Saturday, February 29, 2020

Maldives gets Amal Clooney to fight for Rohingya at UN court

AFP / Tolga AKMENHuman rights lawyer Amal Clooney will represent the Maldives at the UN's highest court in the Rohingya case

The luxury tourist destination of the Maldives has hired prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to represent it at the UN's highest court in seeking justice for Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya Muslims.

The Maldivian government said Wednesday it will formally join the mainly Muslim African state of The Gambia in challenging Myanmar's 2017 military crackdown that sent around 740,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.

In a unanimous ruling last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Buddhist-majority Myanmar to implement emergency measures to prevent the genocide of Rohingya -- pending a full case that could take years.

Clooney successfully represented former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed and secured a UN decision that his 2015 jailing for 13 years was illegal.

With the fall of strongman president Abdulla Yameen in 2018, Nasheed as well as several other dissidents in the Sunni Muslim nation of 340,000 have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Nasheed is currently the atoll nation's speaker in the national legislature.

The government said it welcomed the ICJ's decision to order provisional measures to secure the rights of victims in Myanmar and prevent the destruction of evidence in the ongoing case.

"Accountability for genocide in Myanmar is long overdue and I look forward to working on this important effort to seek judicial remedies for Rohingya survivors," Clooney was quoted as saying by the Maldivian government.

Thousands are suspected to have been killed in the Rohingya crackdown and refugees brought widespread reports of rape and arson by Myanmar's military and local Buddhist militias.

Moscow police seize homemade 'Batmobile'

Russian Interior Ministry/AFP / HandoutThis handout photo from Russian Interior Ministry taken on February 22, 2020 shows Russian traffic policemen standing next to a vehicle in Moscow that bears a striking resemblance to the "Batmobile"

A homemade vehicle bearing a striking resemblance to the "Batmobile" featured in a recent Batman film has been seized in central Moscow, Russia's interior ministry announced.

Traffic police brought the all-black, lowrider vehicle with giant wheels to a screeching halt as it cruised down one of the main roads into the city centre on Saturday evening.

They impounded the car, styled after the famous car belonging to the superhero and owned by a 32-year-old Muscovite.

The "Batmobile" owner faces fines for numerous violations before being allowed to get his car back.

Police said Tuesday that the vehicle was assembled illegally at a private workshop, is not registered as a vehicle and does not adhere to road safety standards, as well as being supersized for a standard car at six metres (20 feet) long.

The car was built in the United States, then customised in Russia at an auto tuning workshop called Fast Boom Pro, whose logo is visible in a police video, Russian auto sites reported.

The workshop turned it into the spitting image of the vehicle featured in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice".

The replica car was reportedly put on sale in Russia in October last year for 55 million rubles ($842,100).

It was described as armoured and equipped with a night-vision camera, a thermal imaging camera, a laser-aiming device and a model gun that imitates the sound of shooting.

Norway authorizes demolition of building with Picasso murals

AFP/File / ODD ANDERSENPicasso's 'The Fisherman' adorns a wall of the Y-block in Oslo which is to be demolished

Norway gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for the demolition of a bomb-damaged building adorned with drawings by Spanish master painter Pablo Picasso.

The government, which ruled out a further postponement to the 2014 decision to demolish the building, has said it would relocate the two Picasso murals.

Completed in 1969 in the centre of Oslo, the "Y block", named for its shape, bears drawings by Picasso sandblasted on its walls - the work of Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar, who collaborated with the Spanish master painter.

Previously the home of a government ministry, the building was damaged in the deadly bomb attack carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011, before he went on to carry out a mass shooting on the island of Utoya, killing a combined 77 people.

In 2014, Norway decided to demolish the building for security reasons as part of a major reconstruction project, and decided to relocate the murals "The Fishermen" and "The Seagull."

Anther building, "H block", which was also damaged in the blast and has three other Picasso murals, will not be destroyed.

The 2014 decision to knock down "Y block" provoked a backlash among champions of architectural heritage and the ensuing public outcry saw a delay to the demolition.

Three organisations and associations announced on February 13 their intention to take the state to court and asked the government to postpone the demolition until the court had ruled on the matter.

On Wednesday, the government rejected this request, arguing that further delays would lead to financial cost as well as the postponement of the reconstruction project which has already been decided.

SCANPIX NORWAY/AFP/File / STORLØKKEN, AAGENorwegian artist Carl Nesjar (left) sandblasting one of Pablo Picassos works into the concrete during the construction of the Y-block in Oslo

The ministry of local government and modernisation said in a statement that the agency in charge of managing the state's real estate assets, Statsbygg, had been given the "assignment to start preparation work for the demolition of the Y block."

No starting date has been set, but postponing the implementation of the measure beyond April 1 would cost between 30 and 50 million Norwegian kroner ($3.2 million to 5.3 million or 2.9 million to 4.9 million euros) per month, according to Statsbygg.

A petition launched a year ago to stop the demolition of "Y block" had gathered nearly 28,000 signatures by midday on Wednesday.

OIL DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBAL WARMING

Cannibalism on rise among polar bears, say Russian scientists

RUSSIAN ARCTIC NATIONAL PARK/AFP / Handout

Russians living in Arctic settlements have sounded the alarm over dozens of bears entering areas of human habitation, particularly to raid rubbish dumps for food

Cases of polar bears killing and eating each other are on the rise in the Arctic as melting ice and human activity erode their habitat, a Russian scientist said Wednesday.

"Cases of cannibalism among polar bears are a long-established fact, but we're worried that such cases used to be found rarely while now they are recorded quite often," said polar bear expert Ilya Mordvintsev, quoted by Interfax news agency.

"We state that cannibalism in polar bears is increasing," said Mordvintsev, a senior researcher at Moscow's Severtsov Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution.

Speaking at a presentation in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg, he suggested that the behaviour could be due to lack of food.

"In some seasons there is not enough food and large males attack females with cubs," he said.

The rise in cases may also be partly due to more people working in the Arctic and reporting such behaviour, he said.

AFP / Adrian LeungPolar bears face uncertain future

"Now we get information not only from scientists but also from the growing number of oil workers and defence ministry employees."

This winter the area from the Gulf of Ob to the Barents Sea, where polar bears used to hunt, is now a busy route for ships carrying LNG (liquefied natural gas), Mordvintsev said.

"The Gulf of Ob was always a hunting ground for the polar bear. Now it has broken ice all year round," he said, linking this to active gas extraction on the huge Yamal peninsula that borders the Gulf of Ob, and the launch of an Arctic LNG plant.

- Quitting normal hunting grounds -

Russia, already a key global oil and gas exporter, is keen to develop its LNG potential in the Arctic. It has also significantly upgraded its military facilities there.

Another Russian scientist, Vladimir Sokolov, who has led numerous expeditions by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, based in Saint Petersburg, said this year polar bears had mainly been affected by abnormally warm weather on Spitsbergen Island to the west in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where there have been no ice floes and little snow.

Russian researchers have recorded growing numbers of polar bears moving away from their traditional hunting grounds as ice melts due to global warming.

Over the last quarter-century, Arctic ice levels by the end of summer have fallen by 40 percent, said Sokolov. He predicted that polar bears would eventually no longer hunt on sea ice and be confined to shore areas and high-latitude archipelagos.

Russians living in Arctic settlements have sounded the alarm over dozens of bears entering areas of human habitation, particularly to raid rubbish dumps for food.

Kenya bans controversial donkey slaughter trade

AFP / TONY KARUMBAKenya has decided to ban the slaughter of donkeys for use in Chinese medicine

Kenya has decided to ban the slaughter of donkeys for use in Chinese medicine, a practice condemned by animal rights activists as cruel, unnecessary and devastating to donkey populations in Africa, a minister said on Thursday.

Agriculture Minister Peter Munya told AFP that the ban, imposed earlier this week, came after "people petitioned my office to ban the slaughtering of donkeys because theft of donkeys to sell had increased".

A ministry statement said rampant theft of donkeys was hitting farmers who use them to transport agricultural produce and water, and causing "massive unemployment".

Four abattoirs dealing in donkey meat have been given a month to stop the practice.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) hailed Kenya's decision to "cut ties with a cruel trade that sentences gentle donkeys to miserable deaths by the millions."

"No one needs donkey skin except the animals who were born in it," said PETA Senior Vice President of International Campaigns Jason Baker.

Donkey skins are exported to China to make a traditional medicine known as ejiao, which is believed to improve blood circulation, slow ageing, and boost libido and fertility.

It was once the preserve of emperors but is now highly sought after by a burgeoning middle-class.

A PETA investigation last year showed donkeys being cruelly beaten by workers, or dead after long truck journeys from neighbouring countries.

UK-based animal welfare organisation The Donkey Sanctuary told AFP at the time that there were tales of the animals being rounded up and machine-gunned or bludgeoned to death

China is increasingly looking to Africa to satisfy demand as its own donkey population has nearly halved in recent years.

However several African countries have now banned Chinese-funded abattoirs or implemented policies to stop the export of donkey skins to China.

Donkeys reproduce slowly and do not handle stress well, and activists have raised fears that populations could be wiped out in east Africa in a matter of years.

Emaciated lion Jupiter returning home to 'mother'

Cali Mayor's Office/AFP / Guillermo Gutiérrez / Alcaldia de CaliTwenty-year-old lion Jupiter does not have the strength to stand up after almost two years of being kept in dreadful conditions

Emaciated with a vacant gaze and without the strength to stand upright, 20-year-old lion Jupiter's life is in danger.

But authorities are acting to try to save him after he was discovered in a "critical state."

Leading attempts to restore Jupiter to full health is the woman who rescued him from the circus where he was born and brought him up as her "son" from the age of three months.

Ana Julia Torres has run the Villa Lorena animal sanctuary in Cali, Colombia for more than 30 years.

But in April 2019, environmental authorities confiscated Jupiter over a lack of required documentation and accusations that Torres was mistreating hundreds of wild animals, most of which arrived at her sanctuary showing signs of previous mistreatment.

When Jupiter was transferred to the Los Caimanes zoo in the department of Cordoba he weighed 250 kilograms (550 pounds), Torres said. Now his weight is down to just 90 kilos.

AFP / Lina GilKeeper Ana Julia Torres rests next to Jupiter, a diminished 20-year-old lion, at Los Caimanes zoo in Monteria, Colombia

When the zoo closed he was taken to a nearby facility.

"Clearly he was locked up and that's when he started losing weight," said Torres, who claimed she had felt a mother's instinct that her progeny needed her help.

"He hasn't eaten for several days. It's a fact that an animal deteriorates" in such conditions, she said.

Dramatic pictures of Jupiter have gone viral on social media where a campaign was launched to help him.

Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announced the lion would be sent home on an air force plane.

"This animal should never have left, nor been mistreated," said Cali's mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina.

He said local authorities were looking into building "appropriate" accommodation for Jupiter while the attorney general's office and police opened an animal cruelty enquiry.

Animal cruelty can be punished with up to three years in prison and a $12,000 fine.

Crucially, though, this king of the jungle -- who has never set foot in one -- is going home where his former carer is hoping to nurse him back to health.

"This love that he and I have for each other will save him," said Torres.

"That's the connection between a mother and a child."

LIVING IN CLOUD KOO KOO LAND

News

To 11 million Brazilians, the Earth is flat

AFP / Florence GOISNARD"Flat-Earthers are the smartest. Write that!" says Anderson Neves, a 50-year-old entrepreneur who is convinced that the Earth is flat

Sitting by a model of the Earth shaped like a pancake, Brazilian restaurant-owner Ricardo lets out an exaggerated laugh: "'Hahaha!' That's how people react when you tell them the Earth is flat," he says.

Ricardo, who declines to give his full name for just that reason, is a 60-something man whose restaurant in Sao Paulo has become a meeting place for people who, like him, reject the notion that the Earth is a sphere.

"The only things I know for certain are that I'm going to die someday and that the Earth is flat," he says.

It is a curious but remarkably large club: more than 11 million people in Brazil -- seven percent of the population -- believe the Earth is flat, according to polling firm Datafolha.

And their influence stretches surprisingly far, in a country currently swept up in the post-truth era and the anti-intellectual, climate-change-skeptic worldview embodied by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's most prominent ideologues, the writer and former astrologer Olavo de Carvalho, has said he "cannot refute" Flat-Earth theory.

Yet Brazil's Flat-Earthers are also a secretive, at times paranoid, community, communicating via encrypted messages on WhatsApp, invitation-only Facebook groups and especially on YouTube, where their channels have tens of thousands of followers.

There, they are free to state what they believe, without fear of ridicule: that the Earth is a flat, stationary body.

It is an argument they advance with varying interpretations of physics, optics and the Bible, dismissing all evidence to the contrary as a conspiracy.

- 'Humankind's greatest lie' -

Brazilians who believe the Earth is flat are mostly men, often Catholics or evangelical Christians, and with relatively low levels of education, according to Datafolha.

But don't confuse education with knowledge, the Flat-Earthers warn.

"Flat-Earthers are the smartest. Write that!" says Anderson Neves, a 50-year-old entrepreneur, who has come to Ricardo's restaurant armed with a pamphlet denouncing the "hoaxes" of Newton and Copernicus.

"A malignant pseudo-science has corrupted the education system around the world," says another text he is carrying.

It calls the idea of a round Earth "humankind's greatest lie, dictated by the global elite."

Next to him, Ricardo's Flat-Earth model shows the sun and Moon as little balls, equal in size, suspended above a disc-shaped planet.

"Just look at the horizon. Climb a mountain and take pictures. You can see the Earth isn't curved," says Neves, clutching a level to illustrate his point.

NASA/AFP/File / Nick HAGUEFlat Earthers give little credit to photographs of the Earth taken from space, and are convinced that NASA is perpetrating a giant fraud

The Flat-Earthers are brimming with counter-factual questions: If the Earth is rotating at 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) per hour at the equator, why doesn't the movement make everything fly off? If it's a sphere, why can't we see the curve from an airplane?

They give little credit to photographs from space or scientists' answers about gravity, Foucault's pendulum and two millennia of astronomical observation.

"We've known for certain the Earth isn't flat since Galileo, since the early 17th century. But the ancient Greeks had pieced it together more than 2,000 years ago," says astronomer Roberto Costa of the University of Sao Paulo.

"To scientists, this (Flat-Earth theory) seems more like a topic for psychologists or sociologists to study. The Earth's shape isn't a scientific problem to astronomers."

- Tilted Eiffel Tower? -

One of the most prominent of Brazil's Flat-Earthers is Afonso de Vasconcelos, a geophysicist with a PhD from the University of Sao Paulo.

Vasconcelos is based in the United States, which is also home to a large community of Flat-Earthers. One of them died last week attempting to launch himself more than 1,500 meters (nearly a mile) into the sky in a homemade rocket.

Vasconcelos operates a YouTube channel called "True Science" (Ciencia de Verdade) where he expounds his ideas to 345,000 followers.

Fellow YouTuber Siddhartha Chaibub, "Professor Flat-Earth" (Professor Terra Plana), has nearly 30,000 followers. Last November, Chaibub helped organize the first-ever convention for Brazilian Flat-Earthers, which drew hundreds of people in Sao Paulo.

One of the favorite targets for Flat-Earthers' conspiracy theories is NASA. They accuse the US space agency of pulling a giant fraud.

"Man never landed on the Moon. That was a studio set," says Ricardo.

As for satellite images showing Earth's curvature from space, he demands: "Where's the tilted Eiffel Tower?"

Mexico court jails man over murder of journalist Valdez

AFP/File / PEDRO PARDOMexican journalist Javier Valdez was murdered in May 2017

One of the murderers of acclaimed journalist and AFP contributor Javier Valdez Cardenas was sentenced Thursday to 14 years and eight months in prison by a Mexican court.

Heriberto Picos Barraza, nicknamed "El Koala", was one of the perpetrators of the crime committed in the northwestern city of Cualiacan in May 2017, according to the prosecution.

He had served as a driver for two men, Juan Francisco Picos Barrueto and Luis Idelfonso Sanchez, who shot Valdez outside his office.

A co-founder of the weekly newspaper Riodoce, Valdez, 50, was one of the most prominent chroniclers of Mexico's deadly drug war in a state where notorious kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman once reigned.

The public prosecutor's office ordered the accused to pay 9 million pesos (around 420,000 euros, $460,000) to the journalist's family.

The sum will be covered by the Executive Commission for Victim Assistance (CEAV), a branch of the interior ministry.

The prosecution argued that the assassination was ordered by Damaso Lopez Serrano, the son of a drug trafficker, who was furious at having been criticized in an article by Riodoce.

Lopez Serrano, who allegedly paid 100,000 pesos for the killing and supplied the weapons, has always denied the claims.

Juan Francisco Picos Barrueto, having refused to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of 20 years and eight months in prison, will be tried in March as the main perpetrator.

The murder in one of the deadliest countries for members of the press sparked international condemnation.

In virus-hit China, coat maker adapts to make hazmat suits

AFP / NOEL CELISUgly Duck Industry in Wenzhou, eastern China, has switched production from winter coats to hazmat suits

The coronavirus outbreak in China is preventing clothing manufacturer Ugly Duck Industry from resuming its normal production of winter coats, so it has pivoted to another in-demand product: hazmat suits.

The company in the eastern China export hub of Wenzhou hastily repurposed its assembly line, putting the few dozen workers it could muster to produce thousands of single-use protective suits daily.

Ugly Duck -- referring to the proverbial duckling that becomes a swan -- is among countless Chinese manufacturers heeding calls to address desperate shortages of face masks, medical equipment, and other supplies to fight the new coronavirus.

The contagion has killed more than 2,800 people and infected some 79,000 in China, sparking global fears and a run on supplies.

AFP / NOEL CELISUsing a repurposed assembly line, Ugly Duck is producing thousands of single-use protective suits daily

Wenzhou is one the hardest-hit areas, with 504 cases and one death as of Friday, compared with 337 infections in far larger Shanghai.

Along with other cities in Zhejiang province, Wenzhou adopted harsh restrictions on residents' movements on February 2. Ugly Duck was asked by local authorities to do its part.

"As soon as we received this mission, we reorganised our production line within 60 hours," company president Pan Yue told AFP.

The suits are sold to the government at cost and intended for local epidemic-control efforts.

But with the virus now hitting other countries, the company plans to continue hazmat suit production even after normal operations resume as expected in the coming weeks.

"We are considering export to Italy or wherever they are needed," Pan said. "We want to contribute to society and to the world."

- Hazmat-clad workers -

Major production areas in the five-story concrete factory are ghostly quiet expanses of idle sewing machines -- testament to the paralysis inflicted on Chinese manufacturing.

AFP / NOEL CELISThe workers at Ugly Duck's factory are clad in head-to-toe suits to prevent contamination of the new hazmat gear

But in one workshop nearly the size of a football pitch, the bright-white polypropylene material is first cut into basic shapes, then stitched together in stages, and finally folded and packaged on an assembly line by workers who are also clad in the head-to-toe suits to prevent contamination.

Each worker has a bottle of hand sanitiser at their work table.

Underlining China's enduring ability to foster mass, collective efforts, companies across China -- from iPhone maker Foxconn to car manufacturer BYD -- have pitched in after news that doctors in front-line epidemic areas were treating patients without proper masks or suits, or were forced to reuse single-use equipment.

Wenzhou, with around three million people in its main urban core, is famed for its commercial prowess.

AFP / NOEL CELISWenzhou is one of the areas hardest-hit by the coronavirus outbreak in China

A trade entrepot for centuries, it was an early pioneer in China's manufacturing-led economic transformation beginning in the 1970s and today produces a large portion of the world's eyeglasses and shoes.

But the city remains subdued, its factories hobbled.

Much of Ugly Duck's roughly 300-strong labour force are migrants from less-developed provinces like Yunnan and Guizhou in China's southwest.

Only half of the workers have managed to navigate travel restrictions and reduced rail and bus traffic.

"The outbreak has impacted the company because (production) has been delayed for a month," said Pan.

"But we will do everything to recoup the losses."

Opposition urges 'Russia without Putin' in rally for slain liberal

AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEVA Moscow rally marks five years since the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, but its organisers also want to send a message to President Vladimir Putin

Thousands rallied in central Moscow on Saturday to call on President Vladimir Putin not to stay in power indefinitely, in the first major protest by the Russian opposition since the Kremlin chief announced controversial plans to change the constitution.

The rally marked five years since the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, but its organisers also want the event to send a message to Putin after he proposed major constitutional changes.

Organisers, including the country's most prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, called for a mass turnout to show Putin that he must not consider staying in power by any means when his current mandate ends in 2024.

Moscow authorities gave permission to the rally -- after a succession of demonstrations urging fair elections last summer were roughly dispersed -- and the street was packed by a flow of protesters, an AFP correspondent said.

"The Putin regime is a threat to humankind," said the slogan on one placard next to a portrait of Nemtsov.

AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEVOpposition supporters attend a march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow. It is the first such rally since Russia's Vladimir Putin announced controversial changes to the constitution in January.

"Putin's policies are based on total lies," said another, quoting the liberal politician who was assassinated in central Moscow on February 27, 2015.

"Russia without Putin!" the crowds chanted repeatedly as they marched.

The White Counter monitor which counts attendance at protests said 22,300 people took part in the march. The interior ministry said 10,500 took part.

- 'Stay in power by any means' -

Putin, who has dominated Russia for two decades, in January unleashed a political storm, proposing an overhaul of the constitution, the first changes to the basic law since 1993.

Analysts see the plan as beginning preparations for succession when Putin's fourth presidential term ends in 2024, while the opposition says the Kremlin strongman wants to remain leader for life.

AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEVOrganisers of the march want mass turnout to show Vladimir Putin should not consider staying in power by any means beyond the end of his term in 2024

"I think that this is a crime, that it is mocking the constitution," said Semyon Pevzner, a pensioner aged 75. "The only aim is to stay in power by any means possible."

Putin first came to power as prime minister in 1999 under Boris Yeltsin before becoming president in 2000. He served the maximum two consecutive terms between 2000 and 2008 before a four-year stint as prime minister.

He returned to the Kremlin in 2012 for a newly-expanded six-year mandate and was re-elected in 2018. But opponents fear he could remain Russia's number one even if the job of president nominally goes to someone else in 2024.

Kseniya Telmanova, a 21-year-old student, reflected that Putin had been president for her whole life, except her first few months. "Probably those were the best months of my life," she said, laughing. "The leaders should fear the fact they can lose power."

AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEVA picture of Boris Nemtsov wearing a facemask left during the rally in downtown Moscow

Russia is planning to hold a referendum on the constitutional amendments on April 22.

One of the organisers of the Moscow protest, opposition leader Ilya Yashin, said the event had shown an "important dynamic" in that more people had turned out than at a similar anniversary event last year.

Asked whether the opposition was planning any more protests in the near future, he said: "I don't know so far. This was the main event we had been preparing."

- 'No major progress' -

Around 2,000 people gathered for a similar demonstration in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg on Saturday, clutching flowers, portraits of Nemtsov and banners reading "They feared you Boris".

"This is basically the only chance we have to go out and say that we are against what is going on in the country and against this police state," said Galina Zuiko, 55.

Nemtsov -- one of Putin's most vocal critics and a former deputy prime minister in the Yeltsin government -- was shot and killed on a Moscow bridge near the Kremlin.

AFP / Dimitar DILKOFFOpposition supporters push for release of political prisoners in Moscow rally, the first since Vladimir Putin controversial changed the constitution in January

In 2017, a court found a former security force officer from Chechnya guilty of his murder and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Four other men were found guilty of involvement in the killing.

But Nemtsov's family and allies insist the authorities have failed to bring the masterminds to justice.

"We have not seen any major progress" in the probe, Navalny said in brief comments to pro-opposition channel TV Rain. "We will continue to turn out (every year) until this case is solved."

Mike Pompeo refuses to deny conspiracy theory that coronavirus is ‘hoax created to damage Trump’

US secretary of state sidesteps question after president accuses opponents of politicising the virus

Jane Dalton @JournoJane
Saturday 29 February 2020 16:38

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has refused to deny a conspiracy theory that the severity of the coronavirus outbreak is a "hoax", after the White House tried to paint coverage of the disease's spread as a conspiracy to undermine Donald Trump.

The president accused his opponents and the media of “politicising” the virus, adding, “This is their new hoax,” following the investigation over Russian interference in his election and his impeachment.

Challenged to dismiss the suggestions of a ruse, Mr Pompeo repeatedly refused to do so, saying: “The State Department is doing everything it can to protect American citizens around the world.

"I’m not going to comment on what others are saying ... I’m just telling you what the secretary of state is doing.”

Mr Trump and his allies have been accused of increasingly trying to manage the public health crisis to benefit the president’s public image.

More than 85,000 people worldwide in nearly 60 countries have come down with the virus, leading to around 2,900 deaths. Sixty-five cases of the virus have been reported in the US.

During a hearing of the house foreign affairs committee, Mr Pompeo dismissed the questioning, from Ted Lieu, as “a gotcha moment”, adding: “It’s not useful.”

Asked again, Mr Pompeo said: “We’re taking it seriously.”

Read more
Republicans block plans to protect elections from foreign interference

The exchange followed comments by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who played down the disease and accused the press of focusing on coronavirus because they thought it would “bring down” the president.

Mr Lieu later tweeted to the president: “The 63 Americans with #coronavirus and the families of the over 2,800 dead globally because of coronavirus would disagree with you that it’s a 'new hoax'. This is not about you. It’s a public health crisis.”

He also accused Mr Pompeo of “being too scared to even say” coronavirus was not a hoax.

But the secretary of state posted that he was deeply concerned by its spread in Iran and the public health risk to the Iranian people and their neighbours.

“The US offers our humanitarian assistance to the people of Iran to help unmet needs in their response efforts,” he added.

Defending his administration’s handling of the outbreak, Mr Trump claimed the White House was “magnificently organised” in fighting it.

The World Health Organization has raised the risk of the global spread of the pathogen to “very high”.

While Muslims are being murdered in India, the rest of the world is too slow to condemn

There are some grim parallels between Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938 and Delhi today

Patrick Cockburn @indyworld
1 day ago

On 9 to 10 November 1938 the German government encouraged its supporters to burn down synagogues and smash up Jewish homes, shops, businesses, schools. At least 91 Jews – and probably many more – were killed by Nazi supporters egged on by Joseph Goebbels, the minister for public enlightenment and propaganda, in what became known as Kristallnacht – “the Night of Broken Glass”. It was a decisive staging post on the road to mass genocide.

On 23 February 2020 in Delhi, Hindu nationalist mobs roamed the streets burning and looting mosques together with Muslim homes, shops and businesses. They killed or burned alive Muslims who could not escape and the victims were largely unprotected by the police. At least 37 people, almost all Muslims, were killed and many others beaten half to death: a two-year-old baby was stripped by a gang to see if he was circumcised – as Muslims usually are, but Hindus are not. Some Muslim women pretended to be Hindus in order to escape.

Government complicity was not as direct as in Germany 82 years earlier, but activists of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, were reported as being in the forefront of the attacks on Muslims. A video was published showing Muslim men, covered in blood from beatings, being forced to lie on the ground by police officers and compelled to sing patriotic songs. Modi said nothing for several days and then made a vague appeal for “peace and brotherhood”.

The government’s real attitude towards the violence was shown when it instantly transferred a judge critical of its actions during the riots. Judge Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court was hearing petitions about the violence when he said that the court could not allow “another 1984” to happen, referring to the killing of 3,000 Sikhs by mobs in Delhi in that year after the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. He said the government should provide shelter for those who had been forced to flee and questioned if the police were properly recording victims’ complaints.

The government says that Judge Muralidhar’s transfer had already been announced and claims that its speedy implementation of the move had nothing to do with his remarks

Accusations of fascist behaviour by present day political leaders and their governments, similar to that of fascist regimes in Germany, Italy and Spain in the 1930s and 1940s, should not be made lightly. Such comparisons have been frequently levelled in recent years against nationalist, authoritarian populists from the US and the Philippines to Poland to Brazil. Often the allegation is believed by the accuser and, at other times, it is simply a term of abuse. Yet Modi and the BJP appear closer than other right-wing regimes to traditional fascism in their extreme nationalism and readiness to use violence. At the centre of their agenda is their brand of Hindu nationalism and a relentless bid to marginalise or evict India’s 200 million Muslims.

The rest of the world has been slow to grasp the gravity of what is happening in India because the Modi government has played down its project to shift India away from its previous status as a pluralistic secular state. The sheer number of people negatively affected by this change is gigantic: if the Muslim minority in India was a separate country then it would be eighth largest state in the world by population.

The violence in Delhi this week stems from the fear and hatred generated by the government-directed pincer movement against Muslims in India. One pincer is in the shape of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), under which non-Muslim migrants can swiftly gain Indian citizenship but Muslims cannot. Even more threatening is the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is likely to deprive many Indian Muslims of their citizenship. It was the non-violent protests and demonstrations opposing these measures that provoked the Hindu nationalist mobs into staging what was close to a pogrom earlier this week.

Just how far Modi and the BJP will go in their anti-Muslim campaign is already in evidence in Jammu and Kashmir, the one Indian state with a Muslim majority. It was summarily stripped of its autonomy last August and has been locked down ever since. Mass detentions and torture are the norm according to the few witnesses able to report what they have seen.

For 150 days after the government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the internet was cut off and it has only been restored to a very limited degree since January. The security forces detain who they want and distraught family members complain that they cannot find their relatives or that they are too poor to visit them in prisons that may be 800 miles away.

The isolation of Kashmir has largely worked from the government point of view in sealing it off from the outside world. But would it make much difference if events there were better known? The burnings and killings in Delhi this week are well publicised, but regarded with a certain tolerance internationally: Modi can trade off India’s reputation as a ramshackle democracy and a feeling that “communal violence” is traditional in India, like hurricanes in Florida or earthquakes in Japan, and nobody is really to blame.

There has been an encouraging, though fiercely repressed, wave of opposition in India to the degradation of its non-sectarian traditions. The danger here – and the mobs in Delhi may be a sign of this – is that Modi and his government will respond to these protests by playing the Hindu nationalist card even more strongly.6

Dealing with foreign criticism, the government may say that, regardless of its domestic political programme, it is supercharging economic growth and this excuses its other failings. Authoritarian regimes, with control over most of their own media, often make such claims and, when economic statistics show the opposite, they simply fake a new set of figures. A recent study of the Indian economy noted that, while overall economic growth had supposedly risen strongly, the growth in investment, profits, tax revenues, imports, exports, industrial output and credit had all weakened in recent years.

In one respect, Modi is in a stronger position than Germany after Kristallnacht. President Roosevelt responded with a statement denouncing antisemitism and violence in Germany and promptly withdrew the US ambassador. President Trump, on a two-day visit to India at a time that Muslims were being hunted down and killed a few miles from where he was sitting, said he was satisfied that Modi was working “really hard” to establish religious freedom.