Slovenian President Borut Pahor expressed his concern on Monday after internet footage showed masked members of an armed group led by a fringe politician conducting training exercises.

Former presidential candidate Andrej Sisko told Reuters that his group would secure order if necessary, adding that it was doing nothing illegal – although he acknowledged that the weapons it uses have not been registered with the Slovenian authorities.

The president said there was no place for such a group in the European Union member state.

“President Pahor stresses that Slovenia is a safe country in which no unauthorized person needs or is allowed to … illegally care for the security of the country and its borders,” Pahor’s cabinet said in a statement.

Photos on websites and in local media show up to 50 masked people with guns led by an unmasked Sisko, who won only 2.2 percent of the vote when he ran for president last year.

Sisko said the group called the “Guard of Stajerska,” named after a region of northeastern Slovenia, consists of “several hundred people”, adding that these were volunteers who “will secure public peace and order” if needed.

“The police have not visited me so far but I expect their visit. We are doing nothing wrong and we would be even interested in cooperating with the police,” Sisko said.

The police said the force had started an investigation into the matter.

Sisko also attacked multiculturalism, saying the country should accept immigrants only if they accept Slovenian culture.

He also leads the center-right United Slovenia Movement, which got 0.6 percent of the vote in a June general election and failed to make it to parliament. The party has no connection to the military group, he said.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has increased in Slovenia since 2015 and 2016 when almost half a million migrants crossed the country on their way to richer EU states.

The number of requests for an asylum in Slovenia has risen significantly from 277 in the whole of 2015 to 1,717 so far this year. However, only 77 people have been granted an asylum in 2018 versus 152 in the whole of 2017, interior ministry data showed.

An anti-immigrant stand helped the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party to win most votes at the June election but the party lacked coalition partners to form a government.

As a consequence a minority government of five center-left parties is due to be confirmed in the parliament next week.
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Turkey’s central bank said it would adjust its monetary stance given “significant risks” to price stability, a rare move to calm financial markets after inflation surged to its highest in nearly a decade and a half on Monday.

The comments from the central bank underscore the volatile outlook for prices amid a currency crisis. The lira has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar this year, driving up the cost of goods from potatoes to petrol and sparking alarm about the impact on the wider economy and the banking system.

Inflation jumped 17.9 percent year-on-year in August, official data showed, outstripping market expectations and marking its highest level since late 2003. 

“Recent developments regarding the inflation outlook indicate significant risks to price stability. The central bank will take the necessary actions to support price stability,” the bank said in a statement.

“(The) monetary stance will be adjusted at the September monetary policy committee meeting in view of the latest developments.”

For investors, the main question has been whether the central bank will be able to sufficiently hike interest rates at its next policy-setting meeting on Sept. 13 to tame inflation. It left rates on hold at its last meeting in July, confounding expectations and sending the lira sharply weaker.

President Tayyip Erdogan, a self-described “enemy of interest rates,” wants to see lower borrowing costs to keep credit-fuelled growth on track. Investors, who fear the economy is set for a hard landing, want big rate hikes.

Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that the bank was independent of the government and would take all necessary steps to combat inflation. He also promised a “full-fledged fight” against inflation.

By signalling that it was ready to take action, the central bank may now have inadvertently set financial markets up for disappointment if it doesn’t deliver a hefty increase, said Piotr Matys, an emerging markets forex strategist at Rabobank.

“A proper rate hike is required and by making a pledge to raise interest rates, the central bank may have raised the bar for itself to exceed expectations on Sept. 13,” Matys said. “The central bank basically has no room to disappoint.”

Not enough 

The lira briefly recovered some losses immediately after the central bank’s announcement. By 0852 GMT it was more than 1 percent weaker on the day at 6.6200 to the dollar.

The bank is likely to deliver a rate hike of 2 percentage points on Sept. 13, far short of the 7-10 percentage points that investors would like to see, said Jason Tuvey of Capital Economics in a note to clients.

Such increases are needed “to bring real interest rates back to positive territory and reassure the markets that policymakers are willing and able to tackle high inflation,” he said.

Inflation jumped 2.3 percent from the previous month, the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute also showed, higher than the 2.23 percent forecast in a Reuters poll.

Producer prices rose 6.6 percent month-on-month in August for an annual rise of 32.13 percent.

 
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British Prime Minister Theresa May got plenty of attention for her trip to Africa last week. Videos of her dancing — one with secondary students who greeted her in South Africa and another with her dancing with young scouts in Kenya — went viral.

But May’s dance-floor diplomacy didn’t overshadow her larger mission in Africa, which was to forge business ties for a post-Brexit Britain. In Cape Town, she pledged more than $5 billion to support African markets and also promised that her country would overtake the United States to become the biggest investor in Africa out of the G-7 countries.

Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at the Lagos-based research firm SBM Intelligence says Britain is desperately trying to find new trade partners. “Because Brexit isn’t working out as it had expected,” he said. “Brexit is seven or eight months away now and they’re so many contentious issues that will need to be resolved.”

Playing catch up to China

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her own recent foray to Africa, visiting Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana, also seeking economic benefit. China has played the role of Africa’s largest trading partner for the past nine consecutive years, and both Britain and Germany have a lot of catching up to do.

According to British government figures, the country’s total trade with Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya — the countries May visited — amounted to $16.9 billion in 2016. That’s less than 2.5 percent of the $712 billion in goods and services that Britain exchanged with the European Union in the same year, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Germany declared 2017 a key year for its Africa policy and hosted African presidents in Berlin at a G-20 summit to boost private investment. However, to date, Germany only has about 1,000 companies that are active in Africa.

In comparison, China has 10,000 firms in Africa. It has financed more than 3,000 infrastructure projects on the continent, building thousands of kilometers of highways, generating thousands of megawatts of electricity and creating thousands of jobs across the continent.

“China is challenging all the Western countries, even the United States. China has no historical background of colonialism [in Africa] so many Africans prefer working with China,” said Bakary Sambe, a development and peace studies analyst in Senegal.

This week, several African presidents are in China for the 2018 Forum for Africa-China Cooperation, which China’s Foreign Minister Wang Li described as the biggest summit of all time.

But, Nii Akwuetteh, a prominent independent Ghanaian policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., recommends African politicians, businesses and civil society members be wary of both the West and the East.

“If I had my way, they would be far more vigilant and tougher against Merkel, against May, and even against the Chinese, because all these global powers are rushing to Africa now and they all claim that they love Africa and they want to help. Well, we all heard that before and it led to slavery and it led to colonialism,” he said.

Stopping migration

Akwuetteh said May and Merkel are motivated in part by a desire to stop the waves of African migrants showing up on Europe’s shores.

“They are doing this because their populace don’t like Africans. Merkel is very clear, that’s why she’s doing this — we want to create jobs in Africa so you all don’t come to Europe,” he said.

Merkel said she wants to work with these governments to tackle issues the three countries are struggling with, such as the Boko Haram insurgency and widespread unemployment.

One of the agreement she said was an MOU signed between German automaker Volkswagen and partners in Ghana and Nigeria. Volkswagen announced last week it would assemble cars in Ghana and make Nigeria an automotive hub.

Ayisha Osori, the head of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, commends this effort and says African leaders need to acknowledge the reasons why citizens are risking their lives to flee.

“It’s a good deal to create more jobs to keep people away from migrating, coming over to Europe in less numbers. Looking at the people who try to cross the desert, that go by sea or by boat, what are they running away from? What is it about their lives that is making them to take such dangerous journeys?” Osori asks.

U.S. role?

In this scramble for Africa, the United States looms in the background, contributing mostly military support. The Brookings Institution says U.S.-Africa relations will not reach their potential if the executive office fails to provide diplomatic and policy leadership.

But U.S. President Donald Trump has shown little interest in the continent and angered many Africans with offensive remarks.

Though Trump has no announced plans of going to Africa, first lady Melania Trump announced in August that she will visit — without the president.
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Human Rights Watch is calling for an immediate end to all arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the bombing of a schoolbus last month that killed 51 people, including 40 children.

In a report released Sunday, the HRW called the attack an “apparent war crime,” saying it only added to the Saudi-led coalition’s “already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals and schools in Yemen.”

The coalition, which has the support of the United States, has been fighting the Houthi rebels since March 2015. The coalition backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and aims to restore it to power.

The HRW report comes just a day after the coalition said it has accepted the conclusions of its investigative body that there were “mistakes” made in the attack, including failing to take measures to minimize collateral damage.

The coalition vowed to “take all the legal measures to hold accountable those who were proven to have committed mistakes” once it officially receives the findings. It also pledged to coordinate with Yemen’s government to compensate civilians.

The U.S. State Department on Sunday welcomed the coalition’s statement as “an important first step toward full transparency and accountability.”

But, Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher for HRW, urged the U.S. and other countries to “immediately stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening the independent U.N. inquiry into violations in Yemen, or risk being complicit in future atrocities.”
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The Ukrainian city of Lviv, once a major center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the annihilation of the city’s Jewish population by Nazi Germany and honoring those working today to preserve what they can of that vanished world.

City authorities presented the honored recipients Sunday with 75 glass keys — replicas of a metal key that once belonged to a Jewish synagogue and an American artist found at a street market in Lviv. The anniversary events, which included a concert performance at the ruins of former synagogues, come amid other attempts to revive suppressed memories of the Jews who once were an integral part of the region.

“God forbid our city once suffered such a misfortune,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said at the ceremony. “Today we cannot even imagine for a moment the pain, humiliation and grief that thousands of Lviv’s people suffered in the last century.”

Iryna Matsevko, deputy director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and an organizer of the anniversary events in Lviv, said it was the first time the western Ukrainian city has acknowledged the historical preservation efforts in such an extensive way.

Consciousness is growing in Ukrainian society of the need to remember the Jews who were annihilated by Nazi forces, with the participation of local people in some cases, during the German occupation of Eastern Europe, Matsevko said.

Initiatives have included introducing Jewish history courses at universities, new research by young Ukrainian scholars and grassroots efforts by volunteers, such as the ones that recovered Jewish gravestones that were used to pave roads and returned them to cemeteries.

“This is part of the process of reviving the memory of the Jewish heritage. Of course, this process is slow. I want it to be quicker, but for the last 10 years we have seen how the Jewish heritage is returning to people’s consciousness and a lot of activities are taking place,” Matsevko said. “It is very important that people are being acknowledged for their work in Jewish heritage.”

Before World War II, Lviv and the surrounding area belonged to Poland. Then called Lwow, it was the third largest Jewish community in prewar Poland after Warsaw and Lodz, with most working as merchants, manufacturers or artisans. Before World War I, Lviv and the surrounding area were part of the eastern Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the city was called by its German name, Lemberg.

In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, its former ally. When the German forces entered the city, they and their Ukrainian collaborators massacred Jews in the city and countryside. While occupying the area, Germans murdered Jews in the ghetto, the Belzec death camp and a forced labor camp, Janowska, with the final annihilation occurring in 1943, the anniversary observed on Sunday.

Of a population of about 150,000 Jews, only an estimated 1 percent survived.

In the postwar years, with Ukraine part of the Soviet Union, the memories of the murdered Jews began to vanish. Historian Omer Bartov has called the area a “land of memory and oblivion, coexistence and erasure, high hopes and dashed illusions.”

The remembrance work is taking place as Ukraine finds itself mired in crisis and conflict following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and a continuing Russia-backed insurgency in the east. Nationalism has been on the rise, and some Ukrainians laud the Nazi-affiliated irregulars who fought against the Soviet Army in World War II.

To what extent this has led to greater anti-Semitism is a matter of dispute. Some of the people trying to sustain the history of Jewish life in western Ukraine think the amount of anti-Semitism is exaggerated as part of a Russian propaganda effort.

Among those honored was Marla Raucher Osborn, an American who heads Rohatyn Jewish Heritage. The group’s projects include restoring a Jewish cemetery in nearby Rohatyn.

Osborn said she was honored to be acknowledged along with the local activists “working quietly in local communities, recovering Jewish memory with little or no knowledge of their projects outside of those communities, especially among the distant Jewish diaspora.”

The glass keys were the work of New Mexico-based artist Rachel Stevens, who found the rusted synagogue key on which they were based in February while seeking remnants of Jewish culture in eastern Galicia as part of a research project.

Stevens used glass for the replicas because in Jewish tradition the material “represents the fragility of life.” Creating them “became a tangible way for me to express my grief about the past and my hope for the future,” she said.

“The idea for this artwork seems almost mystically delivered to me,” Stevens said.
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