazil’s democratic institutions — polls show a fifth of the country has lost faith in the election systems — and about violence in the streets. Mr. Bolsonaro’s claims of fraud and potential refusal to accept a loss echo those of his ally Donald J. Trump, and Brazilian officials repeatedly cited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as an example of what could happen.

“How do we have any control over this?” Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and Mr. Bolsonaro’s son, said in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Estadão in reference to potential violence. In the United States, he said, “people followed the problems in the electoral system, were outraged and did what they did. There was no command from President Trump, and there will be no command from President Bolsonaro.”

Last week, more than one million Brazilians, including former presidents, top academics, lawyers and pop stars, signed a letter defending the country’s voting systems. Brazil’s top business groups also released a similar letter.

On Tuesday, at an event with nearly every major Brazilian political figure present, another Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, took office as the nation’s new elections chief and warned that he would punish attacks on the electoral process.

“Freedom of expression is not freedom to destroy democracy, to destroy institutions,” he said. His reaction, he added, “will be swift, firm and relentless.”

The crowd stood and applauded. Mr. Bolsonaro sat and scowled.

Mr. Bolsonaro, whose representatives declined requests for an interview, has said that he is trying to protect Brazil’s democracy by strengthening its voting systems.

Among the officials interviewed, there was broad disagreement over whether the right-wing president was driven by genuine concern about fraud or just fear of losing. Mr. Bolsonaro has consistently trailed former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, in opinion surveys; if no one wins a majority of the vote on Oct. 2, a runoff is scheduled for Oct. 30.

Mr. Bolsonaro trails the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the polls.

Credit...Dado Galdieri for The New York Times

Yet there are increasing hopes for a smooth transition of power if Mr. Bolsonaro loses — because he now appears open to a truce.

His allies, including top officials in the armed forces, are about to begin negotiations with Mr. de Moraes about changes to Brazil’s election system designed to address the president’s security critiques, according to three federal judges and one senior administration official close to the planned talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are confidential.

The idea is that Mr. Bolsonaro would back off his attacks on the voting machines, these people said, if election officials agreed to some changes requested by Brazil’s military.

“I have full confidence in Brazil’s election system. That also doesn’t mean it’s infallible,” said Ciro Nogueira, Mr. Bolsonaro’s chief of staff. “I’m sure, as the president says, the people will have their say.” And on Saturday, Mr. Bolsonaro seemed to suggest at a rally that he would accept the results of the election.

Yet Mr. Bolsonaro has made similar comments in the past and agreed to similar a truce last year — and then continued his attacks.

Those attacks have had an effect. Since June, Brazilian Twitter users have mentioned Brazil’s voting machines more than inflation or social-welfare programs in relation to the election, and roughly as much as gas prices, which have been a major point of political debate, according to an analysis by researchers at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation Communications School requested by The New York Times.

Supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in Salvador, Brazil.

A poll last month showed that 32 percent of Brazilians trusted the voting machines “a little” and 20 percent did not trust them at all.

At the same time that many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters are convinced that the vote can be rigged, many more also have guns. Mr. Bolsonaro made it much easier for civilians to purchase firearms under looser restrictions for hunters, and now more than 670,000 Brazilians own guns under such rules, 10 times as many as five years ago.

Inside his administration, Mr. Bolsonaro has been increasingly pulled between two factions.

One side has encouraged the president to stop attacking the voting machines because they believe the issue is unpopular with the more moderate voters he needs to win over and because Brazil’s economy is rebounding, helping his chances of re-election, according to two senior advisers to the president.

They said the other group, led by former military generals, has fed the president misinformation and urged him to keep warning of potential fraud.

Election officials last year invited the military to join a committee to improve the election systems. The military suggested a series of changes, but election officials said they could not be implemented in time for October’s vote.

But military leaders are still pushing for one specific change: for the voting machines’ integrity tests to happen with real voters, instead of in simulations.

For months, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s election officials 

as aligned against him. 

The military is concerned that a hacker could implant malicious software in the voting machines that would recognize simulations and stay dormant during such tests, allowing it to evade detection.

An election-security expert said such a hack is conceivable but unlikely.

Mr. de Moraes, the new elections chief, has signaled that he would be open to changes in the voting systems, though what might be achievable by Oct. 2 is unclear.

Mr. Bolsonaro has long been at odds with Mr. de Moraes, who has led investigations into allegations of disinformation and leaks of classified material that implicate the president and his allies. Mr. Bolsonaro has criticized Mr. de Moraes as politically motivated, and said at a rally last year that he would no longer abide by his rulings, a statement he later walked back.

So Mr. de Moraes’s ascent to lead Brazil’s electoral court was expected to further aggravate tensions.

But in recent weeks, he and Mr. Bolsonaro have begun chatting on WhatsApp in an effort to mend their relationship, according to a person close to the president. When Mr. de Moraes hand-delivered an invitation to his inauguration as elections chief this month, Mr. Bolsonaro gave him a jersey for Corinthians, Mr. de Moraes’s favorite soccer team. (Corinthians is the archrival of Mr. Bolsonaro’s favorite squad, Palmeiras.)

With tensions running high, Brazil’s leadership decided to make Mr. de Moraes’s inauguration on Tuesday — usually a procedural event — a demonstration of the strength of the Brazilian democracy.

Motorcycle caravans have become common at events in support of the president across the country.

In a modernist, underground amphitheater, the heads of the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court and military joined five of Brazil’s six living presidents for the ceremony, including Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula da Silva.

Cameras zoomed in on Mr. Bolsonaro next to Mr. de Moraes at the head table, a rare sight. They whispered to one another, sometimes chuckling, throughout the event. Then Mr. de Moraes got up for his speech. Before the event, he had warned Mr. Bolsonaro that he wouldn’t enjoy it, according to a person close to the president.

“We are the only democracy in the world that calculates and publishes election results on the same day, with agility, security, competence and transparency,” he said. “Democracy is not an easy, exact or predictable path. But it’s the only path.”

The room gave him a 40-second standing ovation. Mr. Bolsonaro was among the first to stop applauding.

Afterward, the two men posed for a photo. They did not smile.

Photo Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Number of Websites Blocked by Russian Authorities Continues to Rise and Now Exceeds 5300

Number of Websites Blocked by Russian Authorities Continues to Rise and Now Exceeds 5300

 August 22,2022– The Russian Communications Freedom NGO, which since 2012 has maintained a list of websites closed by the Russian authorities, says that the number of such sites, both Russian and non-Russian which have been blocked by military censorship since the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine now exceeds 5300.

            Many of the 1500 closures in the first month of the war attracted attention because they involved high-profile sites (roskomsvoboda.org/post/ban-1500-ssylok), but attention has fallen off, an unfortunate development because Moscow is using this method to close sites that have little or nothing to do with military issues (roskomsvoboda.org/post/voen-cenzura-5300-saytov/).

            Another reason both for the decline in attention but a justification for an increase in concern is that many of the decisions affect sites of regional importance and are being taken not by the central authorities but by regional and municipal ones, thus making what RosKomSvoboda does especially important and meriting continued checking. 

Receding water levels of Yangtze in China reveal three Buddhist statues as heatwave continues

Forecasters have warned the sweltering conditions could last well into September amid fears of a "grave situation" in the Sichuan province over the loss of water to the hydropower system.

Monday 22 August 2022 

A once submerged Buddhist statue sits on top of Foyeliang island reef in the Yangtze


Falling water levels of the Yangtze River in China has revealed a submerged island with three Buddhist statues believed to be 600 years old.

Parts of the Yangtze - the world's third longest river - has been drying up amid a severe heatwave which has led to the issuing of a nationwide drought alert.

The three statues were found on the highest part of the island reef in China's southwestern city of Chongqing.

One of the statues on the island - called Foyeliang - depicts a monk sitting on a lotus pedestal.

The heatwave is the most extreme in six decades and has seen temperatures regularly exceed 40C (104F) in a number of cities.

Forecasters have warned the sweltering conditions could last well into September amid fears of a "grave situation" in the Sichuan province over the loss of water to the hydropower system.

Authorities have been working to maintain power and find fresh water to irrigate crops ahead of the autumn harvest.

The severe heatwave across the Yangtze basin has been caused by a larger-than-usual Western Pacific subtropical high.

It has lasted for over two months, reducing hydropower supplies and parching large expanses of arable land.

The Yangtze River supports about a third of the country's population.



Officials in Beijing have warned of the increasing risk of extreme weather in China as a result of climate change - while heavy rainfall has continued to take its toll in other parts of the country.

Water levels on the main trunk of the Yangtze and the flood basin lakes of Dongting and Poyang are now at least 4.85 metres (16ft) shallower than normal - and the lowest on record for the period, officials have said.

Rainfall in the basin has been around 45% lower than normal since July, according to forecasters.

Factories shut down as heatwave hits hydropower in China’s Sichuan province

Tesla, Toyota and Foxconn are among the multinational companies affected by a cascading water and energy crisis


The Three Gorges Dam, downriver from drought-hit Sichuan in Hubei province, China (Pic: Kyla Duhamel/Flickr)

By Alok Gupta
Published on 22/08/2022

From May to July, heavy rainfall flooded Sichuan, China’s hydropower hub resulting in surplus power production. A month later, the region is drought-stricken, with reservoirs dried up, power generation disrupted and factories ordered to shut down.

Hundreds of industries including component suppliers for Toyota, Foxconn and Tesla closed for six days last week. Next, provincial authorities restricted household electricity use.

Drying up the rivers and reservoirs are the heatwaves that began in mid-June and continue to sweep through southern China. Such a prolonged period of heatwave stretching for more than 60 days is happening for the first time since 1961, ramping up household demand for electricity.

“The extreme long lasting heatwaves have driven up cooling demand by 20% combined with low hydropower output due to 50% lower than normal precipitation,” said Yan Qin, an analyst with Refinitiv.

Temperatures have reached 40C in more than 10 provinces, including Sichuan, Henan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui. In a few places, the mercury touched 45C.

Sichuan, China’s largest and most reliable hydropower producer, with around 90 GW of installed hydropower capacity, fulfills 80% of the province’s power demand. It also supplied uninterrupted power when the country faced a coal shortage last year that caused outages in a few provinces.

This year’s hydropower shortage might prompt the government to rethink its energy policy. With a 16% share in the country’s energy mix, hydropower is a crucial pillar in China’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In response to the latest crunch, the government is boosting coal generation as an alternative.

The crisis hasn’t come without warning. “We had predicted that climate change, in the current case, causing an extreme weather event, will affect hydropower potential in China,” Qiuhong Tang, a Chinese Academy of Sciences professor, told Climate Home.

Tang and his colleagues, in a study in 2016, estimated that climate change could reduce hydropower potential by 2% in China during 2020-2070. “But in Sichuan, the loss would be up to 10%.”

Rising temperatures are changing rainfall and evaporation patterns in China. As a result, models project a decrease in annual average runoff for most river basins, particularly in the southern areas.

In the recent weeks, “the heatwave also led to fast evaporation of the river and reservoirs,” Qin added, leading to a sharp drop in water levels.

Can China capture excess rainwater during March-June in its dams to generate hydropower in the lean season? Even if the country stores the excess water during the wet season and transfers it for the dry season, said another study, hydropower generation in the Yalong basin “would be reduced by 4 to 6% compared to the baseline period”.

“This change will largely affect the energy generation in Chongqing and Sichuan, which rely heavily on the Yalong River for hydropower generation,” said the authors.


Brazil election: Lula challenges Bolsonaro’s deforestation record, backs oil development

Urgent adaptation measures are required to deal with the loss of hydropower potential, Tang added. “Government needs to engage more climate scientists and policymakers to deal with the situation, else a source of clean energy that could help the country meet its climate goals will face serious loss.”

“For hydropower, storage management is crucial. Store water when demand is low and generate power from it when demand is high. Climate change affects both electricity demand and inflow into the reservoirs, potentially creating a demand and supply gap,” said Nathalie Voisin, Chief Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, US.

“In some regions, inflows are happening earlier than before, which might be difficult to store until the peak summer months, cascading a water crisis into a power crisis,” she said.

Weather data shows the flood season in southern China began two weeks earlier than usual, and average rainfall hit levels that have not been seen since 1961. And when the heatwave began in mid-June, the water level in Sichuan’s reservoirs started declining, unable to meet the peak summer demand.

“Climate change is challenging hydropower reservoir management worldwide,” added Voisin.

Meanwhile, companies facing significant production losses due to frequent lockdowns imposed as a part of China’s zero-covid-19 policy are getting desperate. Shanghai officials sought priority power access for Tesla suppliers in Sichuan province, sparking a backlash on social media from residents suffering from the power outages.

PAKISTAN

Sindh, Hindu health worker risks lynching after (false) blasphemy charge

by Shafique Khokhar

Ashok Kumar accused of desecrating the Koran to mask personal issues with the person who denounced him. When word spread, a mob tried to kill the man, who was picked up by the police and then arrested. New call by activists against norm-related abuses.



Hyderabad (AsiaNews) - Ashok Kumar, a Pakistani health worker of the Hindu religion has risked being lynched on a (false) charge of blasphemy, for having profaned the Koran. The incident was triggered by a complaint lodged at the police station in Hyderabad, Sindh, by a resident of the area, Dandu Khan, who had allegedly had a heated argument with the accused beforehand.

Investigators opened a file under Section 295B of the Penal Code. Local sources explain that Khan heard from a customer named Nabeel about a desecration of the Koran that had taken place in the nearby Rabbi Centre. Upon arriving at the scene, he questioned Kumar and, not receiving a satisfactory answer, held him responsible for the act against the holy book.

When word of the alleged act of blasphemy spread, a crowd gathered in the area with the aim of taking justice into their own hands and killing the man, who was saved thanks to the intervention of the police who arrested him. At the time of the arrest, the officers explained that initial investigations revealed that the health worker was the victim of a personal dispute with a local resident.

In the past, Pakistan has been the scene of attacks, violence and killings of people accused - even unjustly and without proof - of blasphemy: last year a Sri Lankan citizen was burnt alive in Sialkot; a few years earlier a Christian couple died at the hands of an angry mob in Kasur.

Interviewed by AsiaNews Naveed Walter, president of Human Rights Focus Pakistan (Hrfp), condemned the incident, which was once again linked to the use of blasphemy laws to settle personal disputes. He hoped that the perpetrators would be brought to justice and appealed to the authorities to stop the practice of abuse linked to the controversial regulations, including in the workplace and against underpaid, exploited and disenfranchised minorities.

He says 'there is a reason that most health workers are subject to numerous health problems. Moreover, there is an open question of security in prison for Ashok Kumar and also for his family, who should be guaranteed protection' by the state. Samson Salamat, president of Rwadari Tehreek, calls for strict measures against those who 'spread hatred and terror' against the Hindu community.

'The latest incident in Hyderabad is a crystal-clear example of attempts to target religious minorities under the pretext of blasphemy accusations, when the real culprit in this case too was a Muslim,' he concludes.

The Afro-Italians shaking up Italy's rigid notions of national identity

By Rebecca Ann Hughes • Updated: 22/08/2022 - 

Aida Diouf Mbengue. - Copyright Provided by Mbengu

After moving to Italy from Senegal at four years old, Aida Diouf Mbengue struggled to be accepted both for her hijab and her skin colour.

She was excluded by classmates and belittled by teachers.

Now Mbengue is a rising internet star with one million followers on TikTok thanks to light-hearted, cheeky videos of herself flaunting an array of veils. Her content, she says, aims to fight against the mindsets that beset her childhood.

She is far from alone. Mbengue is part of a burgeoning movement of Afro-Italian influencers and creatives helping to spur a rethink of the Italian identity.
Black Italians erased from history

African Italians are frequently cast as outsiders in Italian society even though their history goes back decades -- the country had been experiencing waves of arrivals from Africa long before the refugee crisis.

Yet, according to sociologist Mauro Valeri, this is “a history that still needs to be written". In a lecture for NYU Florence, Valeri presents notable Black Italians that have fallen into obscurity after 1930s Fascism redefined Italians as Arian and Catholic.

Since then, Valeri argues, Italian identity has been tied to whiteness.

But as geography would have it, Italy has been among the European countries bearing the brunt of refugees and migrants' arrivals over the past few years and the political narrative surrounding the refugee crisis has deepened the struggle for acceptance for Afro-Italians.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League party and former deputy prime minister, is notorious for advocating hard-line anti-immigration policies.

In 2018, the United Nations accused him and other right-wing politicians of “unashamedly embracing racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner rhetoric” to help push through their policies.
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This has strengthened a connection in public consciousness between skin colour, illegal immigration and a physical and cultural threat to Italian society.

For young Afro-Italians, this has meant growing up in an environment of hostility and societal rejection.

A study conducted by Milan's Instituto Cattaneo in 2018 found that Italians are also prone to overestimate the number of non-EU immigrants in Italy with those who identified as right-wing likely to inflate the number the most.
The rise of Afro-Italian voices

But a backlash against anti-immigrant sentiment in Italian society has also been growing in parallel and protests erupted across the country after the killing of George Floyd in the US.

Campaigners then not only expressed solidarity with those suffering racial abuse in the US but also brandished banners reading "I am Italian too" or listing names of victims of racism in the country to draw attention to the rampant home-grown racism.

Italian media has also come under fire from activists for programmes that make use of blackface and the n-word.

This growing disillusionment with the traditional Italian identity has led to the emergence of several Afro-Italian creatives.

The Afro Influencers agency -- created by Moustapha Thiam, an IT analyst, actor and comedian to "give a voice to these young people, to this community that is rarely listened to" -- is making waves in the world of social media.

One of its members is TikTok star Mbengue who has been dubbed “the first Italian TikTokker with a veil” for her sassy videos aiming to dispel assumptions that her skin colour, religion or hijab are obstacles or limitations.

“My videos are changing the mindset of people who will become parents in the future and will pass on these values to their children,” Mbengue explains.

“Being Afro-Italian means fighting and giving a voice to all those who don’t have one because of discrimination and prejudice.”

Singer Samuel Afriyie Artist's own.

Samuel Afriyie, also part of the Afro Influencers collective, arrived in Italy from Ghana at the age of 4. He found fame with his satirical music videos that comment on how he is viewed as an immigrant.

“I’m an immigrant in Italy, I eat rice with chicken, this is the top, Salvini is a flop,” is one line from his song Sono Sono Samuel.

“To combat racism in Italy we need to display strength and the beauty of our ethnicities,” Afriyie says. “We need to display our talent until people believe there is always something to learn from a different culture.”
Embracing dual origins

The continued reluctance of some Italians to accept the non-white Italian identity has also prompted some Afro-Italian creatives to consciously celebrate their dual origins.

Awa Fall Mirone, a reggae singer born in Bergamo to an Italian mother and Senegalese father, travelled to her father's native country to learn more about her roots.

“I went because I didn’t feel I had a foundation on which I could build my own identity,” she says. The journey of self-discovery inspired her song Roots and Culture. The song emphasises the importance of origins and identity and encourages others to value their roots.

Mirone describes being Afro-Italian as “like a bridge between two cities” and sings in multiple languages — Italian, English, Spanish, French, Wolof and Yoruba — to express the co-existing cultures creating her identity.

For her, singing about hybrid identities is also a way of reaching out to others experiencing similar struggles. “The biggest challenge for me was not finding a person who could help me grow up as Afro-Italian,” she says.

She hopes her music will provide that helping hand for future generations of Afro-Italians.

These creatives are finding an increasingly receptive audience for their work.

Mbengue has 80,000 Instagram followers on top of her million fans on TikTok. Mirone’s music video for Roots and Culture has over one million views on Youtube.

Importantly, Mbengue says most of her fans are Italian, and many are not black, so she feels she is having a real impact on wider society.

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Italians without citizenship

This growing cultural reckoning is putting pressure on the political system to help this demographic cement its place in Italian society.

Mbengue is one of over one million second-generation migrants who do not have citizenship. Those born in Italy or who arrive at a young age and do not have at least one Italian parent must wait to be 18 to apply for citizenship.

Now there are calls for changes in citizenship legislation that would see it granted on the basis of jus soli, birthright, or jus culturae, cultural right.

The latter would see citizenship bestowed on children who were born in Italy or moved there before the age of 12 and have completed at least 5 years of schooling.

Heather Merrill, a professor of Africana Studies notes however that while changing citizenship laws is fundamental, it doesn’t mean a sudden eradication of racism necessarily follows.

“There are all sorts of complexities to being a citizen,” she says, and seeing oneself reflected in the media and culture of one’s country is also essential.

Greater representation in Italian culture is key to the normalisation of the Afro-Italian identity, Merrill says, and creative expression and social media are crucial for igniting conversations and interacting with young audiences.

“The creative areas are the way you reach people and the way you do politics in some ways,” she says. “In Italy, I see the effort and the promise of change.”

Turkey has no intention of seizing Syrian Kurdish territory, Erdogan says

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Editorial Staff in Kurdistan

ISTANBUL,— Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey does not intend to seize any Syrian territory despite stepping up its attacks against Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

Erdogan’s comments came days after a Turkish air strikes on a Syrian border post run by regime forces reportedly killed 17 fighters.

A war monitor confirmed that both Kurdish fighters manning Syrian border posts and regime forces were killed in Turkish airstrikes.

The official Syrian news agency said three government soldiers died.

Turkey said it was responding to a strike on its own positions along the border that killed two soldiers.

The exchange of fire marked one of the largest escalations since Ankara and Damascus traded attacks in 2020.

Erdogan appeared to try and calm the tensions in comments to reporters on board his return flight from his first wartime visit to Ukraine.

“We do not have eyes on the territory of Syria because the people of Syria are our brothers,” Turkish media quoted Erdogan as saying.

“The regime must be aware of this.”

Erdogan has for several months threatened to launch new military offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in northern Syria, which include the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which were an essential component of an international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group.

Erdogan’s visit to Ukraine came two weeks after he flew to Sochi for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin that also covered Syria.

Putin’s support was instrumental in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad survive an 11-year conflict against rebel groups backed in part by Turkey.

Erdogan said he told Putin that he wanted to cooperate more closely with Russia in northern Syrian regions where Ankara has been targeting Kurds it views as “terrorists”.

“We are in contact with Russia on every step that we take in Syria,” Erdogan said.

Reproachment with Assad?

The border clash came with fears mounting that Turkey may be preparing to launch its fourth cross-border offensive against Kurdish forces since 2016.

Erdogan accuses the Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan — allied with the United States against Islamic State jihadists — as outlawed militants with links to groups waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

He repeated his catchphrase on Friday that Turkish forces could strike Syrian Kurds “suddenly one night”.

But he also hinted that Turkey may be open to a possible reproachment with Assad after fiercely opposing his regime.

“There should be no resentment in politics,” Erdogan was quoted as saying.

He pointed out that Turkey had made up with its one-time rivals Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in the past few years.

“We need to secure further steps with Syria,” he said without fully explaining what those might involve.

Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu sparked protests in northern Syrian regions under Ankara’s control last week by calling for a “reconciliation” between rebel groups it backs and Assad.

He also revealed last year holding his first brief meeting with a Syrian foreign minister since 2011.

“You should always be at peace,” Erdogan said on Friday. “You should have the opportunity to meet at any time.”

Ankara has conducted three incursions into northern Syria since 2016, seizing hundreds of kilometers of Kurdish land and pushing some 30 km deep into the country, in operations targeting mainly the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

In 2016, the Turkish troops entered the Kurdish northern Syria in an area some 100 km east of Afrin to stop the Kurdish YPG forces from extending areas under their control and connecting Syrian Kurdistan’s Kobani and Hasaka in the east with Afrin canton in the west.

In January 2018, Turkish military forces backed pro-Ankara Syrian mercenary fighters to clear the YPG from its northwestern enclave of Afrin. In March 2018, the operation was completed with the capture of the Kurdish city of Afrin. The flags of Turkey and Syrian rebel groups were raised in the Kurdish Afrin city and a statue of a Kurdish hero Kawa, a symbol of resistance against oppressors for all Kurds worldwide, was torn down.

In 2019, an incursion into Syrian Kurdistan against the YPG drew widespread international condemnation, prompting Finland, Sweden and others to restrict arms sales to Turkey.

Rights groups and displaced Kurdish families have accused Ankara-backed Syrian Islamic mercenary fighters of executions, home confiscations and looting in that border strip.

The worldwide-respected PYD-led Autonomous Administration in Syrian Kurdistan has a secular decentralized self-rule, where equality between men and women, direct democracy, and environmental responsibility are emphasized.

In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan. Turkey on January 20, 2018 launched an operation against the YPG in the Kurdish canton of Afrin and on March 18, the Turkish troops supporting Syrian Islamic mercenary fighters drove the YPG out of Afrin city.

On September 6, 2018, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was proclaimed in Ain Issa. Since then, the Autonomous Administration has been responsible for implementing the model of democratic confederalism in the municipalities and regions in North-East Syria.

The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019. An estimated 12,000 suspected IS members are still held in Kurdish prisons since 2019.

So far over 11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.

Copyright © 2022, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP | Agencies

Joe Biden’s response to Omar Sindi’s letter regarding Turkey’s military operations in Iraqi Kurdistan

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Omar Sindi 

NEW YORK,— A letter from the US President Joe Biden in response Omar Sindi’s letter in regard of Turkish deforestation in Iraqi Kurdistan.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
July 20, 2022

Mr. Omar Sindi Annandale, Virginia

Dear Mr. Sindi,

Thank you for writing to me about U.S. foreign policy. I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

The challenges facing our world today demonstrate how interconnected we are and how the fates of all people are bound up together. The outbreak of a virus overseas can cause profound grief and suffering at home. Conflict a continent away can create unrest that endangers our own security. Economic downturns abroad can mean lost jobs and shuttered businesses in towns across America. Global climate change is already worsening hurricanes in the Gulf, floods in the heartland, and wildfires in the West. No country can solve these problems alone, and America cannot afford to be absent from the world stage. Investing in strengthening our leadership abroad is also an investment in bolstering our security and prosperity at home.

As President, I am determined to repair our alliances, renew our leadership in international institutions, reclaim our credibility, and equip the American middle class to succeed in a global economy. I strongly believe that our Nation is better positioned than any other to lead in the 21st century and to be the greatest force for good in the world. Under my Administration, American political and economic leadership will be rooted in our most cherished values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.

We have returned diplomacy to the center of our foreign policy and are committed to meeting today’s global challenges from a position of strength, working in close cooperation with our allies and partners. I also want to be clear that I will never hesitate to defend the American people or our vital interests, including through the use of force when necessary. We will always stand with our friends around the world to protect our values and to advance peace, security, and prosperity for all.

I appreciate you sharing your views with me, and I will keep your perspective on these important issues in mind as we work to meet the challenges of our time. May God bless America, and may God protect our troops, our diplomats, our development experts, and all those serving in harm’s way.

Sincerely,

Joe Biden.

Omar Sindi, a senior writer, analyst and columnist for Ekurd.net, Washington, United State

Iranian Kurdish PDKI, KDPI parties reunite after 16 years split

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Editorial Staff 

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan region,— The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party – Iran (KDP-I) on Sunday announced their reunification after they split nearly 16 years ago, calling the reunion “a new stage” in their opposition to the Iranian state.

“Today, the Democratic Party is ending an unpleasant period in its history by regaining its unity,” read a joint statement from both parties, adding that the reunion “will be the beginning of a new stage in the struggle of this party against the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran and against any centrist mentality that denies Iran’s multi-ethnicity and the national rights of different components in Iran.”

The PDKI is a Kurdish opposition party that has waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The party split following its 13th congress in 2006, but the PDKI and KDPI have been engaged in several rounds of unification talks over the years.

The statement said that the reunion has been one of the “legitimate demands and sacred wishes” of the people of Iran’s western Kurdish region (Rojhelat), adding that senior members of both sides have never dismissed the idea of reunification, but have considered it “a goal” and not just “a possibility”.

Going forward, the party’s organizations and bodies will reunite and resume under the name of the PDKI and through the “guidance of a common leadership” and “bilateral agreements,” the statement highlighted.

The PDKI was founded in Rojhelat’s Mahabad by Kurdish leader Qazi Muhammad in 1946 under the name of the Democratic Party.

In the 1980s, it fought alongside other Kurdish parties in a war against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops (IRGC) and other security forces in Iran’s Kurdish region when larger opposition eventually forced them out. Since that decade, they have been based in the Kurdistan Region prompting Iran to shell areas in the Region in what it says are efforts to target the group.

The reunification of both parties comes after a rights organization recently reported that Iran has stationed a large number of troops, armed with heavy weaponry, on the border areas between Iran and the Kurdistan Region, in an attempt to “infiltrate” the Region’s borders.

Kurdish armed groups, such as PJAK, Komala and KDPI have been in conflict with the Iranian government for decades, and are seeking greater autonomy in Iranian Kurdistan. These armed Kurdish groups are widely spread across the 60-kilometer border with neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.

Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.

Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.

Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.

Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.

Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan.

Copyright © 2022, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | rudaw.net | Agencies

Iranian Kurdish Komala Rebels Call for International Solidarity

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Editorial Staff 


Marcel Cartier | Exclusive to Ekurd.net

In recent weeks, attacks on Kurdistan have intensified.

Some have made international headlines, such as Turkey’s bombardment of a resort in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Zakho on July 20, which killed nine and injured thirty-three. There has also been speculation of a new Turkish military invasion of Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan, causing concern about a possible deterioration of the security situation across the whole of the region.

However, little has been written in the western press about developments concerning the part of Kurdish soil often forgotten – that of Rojhelat, or Iranian Kurdistan. Over the past few weeks, there has been a renewed push by Iran’s clerical regime to tie the Kurdish resistance to foreign powers, namely Israel.

These accusations have come after Iran’s security institutions first reported the arrest of ten people in late July. This news happened to coincide with the ambushing of four members of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan in Urmia, a city in the West Azerbaijan province.

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry rushed to link the Kurdish rebels to an international conspiracy, proclaiming that “A network of Mossad elements, which penetrated Iran from the Kurdistan region to engage in terrorist and sabotage operations in sensitive centers in Iran… were arrested.”

Komala is a leftist organisation that dates back to 1969, originally taking its place in the resistance against the Shah. As a Kurdish component part of an Iranian-wide socialist movement, it participated enthusiastically in the 1979 revolution, and then waged a protracted struggle against the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Komala would continue to engage in combat with Ayatollah Khomenini’s forces throughout the 1980s.

However, over the past several decades, Komala has largely operated from territory inside Iraqi Kurdistan. From there, it continues to train and graduate new Peshmerga military recruits, although it claims this is for the purpose of self-defense rather than offensive warfare against the Iranian state.

When I visited Komala’s headquarters last year, they were keen to point out that although Peshmerga are often deployed on missions inside Iranian Kurdistan, these have an agitational rather than a military basis. For instance, distributing literature to Kurdish villagers is considered an important task.

Siamak Modarresi, Komala’s Deputy Secretary General, made clear that this was the case with the latest arrest of Komala members, saying “They were unarmed, without any weapons. Their mission was not of any sort of a military character. They were on the way to contact people inside Iran to organise them. These kinds of missions are very common in our party. We’ve been in touch with our people inside Iran mainly like this for decades.”

The Islamic Republic, however, presented photos of square-shaped furniture it said was captured from the Komala detainees that had guns and explosives hidden inside. They alleged that the purpose of their mission was to “bomb a sensitive defence industry centre in the country” and that the planning was coordinated by Israel’s Mossad.

The accusation that Komala is acting as a “proxy of the Zionist regime,” as Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has put it, is nothing new. According to Modarresi, these assertions go back decades to the very foundation of the Islamic Republic.

“Since their very first month as rulers of Iran, they accused all their opponents of being foreigner collaborators and agents. They have tried make such confessions by torture. In nearly all cases, the people who confessed later retracted these confessions after that after they reached a safe haven in other countries.”

The claim of Komala being an agent of foreign powers certainly has many historical parallels. In fact, alleging revolutionaries to be a “fifth column” working on behalf of an external enemy appears to be one of the oldest tricks in the political handbook.

During the Cold War era in the United States, socialists and communists were accused of having their strings pulled by the Soviet Union. Today, those who seek to criticise NATO in the west are branded as Russian agents. Even Vladimir Lenin was labelled as an agent of the German Empire rather than someone with sincere motivations rooted in the working-class struggle.

In all cases, the objective is to delegitimise the actual rationale behind the social movements or causes in question. Indeed, if Kurdish militants are nothing but pawns of Israel, there is no need to address the national oppression faced by Kurds in Iran, who suffer from disproportionate poverty and unemployment, not to mention widespread executions. In fact, the Iranian state refuses to brand Komala as anything other than “separatists,” even though even the most elementary look at their positions clearly indicates that they favour a democratic and federal Iran, not independence for the Kurdistan province. This is most clearly manifested in Komala’s participation in the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran, which includes organisations from other oppressed components inside the country such as the Baloch, Azeri, and Ahwazi.

For Komala, there is concern that Iran is gearing up for what it will present as retribution against the party. Modarresi says this is something he is certain of, although “how and to what extent remains to be seen in the future.” Iran has also said that it will hold others accountable, including the Iraqi Kurdish administration that hosts Komala. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Force warned on July 28th that “punishing the aggressors is on the agenda, because the redlines of Iran’s national security were crossed, planned by Mossad, executed by terrorist groups based in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and aided by the Iraqi Kurdistan leadership.”

Iran has executed several Komala members, as well as those accused of membership, in recent years. In one fairly high-profile case in 2018, the Iranian authorities hung Ramin Hossein Panahi, even after an international outcry that presented his case as littered with human rights abuses from the time of his arrest the previous year.

During these difficult times, what Modarresi considers to be vital is the solidarity of progressive people across the world. “They can do a lot,” he says. “They can contact the human rights authorities and demand that they support the Kurds of Iran – and especially that they are able to access the arrested and prevent them from being tortured, so that there can be a fair trial for them.”

Despite the ongoing threats, the Komala Party seems largely undeterred by the latest accusations that have been leveled at them, posting new photos on numerous social media accounts of the latest graduation ceremony of Peshmerga recruits at their headquarters.

As Modarresi puts it, “We are very popular among people. Komala has found roots more and more especially among the young people. This is perhaps one of the reasons for the regime’s sensitivity and attitude towards us.”

Marcel Cartier is an American hip-hop artist, journalist, filmmaker, writer, and political commentator based in Germany. He has reported on Kurdish nationalism and recording the experiences of anti-ISIS fighters belonging to the YPG and YPJ militias during the Rojava–Islamist conflict. His first book Serkeftin became one of the first major accounts by an English-speaking journalist to gain access to the civil structures created by Kurdish militants in Rojava. You can follow him on Twitter @Cartier_Marcel.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2022 Ekurd.net. All rights reserved

Vodafone to sell Hungarian arm in £1.5bn deal

August Graham
Mon, August 22, 2022 

(PA) (PA Archive)

Vodafone has said it plans to sell its Hungarian arm in a £1.5 billion deal with a domestic company.

The telecommunications giant said it had “entered into heads of terms” – similar to a letter of intent – for the deal.

It would see Hungarian company 4iG take over Vodafone Hungary.

4iG will pay 715 billion Hungarian forints (£1.5 billion), which is 9.1 times its Ebitdaal (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, after leases) for the last financial year.

Bosses said the deal fits well with the hopes of the Hungarian government to create a large locally owned telecommunications giant.

After the purchase, 4iG will be the second biggest mobile and fixed communications company in Hungary.

Vodafone chief executive Nick Read said: “The Hungarian government has a clear strategy to build a Hungarian-owned national champion in the ICT (information and communications technology) sector.

“This combination with 4iG will allow Vodafone Hungary, which has a proud history of success and innovation in the country, to play a major role in the future growth and development of the sector as a much stronger scaled and fully converged operator.

“The combined entity will increase competition and have greater access to investment to further the digitalisation of Hungary.”

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: “It is clear the Hungary government is keen to build its own national telecoms champion with Vodafone prepared to take the cash in exchange for the spin-off.

“In November last year Vodafone’s CEO Nick Read said he was pursuing consolidation in Europe.

“Now the telecoms giant can focus more of its attention on Germany instead, a market it considers to be the most attractive on the continent.

“There is also M&A (mergers and acquisitions) potential for Vodafone in the UK amid recent reports that it considered a merger with Three’s UK division.

“Vodafone’s share price has been in long-term decline, halving since the peak in January 2018, but it still offers an attractive dividend yield.”