Music

Guinea’s Queen Rima wins 2025 RFI African music prize

It was third time lucky for 28-year-old Guinean singer and dancer Queen Rima, who won the 2025 RFI Discovery Prize, a competition open to budding musicians from Africa.

Queen Rima winner of RFI Prix Découvertes 2025. © RFI

By:Ollia Horton with RFI
07/03/2025 - 

Queen Rima (born Born Marie Tolno) is considered one of the pioneers of dancehall in her native Guinea Conakry, a style that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in Jamaica before taking the world by storm.

She was a finalist in the RFI Prix découvertes (discovery prize) in 2022 and 2023, and her determination to win the 2025 crown impressed the jury, chaired by Benin’s Angélique Kidjo.

"If we give her the chance to have a career and we surround her well, she can have a long career. She can surprise us," Kidjo said at the prize ceremony on 17 February.

"She can do a lot of things with her voice. That is why, unanimously, with the votes of the public, we voted for Queen Rima. But the others are also good."

For Kidjo, it was difficult to choose a winner among the ten candidates, who were all very talented and motivated.

But she was particularly impressed by Queen Rima's stage presence, especially with the song "Lantchou mi Yobaï", which means in Pular "I will manage".

"It gives me hope for my continent because there’s quality, and the future looks bright. I’m happy to see African artists taking on board their respective cultures and mixing things up," Kidjo told RFI.

Upon learning the results of the competition, Queen Rima, contacted by RFI, said she was "so happy she cried" and hadn’t slept a wink prior to the announcement.

"I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished. This is a great victory for women who make urban music like me in Guinea," the artist said.

The winner of the RFI Discovery prize pockets 10,000 euros and gets an African concert tour in partnership with the Institut français network, as well as a concert broadcast by RFI.

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Upending stereotypes

28-year-old Queen Rima started her career as a dancer and has accompanied numerous Guinean artists such as Singleton or Djelika Babintou.

She formed her dance group Toxaï Girls, before devoting herself, ten years ago, to writing music, which she calls "afro-fusion dancehall" - mixing styles and borrowing from reggaeton, amapiano and traditional music.

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Singing in local Guinean languages such as Pular and Susu as well as French and English, Queen Rima has made a niche for herself in what is a very male-dominated genre of the music business.

She told RFI that she "wants to prove to men that women are just as capable as them of making urban music," and likes to upend stereotypes with video clips like "Boss Up" where she appears surrounded by four bare-chested, muscular men.

In her title "Guinée Won nomane", she pays tribute to all the strong women of her country, who face inequality in a patriarchal society.

Culture

All-female exhibition aims to restore women’s voices in art history

Poitiers – French artist Eugénie Dubreuil has collected more than 500 works by female artists, beginning in 1999. Last year she donated her collection to the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers, which is now putting them on display in an exhibition that aims to restore the forgotten voices of women in art.


02:59
The "La Musée" exhibition at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers, western France.
© Ville de Poitiers

By :Isabelle Martinetti
Issued on: 08/03/2025 -
RFI

"Women artists have long been marginalised in art history courses and by museums and galleries," Manon Lecaplainn, director of the Sainte-Croix Museum, told RFI. "For decades, art history has been written without women. Why should our exclusively female exhibition be shocking?"

"Our aim is not to exclude men from art history," she explains. "The goal is to make people think."


Eugénie Dubreuil en mariée (1990) by Danièle Lazard. © Musées de Poitiers, Ch. Vignaud

The Sainte-Croix Museum has been known in France for its proactive policy of promoting women artists since the 1980s.

In this new exhibition, Lecaplain and her co-curator Camille Belvèze are showcasing nearly 300 works from the 18th century to the present day, divided into three sections: the collection of Eugénie Dubreuil, the hierarchy of genres in art history, and the social role of the museum.


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This exhibition is the first step in a five-year project to promote Dubreuil's collection – entitled La Musée – and relies on a financial grant of €150,000.

"Why not an initiative like this on a larger scale in France, Europe, the world?" asks Dubreuil.

The "La Musée" exhibition showcases 300 works by female artists, thank to a donation made by Eugénie Dubreuil in 2024. © Ville de Poitiers

► La Musée runs until 18 May, 2025 at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SURREALIST WOMEN

International Women's Day

Africa sees gender equality progress, but continent ‘still only halfway there'

As the world marks International Women's Day, RFI looks at the situation in Africa. Women on the continent are closer to equality today than they were four years ago, according to the latest report by the UN and the African Development Bank, but the continent is still only halfway to achieving gender parity.

Women march against rising cases of femicide in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27 January, 2024. 

AP - Brian Inganga

By: RFI

 08/03/2025 -


Commenting on the report’s findings, Nathalie Gahunga, manager of the Gender and Women Empowerment Division at the African Development Bank (AfDB) said they are "a call to action for African governments to invest in Africa’s women and girls for sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development that works for all, across the continent".

She emphasised that this could be achieved through evidence-based, gender-responsive policies and programmes, adding: "At the African Development Bank, we will continue collaborating with governments to address this important gap."
'A more prosperous Africa for all'

The Africa Gender Index 2023 Analytical Report measures gender equality in 54 African countries, scoring them between 0 and 100 – representing full equality.

Entitled “African Women in Times of Crisis”, this second edition of the Africa Gender Index (AGI) is the latest conducted by the AfDB and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and was released in November 2024.

It shows that between 2019 and 2023, Africa’s overall gender index score improved from 48.6 to 50.3 percent. While this marks progress, it also highlights a sobering reality: women on the continent still experience half the economic, social and representation opportunities available to men.

A woman carries a banner reading "zero rape in my country" during a protest organised by the Ministry of Women, Family and Children Affairs against gender-based violence in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in December 2021. AFP - SIA KAMBOU

Keiso Matashane-Marite, head of UNECA’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Section, said: "None of the targets for United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality are on track. For instance, equal representation in parliaments won’t be reached until 2063. This is unacceptable."

She believes Africa cannot achieve sustainable prosperity if half its potential – that represented by the women of the continent – remains underused.

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Matashane-Marite is urging policymakers to act decisively, using the AGI findings to implement practical solutions and close gender gaps.

“The need for accelerated action is clear," she said. "By addressing these gaps, we can build a more inclusive and prosperous Africa for all.”

The AfDB's Gahunga echoed this, saying: "This effort requires strong support in investing gender data and statistics for more evidence-based decision-making, that leads to transformative public policy reforms."

Key findings

The report found that women in Africa score just 50.3 percent in equality across economic, social and public representation areas – a slight improvement from the 48 percent score in 2019.

Women in Africa are closer to equality in social areas, with a score of 98.3 – a parameter that includes access to education and healthcare. Girls on the continent now outnumber boys in graduation rates across primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education.

The report also found a 1.5 percent increase in women’s representation, which rose to 24.4 percent. However, women continue to be underrepresented in Africa's parliaments, ministerial positions and private leadership roles.

Economically, there has been a decline in gender equality. Women’s economic parity dropped from 61 percent in 2019 to 58.2 in 2023. While both men and women experienced economic setbacks during the reported period, women were disproportionately adversely affected.

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Women in war zones

Women are also often the first victims of the conflicts raging on the continent.

"When conflict and crisis strike, displacement, hunger, and poverty follow," according to the charity Oxfam. "But, all too often, it is women’s rights that become the early casualties of war."

Women in the M'Berra camp, collecting rubbish as part of an initiative led by refugees, in Bassikonou, Mauritania, 8 June 2022. AFP - GUY PETERSON

The charity reports that one in five refugee or displaced women suffers sexual violence, and that in countries affected by conflict girls are 2.5 times more likely not to be in school.

"As they flee conflict, travel, and settle in refugee camps they are highly vulnerable to all forms of violence. They face exploitation, sexual harassment, and rape; they risk being sold into early or unwanted marriages or resorting to survival sex just to get their basic needs for food, shelter, and transport met."

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Recommendations

Building on its findings, the AGI recommends targeted actions to close the gender gap across three key areas.

In the social sphere, the report urges countries to invest in overcoming barriers that prevent women from thriving in education, such as the burden of unpaid domestic work, early marriage and inadequate sanitary facilities in schools.

On representation, the report recommends strict enforcement of gender quotas in order to increase the number of women in leadership roles, in both government and the private sector.

Recognising that women often attain higher education levels than men, the report also calls for African countries to tackle harmful gender norms and practices, and address occupational segregation, to boost women’s economic participation.

International Women's Day

Spray it to say it: graffiti group sees women make their mark in Paris

A vacant lot in southeastern Paris has become a hub for graffiti artists from France and the world thanks to an initiative by community group Spot 13. It prides itself on promoting female graffiti artists and is holding an event to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March.

03:46

Graffiti artist MIU works on a wall at an open-air street art gallery run by the non-profit Spot 13. © RFI / Ollia Horton

By:Ollia Horton

RFI

 08/03/2025 


The outskirts of the French capital's 13th arrondissement have been undergoing a radical transformation in recent years, with new residential buildings popping up among office blocks and older architecture.

Where the southern Paris city limit meets the suburb of Ivry, three busy overpass bridges provide a vast web of concrete canvases for street artists hailing from Europe and further afield, as well as local talents.

"Even though we’re under the ring road, it feels like we’re in the countryside and we have a sense of freedom," says Spot 13 founder Joko – who is also a graffiti artist and a keen skateboarder.

While graffiti artists have been using the site since 2017, Joko set up his non-profit organisation in 2021 and got permission from the local council to "beautify" what would otherwise be a no-man’s land – part of a wider initiative by the co-operative Plateau Urbain, which repurposes unused urban spaces.

Spot 13 also prides itself on promoting female graffiti artists. "In general, there isn’t much room for women in urban art. There tends to be a lot of testosterone," Joko says, adding that he created Spot 13 in homage to his mother.

Joko, the founder and president of Spot 13, a non-profit organisation that hosts a graffiti art hub in the 13th district of Paris. © RFI / Ollia Horton
'Everyone is welcome'

Joko points to an artist known as MIU, who is working on a large wall in the bright sunlight – this is her first time working on such a large surface since she started doing graffiti just over two years ago.

She loves interacting with the people who come to ask questions and observe the artists at work. It’s a laidback, family-style atmosphere, she says. "While the question of gender still exists elsewhere, I don’t think it’s an issue at Spot 13. Everyone is welcome here, regardless of social background, identity or gender."

MIU’s latest work is a portrait of a child from the Toraja ethnic group in Sulawesi, Indonesia, wearing traditional colourful dress.

A work by graffiti artist MIU, inspired by the Toraja ethnic group from Sulawesi in Indonesia. © RFI / Ollia Horton

Describing herself as a modern art historian whose job it is to "preserve memory," she likes to use art as a means to represent minorities around the world whose cultures and way of life “we don’t know much about, and which are becoming extinct".

MIU is one of 15 female artists invited to take part in a live graffiti "jam session" on the theme of freedom, to celebrate International Women’s Day, on the weekend of 8-9 March.

Organised by Spot 13 and the collective Bombasphères, part of the profits from artists’ prints will be donated to the Maison des Femmes charity in Paris, whose work includes supporting women experiencing gender-based violence.

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Street art on a vacant lot hosted by community group Spot 13. © RFI / Ollia Horton
Building bridges

Jacques, a longtime volunteer with Spot 13, emphasises that giving back to the community is part of the project's DNA. More than just a place for people to legally practise street art, the space has a role to play in social cohesion, in an area that used to have a "pretty bad reputation," he says.

"We try to have good communication with our neighbours. It’s very important to be accepted, to be understood...it’s not just about painting," he explains, adding that making art provides a focus that can diffuse tensions between groups.

This part of the 13th arrondissement of Paris has become a hub for graffiti artists from around the world. © RFI / Ollia Horton

Joko – whose personal tag includes the slogan "taking art towards infinity and beyond" – agrees that art can be a powerful way to promote mutual respect, as well as a valuable tool for maintaining mental health.

"Art is a good way to stay calm. When you’re making art, you’re calm, and it brings a sense of peace to viewers. It’s great to have a designated place where art and nature meet."

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He hopes to make the current initiative in this part of Paris a permanent one. "We’re trying to bring some life into the suburbs and public spaces. It really comes from the heart."

Spot 13's initiative has created an open-air gallery under the city's ring road. © RFI / Ollia Horton

Gender inequality

Why do women in France still earn less than men?

France's gender equality legislation has helped narrow the pay gap by a third over the last 30 years. But women in the private sector still earn an average of 22 percent less than their male counterparts. RFI looks at what's behind the gap and what could be done to close it.

A woman holds a sign reading "It's time for change" during a demonstration calling for gender equality and an end to violence against women on International Women's Day in Paris on 8 March, 2024. © Abdul Saboor / Reuters

By:Alison Hird

RFI
08/03/2025 - 

France co-founded the United Nations International Labour Organisation in 1919, championing "equal pay for equal work", and in 1972, the agency wrote the principle of pay equality into its labour code.

In 1983, France's Roudy law mandated equal opportunities in the workplace, requiring companies to publish annual reports comparing the situation of its male and female employees and introducing a tool to help human resources managers identify and measure pay differences.

In 2018, the country launched an index to monitor the performance of large companies in the field of gender equality.

But this battery of legal measures has still not enabled France to close its gender pay gap.

Data published this week by the French National Statistics Institute (Insee) showed that in 2023 women’s average annual salary was €21,340 net compared to €27,430 for men – a difference of more than 22 percent.

While there has been progress, the pace is slow, with the gap narrowing at a rate of 1 percent per year over the last five years.

The primary reasons behind the gender pay gap are hours worked and type of jobs held. Women work on average 9 percent less than men and they're also more likely to work part-time. But even when working hours are identical, their average salary is 14.2 percent lower than men’s, Insee found.

What’s more, working part-time is not necessarily a life choice says Anne Eydoux, an economist specialising in employment and gender issues.

"It's a choice made under constraint, and some of the constraints refer to the gender divide of family roles where women take [more] parental responsibility," she tells RFI. "But it's also the result of occupational segregation." Women are over-represented in for example supermarket and cleaning jobs, where split shifts are common.

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Gendered occupations

Women are also far more likely to work in low-paying sectors such as health, care and education.

According to Insee, more than 95 percent of secretaries are women, with an average full-time net salary of €2,044 per month.

Meanwhile, only a quarter of engineers and IT executives – professions in which average monthly net salaries are close to €4,000 – are women.

"Women are over-represented in the care sector, where their skills are under-recognised," Eydoux said. "And this is a fact for many female-dominated occupations, as the Covid crisis showed."

Women also have less access to the highest-paying jobs. In 2023, they accounted for 42 percent of full-time equivalent positions in the private sector, and yet just 24 percent of the top 1 percent of high-paying jobs. The glass ceiling is still there, as Eydoux noted.

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Cultural attitudes

Working less and in lower-paid sectors does not, however, fully explain the 22 percent wage gap. Women doing the same job as men in the same company are still paid 3.8 percent less.

There are historical and cultural reasons for this according to Marie Donzel, an expert in social innovation and author of "Justified inequalities: how to pay women less with a clear conscience".

Until 1945, France had a "female wage". Based on the assumption that a woman's pay was intended merely to supplement her husband's income, "women could be paid 10 to 15 percent less just because of their gender," Donzel told RFI.

This has helped foster gendered attitudes towards salaries. "Women tend to see [their pay] in terms of how much they need to live, and men see it in terms of 'how much my job is worth'," she said.

Donzel also points to a cultural prevailing negative image of women who take an interest in money. "We have a gendered socialisation in France that teaches us to be modest. When we talk about money, there's still the spectre of venality."

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'I thought negotiating was vulgar'

Women themselves are not always aware that they're being discriminated against. It took Nathalie, a regional director for a multinational company, 15 years to find out.

"While chatting with my male counterparts, I realised that I was earning about €1,000 less per month than they were," she told Franceinfo. "I’d lost €150,000 over 15 years."

After comparing pay slips with colleagues, she realised that "every time, the women had significantly more experience in the role, more qualifications, we checked all the boxes. And yet, we were paid less. And the higher you climb in the hierarchy, the bigger the gap becomes".

Nathalie took her case to court and won, securing a raise for herself and her colleagues. She questions whether women "negotiate their salaries enough".

The question of negotiating pay "is as taboo as sex," says lawyer Insaff El Hassini.

She set up a training and coaching company called Ma Juste Valeur – meaning "My True Worth" – to help women overcome that barrier and negotiate their pay, after facing gender discrimination in the workplace herself.

"I found out my male colleague earned €5,000 a year more than me," she told RFI. "When I voiced my concerns I was told, 'Well you're already well paid, you should have negotiated your starting salary when you joined'. No one had told me you had to negotiate. I thought it was vulgar."

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Closing the gap

This year France will implement the EU's 2023 Pay Transparency Directive, obliging companies to provide employees with pay scales for equivalent posts. Both Eydoux and Donzel welcome this transparency measure.

Eydoux also points to economic measures such as increasing both the minimum wage and income tax on very high wages, which together would narrow the pay gap. But the French government, which is trying to reduce the country's huge deficit and keep high-earners and businesses on board, is not currently in favour of either.

Donzel insists that salaries in the female-dominated education and care sectors must be raised, given the contribution they make to society. "Whether it's taking care of children, the elderly or in caring professions, this is obviously what's most valuable, yet the economy has reversed the value system and that's what we pay the least for."

Eydoux would also like to see France's gender quota policy, which has proven "very efficient" in breaking the glass ceiling by imposing gender-balance on executive boards, extended to other sectors.

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For the moment, however, she says there aren't many signs of improvement: "I don't see much political will to focus on the gender pay gap and reduce it."

Resistance to gender equality is nothing new, she added, and while younger women in particular are "more conscious of the gender pay gap and more willing to improve the situation", they are now facing new forms of resistance.

"More and more young men are defending masculinist positions and ideologies," she said, with some claiming the 22 percent gender pay gap is "fake news".

France and other European leaders back Arab proposal to rebuild Gaza

France, Britain, Germany and Italy have said the Arab-backed plan to reconstruct Gaza and avoid displacing Palestinians from the terrritory is a "realistic path".

Palestinians break their fast among the rubble in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 1, 2025. The UN says more than 90% of homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. REUTERS - Hatem Khaled

By: RFI

Issued on: 08/03/2025 - 


The $53 billion plan, put forward by the Arab League, was formally adopted on Saturday by the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia.

The Egyptian-crafted proposal is an alternative to US President Donald Trump's plan to turn the Gaza Strip into a "Middle East Riviera", displacing its 2.4 million inhabitants.

On Saturday, the foreign mnisters of France, Germany, Italy and Britain welcomed the five-year Egyptian plan, saying it promised "swift and sustainable improvement of the catastrophic living conditions" for the people of Gaza, they said in a joint statement.

French Foreign ministry says forced displacement of Gazans would be 'unacceptable'



A "realistic" path

The plan would rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and does not outline a role for Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Hamas and the PA welcomed the plan after it was presented by Egypt on Tuesday.

OIC, which represents the Muslim world, has urged "the international community and international and regional funding institutions to swiftly provide the necessary support for the plan".

Both the US and Israel have rejected it, claiming it fails to address the realities in Gaza.

"Residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance," Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump's National Security Council, said Tuesday.

However, European foreign ministers said it showed "a realistic path to the reconstruction of Gaza".

"We are clear that Hamas must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel any more," they said in their statement.

"We commend the serious efforts of all involved stakeholders and appreciate the important signal the Arab states have sent by jointly developing this recovery and reconstruction plan."

The four countries said they were committed to working with the Arab initiative, the Palestinians and Israel to "address those issues together".

The majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents have been forced to leave their homes since Israel began bombarding Gaza following the 17 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.

More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

(with newswires)

Adopted orphan brings couple ‘paradise’ in war-ravaged Gaza


By AFP
March 7, 2025


Iman Farhat said the idea for her and her husband to adopt a child 'was cemented by' Gaza's war - Copyright AFP BASHAR TALEB

Youssef HASSOUNA

In their home in war-devastated Gaza City, Iman Farhat and her husband cherish the “paradise” brought by their newly-adopted baby, one of many orphans in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Wrapping five-month-old Jannah in a brightly coloured blanket, Farhat gently sang as she rocked her to sleep.

“I chose Jannah just as she was,” the new mother said smiling, explaining the couple simply wanted to adopt a young child without preference for gender or physical appearance.

“Her name was Massa, and I officially changed her name from Massa to Jannah,” which means “paradise” in Arabic, she added.

Farhat, 45, and her husband Rami al-Arouqi, 47, adopted the well-behaved and chubby baby in January.

“At first, we had mixed feelings of both joy and fear, because it is a huge responsibility and we had never had a child”, said Arouqi, a Palestinian Authority employee.

The couple already owned a cat.

“The idea of adopting a child had crossed our minds, but it was cemented during the war” which “wiped out entire families and left only orphans”, he added.

In September, the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF, estimated there were 19,000 children who were unaccompanied or separated from their parents in Gaza, Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF’s spokesman for the Palestinian territories, told AFP.

Data for the number of adoptions in Gaza was not immediately available.

The war sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel left more than 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings damaged or destroyed, displaced almost the entire population and triggered widespread hunger, according to the United Nations.



– Life ‘turned upside down’ –



Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 48,446 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.

Farhat and her husband said that before Jannah’s adoption, she was taken care of by the SOS Children’s Villages — an international NGO which looks after children in need.

After the NGO’s premises in the southern Gaza city of Rafah were destroyed in the war, the organisation had to move to nearby Khan Yunis where “they could not house all the children in buildings, so they set up tents for them,” Farhat said.

Her husband Arouqi told AFP that another motive for adopting a child came from the idea that “Palestinians should stand by each other’s side”.

“The whole world has abandoned and let us down, so we shouldn’t let each other down,” he added.

Once the pair took Jannah home, “our life was turned upside down in a beautiful and pleasant way,” he said.

“Her name is Jannah and our world has truly become a paradise.”

A fragile truce took effect on January 19, largely halting the devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.

The ceasefire’s first phase ended last weekend.

While Israel has said it wants to extend the first phase until mid-April, Hamas has insisted on a transition to the deal’s second phase, which should lead to a permanent end to the war.

Germany’s asylum seekers anxious over Merz’s immigration plans


By AFP

March 7, 2025


Mohammad Bitar, 34, from Syria said he fears the climate is darkening - Copyright AFP/File Ting Shen, ALFREDO ZUNIGA

Pierrick YVON

As Germany’s Friedrich Merz gets closer to becoming chancellor, many asylum seekers live in fear of what his promised crackdown on irregular immigration will mean for them.

After a heated election campaign marred by a string of deadly attacks blamed on Syrian, Afghan and Saudi suspects, some migrants now worry for themselves and their families.

As the far-right AfD has made strong gains, Mohammad Bitar, 34, from Syria said he fears the climate is darkening and that the message towards migrants may shift to one of “we don’t want you anymore”.

Bitar was among some 30 Syrians who met recently in the town hall of Norderstedt, just outside the northern city of Hamburg, to learn about what Berlin’s shifting policy plans may mean for them.

Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government already froze asylum applications for Syrians after the fall of long-time president Bashar al-Assad late last year.

The months since saw a string of attacks, including a car-ramming through a Christmas market crowd in December that killed six people and wounded hundreds, with a Saudi man arrested.

More deadly attacks followed, two of them blamed on Afghan asylum seekers: a stabbing spree targeting kindergarten children and another car-ramming attack in Munich.

Merz has vowed tight controls on German borders, deportations of rejected asylum seekers, and an end to family reunifications for some categories of asylum seekers.

Bitar, an academic specialising in international law, said he arrived in Germany a year and a half ago.

He now lives in Norderstedt, a town of 85,000 people that is home to more than 2,000 refugees, who are mostly housed in emergency accommodation.

He is in Germany under “subsidiary protection”, a status given to people who have not been accepted as refugees but for whom “serious harm is threatened in the country of origin”.



– ‘Something is changing’ –



Merz has said he wants people who have this status not to be able to apply for family reunions.

This will directly impact Bitar, who has been hoping that his wife will be able to join him.

Bitar said he fears that the “situation will change” to the point where authorities tell him he is no longer welcome.

Concerns were also raised by Mouayad Hamzeh Alamam, 16, who arrived from Syria seven years ago and has since become a German citizen.

In perfect German, he spoke of his worries that his mother, who only has a residence permit, “could be deported to Syria”.

“You can feel something is changing,” he said.

Alamam pointed to a dramatic day in parliament last month when Merz pushed through a motion calling for an immigration crackdown with support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The move breached a long-standing taboo and sparked uproar in the chamber and days of street protests.

“The CDU today is quite xenophobic, if I can put it like that,” said Alamam.

Merz has vowed a dramatic change from the open-door policy of his CDU party’s former chancellor Angela Merkel, who welcomed more than a million people during the mass migrant influx of 2015-16.

Her centre-left successor, Scholz, has already reacted to the changing mood and recently trumpeted the fact that the re-establishment of border controls in 2024 had reduced the number of new asylum seekers by 37 percent.



– ‘Race against time’ –



Merz’s centre-right CDU/CSU alliance is now in preliminary talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) on a possible coalition.

A flashpoint issue they are discussing is immigration and security, a topic that dominated the campaign.

The tough new stance promised by the CDU means that asylum seekers waiting for a decision face a “race against time”, said Raphaela Shorina, who works in Norderstedt for the charity Diakonie.

To boost their chances of being allowed to stay, she said, many “are trying to get their qualifications recognised and to improve their language skills”.

She rejects the logic of scaling back refugee numbers in the light of recent attacks.

“It’s mental health care which is lacking and that means that people go to pieces because of everything that they’ve bring through,” she said.

She pointed to Germany’s huge skilled labour shortage and said the authorities should invest in language courses and other measures to help new arrivals integrate better.

Afghan asylum seeker Arsalan Qurishy, 28, condemned the recent attacks, which he said threaten to make wider society “blame other Afghans”.

He said he cannot go back to Afghanistan as his father was a prosecutor who fled the Taliban, but said he had been waiting for a decision on his asylum request for two years.

“I have no future,” he said. “I have no safety. I have nothing in my own homeland.”

FASCIST STATE

Ecuador security forces given blanket amnesty in cartel fight


By AFP
March 7, 2025


Fighting between rival factions of an Ecuadoran drug trafficking gang left at least 22 people dead in the port city of Guayaquil on Thursday - Copyright AFP MARCOS PIN

Ecuador’s president announced on Friday an amnesty for security forces fighting drug cartels in the port city of Guayaquil, where 22 people were killed in fierce gunfights between rival gangs.

As teams of heavily armed police launched raids and collected tens of bodies in the city’s troubled Nueva Prosperina neighbourhood, President Daniel Noboa announced a blanket pardon designed to signal resolve.

“All police and military personnel who have operated in, or who will be deployed to Nueva Prosperina, already have a presidential pardon,” he said on social media.

He urged the security forces — some already accused of human rights abuses during an increasingly brutal drug war — to “act with determination and without fear of reprisal.”

AFP reporters accompanied police SWAT teams on a series of raids in Nueva Prosperina on Friday.

Forces combed steams and culverts, and stormed apartment blocks, hauling out handcuffed suspects and suitcases filled with rifles and ammunition as police helicopters circled the skies above.

Noboa, in power since 2023, faces a presidential runoff election on April 13 that will decide whether he gets another four years in power.

He has campaigned on his crackdown on drug cartels that have turned what was once one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries into one of its most violent.

“Defend the country and I will defend you,” added the president, who edged his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez in the first election round on February 9.

On Thursday, 22 people were killed and six injured in clashes between rival factions of one of the country’s biggest criminal gangs, Los Tiguerones, authorities said.



– ‘I will defend you’ –



Noboa’s rival Gonzalez, a lawyer, has criticized human rights abuses allegedly committed by the security forces in the name of the war on cartels and vowed a more restrained approach.

Over a dozen members of the military are being investigated over the murder of four boys who went missing while playing football in Guayaquil in December.

Their charred bodies were later found near an army base, in a case that caused widespread outrage.

Ecuador has been plunged into violence by the spread of transnational cartels that use its ports, like Guayaquil, to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Homicides rose from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 in 2023.

With the violence showing no sign of abating, Noboa’s strategy on the campaign trail has been to toughen rather than soften his rhetoric.

He recently said he would ask unspecified allied countries to send special forces to help him fight criminal gangs.

Guayaquil is the capital of Guayas, one of seven provinces where a state of emergency has been in force for the past two months.

Colombian FARC dissidents take 29 soldiers, police captive


By AFP
March 7, 2025


Coca crops seen in a mountain stronghold of the Central General Staff (EMC) rebels in southwest Colombia, who have taken 29 security force members captive - Copyright AFP Ludovic MARIN

Lina VANEGAS

Dissident members of Colombia’s FARC rebel group have taken 29 soldiers and police officers captive during clashes with the military in a key cocaine-growing region in the southwest, the defense ministry said Friday.

The ministry blamed Thursday’s attack on members of the main FARC renegade faction, the Central General Staff (EMC), which rejected an historic peace agreement signed by the Marxist rebel group with the state in 2016.

It said that residents acting at the behest of the guerrillas also took part in the hostilities.

The events occurred in the municipalities of Argelia and El Tambo, major coca-growing areas controlled by the EMC which the military has been trying to bring back under state control since October.

Coca is the raw material of cocaine.

Videos published by the authorities show an armored vehicle in flames fleeing the area while a group of people pelted it with stones.

In other videos, riot police can be seen throwing smoke grenades and advancing down a street during a gun battle.

Colombia is experiencing its worst outbreak of violence in the decade since the peace deal with FARC.

Much of the violence is driven by the fight for control of coca-growing areas and cocaine trafficking routes.

The fighting in the southwest comes less than two months after a wave of guerrilla attacks in the northeastern Catatumbo region, which left dozens dead and forced tens of thousands from their homes.

One faction of the EMC is in peace talks with the government but another faction withdrew from the talks last year and resumed attacks on state forces, which in turn stepped up operations against the group.

Writing on the social network X, left-wing President Gustavo Petro said the EMC was acting out of “desperation and therefore using the civilian population.”

– ‘War crimes’ –



The defense ministry accused the rebels of war crimes.

It said the dissidents “not only forcibly recruit minors but also instrumentalize and coerce the civilian population in order to drive out state forces” and prevent the state providing access to “health, education, employment, and regional transformation.”

Police chief General Carlos Fernando Triana called on X for the immediate release of the security force members held captive by the guerrillas.

The successive waves of violence have upended Petro’s signature policy of trying to bring “total peace” to Colombia by getting all the armed groups to the negotiating table.

Petro’s critics say the guerrillas have used the breathing room afforded them by the talks to expand their control over remote rural parts of the northeast and southwest particularly.