STATEMENT

“Where is the sense of urgency?”

Civil society coalition calls out delays in justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia

16 Oct 2022 BY INDEX ON CENSORSHIP

Daphne Caruana Galizia

Five years ago today, investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally assassinated in a car bomb attack in Malta. Our thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues. Together with them, we continue to fight for justice.

It is deeply saddening that we have issued a similar statement every year since Caruana Galizia’s murder. Today should be a day to remember and celebrate her fearless journalism, the far-reaching impact of her incisive writing on financial crime, abuses of power and deep-seated corruption, and her unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth and serving the public’s right to information.

Instead, we must yet again note that progress in criminal investigations and prosecutions has been minimal and intolerably slow. Impunity serves to embolden those who use violence to silence critical journalism and it ends only when all those responsible for the heinous murder have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law: the assassins, intermediaries and the mastermind must be brought to justice without further delay.

Similarly, we must point out the unacceptable lack of implementation of the recommendations made by the landmark Public Inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the exclusion of structured public consultation, including with our organisations, on proposed legal amendments relating to the safety of journalists and SLAPPs, which in the latter case fail to meet international standards. The process provides a historic opportunity for the Government of Malta to implement its obligations under international and European legal and policy frameworks to create an enabling environment for journalism and to protect journalists.

The lack of political will to initiate the effective and systemic reform that is needed casts doubt on whether Malta’s political class has drawn any lessons from Caruana Galizia’s assassination. Where is the sense of urgency to fix the rotten power structures and dangerous conditions for journalists who report on them, violently exposed by the blast five years ago?

Signed by:Access Info Europe
Access to Information Programme (AIP)
ARTICLE 19 Europe
Association of European Journalists-Belgium
Civic Alliance (CA) Montenegro
Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Corporate Europe Observatory
English PEN
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
European Integrity Academy – AntiCorruption Youth Greece
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
IFEX
Index on Censorship
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
International Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI) Ukraine
International Media Support (IMS)
International Press Institute (IPI)
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann
Kosova Democratic Institute
Legal Human Academy
Media Diversity Institute
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
Oživení, z.s. (CZ)
Partners Albania for Change and Development
PEN International
PEN Malta
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Scottish PEN
Society of Journalists, Warsaw
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
Syri i Vizionit
Transparency International EU
Wales PEN Cymru

Teens tackle 21st-century challenges at robotics contest

By Jamey Keaten | AP
October 16, 2022

Robots from different teams compete during the 6th edition of the First Global Robotics Challenge in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. 

(Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

GENEVA — For their first trip to a celebrated robotics contest for high school students from scores of countries, a team of Ukrainian teens had a problem.

With shipments of goods to Ukraine uncertain, and Ukrainian customs officers careful about incoming merchandise, the group only received a base kit of gadgetry on the day they were set to leave for the event in Geneva.

That set off a mad scramble to assemble their robot for the latest edition of the “First Global” contest, a three-day affair that opened Friday, in-person for the first time since the pandemic. Nearly all the 180-odd teams, from countries across the world, had had months to prepare their robots.

“We couldn’t back down because we were really determined to compete here and to give our country a good result — because it really needs it right now,” said Danylo Gladkyi, a member of Ukraine’s team. He and his teammates are too young to be eligible for Ukraine’s national call-up of all men over 18 to take part in the war effort.

Gladkyi said an international package delivery company wasn’t delivering into Ukraine, and reliance on a smaller private company to ship the kit from Poland into Ukraine got tangled up with customs officials. That logjam got cleared last Sunday, forcing the team to dash to get their robot ready with adaptations they had planned — only days before the contest began.

The event, launched in 2017 with backing from American innovator Dean Kamen, encourages young people from all corners of the globe to put their technical smarts and mechanical knowhow to challenges that represent symbolic solutions to global problems.

This year’s theme is carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere is sucked out of the skies and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming

Teams use game controllers like those attached to consoles in millions of households worldwide to direct their self-designed robots to zip around pits, or “fields,” to scoop up hollow plastic balls with holes in them that symbolically represent carbon. Each round starts by emptying a clear rectangular box filled with the balls into the field, prompting a whirring, hissing scramble to pick them up.

The initial goal is to fill a tower topped by a funnel in the center of the field with as many balls as possible. Teams can do that in one of two ways: either by directing the robots to feed the balls into corner pockets, where team members can pluck them out and toss them by hand into the funnel or by having the robots catapult the balls up into the funnels themselves

Every team has an interest in filling the funnel: the more collected, the more everyone benefits.

But in the final 30 seconds of each session, after the frenetic quest to collect the balls, a second, cutthroat challenge awaits: Along the stem of each tower are short branches, or bars, at varying levels that the teams — choosing the mechanism of their choice such as hooks, winches or extendable arms — try to direct their robots to ascend.

The higher the level reached, the greater the “multiplier” of the total point value of the balls they will receive. Success is getting as high as possible, and with six teams on the field, it’s a dash for the highest perch.

By meshing competition with common interest, the “First Global” initiative aims to offer a tonic to a troubled world, where kids look past politics to help solve problems that face everybody.

The opening-day ceremony had an Olympic vibe, with teams parading in behind their national flags, and short bars of national anthems playing, but the young people made it clear this was about a new kind of global high school sport, in an industrial domain that promises to leave a large footprint in the 21st century

The competition takes many minds off troubles in the world, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the fallout from Syria’s lingering war, to famine in the Horn of Africa, and recent upheaval in Iran.

While most of the world’s countries were taking part, some were not: Russia, in particular, has been left out.

Past winners of such robotics competitions include “Team Hope” — refugees and stateless others — and a team of Afghan girls.

 Defend Kurdistan Initiative calls for actions against chemical weapons

The Defend Kurdistan Initiative calls for actions to be organized from 3 November, the UN day of remembrance for all victims of chemical warfare, until 3 December, when demonstrations will be held around Europe.

ANF
NEWS DESK

Saturday, 15 Oct 2022, The Defend Kurdistan Initiative said in a statement that "never before has Turkey committed more war crimes than in 2022. The international focus on the war in Ukraine cannot be used to cover up that Turkey's occupation of Kurdistan has led to numerous cases of war crimes, including the intensive use of chemical weapons and drone attacks."

The statement called for actions to be organized from 3 November, the UN day of remembrance for all victims of chemical warfare, until 3 December, when demonstrations will be held around Europe. "We call - said the statement - for your creativity and solidarity to take action (i.e. go-ins, street-theatre, flash mobs, stadium actions, public video-screenings etc.)"

The statement continued: "Despite the serious allegations regarding Turkey ́s use of chemical weapons, the international community and its responsible institutions such as the OPCW have so far failed to hold Turkey responsible, and neglect to seriously investigate the matter. Both because of Turkey’s invasion into North-Syria/Rojava in 2018/19, which clearly violates international law, as well as now because of its occupation attempts of South-Kurdistan/North-Iraq, ongoing international protests have been held.

The reaction of government officials or representatives of international institutions has so far mostly varied between indifference and active obstruction. OPCW refuses even to receive reports from journalists and researchers. Additionally, all requests made to laboratories in different countries, to analyse samples that had been taken to Europe from guerrilla positions attacked with chemical weapons in South Kurdistan, were declined. This is encouraging the Turkish state to continue its criminal policy without any expectations of accountability. At the same time, many governments around the world justify Turkey's attacks against the Kurdish people and freedom movement as an act of self-defence and the fight against terrorism."

The statement added: "It seems that the Kurdistan Freedom Movement with its radical paradigm of democracy, ecology and women's liberation, developed by its imprisoned mastermind Öcalan, is an obstacle to the power interests of regional and international hegemonic forces. The phrase "Jin Jiyan Azadî", which spread from Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) to the uprisings in Iran and is now shouted all over the world, became the slogan of the women's liberation struggle. In order to silence the call for freedom of women and the peoples they are ready to commit these inhuman war crimes.

We simply cannot stay silent.

Turkey's ongoing war crimes clearly show that Turkey has been encouraged by the silence of the international community and thinks that it has been given a green light to commit war crimes wherever it wants. The unfortunate result of this silence means being an accomplice of Turkey's war crimes."

Debbie Bookchin: Turkey is actually engaged in a grotesque example of ethnic cleansing in Rojava

Debbie Bookchin underlined that Turkish President Erdogan sees the democratic, feminist and ecological system in Rojava as a threat to himself.

EREM KANSOY
LONDON
Wednesday, 12 Oct 2022,


Debbie Bookchin, Secretary General of the Rojava Emergency Committee in the US, spoke to ANF. Debbie Bookchin, who noted that Erdogan's picture of a war against the PKK is actually a war waged against the entire Kurdish people, said that it is in fact another grotesque example of ethnic cleansing.

Stating that as long as NATO membership continues, the Coalition will not take a step towards closing the airspace to Turkey in Rojava, Bookchin said: “Of course, we can put serious pressure on Erdogan to impose some sanctions. With these pressures, Erdogan can take a step back in military operations and approach peace talks with the PKK again. At the moment, we clearly see that the Turkish state is carrying out heavy massacres in the region. It is trying to de-Kurdishize the region and resettle the 'refugees' in Turkey as they did in Afrin.”


The system in Rojava seen as a threat by Turkey

Underlining that Erdogan sees the democratic, feminist, ecological system in Rojava as a threat to himself, Bookchin said: “We clearly see that Erdogan has trampled on human rights. Western state leaders should today be ashamed to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while at the same time remaining silent about Erdogan's attacks on the Kurdish people and Rojava. We will continue to fight. We hope that we will succeed in the coming period in order to change the political approach of the West to the region.”

Swiss Climate Strike Initiative calls for closure of Rojava airspace

The Swiss Climate Strike Initiative has announced that they support the call for the closure of Rojava’s airspace.

ANF
LUCERNE

 
Saturday, 15 Oct 2022, In a statement, the Swiss Climate Strike (Klimastreik Schweiz), emphasized that the people living in Northern Eastern Syria have been building a self-governing region based on grassroots democracy, women's freedom and social ecology values for the for last 10 years.

The statement said: "The gains of the Rojava Revolution have been under pressure from the very beginning. Rojava, which has been fighting against the Islamic State, is being invaded by Turkey today. There is an economic boycott against the region.

Since its last major military operation in 2019, Turkey's war strategy against Rojava has changed. Regular attacks are carried out by drones and artillery to give way to ground operations. The main purpose is to evacuate the region by wearing down the population of the region.”

The statement continued: “These attacks on Rojava have dire consequences for the civilian population. On 18 August this year, 5 children died as a result of the attack by a Turkish drone on a training center for girls supported by the United Nations.

The United States condemned the attack but also has air sovereignty over the region. That's why these attacks are allowed. There is a demand for a no-fly zone over Rojava against these attacks. And we support this demand."

Vigil for Öcalan website publishes interview with lawyer Ibrahim Bilmez

Öcalan's lawyer Bilmez said: "We are calling on everybody to understand that freedom for Öcalan is freedom for the Kurdish people, and freedom for the Kurds is your freedom, too."

ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 16 Oct 2022,

The Vigil for Öcalan website published an interview with one of the Kurdish people's leader's lawyers, Ibrahim Bilmez.

Bilmez said: "This is not the first time we are here in Strasbourg. We have been coming for years. As Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers, we have been trying to do what we can in the justice system here. The European Court of Human Rights is the highest justice institution in Europe, and, as Öcalan’s lawyers, we have open cases in the court and other cases from the past. Some past decisions were positive and others negative. We are working on getting the positive decisions put into practice, because Turkey doesn’t even implement the decisions taken by the court. Just as the Kurdish people have been coming for years to hold a vigil in front of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, so we have also been coming for years to try and see that their decisions are implemented."

With respect to the 2014 Court ruling that found that Öcalan’s imprisonment without the possibility of parole denied him the fundamental ‘right of hope’, which was finally looked at by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers last year, Bilmez said: "Turkey was given until the end of September to respond. However, there was nothing discussed at the September meeting of the Committee of Ministers. We are waiting to see if it is on the agenda for the next meeting, and NGOs in Turkey are working on a submission to the committee to try and push this forward.

On one hand, Turkey is trying to delay everything – not implementing what is demanded and playing for time. And on the other hand, the Council of Europe is assisting Turkey to do this. They do not uphold the fundamental principles and values for which they were established, but are effectively helping Turkey to evade them. Vigils outside the Council and in other places can put more pressure on the Council and on Europe’s justice system. Rights cannot be gained without a struggle. This is an unfortunate reality.

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) [which visited İmrali prison in September], has been visiting İmralı for nearly 24 years. Through these years, we have always informed them of the situation, and they have seen it for themselves, and their reports list some of the injustices. Through the years, we meet with them, and they say: ‘Yes, we have visited. We can’t say anything about the visit. We will prepare a report and give it to the interested states, and if and when they agree, we will make it public. Before then, no information will be available.’ We hope that this time it doesn’t take a year, or even six months. It is nineteen months since we have had any information from our client."

Bilmez added: "In the CPT’s reports there are criticisms and things that need to be changed – such as allowing visits from family and lawyers. But who is going to demand that these happen? Nothing has happened for all that time.

The aim of the international conspiracy [that led to Öcalan’s abduction] was to destroy him. It was not just against Öcalan, but against the Kurdish people and the Kurdish freedom struggle. However, they didn’t get their expected result. Öcalan is isolated in İmralı, but his thoughts and ideas have grown – not only in Kurdistan, but in the whole world. We have seen what happened in Rojava, the resistance against Daesh, and now in Iran, where women are on the streets shouting Öcalan's slogan: Jin Jiyan Azadi. Understanding of Öcalan, both in the region and internationally, has grown with time."

Bilmez also spoke about the importance of removing the PKK from the lists of terrorist organizations and said: "This is very important because it opens the way to a democratic and peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. Delisting is important to put an end to the denial and annihilation policies that have been applied to the Kurdish people by Turkey and also by the international powers. It will open the possibility of a real solution that meets the rights of the Kurdish people. If you insist that the PKK is a terrorist organisation, Turkey cannot be made to solve the issue with terrorists. The states who put the PKK on a terror list don’t want to solve the Kurdish issue that they created 100 years ago. We ask, what is their approach to solving the Kurdish issue? What rights do Kurds have?

Kurdish people have been carrying out the struggle for forty years, together with their friends all over the world, and each of those friends has added their own input. We believe in international solidarity, and that growing solidarity will be more important in solving not only the Kurdish issue, but the universal problems to which it is linked. That is why we are calling on everybody to understand that freedom for Öcalan is freedom for the Kurdish people, and freedom for the Kurds is your freedom, too. With this knowledge, we can strengthen international solidarity."

9 October 1998: The day the international conspiracy began

In 1998, amid a unilateral ceasefire, Turkey, assisted by NATO, threatened Syria with war, forcing Abdullah Öcalan to leave the country on 9 October the same year. That day,
the international conspiracy began.  

AFN NEWS DESK Sunday, 9 Oct 202

Amid a unilateral ceasefire, Turkey, assisted by NATO, threatened Syria with war, forcing Abdullah Öcalan to leave Syria. Öcalan headed for Europe to promote a political solution to the Kurdish question

That day, the international conspiracy began. Öcalan arrived in Athens from Syria on 9 October 1998. On 11 October he arrived in Moscow.

On 20 October, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon signed the Adana Protocol. Turkey-Syria relations "quickly improved."

On 4 November, the Duma, which is the lower legislative house of the Russian Federation, asked for the recognition of asylum for Öcalan with 298 votes in favour, and 1 against.

On 12 November, Öcalan left for Rome, but on 16 January 1999, he left the Italian capital to fly back to Moscow, from where, on 29 January, he flew to Greece.

On 31 January, Öcalan tried to go to Belarus and the Netherlands; neither country allowed him to land. On 1 February, he returned to Athens. On 2 February, Greek officials took Öcalan to the Greek embassy in Nairobi en route to South Africa.

But on 15 February 1999, he was kidnapped from Nairobi, Kenya's capital, in an international clandestine operation and brought to Turkey.

Timeline since the kidnappings on 15 February 1999.

-16 February, arrival at Turkey’s İmralı Island, which had been emptied of other prisoners and declared a prohibited Military Zone

-25 February, first meeting with lawyers – brief and not in private

-2 March, first visit by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).

-11 March, first private meeting with lawyers

-31 May, trial begins

-29 June, death sentence

-25 November, Turkey’s Court of Cassation upholds the judgement against Öcalan

-30 November, European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) calls for death penalty not to be enacted

2001

-6 September, second visit by CPT

2002

-9 August, Turkish parliament abolishes the use of the death penalty in peacetime

-3 October, Öcalan’s death penalty commuted to life without the possibility of parole

2003

-16-17 February, third visit by CPT

-12 March, ECtHR rules that Öcalan was not given a fair trial

2005

-12 May, Grand Chamber of ECtHR upholds 2003 ruling

2007

-19-22 May, fourth visit by CPT

2008-2011

-Öcalan involved in peace talks with government representatives

2009

-18 April, two of Öcalan’s lawyers arrested

-17 November, Öcalan transferred to newly built prison on İmralı along with five others brought from other prisons

2010

-26-27 January, fifth visit by CPT

2011

-27 July, last visit of lawyers until May 2019.

-22 November, 42 of Öcalan’s lawyers arrested and accused of transmitting messages to a terrorist organisation

2013

-3 January, Öcalan meets with two leading Kurdish politicians, Ahmet Türk and Ayla Akat – the first of many meetings with MPs as part of the peace process, which continued until 2015

-16-17 January, sixth visit by CPT

2014

-18 March, ECtHR ruling that Öcalan’s life imprisonment without parole violates his human rights, as did his detention conditions up to 2009

-6 October, family visits stopped

2015

-16 March, the five prisoners also incarcerated on İmralı are exchanged for five others

-5 April, talks between Öcalan and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MPs as part of the peace process halted

-December, two of the five other inmates transferred to other prisons

2016

-28-29 April, seventh visit by CPT

-15 June, coup attempt against Erdoğan, which became an excuse for a greater crackdown on all opposition

-11 September, Öcalan meets his brother

2018

-8 November, Leyla Güven starts a hunger strike to call for an end to Öcalan’s isolation, which will eventually be joined by over 8,000 people

2019

-12 January, Öcalan meets his brother

-2 May, Öcalan meets his lawyers

-6-17 May, eighth visit by CPT

-22 May, Öcalan meets his lawyers

-26 May, hunger strike ended

-12 and 18 June and 9 August, Öcalan meets his lawyers

2020

-27 February, fire on İmralı Island

-3 March, Öcalan meets his brother

2020

-27 April, Öcalan allowed his first phone call

2021

-25 March, after rumours that Öcalan had died caused widespread fears, he was allowed a phone call to his brother – which was cut short after less than four minutes

2022

-September, ninth visit by CPT. The report will be ready in March 2023

TURKEY

Rıdvan Turan: Those responsible for the mine disaster in Amasra are those who run this country

Speaking in Amasra, HDP deputy co-chair Rıdvan Turan said: “The President's duty is not to give blood money to the nation, but to prevent these accidents from happening. Those responsible are those who run this country."

 ANF

 

 AMASRA

 

 Sunday, 16 Oct 2022,

Visits and the investigations by various delegations to the area where the mining massacre took place in the Amasra district of Bartın continue. The area was visited by politicians and legal organizations on Saturday. Erkan Baş, the chairman of the Workers' Party of Turkey (TIP), Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy co-chair Rıdvan Turan and Party Assembly member Hüseyin Taka, Labor Party (EMEP) chairman Ercüment Akdeniz, Nebiye Merttürk, President of the People’s Houses, as well as legal organizations and the President of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB), Erinç Sağkan went to supervise the area.

'Number of staff reduced'

The HDP delegation reached the area on Saturday evening and went to the place where the massacre took place. Making evaluations here, Turan said that there are many deficiencies and mistakes. “If basic occupational health and safety had been taken, we would not have such a heavy death toll. Where the concepts of 'fate' and ‘fatality’ are used, it means that many things are hidden there. It means trying to cover it up. There are very important occupational health and safety violations here. The number of personnel has gradually decreased over the years, and the number of people who have to work to eliminate some malfunctions that may occur in the furnace has been reduced to a minimum.”

'We saw the same negligence in Soma'

Continuing his speech, Turan said: “If you don't take public measures, if you don't provide enough training to people working in this very dangerous field, of course there will be problems. If you employ inexperienced workers, the result will be an accident. We all know the 2019 Court of Accounts reports. There are data saying that the methane rate is increasing gradually, and this would likely cause an explosion. We saw the same negligence in Soma. There was a technical report that was not followed there, and there is also a technical report not followed here. If we are not doing the necessary things for science and technology, if you see all as an extra cost, you definitely experience similar tragedies at the end of the day.”

‘The responsibilities lie on those governing this country’

Expressing that they strongly condemned the word "destiny" used by AKP President Erdogan during his visit, Turan said: "The President's duty is not to give blood money to the nation, but to prevent these accidents from happening."

Turan said: “During the Erdogan rule, this country experienced the loss of dozens of workers. It's news when too many workers die. The people who run this country are responsible for the loss of workers."

Tunisians clash with police after man’s death in police chase

24-year-old Tunisian dies of injuries sustained in police chase in August
Yamena Salemi |16.10.2022

Tunisian protesters clash with police over the death of young man

TUNIS, Tunisia

The Tunisian capital, Tunis, saw a second night of clashes on Saturday between protesters and security forces following the death of a young man in a police chase.

According to an Anadolu Agency reporter, Tunisian police used rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators, who responded by hurling stones at security forces.

The violence erupted as hundreds of mourners paid farewell to a 24-year-old Tunisian, Malek Selimi, who died of injuries he sustained during a police chase in August.

There were conflicting reports about the cause of Selimi’s death. While some reports suggested that he was shot by security forces, others said he fell during a police chase at the end of August.

There was no comment from the Tunisian authorities on the report.

Thousands From Rival Tunisian Parties Protest President Saied

Thousands of supporters from the Islamist Ennahda party and the Free Constitutional Party held protests accusing the Tunisian president of economic mismanagement.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
15 October, 2022

Protesters also accused Saied of an anti-democratic coup [Getty]

Two rival Tunisian opposition groups staged one of the biggest days of protest so far against President Kais Saied on Saturday, denouncing his moves to consolidate political power as public anger grows over fuel and food shortages.

Thousands of supporters from the Islamist Ennahda party and the Free Constitutional Party held parallel rallies in adjacent areas of the capital, Tunis, accusing Saied of economic mismanagement and of an anti-democratic coup.

"Tunisia is bleeding. Saied is a failed dictator. He has set us back for many years. The game's over. Get out," said protester Henda Ben Ali.

Saied, who moved to rule by decree after shutting down parliament last year and expanding his powers with a new constitution passed in a July referendum, has said the measures were needed to save Tunisia from years of crisis.

In a speech on Saturday to commemorate the departure of French troops upon Tunisia's 1956 independence, he demanded the departure today of "all who want to undermine independence" - an apparent allusion to his political foes.

Saied's opponents say his actions have undermined the democracy secured through a 2011 revolution that ousted autocratic leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and triggered the Arab spring.

Ennahda and the Free Constitutional Party have long been bitter foes, but both are now more focused on their struggle against Saied.

Tunisians are meanwhile struggling to make ends meet as a crisis in state finances has contributed to shortages of subsidised goods including petrol, sugar and milk on top of years of economic malaise and entrenched unemployment.

The president, who has blamed hoarders and speculators for the shortages, appears to retain broad support among many Tunisians, but the growing hardships are causing frustration and increasing the flow of illegal migrants to Europe.

In the southern town of Zarzis this week, residents protested over the burial in unmarked graves of local people who had died in one of the many shipwrecks of migrants trying to reach Italy.

"While our youth are dying at sea in boats to escape from hell, Saied is only interested in gathering power," said Monia Hajji, a protester.

In Tunis, there have been some isolated clashes this week in poor districts between police and protesting youths, and there was a heavy police presence in the city on Saturday.

The Free Constitutional Party leader Abir Moussi, a supporter of the pre-revolution autocracy, criticised the stringent security arrangements in a speech to protesters, asking Saied: "Why are you afraid?".

At both rallies, protesters chanted "the people want the fall of the regime", the slogan of the 2011 revolution.

"The situation is about to explode and is dangerous for the future," said the Ennahda former prime minister Ali Larayedh.

(Reuters)

BOOKS

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Vancouver, British Columbia

A new book plumbs the city’s history, revealing how past tensions between its elites and masses define its present — and may shape its future.

Featured image: Matt Wang / Unsplash

Michael Ledger-Lomas

In the 1960s, the citizens of Vancouver, a Pacific port city in the Canadian province of British Columbia, rebelled against the “North American disease of proliferation and gigantism.” The collapse of plans to build urban freeways was followed by the rehabilitation of the city’s peninsular downtown, the deindustrialization of the shoreline, and finally the pursuit of the “world’s greenest city” status through the construction of bike lanes and expansion of the SkyTrain transit system.

By the time the city hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver had spawned “Vancouverism” — a concept and a brand. Vancouverism meant “city building in paradise.”

Hemmed in by mountains and the Burrard Inlet to the north, bisected by False Creek and bordered by the Fraser River to its south, the city of Vancouver had no choice but to grow responsibly, which meant upward. Planners controlled the flow of developer capital after a successful World’s Fair — Expo 86 — by mandating clusters of green-glass condo towers for former industrial areas, mounted on podiums of shops to keep the street scene lively. What one book called The Vancouver Achievement pushed the city up the Economist’s global “livability” index, where it still sits in fifth place, alongside other cities from the former British Dominions.

While paying polite heed to that “achievement,” Daniel Francis’s concise and vividly illustrated Becoming Vancouver also invites us to consider the related costs, and how the city’s history might provide new ideas for how to overcome the deep social problems it has failed to address.

The curse of ‘livable’ cities

It can be hard to survive in so-called livable cities. Vancouver is “world-class” mainly in its housing costs. In 2021, the Vancouver Sun reported that the median price for a Vancouver property was 13 times the local median income, putting the city just behind Hong Kong and Sydney in unaffordability rankings. Costs and vacancy rates have been just as brutal for renters, pushing old and new Vancouverites to settle in car-dependent sprawl beyond the city. If Vancouverism discouraged the middle class, then it was tougher still on the welfare class, which it concentrated into the Downtown Eastside. Here decrepit hotels built for miners and loggers now house single room occupancy (SRO) buildings. It is not livability which flourishes in SROs but mortality. They are the epicentre of British Columbia’s fentanyl epidemic, which has in 2022 alone killed 1,468 people.



Becoming Vancouver: A History
Daniel Francis
Harbour Publishing, 2022

Vancouver might be marketed to international homebuyers as a Pacific idyll, but like the United States’ West Coast it has become a place to experience coming disasters. Now regularly blanketed in wildfire smoke, the city was blasted by the June 2021 heat dome that killed over 600 British Columbians, cut off from the interior by the freakish storms of November 2021, and is currently in the grip of an interminable drought.

The unraveling of Vancouverism is a chance to rethink the city’s past. Civic histories once celebrated the inevitable passage from “milltown to metropolis,” from logging camp to postindustrial playground. Francis instead highlights how past tensions — between capitalist and escapist impulses — define Vancouver’s present. Like many a civic history, Francis’s work is a local book for local people. Much of its information about sports, memorable industrial accidents, or local celebrities will not resonate beyond the Strait of Georgia. But its evocation of the failures and forgotten successes of municipal policy has a broader application.

Precisely because of its brevity, Vancouver’s history illustrates how uncomfortable ruling class types have often been with the economic and demographic forces which created their cities. If Vancouver’s elite often resisted welcoming those who wanted to live and work there, then a study of that resistance opens possibilities to revive the forfeited dynamism of the past.

Land grabs and railway barons

The decades from the foundation of Granville township in 1870 and its 1886 incorporation as Vancouver to the outbreak of World War I are rich in promising directions now often ignored. The buildings of this era are now “heritage.” When the city rehabilitated Gastown, its earliest neighbourhood, it added cobblestones and a steam-powered clock to attract cruise ship tourists. Yet this area of Vancouver was the reverse of quaint: it was Railtown, the acme of a revolution in trade and communications. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was an imperial feat, designed to make the Dominion of Canada an economic and political unity by linking its eastern seaboard with the sparsely populated but resource-rich west. When the first train from Montreal arrived in Vancouver on May 23, 1887, draped with Queen Victoria’s portrait, it established the city as a global hub.

The deep waters of Burrard Inlet had drawn the CPR leadership to make Granville its terminus city. CPR trains soon linked up with steamships which imported Asian commodities for transportation eastward or exported prairie wheat westward. So enviable was Vancouver’s position that even its total destruction in 1886 (by a fire accidentally sparked by railway contractors) was dismissed as a chance to build back better. The rise of containerisation, pioneered in the city during the 1950s, has only heightened the economic significance of its port.

The railways caused a property boom before there were houses or even many people. The CPR’s American boss had picked his terminus because he could demand extensive land grants from the local authorities. He also insisted that the new city should borrow a name from the familiar Vancouver Island so British investors could find it on the map. The result was a buying frenzy: having passed through town, the laureate of empire Rudyard Kipling was one of those who snapped up a lot.

Behind the froth was an impressive rollout of the latest urban infrastructure. The shacks popping up in Vancouver’s muddy, tree stump–studded streets had electricity from the start, which was soon supplied by hydroelectric power. Pipes under the Burrard Inlet carried lake water from the mountains into town. The economist J.A. Hobson, who rolled into Vancouver on a CPR train in 1905, sniffed that its electric lighting gave “an exaggerated impression of its development.”

He also noticed its transit system. The first interurban railway in North America linked Vancouver with the growing settlement of New Westminster. Numerous lines and tramways followed, powered by hydroelectricity. The transit system’s British-funded controllers fought off a challenge from an Edwardian Uber: gas-powered “jitney” hire carriages, which were soon banned. Complementing the trams were bicycles — another invention so popular that the city sprouted the bike lanes and bike racks which are once more today the height of urban fashion.

Settler city

Of course, Vancouver was not Copenhagen by the Pacific, but an often-brutal settler city. Although a plaque later honoured its pioneers for carving its streets from the “silent solitude of the primeval forest,” that forest had been alive with the voices of indigenous people, soon to be forced or swindled off their ancestral lands. The obliteration of indigenous villages created Stanley Park, which Hobson labeled “the most beautiful natural park in the world.” Vancouver’s growth was as prodigal with space as it was hostile to native title.

Francis notes that Vancouver was and remains a “city of houses” — and detached houses at that, in a departure from the British norm of the terraced rowhouse. Yet even as its suburbs gobbled up old-growth forest, transit wired them into a downtown which boasted the two tallest buildings in the British Empire. The city projected a dense, even stately urban identity, with an opera house and three railway stations.

The global slump of 1913 punctured these rosy visions. Starved of British investment, Vancouver would never be so ebullient again. After World War I came an abiding concern not just with planning, but even preventing, urban growth. The American expert Harland Bartholomew drafted a plan for Vancouver in 1929 filled with bad ideas, many of which still govern the city. He dreaded renters in apartments and the promiscuous mixing of shops with housing, preferring to house families in detached dwellings hygienically separated from one another and the road by grassy setbacks. The result was the monotonous suburbanisation of much of the city, especially once the love of cars prevailed over transit. Here Vancouver was more American than British, even down to driving on the right-hand side of the road.


Photo: Mike Benna / Unsplash

The city boasted the first gas station in Canada (1907) and a gas-powered ambulance (1909), which knocked down and killed an American tourist on its first outing. By 1938, the construction of the Lions Gate Bridge and a causeway through the faux wilderness of Stanley Park allowed homeowners in the chichi suburbs of the North Shore to drive into Vancouver. Today 80 percent of the city is more or less reserved for single-family houses, with apartments and restaurants squashed along main roads which thunder with trucks and SUVs.

Locavore xenophobia

Increasingly nervous of density, white Vancouverites had long disliked the racial pluralism encouraged by imperial globalisation. As the epicentre of British Columbia’s logging, fishing, and mining economy, Vancouver attracted many Chinese, Japanese, and Indian workers. Such immigration provoked repeated attempts to keep Vancouver white. Formal measures included provincial “head taxes” on the families of Chinese workers; immigration and employment bans; and electoral disenfranchisement. Vigilante anti-immigrant action also manifested, as in the1907 riot initiated by the Asiatic Exclusion League, which shocked imperial opinion.

Although the neighbourhood of Japantown survived the riot, its population would later be interned and deported during World War II. The justification for this sweep was national security, but its mastermind had previously crusaded to ban white women from waitressing in Chinese restaurants. Where non-white workers could not be excluded, they were marginalised. Vancouver’s Chinatown was designed as a ghetto rather than as the entertainment district it later became. Nearby were the brothels, such as the aptly named House of All the Nations, and Hogan’s Alley, a black neighbourhood casually demolished in the 1960s for a road viaduct.

Immigration restrictions were supposed to protect white workers. Yet the city’s leaders always favoured property and capital over labor. Hobson, who condemned Vancouver’s xenophobia as a shackle on its growth, thought that nowhere in Canada was there so much bitterness between employers and workers.

The city’s town hall became a monument to this rancour. Gerry McGeer, the mayor who dominated Vancouver during the years of the Great Depression, put the building on a ridge far to the south of the city centre. Placing City Hall at such a remove distanced urban government from the unemployed crowds who repeatedly protested downtown until dispersed by the batons of the city’s police department, which was as draconian as it was corrupt. In 1937, the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) was founded to curb property taxes and block any drift to socialism. It survives today, running Fred Harding — a former British policeman with a nineteen-point plan to crack down on crime — as its mayoral candidate in this October’s municipal election. Ken Sim, the likely winner of these elections, is a former NPA candidate who has been endorsed by the Vancouver Police Union for his plan to boost police funding beyond its current, inflated levels.

Vancouver may no longer be demographically or ideologically “white,” but it has not yet shed its suspicion of big-city status. It did not lack for visionaries after World War II, such as the planner Gerald Sutton-Brown, the NPA mayor Tom Campbell, or the architect Arthur Erickson, who wanted to erect a city of ten million on its “shacky” foundations. But their enthusiasm for concrete and demolishing old treasures — Erickson wanted to replace the Anglican cathedral with a tower block — raised a coalition of Jane Jacobs–readers against them. Civic parties who catered to such voters emphasised preservation of heritage buildings, mountain views, and neighbourhood character. Development was corralled from single-family zones; isolated projects in those zones faced filibustering by residents at City Hall. With Vancouver’s land area built out, the result was an inexorable rise in the value of single-family houses — wrongly and often xenophobically blamed since on the financialisation of housing.

Bringing an end to this artificial scarcity of housing will not resolve Vancouver’s problems. The shortage of affordable rental housing reflects broader inequalities in Canadian society, alongside the fading commitment by federal agencies to its construction. But the argument that a city which is a magnet for economic migration cannot pursue “affordability” or climate action without embracing density is slowly making headway. OneCity, a newish civic party, has pledged to undo Bartholomew’s old plan by legalising apartment blocks throughout the city.

How that pledge fares in civic elections, in which low turnout often favours the priorities of comfortable homeowners, is uncertain. What Francis’s history does show is that while North American admirers of greener, livelier urbanism often invoke European models, they might also draw inspiration from the chaotic, suggestive past of their own cities.

Michael Ledger-Lomas is a historian and writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. His most recent book is Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown.

This article was first published on Jacobin.

On World Food Day, UN chief says, ‘People affected by hunger doubled in 3 yrs’

World News

Published on Oct 16, 2022 

The theme for World Food day 2022 is “Leave no one behind.” According to the FAO, although the world has made progress towards building a better world, “too many people have been left behind.”

World Food Day is observed to mark the founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945.(FAO)

ByYagya Sharma

Raising concern on the growing number of people who have been affected by hunger amid global concerns, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday flagged a staggering figure. "The number of people affected by hunger has more than doubled in the past 3 years, (sic)," he wrote in a tweet

Also Read| Why UN global hunger report figures are staggering: 150 million added post Covid

The surge in this figure can be, arguably, attributed to coronavirus with the pandemic leading to strict curbs across nations since the first outbreak in China's Wuhan city in 2019. The head of the 193-member organisation stressed to move from “despair to hope and action” and “make nutritious diets available and affordable for all" in his post to mark the World Food Day.

What is World Food Day?

World Food Day is observed to mark the founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945. On this day, worldwide awareness events are held to push for action for those who suffer from hunger and for the need to ensure healthy diets for all, leaving no one behind.

What is the theme for World Food Day 2022?

The theme for World Food day 2022 is “Leave no one behind.” According to the FAO, although the world has made progress towards building a better world, “too many people have been left behind.” The organisation also highlighted that enough food is produced today to feed everyone on the planet but the problem is access and availability of nutritious food.

Countries facing a food crisis

The Global Report on Food Crises2022 released in May by the Global Network against Food Crises underscored that about 180 million people across 40 countries will face inescapable food insecurity. Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen have been marked as “hunger hotspots”, with Egypt facing challenges due to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia as both countries provided for 85 percent of Egypt's imports in 2020-2021.

Tunisia and Algeria are also struggling with food security issues to meet the demands of their population. Since the regime change in Afghanistan with the Taliban governing the country now, the food crisis has worsened as "92 percent of the population faces insufficient food consumption, while 57 percent of households resort to crisis-level coping strategies to get by” as per World Food Programme’s (WFP) food security update.

Paris girds for cost of living protests as fuel strike rages for third week

Police expect 30,000 people to attend rally on Sunday as French left-wing party deputy decries ‘greatest loss of purchasing power in 40 years’

By AFP

Today, 

Motorists wait in lines at a gas station amid a fuel shortage and rising prices in Paris on October 15, 2022. (Christophe ARCHAMBAULT/AFP)


PARIS, France — Nearly three weeks into a strike that has forced gas stations across France to close, police in Paris were preparing for protests Sunday against soaring living costs.

Left-wing opponents of President Emmanuel Macron’s administration have organized the demonstration, which they say is also in protest against government inaction over climate change.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party, had planned the march well before the current strike, but organizers are hoping to pick up some of the momentum from the current industrial unrest.

“The rise in prices is unbearable,” said LFI deputy Manon Aubry. “It is the greatest loss of purchasing power in 40 years.”

It is time the billions that the big companies were reaping in profits were passed down to those struggling to make ends meet, she added.
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Police are expecting around 30,000 people to attend, with one source saying they feared problems from hard-left troublemakers. “The organizer has been warned of these fears,” said the official.

Trade unionists and striking employees gather outside the TotalEnergies refinery site, in Donges, western France, on October 14, 2022. (LOIC VENANCE/AFP)

The dispute at French refineries and fuel depots has forced many gas stations to close and had a knock-on effect across all sectors of the economy.

According to government figures issued Saturday to French broadcaster BFMTV, 27.3% of gas stations were short of at least one product: in the Paris region, that rose to 39.9%.

Four of France’s seven refineries and one fuel depot are still out of action after striking members of the hard-left CGT union rejected a pay offer from the hydrocarbon industry leader that other unions accepted.

They are furious that Macron’s government used requisitioning powers this week to force some strikers back to open fuel depots, a move that has so far been upheld by the courts.

But the union risks stoking resentment in a country where three-quarters of workers rely on personal vehicles for their jobs. One poll by BVA released Friday, suggested that public support for the strike was at just 37%.

The CGT is pushing for a 10% pay rise for staff at TotalEnergies, backdated to the beginning of the year.

A paper reading “Limited to 30 litres” is displayed in a gas station amid a fuel shortage and rising prices, Mont-Pres-Chambord, France, on October 14, 2022, (GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP)

It argues the French group can more than afford it, citing TotalEnergies’ net profit of $5.7 billion in the April-June period as energy prices soared with the war in Ukraine, and its payout of billions of euros in dividends to shareholders.

The union has extended its strike action, which started on September 26, up to Tuesday, when it has also called a broader strike involving public transport nationwide.

The CGT walked out of talks with the French group last week, even as other unions representing a majority of workers accepted a deal for a smaller pay hike.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is due to appear on primetime television Sunday evening to discuss the gas shortage.

Macron faces risk of protests spreading in wake of oil strike

The left is taking to the streets on Sunday to demand more government action against inflation and climate change.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s government has been working hard to resolve strikes, as the absence of oil workers across the country has led to long lines at petrol pumps

 | Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images

BY CLEA CAULCUTT
OCTOBER 16, 2022 

PARIS – After two weeks of crippling fuel strikes in France, the protest movement at oil refineries risks spreading to other sectors of the economy with fresh industrial action planned in the coming days.

On Sunday, France’s left-wing alliance Nupes is also calling for a march against inflation and climate change, before a general public sector strike planned on Tuesday, which may disrupt transport across the country.

Oil workers’ strikes have led to disruption at oil facilities and long lines at petrol pumps since last week, particularly in the Paris region and in the north of France. While things have yet to go back to normal despite agreements with some leading unions, the movement risks spreading further, with ongoing calls for strikes in other sectors.

With high inflation in the wake of the Ukraine war, discontent is rising among voters, and there are fears ongoing industrial action may even lead to a rerun of the Yellow Jacket protests. Left-wing parties, which made a strong showing in the recent parliamentary election, are hoping to whip up public opposition to the government over rising electricity and heating bills.

“I hope [Sunday’s march] will be a demonstration of strength,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of the leaders of the left-wing alliance Nupes, ahead of the protest, on TV channel France 3.

“It’s not the march of Mr. Mélenchon. It’s a march of the people who are hungry, who are cold and who want to be better paid,” he said.

Public sector workers such as teachers, nuclear industry workers and rail workers are also expected to walk out on Tuesday in response to calls from French trade unions.

In recent days, French President Emmanuel Macron’s government has been working hard to find a solution to resolve the oil refinery strikes in an effort to bring things back to normal. On Wednesday, Macron said the conflict should be resolved next week.
Fears of a return of the Yellow Jackets

The strikes of refinery workers, which have meant fuel shortages at up to a third of petrol stations across France, have raised fears of a rerun of the Yellow Jacket protests that rocked France in 2018 and 2019. The protests were sparked by a new government tax on petrol and diesel but developed into a more general protest against French elites.

After weeks of violent protests marked by a harsh police crackdown, the government was forced to back down and drop the new tax.

However, OpinionWay pollster Bruno Jeanbart says parallels being drawn between the widespread Yellow Jacket demonstrations and the current unrest only go so far.

The strikes have raised fears of a rerun of the Yellow Jacket protests that rocked France in 2018 and 2019 

| Stephane De Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images

“[The oil refinery strike] is not popular, because its creating problems and has a lot of impact on the public,” Jeanbart said.

“The striking workers are able to block everybody for their own interests, they are not fighting against an unpopular pensions or education reform, but are taking actions to boost their own wages,” he said.

The strikes have pitched management at oil giants TotalEnergies and Esso-Exxon Mobil against staff blockading depots across the country. On Friday, splits started appearing in the movement with some trade unions agreeing to a wage hike deal with TotalEnergies.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne also said she saw “some signs of improvements” with deliveries restarting at some oil depots. However, the CGT trade union, one of the largest in France, says it will continue the strike.

According to Jeanbart, the protests may become more challenging for the government if they spread to public sectors that benefit from strong public support, such as teachers or health workers.

“There’s a lot of tensions among teachers. Difficulty in recruiting new teachers, difficulty in filling positions in Paris, wage increase [issues] … There’s a quiet quitting movement among teachers so it’s difficult to tell if they would join a protest movement in the streets,” he said.

And while the weakening of trade unions in France’s political life might play in favor of the government, it may also raise the likelihood of “outside-the-box” protests movements that are less predictable.

Looking ahead, Macron will be watching the shifts in public opinion closely as he prepares to push through his controversial reform of French pensions as early as this fall.