It would be irresponsible for the European Union to refuse to reopen negotiations over Britain’s exit deal, British trade minister Liam Fox said in an interview aired Sunday.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is seeking changes to the Withdrawal Agreement she agreed to with Brussels last year in order to win the support of parliament. 

The EU has said the deal cannot be renegotiated.

“Are they really saying that they would rather not negotiate and end up in a ‘no-deal’ position?” Fox told Sky News in a prerecorded interview. “It is in all our interests to get to that agreement and for the EU to say we are not going to even discuss it seems to me to be quite irresponsible.”

With less than two months until Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, the opposition Labour Party has said it is now inevitable that the government will have to request an extension to the Article 50 exit negotiation period.

Fox, who has previously spoken out strongly against delaying the exit date, said extending the negotiations without a deal in place would not solve anything, but it was “a very different argument” if Britain just needed more time to get the necessary legislation in place for a smooth exit.

He is the second senior minister to suggest such a delay may be needed, after Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Thursday Britain may need time to get legislation through.

“There is a big difference between if we had an agreement and we need some time to get the legalities done, that is one thing,” Fox said. “I think to extend simply because we hadn’t reached an agreement would not provide any impetus for that agreement to be reached.”

Fox said Britain would “be able to deal” with leaving the bloc without an agreement but it would not be in the country’s interests.
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Krzysztof Strzemeski watched with unease as a high school friend voiced support for Poland’s nationalist government on social media, followed by hate-filled extremist posts. But when the liberal mayor of Gdansk was stabbed to death in public in January, he could no longer hold back his anger.

“Congratulations for your perseverance sharing right-wing filth,” the 58-year-old university lecturer wrote to his former classmate. The two haven’t communicated since.

Poland’s political fissures have widened in recent months, pitting conservatives — many of them government supporters — against liberal critics who accuse the ruling party of threatening the country’s hard-won democracy by undermining the independence of the judiciary and the media.

In this toxic atmosphere, there has been an increase in hate speech, political threats and, most stunningly, the assassination of popular Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, a critic of the ruling Law and Justice Party’s anti-immigrant policies.

After stabbing Adamowicz during a Jan. 13 charity event, the attacker grabbed a microphone and said that was his revenge against an opposition political party that Adamowicz had once belonged to.

Although there have been suggestions the assailant also had psychological problems, some government critics blamed Poland’s heated political discourse, some of it from state television. Commentators had often vilified Adamowicz for his open acceptance of refugees and gays, and his widow said he had been getting death threats, causing the family to live in fear.

Poles have long spoken of “two tribes” in their central European country. Now, increasingly there is talk of a “Polish-Polish war” — a divide that is greater than at any time since the 1980s, when the Soviet-backed Communist regime tried to crush the Solidarity freedom movement by imposing martial law.

The wedge issues that Poland faces are familiar in many other places: immigration and borders, abortion, the relationship of the nation’s mostly Catholic society to Jews, Muslims and other faiths, and the rights of gays and women.

On one level, it seems to be a microcosm of the political struggles elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. But Poland is also one of the European Union’s largest and most economically dynamic countries, and its course will help shape the continent’s future.

Poland’s current government has aligned itself with other populist, conservative or nationalist figures — U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The Law and Justice Party won the 2015 election amid Europe’s migration crisis and a weariness with the centrist government that had been in power for eight years. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski vowed more help for the poor, a tough anti-corruption stance and a hard line against Muslim migrants, who he said carried “parasites and protozoa” dangerous to the native European population.

After mass street protests against his party’s plans to overhaul the judicial system, Kaczynski turned his language against internal critics, referring to protesters as “the worst sort of Poles” and “national traitors.” His language was widely denounced as reminiscent of the worst of the last century in Europe.

Last year saw a surge in anti-Semitic rhetoric in Poland after the passage of a controversial Holocaust speech law. Some of that was spoken even by public officials and TV commentators, creating a new normal in what seems to be acceptable speech.

On Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a far-right activist who had been imprisoned for burning an effigy of a Jew in 2015 staged a protest outside the Auschwitz memorial site, saying it was time to “fight Jewry.” Holocaust survivors had gathered for solemn observances not far away.

Muslims, while only a tiny percentage of Poland’s population, have increasingly been taunted, spat on and even assaulted, according to the Never Again association, which monitors such crimes.

Since Adamowicz’s killing, prosecutors have faced criticism for failing to investigate death threats against politicians. Two weeks before his death, the public prosecutor halted proceedings into symbolic “political death notices” that the far-right group All-Polish Youth issued for Adamowicz and 10 other mayors who had pledged support for the integration of migrants.

There also have been dramatic calls on all sides for reconciliation. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has met with opposition leaders and urged more “mutual respect” in public debate.

But state television continues to vilify ideological opponents.

Last week, journalists on a talk show lashed out at Rafal Pankowski, a sociologist and the head of Never Again. One of them called him a “terrible” person, among those “who live from a hatred of their own fatherland.”

Pankowski, who will be honored by the Anti-Defamation League next week for his work fighting anti-Semitism, decried the “climate of hatred in the air” and the fact that taxpayer money was going to fund such “crass propaganda.”

Marcin Makowski, a conservative journalist and commentator, said he believes it’s unfair to put all the blame on the government, recalling instances of harsh political rhetoric used by its opponents that fanned hatred and in some cases seemed to call for violence. When Kaczynski’s brother, President Lech Kaczynski, died in a plane crash in 2010, some even joked about it, Makowski recalled.

“None of them are saints and pretending as such is pure hypocrisy,” Makowski said.

 
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The United Nations is appealing for $162 million to provide protection and life-saving assistance to 2.3 million of the most vulnerable people in eastern Ukraine, which is in its fifth year of civil war.

The United Nations reports more than 3,300 people have been killed and up to 9,000 injured since 2014 when civil war broke out in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and the government.

The conflict remains active and potentially deadly for millions of civilians who are liable to be hit by daily shelling and sniper fire. Nearly 2 million of the 2.3 million people the U.N. plans to assist this year are located on both sides of the contact line. This is the 500-kilometer line of separation between Ukrainian Government and rebel forces.

Spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jens Laerke, tells VOA the increasingly protracted nature of the conflict is having a particularly severe impact on the elderly. He says they comprise one-third of people in need, the highest proportion of elderly affected in the world.

“That is a special problem not least because they have limited mobility. They cannot go and collect their pensions,” said Laerke. “They cannot go to health centers. They cannot get out of their homes and houses. So, they are suffering alone in their homes. These days it is extremely cold. They may not have fuel. They do not have access to the food that they need. They do not have access to the medicine that they may require.”

Laerke says this grim picture is magnified by the risks people encounter along the contact line. He says large stretches of populated areas in the buffer zone dividing the warring factions are littered with landmines and explosive remnants of war. The United Nations reports these weapons caused 270 deaths and injuries last year.

Money from the appeal will provide food, shelter and household items, access to clean water, education and health. It also will support winterization activities, such as supplying people with warm blankets, kerosene for heating and other relief needed to help them survive the harsh winter.

 
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Women’s marches last weekend in cities around the world show just how much attention the #MeToo movement has drawn to the issue of sexual violence. But experts say there is a long way to go. An EU report says one in 20 women in Europe has been raped, and many still do not report sexual assaults.

But in France, a triple world karate champion is teaching women to heal through her sport—both at home and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Laurence Fischer has faced some tough adversaries, but nothing like the one she’s dealing with today. It’s often invisible and hard to beat: the trauma from sexual assault and violence endured by women in her class.

Everybody here has a different story. M’bamoussa Soumare was raped by a relative in her native Mali at the age of 12.

Soumare says her family forced her to marry her rapist two years later, and she underwent excision. She had one child after another and her husband beat her. Finally, last year, she managed to flee to France, with help from a sister living here.

Soumare landed at La Maison des Femmes, or The Women’s Home, a special center for female victims of violence, outside Paris.

“Some of them are victims of domestic violence, others of incest. All kinds of violence in fact. We try to help them according to their story,” said Dr. Ghada Hatem, a gynecologist and founder of The Women’s Home. Many of the women who come here are African immigrants. But plenty of French women have shared their experiences.

“There are many enquiries (studies) that show that about seven women in 10 are victims of violence. So we are all concerned,” she said.

The center offers medical and psychological treatment — but also therapeutic classes, like this one, taught by former triple world karate champion Laurence Fischer.

“Karate is a way to connect yourself to yourself. Because of the trauma, there’s kind of a disassociation … because of the suffering, they cannot connect,” said Fischer.

Fischer began teaching karate to women after retiring from competition, more than a decade ago. Since 2014, she goes yearly to a country where sexual violence is so widespread it’s called the rape capital of the world’— the Democratic Republic of Congo. She works with the Panzi Foundation in eastern DRC, founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege. Two years ago, she launched an NGO called Fight for Dignity. Karate not only helps women to heal, she says, but to regain their self-confidence.

“It’s incredible how it can impact their relations with their children, with their boyfriend, with the way to find job after, the relations with the others because we are not only brain, we are body. And when both are connected, it’s very powerful,” said Fischer.

She began teaching karate at The Women’s Home a year ago.

“I think that karate is a very good sport for these women. It gives them better self esteem,” said Dr. Hatem. “And Laurence has special work around the vagina and clitoris and all the sexual assaults. And it’s very important for our patients to work on their own bodies through this trauma.”

Fischer and her students gather for tea after every class. It’s a time to get to know each other, and to make friends. Thirty-year-old Aissata Djiakite  has been going to The Women’s Home for more than a year.

She says when you’re sexually attacked, you feel weak and battered. But with karate you really want to live. She says Fischer is extraordinary — she helps the women emerge from their pain, and gives them back an appetite for life.

Fischer plans to return to the DRC, not just to work with Panzi. She wants to help some of her female graduates there to start karate classes in their villages — so they can help other women … fight for dignity.
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