JESUIT DENOUNCES FEMICIDE

Pope denounces violence against women as Italy searches soul over murder

Philip Pullella
Mon, 1 January 2024



Pope Francis celebrates the World Day of Peace in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Monday denounced violence against women, speaking as Italy is in the midst of national soul-searching about how to shed an entrenched culture of male chauvinism that often has led to femicide.

Francis has made numerous appeals for an end to violence against women in the past. But his words on Monday were the first in a speech since Italy was angered by the brutal killing of 22-year-old university student Giulia Cecchettin in November.

The killing sparked protests around the country and led to calls that teaching respect for girls become part of school programmes beginning at kindergarten level.

"Every society needs to accept the gift that is woman, every woman: to respect, defend and esteem women, in the knowledge that whosoever harms a single woman profanes God, who was born of a woman," he said.

Italian lawmakers unanimously backed a raft of measures to clamp down on violence against women after the killing reopened a national debate on the subject.

Her ex-boyfriend has confessed to the killing, his lawyer has told reporters.

According to Italy's interior ministry, more than 100 women were killed in 2023, about half of them by their partner or former partner. Femicide has become a common word in newspaper headlines.

The outrage over Cecchettin's killing coincided with the box office success of a film titled "C'e Ancora Domani" (There's Still Tomorrow), which tells the story of a woman beaten by her husband.

Set in Rome just after World War Two, when women won the right to vote, the film is now being used as a teaching tool in schools throughout the country.

The pope made his comments in a homily of a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica on the day the Roman Catholic Church marks the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy Mother of God, which is also the Church's World Day of Peace.

Francis said women had a crucial role in being models for peace.

"The world, too, needs to look to mothers and to women in order to find peace, to emerge from the spiral of violence and hatred, and once more see things with genuinely human eyes and hearts," he said.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Alison Williams)

Same-sex couples able to marry in Estonia from New Year’s Day


Shafi Musaddique in Tallinn
Mon, 1 January 2024

Photograph: Marielle Tuum

Same-sex couples in Estonia are able to marry from New Year’s Day, in a milestone move people say brings the Baltic nation closer to its Nordic neighbours.

Estonia became the first former Soviet-ruled country to legalise gay marriage when the Riigikogu, Estonia’s parliament, voted in favour of marriage equality in June. A majority of 55 MPs voted for amending the Family Act, while 34 MPs voted against the bill in the 101-seat parliament.

The election victory of the prime minister, Kaja Kallas, in February, who has since led the country’s most progressive coalition government, is credited with bolstering efforts to achieve marriage equality.


“It’s an important moment that shows Estonia is a part of northern Europe,” said Keio Soomelt, the project manager for the Baltic Pride festival.

“For the LGBT+ community, it is a very important message from the government that says, finally, we are as equal as other couples; that we are valuable and entitled to the same services and have the same options,” said Soomelt, who will swap his civil partnership of eight years for a marriage with his husband in 2024.

The law came into effect on Monday, with same-sex couples able to register their marriage applications online from New Year’s Day. The first applications will be processed and certified by 2 February, with applications typically taking one to six months to process.

Perceptions of same-sex marriage have shifted in recent years in the largely non-religious country of 1.3 million. In a poll conducted by the Estonian Human Rights Centre this year, 53% of Estonians supported same-sex marriage. A decade ago, it was just 34%.

Civil partnerships and cohabiting partners have been legally recognised by Estonia since 2013.

Marielle Tuum, a 24-year-old teacher from Tallinn, said: “Ten years ago, I didn’t see as many same-sex couples holding hands in public. People are more open now in Estonia. Tuum and her 26-year-old German girlfriend, Annika Unkauf, will register their marriage in spring and hope to celebrate with family and friends in autumn.

“I’m really happy that I can do a proper wedding at home and not elsewhere, that has less meaning,” she said.

Estonia’s largely secular outlook has helped shift opinions on LGBTQ+ people within the last decade. Corporate sponsorship of this year’s Baltic Pride was at an all-time high, with Estonia’s biggest telecommunications company, Telia, among 16 other businesses, openly funding the festival.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1991 when Estonia broke away from Soviet rule. However, discrimination and violence persists. A gay pastor was stabbed in a Tallinn bar during Pride celebrations in June, while LGBTQ+ army conscripts reportedly face additional checks.

Gay marriage is opposed by most of Estonia’s Russian-speaking population, who comprise about a quarter of the country.

FASCIST PERSECUTION

Italy confines Ocean Viking migrant rescue ship for 20 days

RFI
Mon, 1 January 2024 



Italian authorities have detained the Ocean Viking migrant rescue vessel for 20 days over its alleged failure to follow a prescribed route after rescuing dozens of people off the Libyan coast, the ship's operator SOS Mediterranee said Sunday.

"Ocean Viking is detained under the 'Piantedosi Decree-Law' for the second time in two months, punishing humanitarian rescuers for carrying out the lifesaving work that European States fail to do in the central Mediterranean," SOS Mediterranee, based in the French city of Marseille, said on social media platform X.

It said the ship had been ordered to return directly to the Italian port of Bari after picking up 244 people in three rescue operations, including 18 unaccompanied minors and four children under the age of four.


But as it was heading for Bari the Ocean Viking received an alert of at least 70 migrants needing help around 15 nautical miles (28 kilometres) from its position, though in fact the skiff was around 60 nautical miles away.

"Without any indication that another ship was en route to help these people in distress, we simply had no other choice, legal or moral, to respond to this alert - any other choice would have been a violation of international law," said SOS Mediterranee.

EU border agency reports spike in illegal immigration

In the end the Ocean Viking was not in a position to help and resumed its course toward Bari. It did not say if the migrants were later rescued.

(with AFP)

Could 2024 be the year nature rights enter the political mainstream?


Jonathan Watts

 THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 1 January 2024

Photograph: FG Trade/Getty Images

Two new coalitions of scientists, lawyers, philosophers and artists have joined the burgeoning global campaign for ecosystems and other species to have legal rights and even political representation.

The More Than Human Rights (Moth) project and Animals in the Room (Air) are exploring bold tactics to further their cause, including authorship claims for forests, policy advocacy on behalf of bears and whales, and fungal strategies to spread ecological thinking.

They represent a new wave of nature and animal rights movements gaining traction amid frustration over humanity’s ultra-exploitative relationship with other species and growing concern about the shortcomings of the technology-and-markets approach to the climate crisis.

“We want to take the idea of rights of nature from the margin to the mainstream. The idea is to embed society in the biosphere,” said César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Colombian legal scholar who heads the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic at New York University.

Rodríguez-Garavito is the founder of Moth, which intends to set a legal precedent by establishing the creative rights of the Los Cedros cloud forest in northern Ecuador, which has already been recognised as an entity possessing legal personhood and rights under a landmark 2021 judgment by the constitutional court of Ecuador.

In a test case, Moth will argue that a new piece of music was co-created by the forest with the British musician Cosmo Sheldrake. In Song of the Forest, Sheldrake recorded the forest’s voices, including birds, animals and trees, and then mixed this with electronically produced rhythms, his own words and those of other Moth members, including his mycologist brother Merlin and the British author Robert McFarlane. Sheldrake will perform the song in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, next year, after which Rodríguez-Garavito and Ecuadorean lawyers will assert the co-authorship of Los Cedros.

“I wanted to give some of the creative rights to creatures or ecosystems, but I realised there is no structure in place,” Sheldrake said. As the closest comparison, he cited Earth Percent, a company founded by Brian Eno that aims to recognise the planet as a stakeholder in music creation, but Sheldrake said even this “does not address the fundamental issue of authorship rights for birds and other creatures, or places”.

If successful, this would extend the domain of intellectual rights, which thus far have been recognised only for human creators. In the “monkey selfie” case in 2011, for example, a photographer was sued by an animal defence organisation for making money from a photograph that a monkey had taken on the man’s cellphone. The judge refused to accept that nonhumans can have ownership rights.

Elephant AI to fungal protection

The forthcoming forest, or “Copygreen”, case was one of a number of nature rights ideas discussed by Moth at a week-long workshop in Chile.

Among the participants was the geo-philosopher and deep ecologist David Abram, who first coined the term “more than humans”. “We need an ecology of language. What we say profoundly affects our senses,” he said. “We also need to recognise that humans are not the only species capable of language.”

Other speakers ranged from Silicon Valley experts, who explained how artificial intelligence is being deployed to interpret the language of elephants and whales, to mycologists who envisaged a campaign modelled on the “everywhere, all at once” proliferation of fungal spores. Giuliana Furci, the Chilean founder of the Funghi Foundation, said she had already persuaded her government to incorporate the protection of endangered fungi in all infrastructure projects. “They are like a keystone species,” she explained. “If you protect one that covers a wide area, then you preserve a whole ecosystem or habitat.”

José Gualinga, a leader of the Sarayaku people of Ecuador, urged Moth to follow the example of his community. “We are trying to convince people the forest is a living being,” he said. As well as the rights of nature, he stressed the responsibilities of humans. “Non-indigenous humans see nature as something separate from themselves. They forget we are part of nature.”

The broader rights of nature movement dates back to at least 1972, when Christopher D Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, wrote a journal article entitled Should trees have standing, in which he proposed giving legal rights to nature.

Since then, it has expanded in spurts. The Center For Environmental Rights has collated a list of the countries, regions and legal systems that have recognised rights for nature. Ecuador, Bolivia, Uganda, the United States, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Mexico and Northern Ireland have some recognition of the rights of nature in their constitutions, national laws or local regulations. Court decisions in India and Colombia have recognised the rights of ecosystems or rivers. Ireland may be the next to follow, depending on the outcome of a proposed referendum on protecting biodiversity.

The United Nations is also looking into the legal implications of rights of nature, which were mentioned in the last meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

It is the subject of academic research. “The law can give rights to all kinds of entities if it finds reason to do so,” noted scholars Guillaume Chapron, Yaffa Epstein and José Vicente López-Bao in an article in Science. “Corporations, trade unions, and states are all nonhuman entities that have rights and duties under the law. They have rights to litigate if they are injured and duties not to violate the rights of others. The legal system has no difficulty adjudicating nonhuman rights.”

The trio predicted that adjudicating conflicts between rights of nature and human activities would be controversial, but no more so than conflicts between human rights to free expression and non-discrimination. “Conflicts between nature and human activities happen on a massive and systematic scale. When people and corporations have rights and nature does not, nature frequently loses, as evidenced by the continuing deterioration of the environment. Rights of nature may help to prevent this one-sided outcome.”

Guardianship roles

Older campaigns for animal and human rights focus on individuals rather than landscapes, nature or the planet. The new rights of nature movements are exploring novel strategies, including on the political front. Their argument goes that if guardians can be appointed as legal representatives for incapacitated humans, corporate entities and ecosystems, then perhaps they can also stand in as political proxies to ensure other species can be “heard” in decision-making.

This is the focus of Air, a network that brings together philosophers, scientists, animal welfare specialists, artists, and communities to devise and test ways of including non-human animals in human decision-making.

Next year, Air will open a research centre in New York focused on inclusive practices for animals and nature in law, politics and the arts. It will begin with a study in Italy of how to include bears in policy formulation by human communities. There are plans for similar projects to represent elephants in Kenya and whales in the ocean.

One of the cornerstones of its work, according to the founder, Melanie Challenger, is that participants should listen to the animals in question, rather than present themselves as experts. “It is more than just a scholarly and policy-based approach; it is a philosophy and a practice,” said Challenger, who is also a vice-president of the RSPCA and author of How to Be Animal.

She said ideas about political representation for animals moved into the public realm in 2023 with articles being published and talks given to animal charities, Earth governance experts and sustainability groups. “We feared scepticism and, instead, have been met with enthusiasm and, in some ways, relief. People who care passionately about the living world recognise that the old moral and legal tools aren’t fit for purpose,” she said.

Underpinning Air’s work is a growing trend of looking at ways to widen democracy with deliberative assemblies. In a just society “animals must have their perspectives sought out, understood and fed into decision-making in equitable terms,” said the political philosopher Alasdair Cochrane, the author of Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice.

Along with other groups such as the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and the Environmental Justice Network , some feel the campaign may be approaching a critical mass.

“There is certainly something brewing here,” said Pooven Moodluy, a founder of the Earth Rights Collective and member of Moth. His hope was for Indigenous wisdom to combine with new technology: “That could be quite powerful. Indigenous wisdom has to be at the forefront.”

Edginess v realism

The main division between the groups is on the scale at which rights or political representation should be granted. Some organisations believe it should be limited to pets, others to the more obviously sentient animals, such as whales, cows, pigs and bears. Others want to focus on river basins or mountains, or on nature as a whole. The Indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami goes even further: “I think it is better to talk about the rights of the Earth more than the rights of nature … If we are serious, we must not allow any more projects to destroy the Earth.”

There is also the question of how far to push the agenda. Talk of rights for forests or political representation for animals is so unusual that it can raise smirks of derision. But Rodríguez-Garavito believes people are now more willing to consider ideas that were previously on the fringes. “We want to find the sweet spot between edginess and realism. I don’t want a backlash, but the line between the status quo and the absurd has moved. We live in absurd times in many ways. It is necessary to be bolder than before,” he said. “People are open to fast change. We are all feeling the heat of climate change and biodiversity collapse.”

As a precedent, he recalls that 20 years ago, everyone thought Earthjustice lawyers were crazy when they launched a case against the US government on the grounds that the climate crisis was a human rights violation. Now there are so many of these cases that it has become normal.

“This is a highly experimental project,” he said of Moth. “We are working with a compass rather than a map. But we want to showcase how these ideas might work in practice. We will get some things wrong, but that is how we will advance, by specifying, mainstreaming and steadily giving more teeth to rights of nature.”

Mexico's Zapatistas mark 30th anniversary of uprising


Jose Osorio with Samir Tounsi in Mexico City
Sun, 31 December 2023 

Supporters hold a banner of Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) at the Mayan archeological ruins of Palenque on January 3, 2005

 (SUSANA GONZALEZ)

Mexico's Zapatista demobilized guerrilla group prepared Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of its pro-Indigenous, anti-capitalist uprising in an impoverished southern region where today drug traffickers are a greater foe than the military.

Supporters from Mexico and Europe headed to the state of Chiapas for two days of events in the jungle at the invitation of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

"For me it's important to support this struggle because it represents dignity," social activist Moises Perada said before setting off from Mexico City.

Taking its name from 1910 revolution hero Emiliano Zapata, the EZLN appeared the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force on New Year's Day 1994.

Many in Mexico at the time feared free trade with the United States would crush traditional lifestyles and farming.

Led by their mysterious masked leader Subcomandante Marcos, the rebels rose up in poverty-stricken Chiapas to fight for more rights for the Indigenous population.

The insurgency sparked a 12-day conflict with the federal government that left dozens of people dead, mostly Zapatistas.

The guerrillas won over sympathizers well beyond Mexico's borders, notably in Europe.

"I feel the wind blowing from Chiapas and Latin America that will regenerate us," former French first lady and human rights activist Danielle Mitterrand wrote after meeting Marcos in 1996.

The movement used the fledgling Internet to share its press releases in several languages.

That helped the Zapatistas "to win the battle for world opinion," researcher and author David Colon wrote in his book “The Information War” (2023).

A peace pact was signed in 1996 but the EZLN said its demand for constitutional reform that would guarantee its autonomy was never met.

The Zapatistas retreated into mountain communities where they formed their own autonomous health and education systems.

- Drug cartel threat -

Three decades later, the colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas -- the cradle of the rebellion -- is a picturesque tourist destination popular with younger visitors from Mexico, the United States and Europe.

Subcomandante Marcos, the enigmatic rebel identified by authorities as former philosophy professor Rafael Sebastian Guillen, now largely avoids the spotlight.

In 2014, he announced that he would no longer be the voice of the movement, naming fellow former insurgent Moises as the "chief and spokesman" of the EZLN in what he described vaguely as "internal changes" and not due to illness.

Marcos's trademark pipe and balaclava have long been appropriated by the tourism industry, emblazoned on souvenirs, but his fame has faded.

“We don't hear as much about the Zapatistas anymore. If they still exist, they must be very far away,” Mexican tourist Lorena Cruz, 44, told AFP.

At the beginning of November, the Zapatistas announced the end of their autonomous civil systems and the indefinite closure of their cultural centers.

The EZLN denounced what it called "complete chaos" in Chiapas due to the threat from "disorganized crime."

"There are blockades, assaults, kidnappings, extortions, forced recruitment, shootings," it said.

Mexico's two main crime groups, the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, are fighting for control of the region, according to experts.

Armed, hooded men, believed to be members of the Sinaloa cartel, were seen marching to applause in Chiapas in a video broadcast last September.

"The federal, regional and local military and police forces are not in Chiapas to protect the civilian population. They are there with the sole objection of slowing down migration," the Zapatistas said.

Despite a thriving manufacturing sector and a growing middle-class fueled by massive trade with the United States and Canada, today more than a third of Mexicans still live in poverty, according to official figures.

Although Zapatismo has been largely consigned to history, experts say it did leave a legacy.

"Before the uprising, we didn't talk about Indigenous issues," said Mexican writer Juan Villorio, who was close to the movement.

"We're talking more and more about Indigenous languages, Indigenous cultures. This doesn't mean that the main problems have been resolved, but that the subject is on people's minds," he said.

jla-st-dr/dw

XINOMICS

China’s downturn leaves people struggling to meet ‘basic needs’, Xi Jinping admit

James Warrington
Sun, 31 December 2023 

In his New Year message, Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged that the country had faced a 'tough' year in 2023

 - Ju Peng/Xinhua

Xi Jinping has admitted people are struggling to find jobs and “meet basic needs” in China as fresh data pointed to a continued slowdown at factories and in the housing market.

In a rare admission of economic weakness made in his New Year message, the Chinese President acknowledged that businesses had faced a “tough” year in 2023, adding that “some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs”.

His comments came amid further signs of economic slowdown on Sunday as new data showed China’s factory activity had contracted to its weakest level in six months.


The official purchasing managers index (PMI) for manufacturing declined to 49 in December, down from 49.4 in November, to reach its lowest level since June, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Any score of below 50 indicates a contraction in economic activity. Kelvin Lam at Pantheon Macroeconomics said Chinese manufacturing “continues to flounder” despite Beijing’s efforts to prop up the economy.

“The impact of the recent fiscal stimulus is yet to be felt in the economy,” he said, noting that reconstruction efforts in regions hit by natural disasters have been slowed by harsh winter weather.

Meanwhile, a fall in new home sales also accelerated in December. The value of new homes sold by the country’s hundred biggest property companies fell by almost 35pc from a year earlier to 451.3bn yuan (£50bn).

Sales for 2023 as a whole were 16.5pc lower than in 2022 – a more severe fall than earlier forecasts of 15pc.

In his televised address on Sunday, President Xi said the Chinese government’s plans were aimed at “delivering a better life for the people”.

He added: “Our children should be well taken care of and receive good education, our young people should have the opportunities to pursue their career and succeed, and our elderly people should have adequate access to medical services and elderly care.”

Youth unemployment in China rocketed to a record 21.3pc in June 2023. Beijing stopped publishing data on the youth jobless rate after the record was reached.

China has rolled out a number of stimulus packages in a bid to revive its ailing economy, which has struggled in the aftermath of the pandemic.

However, a crisis in the property industry and surging local government debts have hampered recovery.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs believe China’s GDP grew by 5.3pc in 2023 but expect growth to slow to 4.8pc in 2024 before worsening steadily each year to 4pc in 2026.

This is an underwhelming rate by the standards of China’s recent history or by comparison with India, which is expected to grow by well over 6pc each year for the foreseeable future.

President Xi said: “We will consolidate and strengthen the momentum of economic recovery, and work to achieve steady and long-term economic development.”

GEN Z REFUSNIKS
Friends of Israeli teenager jailed for rejecting compulsory military service vow to follow in his footsteps

Sky News
Updated Sun, 31 December 2023 



Friends of an Israeli conscientious objector have promised to follow him in rejecting military service - after he became the first since the Israel-Hamas war began to be jailed for refusing to enlist.

Tal Mitnick, an 18-year-old from Tel Aviv, cited his opposition to the war in Gaza as his decision to reject compulsory fixed-term military service.

He's now in prison for 30 days, and it's likely the sentence will be extended.


In Israel, almost every adult serves in a branch of the Israeli Defence Forces, barring a few exceptions.

Spending a few years doing compulsory military training is part of the country's national identity.

Tal Mitnick, a member of a small group called "Mesarvot", or "We Refuse", didn't want to be part of it.

Some of his friends say that without a group of conscientious objectors to support each other, it would be a "difficult" and lonely political position to take in Israel.

We met three of the Mesarvot members in Tel Aviv.

Iddo Elam, 17, says he will also refuse to serve in the military when his time comes.

He says he's opposed to the war and Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

"Me not serving doesn't mean I'm taking a stand with Hamas. I'm not a supporter of Hamas, I consider them a terrorist group," he explains.

"But the current war, is a revenge war against the whole of Gaza, not only Hamas," Iddo says.

"One massacre does not justify another one."

Iddo says he receives "death threats" and "hate", adding that it's "alienating".

There is only a small number of Israelis who are conscientious objectors, who refuse to serve in the military.

Mesarvot has a few hundred members.

If anything, the attack by Hamas on 7 October and the war in Gaza has increased support for the country's forces.

Iddo says he worries for his friend, Tal, in prison.

"He's brave, and I know he knows what he's in for."

Time Bomb Y2K, review: the millennium bug wasn't the end of the world – it was a warning

Jasper Rees
Sun, 31 December 2023 a

Tony Blair at the Barbican Centre, speaking to the Tackling the Millennium Bug conference in 1998 - Paul Grover

In 1977 a young operator at IBM called Peter de Jager spotted that their computer systems referred to the year with two digits. When the clock ticked round to 01/01/00, he calculated, every computer system in the world would think it was 1900. “Don’t worry,” chortled the short-termists in management, “it isn’t going to happen for another 23 years.”

That the meltdown didn’t happen is partly down to the constant warnings of de Jager, who by the late 1990s was touring the globe like an Old Testament prophet. Comparing the storage-sparing use of two digits as an original sin, he foretold doom, catastrophe and meltdown while wearing a cartoon Armageddon tie. “If you can’t laugh at this,” he reasoned, “we may as well all slash our wrists.”

If you are so minded, there was much to snigger at in Time Bomb Y2K (Sky Documentaries), which in the style of Adam Curtis knitted together archive footage to relive the story of millennial panic in America. The computers look clunky, the haircuts dorky and the Backstreet Boys are asked for a quote about imminent Armageddon. Hey, the past is a foreign country – they do things hilariously there.

But this was a warning from history whose portents feel all too grimly accurate. Yes, as in The Day of the Jackal, you already know how it ends. The boffins averted disaster at midnight, so all those people learning Stone Age whittling skills or going back to the land could join the 21st century after all. But other fears for the future were merited. Computers really do know everything about us and really have spawned de-socialised screen addicts and free-speech maniacs. Meanwhile the religious wingnuts and government-hating militias who spied an opportunity in the threat of Y2K have only got louder and scarier.

The state-of-the-nation snapshot ends with a series of wise children sharing their hopes at the turn of the millennium. “This hasn’t been a great century,” squeaks a kid in orthodontic braces. “Fix the world, don’t screw it up.” The next day, Putin became president of Russia. The bug turned out to assume human form.

Tens of thousands hold anti-Israeli protest in Istanbul


AFP
Mon, 1 January 2023

Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out at Israel (YASIN AKGUL)

Tens of thousands marched in Istanbul Monday to protest "murderer" Israel's war in Gaza and the killing of Turkish soldiers by outlawed Kurdish militants in Iraq.

The rally, called by a foundation which counts Bilal Erdogan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among its members started after crowds performed morning prayers at Istanbul's iconic mosques, including Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

Protesters waving Turkish and Palestinian flags rallied to the Galata Bridge on the Bosphorus chanting: "Murderer Israel, get out of Palestine" and "Allahu Akbar" (God is the greatest).


Tens of thousands of people joined the rally "Mercy for our martryrs and a curse on Israel", the official Anadolu news agency reported.

Erdogan, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, has lashed out repeatedly at Israel for the scale of death and destruction caused by its response to Hamas' unprecedented October 7 cross-border attack.

He has accused Israel of "state terrorism" and said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "no different" from Adolf Hitler.

The nearly three-month war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas's bloody October 7 attacks on Israel, which killed around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Fighters also took around 250 people hostage that day, most of whom remain in Gaza, according to Israeli officials.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response, launching a punishing offensive in the Gaza Strip that has reduced vast areas to a ruined wasteland and killed at least 21,822 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.

The Israeli army says 172 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza, with the war showing no signs of stopping.

The Turkish army said 12 soldiers were killed in late December in two separate attacks launched by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.

Turkey regularly conducts ground and air operations in northern Iraq against the positions of the PKK, listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

ach-fo/ach

POLITICAL PERSECUTION
Nobel winner Yunus convicted in Bangladesh labour law case

Shafiqul Alam
Mon, 1 January 2024 

Bangladeshi Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus (C) appears in a court in Dhaka on January 1, 2024. Yunus was facing six months in jail with a court set to rule on January 1 on a labour law case decried by his supporters as politically motivated. (Munir uz zaman)

Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus was convicted on Monday of violating Bangladesh's labour laws in a case decried by his supporters as politically motivated.

Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank but has earned the enmity of longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has accused him of "sucking blood" from the poor.

Hasina has made several scathing verbal attacks against the internationally respected 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was once seen as a political rival.


Yunus and three colleagues from Grameen Telecom, one of the firms he founded, were accused of violating labour laws when they failed to create a workers' welfare fund in the company.

A labour court in the capital Dhaka convicted and sentenced them to "six months' simple imprisonment", lead prosecutor Khurshid Alam Khan told AFP, adding that all four were immediately granted bail pending appeals.

All four deny the charges. Dozens of people staged a small rally in support of Yunus outside the court.

"I have been punished for a crime that I haven't committed," Yunus told reporters after the hearing.

"If you want to call it justice, you can."

Yunus is facing more than 100 other charges over labour law violations and alleged graft.

He told reporters after one of the hearings last month that he had not profited from any of the more than 50 social business firms he had set up in Bangladesh.

"They were not for my personal benefit," Yunus said at the time.

Another of his lawyers, Khaja Tanvir, told AFP that the case was "meritless, false and ill-motivated".

"The sole aim of the case is to harass and humiliate him in front of the world," Tanvir said.

- 'Travesty of justice' -

Irene Khan, a former Amnesty chief now working as a UN special rapporteur who was present at Monday's verdict, told AFP the conviction was "a travesty of justice".

"A social activist and Nobel laureate who brought honour and pride to the country is being persecuted on frivolous grounds," she said.

In August, 160 global figures, including former US president Barack Obama and ex-UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, published a joint letter denouncing "continuous judicial harassment" of Yunus.

The signatories, including more than 100 of his fellow Nobel laureates, said they feared for "his safety and freedom".

Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping decisions made by Hasina's government, which is all but certain to win another term in power next week at elections boycotted by the opposition.

Her administration has been increasingly firm in its crackdown on political dissent, and Yunus's popularity among the Bangladeshi public has for years earmarked him as a potential rival.

Amnesty International accused the government of "weaponizing labour laws" when Yunus went to trial in September and called for an immediate end to his "harassment".

Criminal proceedings against Yunus were "a form of political retaliation for his work and dissent", it said.

sa/gle/dhw

Muhammad Yunus: Bangladesh's 'banker to the poo
Shafiqul ALAM
Mon, 1 January 2024 

Bangladeshi microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 (ANDREAS SOLARO)

Jailed Nobel-winning microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus is celebrated around the world for helping millions of people out of poverty, but at home in Bangladesh he has a powerful enemy.

The 83-year-old, known as the "banker to the poorest of the poor", was awarded the Peace Prize in 2006 for his work loaning small cash sums to rural women, allowing them to invest in farm tools or business equipment and boost their earnings.

Grameen Bank, the microfinance lender he founded, was lauded for helping unleash breakneck economic growth in Bangladesh, and its work has since been copied by scores of developing countries.


"Human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty," Yunus said during his Nobel lecture, daring his audience to imagine a world where deprivation was confined to history museums.

But his public profile in Bangladesh has earned him the hostility of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who once accused him of "sucking blood" from the poor.

On Monday he and three colleagues from one of the companies he founded were sentenced to jail terms of six months -- but immediately bailed pending appeal -- by a Dhaka labour court which found they had illegally failed to create a workers' welfare fund.

All four had denied the charges and the case has been criticised as politically moviated by watchdogs including Amnesty International.

Yunus still faces more than 100 other charges on alleged graft and labour law violations.

Hasina's administration has been increasingly cracked down on political dissent, and Yunus's popularity has for years earmarked him as a potential rival.

The year after winning the Nobel Prize, Yunus announced plans to set up his own "Citizen Power" party to end Bangladesh's confrontational political culture, which has been punctuated by instability and periods of military rule.

He abandoned those ambitions within months, but the enmity aroused by his challenge to the ruling elite has persisted.

Since Hasina returned to power in 2008, Yunus has been hit with a series of criminal cases and a smear campaign by a state-led Islamic agency that accuses him of promoting homosexuality.

The government unceremoniously forced him out of Grameen Bank in 2011 -- a decision fought by Yunus but upheld by Bangladesh's top court.

A telecom firm he chairs was hit with a graft probe in 2022 over accusations it had embezzled employee funds -- claims that critics say are politically motivated.

Hasina also blamed Yunus for the World Bank's decision to cancel funding for a bridge near the capital Dhaka after the project was embroiled in a bribery scandal.

The bridge finally opened in 2022 after years of construction delays, and at its opening ceremony, Hasina said Yunus should be "dipped in the river" for jeopardising its completion.

Yunus has adamantly denied influencing the World Bank's decision and his office has described the claims as "purely imaginary".

- 'Poverty was all around me' -

Yunus was born into a well-to-do family -- his father was a successful goldsmith -- in the coastal city of Chittagong in 1940.

He credits his mother, who offered help to anyone in need who knocked on their door, as his biggest influence.

Yunus won a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States and returned soon after Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan in a brutal 1971 war.

When he returned, he was chosen to head Chittagong University's economics department, but the young country was struggling through a severe famine and he felt compelled to take practical action.

"Poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it," he said in 2006.

"I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom... I wanted to do something immediate to help people around me."

After years of experimenting with ways to provide credit for people too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans, he founded Grameen Bank in 1983.

The institution now has more than nine million clients on its books, according to its most recent annual report (2020), and over 97 percent of its borrowers are women.

Yunus has won numerous high honours for his life's work, including a US Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by Barack Obama.

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