The death of a handcuffed black man who begged for air as a white police officer kneeled on his neck has ignited protests in cities across the United States. President Donald Trump said he supports peaceful protests but warned he will not allow the situation to “descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.” White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Month: May 2020
Britain, France, Germany Regret US Decision to End Waivers for Iran Civilian Nuclear Projects
Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement Saturday in which they expressed “regret” about the United States decision to end sanctions waivers for Iranian civilian nuclear projects intended to prevent weapons development. “We deeply regret the decision by the United States to end the three exemptions for key nuclear projects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including the Arak reactor modernization project,” the statement said.”These projects, including the Arak reactor modernization project, endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, have served the non-proliferation interests of all and provide the international community with assurances of the exclusively peaceful and safe nature of Iranian nuclear activities,” the three counties said.
Wednesday the United States announced the end of the waivers, which had allowed the continuation of projects related to Iran’s civil nuclear program, even though the Trump administration abandoned the 2015 international plan of action in 2018.Under the waivers Russian, Chinese and European companies worked on the conversion of Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to civilian purposes and on the transfer of nuclear fuel abroad.
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Hearings Begin into Australia Bushfire Disaster
A Royal Commission has begun its investigation into Australia’s devastating summer bushfires. Hearings this week in Canberra have focused on climate change, as well as the impact of the fires on health and wildlife.Parts of Australia are some of the most fire-prone regions in the world. The task of the Royal Commission, the nation’s highest form of inquiry, is to help the driest inhabited continent become more resilient to bushfires and other natural disasters. Experts have told the inquiry that toxic smoke from the Black Summer blazes killed almost 450 people and affected 80 per cent of Australia’s population. The disaster destroyed more than 3,000 homes, burnt more than 12 million hectares of land, and led directly to the deaths of 33 people. The role of climate change and land management, including the use of controlled burns in the cooler months to reduce the fire threat, is under scrutiny. Also under examination are the government’s responsibilities during disasters to maintain essential services and infrastructure, and the impact on wildlife. Some estimates have suggested around one billion animals were killed in Australia’s bushfires. Scientists fear that many threatened or endangered species might have been pushed inexorably towards extinction.Dr. Sally Box, the government’s Threatened Species Commissioner, has told the Royal Commission that vulnerable flora and fauna might never recover.“There are currently approximately 1,800 species listed as threatened under the EPBC (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Act, and more than 300 of these nationally-listed threatened species were in the path of the fire,” said Box. “49 threatened species had more than 80% of their known or likely range within the fire extent, and a further 65 threatened species had more than 50% of their known or likely range within the fire extent. And this includes plants and mammals and birds and frogs and reptiles and fish and invertebrates.” Some experts believe the summer of devastation has signaled the start of a new age of fire in Australia that is driven by man-made changes to the landscape, the use of fossil fuels and global warming. Hearings at the Royal Commission will continue next week. A final report is due by the end of August when southern Australia will be nervously awaiting the start of the next bushfire season.The previous season was unprecedented. March 2 was the first time in 240 days that not a single wildfire was burning in Australia.The blazes have various forms of ignition, including lightning and arson as well as sparks from road accidents and faulty power lines. Many of the witnesses appearing before the commission are giving their evidence remotely via the internet because of COVID-19 physical distancing regulations.
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Report: 13 Suspects Charged with People Trafficking in France
France has charged 13 suspects with people trafficking in connection with the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants last year, AFP reports citing a judicial source Saturday.Six of the suspects, arrested by French police on Tuesday in the Paris region, were also charged with manslaughter after an alleged key smuggler was caught in Germany.On Wednesday, Belgian and French police announced the arrests of 26 people in connection with the case. British police had initially arrested four suspects, including the driver of the container truck, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April.Investigators has announced that the migrant smuggling network which continues its operation even after the tragedy, was charging about $16,000 to $22,000 to transport migrants from France to Britain.The bodies of the Vietnamese migrants, 31 men and 8 women, were found last October in a refrigerated truck in southeastern Britain, in a smuggling case that shocked the world.
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In Unusual Move, US Embassies in Africa Speak up on Floyd
As Minneapolis burns over the police killing of George Floyd and shock and disappointment in Africa grow, some U.S. embassies on the continent have taken the unusual step of issuing critical statements, saying no one is above the law. The statements came as the head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, condemned the “murder” of Floyd and said Friday the continental body rejects the “continuing discriminatory practices against black citizens of the USA.” Africa has not seen the kind of protests over Floyd’s killing that have erupted across the United States, but many Africans have expressed disgust and dismay, openly wondering when the U.S. will ever get it right. “WTF? `When the looting starts the shooting starts’?” tweeted political cartoonist Patrick Gathara in Kenya, which has its own troubles with police brutality. He, like many, was aghast at the tweet by President Donald Trump, flagged by Twitter as violating rules against “glorifying violence,” that the president later said had been misconstrued. ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Minneapolis As Protests Spread Across USWhite police officer is charged with murder of George Floyd in MinneapolisMindful of America’s image on a continent where China’s influence has grown and where many have felt a distinct lack of interest from the Trump administration in Africa, some U.S. diplomats have tried to control the damage. The ambassador to Congo, Mike Hammer, highlighted a tweet from a local media entrepreneur who addressed him saying, “Dear ambassador, your country is shameful. Proud America, which went through everything from segregation to the election of Barack Obama, still hasn’t conquered the demons of racism. How many black people must be killed by white police officers before authorities react seriously?” The ambassador’s response, in French: “I am profoundly troubled by the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Justice Department is conducting a full criminal investigation as a top priority. Security forces around the world should be held accountable. No one is above the law.” Similar statements were tweeted by the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Uganda, while the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya tweeted a joint statement from the Department of Justice office in Minnesota on the investigation. African officials also were publicly outspoken last month over racism in China, when Africans complained of being evicted and mistreated in the city of Guangzhou amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Protests Around the Country Following Minneapolis Death During a night of protests on Thursday, at least seven people were shot, one criticallyAt the time, the U.S. was quick to join in, with the embassy in Beijing issuing a critical security alert titled “Discrimination against African-Americans in Guangzhou” and noting actions against people thought to be African or have African contacts. Now the Africa-facing version of the state-run China Daily newspaper is tweeting footage from Minneapolis with the hashtags #GeorgeFloydWasMurdered and #BlackLivesMatter.
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Malawi Court Dismisses Ban On Call-In Shows
Malawi’s Constitutional Court on Friday put a stop to a government directive banning call-in shows.The government accused broadcasters of careless and unethical coverage of protests following the disputed 2019 elections.Presiding Judge Chifundo Kachale, on behalf of a three-judge panel, said the ban infringed on freedom of expression as guaranteed in Malawi’s Constitution.The judge also said a regulatory authority didn’t consult broadcasters before the directive took effect.Broadcasters called the ruling a victory for a free press and democracy.Teleza Ndanga heads the Malawi press freedom group, Media Institute for Southern Africa, which championed the case challenging the “call-in show” ban.“I had so much hope throughout the entire case,” Ndanga said. “I believed in the arguments that we had and the counsel that we got from our representation. So, it is quite relieving that they [the judges] agree with us and now media houses are quite free to continue with phone-in programs.”Ndanga said she expects the ruling to stand even if it’s appealed. “I strongly believe in in the argument that we put forward.”Lawyers representing a government regulator told local radio station Zodiak that they are waiting to hear from their clients about a potential next move.
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‘Wanton Destruction’ in Minneapolis As Protests Spread Across US
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said early Saturday that the goal of protesters in Minneapolis is “wanton destruction.”Protests have spread across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck as Floyd lay on the ground. The image has been seen around the world and has sparked outrage.Walz said the demonstration in Minneapolis is not about grieving but is instead about “absolute chaos.”Protesters in Minneapolis have burned businesses, cars and at least one police station. The Star Tribune reported that In this May 29, 2020, photo, protesters confront police officers during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Los Angeles. Floyd died in police custody Monday in Minneapolis.The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon had ordered the Army to put several active-duty U.S. military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis. Soldiers from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York have been ordered to be ready to deploy within four hours if called, according to three people with direct knowledge of the orders, AP said, adding that soldiers in Fort Carson, in Colorado, and Fort Riley in Kansas have been told to be ready within 24 hours.A peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon, about Floyd’s death turned violent hours later when protesters broke into police headquarters, where they set a fire. The demonstrators also vandalized stores, set other fires and threw projectiles at police, according to an Associated Press report. Police described the turn of events as a “riot” on Twitter.In Washington, protests Friday at Lafayette Park outside the White House led officials to lock down the building. Reporters said protesters, some spray-painting a nearby building, clashed with Secret Service members. Protesters also removed part of a barricade.Demonstrators in New York City took to the streets for a second day to protest the death of Floyd, 46. Reports say some in the crowd pushed against metal barricades as police pushed back.The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly after protesters smashed shop windows and blocked a freeway. Police marched into downtown Los Angeles to remove the demonstrators. In Atlanta, Georgia, hundreds of protesters confronted police outside CNN headquarters, some throwing water bottles and chanting, “Quit your jobs.” The governor eventually declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard.“This is not a protest,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in an emotional plea to the demonstrators in the Southern city. “This is chaos. A protest has purpose. . . You are disgracing our city. We are better than this as a city. We are better than this as a country.” Five hundred Georgia National Guard are being deployed to Atlanta. Protests also took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in Houston, Texas, where Floyd grew up. More than 60 protesters marched on the freeway in Houston for half an hour, shutting down traffic. The Midwestern city of Minneapolis, where the killing took place, remains on edge following three nights of protests that started peacefully but gave way to arson and looting.Protests Around the Country Following Minneapolis Death During a night of protests on Thursday, at least seven people were shot, one criticallyMinneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey declared a nighttime curfew running from 8 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday.Minneapolis announced late Friday that a $500,00 bail has been set for Derek
Chauvin, the former police officer charged with Floyd’s death. The Washington Post later reported that Chauvin’s wife has filed for divorce.Portland, Oregon, Protest Erupts into Riot Protesters break into police headquarters, set fire; video shows apparent looting U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he had spoken with the family of Floyd and expressed his sorrow. Speaking during an event at the White House, Trump said “we can’t allow” the demonstrations in Minneapolis “to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.” He said looters should not be able to drown out peaceful protests.Protesters vented their anger in Minneapolis on Thursday night, setting a police precinct and businesses on fire and smashing windows of businesses. The National Guard was mobilized as the twin city of St. Paul was also rocked by another night of violence.Trump had tweeted early Friday that the rioters are “THUGS” who “are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd.”He also threatened to bring Minneapolis “under control” and tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020Twitter added a warning to Trump’s tweet about shooting, saying it violates its rules “about glorifying violence.” The social media company later flagged Trump’s reference to “thugs.”The White House later said “the president did not glorify violence, but condemned it.”Trump clarified on Twitter on Friday “Looting leads to shooting … I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means.”The death of Floyd was captured on cellphone video that went viral after it was posted online. “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man,” Floyd pleaded, while being restrained by Chauvin.Chauvin told a handcuffed Floyd to “relax,” but the officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck after the man stopped moving. One witness said he heard Floyd calling out for his mother. The video shows Floyd’s head turned to the side, and he does not appear to be resisting. Toward the end of the video, paramedics arrive, lift a limp Floyd onto a stretcher and place him in an ambulance. Authorities later told reporters Floyd died at the hospital.Minneapolis police said Floyd resembled a suspect wanted for allegedly trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill in a food store and that he had resisted arrest.Mayor Frey said early Friday the city is in “a lot of pain and anger” but the looting and burning to protest George Floyd’s death is “unacceptable.”Frey said the damaged properties, including a police precinct, are “essential to our community.” He said he decided to let the precinct burn late Thursday after receiving reports that protesters were trying to breach the premises. Frey said he ordered police personnel to evacuate from the precinct before it was set ablaze because it became too dangerous for them.Frey also responded to Trump’s tweets that Minneapolis suffers from a “total lack of leadership.”Frey said “Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis,” and added, “We are strong as hell.”Walz, the governor, also criticized Trump, saying his references in his tweets to “thugs” and “shooting” are counterproductive.“In the moment where we’re at, in a moment that is so volatile, anything we do to add fuel to that fire is really not helpful,” Walz said at a Friday news conference. “There is a way to do this without inflaming (tensions).”Attorney General William Barr said Friday the images “of the incident that ended with the death of Mr. Floyd, while in custody of Minneapolis police officers, were harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing.” Barr also said an independent investigation is being conducted by the Justice Department and the FBI.Former President Barack Obama tweeted Friday about Floyd’s death, calling on the country to treat all citizens with dignity and respect.“It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’“It shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America,” Obama added. “It can’t be ‘normal.’”My statement on the death of George Floyd: pic.twitter.com/Hg1k9JHT6R— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 29, 2020Floyd and Chauvin knew each other from working security jobs together at the same Minneapolis nightclub, City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins told CNN on Friday.Chauvin was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department who had at least a dozen complaints filed against him about his conduct, according to NBC News and other news outlets. NBC reports that records show Chauvin was not disciplined over the complaints but received one “letter of reprimand.”The other officers involved in Floyd’s restraint have been identified as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng. They are under investigation.Separately, a CNN crew was arrested in Minneapolis on live television early Friday after protests overnight about Floyd’s death.As reporter Omar Jimenez, who is black and Latino, and two other crew members were arrested, the camera continued to run. During the incident, Jimenez asked why he was being arrested. CNN said Walz has apologized to the network.Because of Floyd’s “I can’t breathe,” comment, his death was quickly compared to that of Eric Garner, a black man in New York who died in 2014 after a white officer placed him in a chokehold while he begged for his life. Garner also told officers, “I can’t breathe,” a cry that became a national rallying point against the country’s long history of police brutality.Floyd’s death comes weeks after three people were charged with the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in the southern state of Georgia. The African American man was killed in February, allegedly by a white former Glynn County police officer and his son who claim they mistook Arbery for a burglar while he was jogging. The two were charged only after a video of the shooting emerged several weeks later.
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Portland, Oregon, Protest Erupts into Riot
Protesters broke into the police headquarters in Portland, Oregon, Friday night, and authorities said they lit a fire inside as a rally over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis turned violent.Portland police said at least one shooting was tied to the protest, although details weren’t immediately released. A fire built from cardboard boxes and other items burned in the middle of a street downtown and video appeared to show people breaking into Pioneer Place mall and taking bags from a Louis Vuitton store. Police said they deployed gas after people threw projectiles at them. Firefighters were responding to the fires, police said.Police via Twitter labeled the event a riot before midnight and closed several streets. “Disperse now or you will be subject to gas, projectiles, and other means necessary for dispersal,” police said.Earlier, thousands of people filled Peninsula Park in North Portland for a peaceful evening vigil that lasted three hours, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Hundreds then began marching through downtown to Portland police headquarters outside the Multnomah County Justice Center. There was scattered vandalism along the route.People were protesting the death of 46-year-old Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white officer pressed his knee into his neck as Floyd begged for air. That officer was arrested on criminal charges Friday.Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tweeted a plea to protesters to remain peaceful and said at about 11:50 p.m. that while he had left Portland to attend to his dying mother, he was heading back to the city.”I am with family to prepare for her final moments. This is hard, this is personal, but so is watching my city get destroyed. I’m coming back NOW,” he said, adding that police and community leaders would be hearing from him.”Portland, this is not us,” he wrote earlier on Twitter. “When you destroy our city, you are destroying our community. When you act in violence against each other, you are hurting all of us. How does this honor the legacy of George Floyd?”
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Protests Spread Across More US Cities After Death of African American Man
U.S. protests over the death of a handcuffed African American man by a white police officer in Minneapolis continued to spread across the country Friday even after the officer was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.In Washington, D.C., protests Friday at Lafayette Park outside the White House led officials to lock down the building. Reporters said protesters, some spray-painting a nearby building, clashed with Secret Service members.Demonstrators in New York City took to the streets for a second day to protest the death of 46-year-old George Floyd. Reports say some in the crowd pushed against metal barricades as police pushed back.In Atlanta, Georgia, hundreds of protesters confronted police outside CNN headquarters, some throwing water bottles and chanting, “Quit your jobs.”Protests also took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in Houston, Texas, where Floyd grew up. More than 60 protesters marched on the freeway in Houston for half an hour, shutting down traffic.The Midwestern city of Minneapolis, where the killing took place, remains on edge following three nights of protests that started peacefully but gave way to arson and looting.Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin poses for a booking photograph at the Ramsey County Detention Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. May 29, 2020.Earlier Friday, officials in Hennepin County, Minnesota, announced charges against former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is seen in cellphone video of the incident kneeling on Floyd’s neck as Floyd pleads that he can’t breathe.Floyd was pronounced dead shortly after the incident. His family responded to the charges, saying in a statement it wants prosecutors to take a tougher approach.“The arrest of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the brutal killing of George Floyd is a welcome but overdue step on the road to justice. We expected a first-degree murder charge. We want a first-degree murder charge. And we want to see the other officers arrested. We call on authorities to revise the charges to reflect the true culpability of this officer.”Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, told VOA that the killing of Floyd shows that “we have in this country not dealt with the issues of race and the value of African American lives in Minneapolis.”He said peaceful protests are “a way for the citizens of this country to bring forth grievances of injustice,” and said NAACP members “absolutely oppose rioting, that never solves anything.”U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he had spoken with the family of Floyd and expressed his sorrow. Speaking during an event at the White House, Trump said “we can’t allow” the demonstrations in Minneapolis “to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.” He said looters should not be able to drown out peaceful protests.Protesters vented their anger in Minneapolis on Thursday night, setting a police precinct and businesses on fire and smashing windows of businesses. The National Guard was mobilized as the twin city of St. Paul was also rocked by another night of violence.Trump had tweeted early Friday that the rioters are “THUGS” who “are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd.”He also threatened to bring Minneapolis “under control” and tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020Twitter added a warning to Trump’s tweet about shooting, saying it violates its rules “about glorifying violence.” The social media company later flagged Trump’s reference to “thugs.”The White House later said “the president did not glorify violence, but condemned it.”Trump clarified on Twitter on Friday “Looting leads to shooting … I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means.”The death of Floyd was captured on cellphone video that went viral after it was posted online. “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man,” Floyd pleaded, while being restrained by Chauvin.Chauvin told a handcuffed Floyd to “relax,” but the officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck after the man stopped moving. One witness said he heard Floyd calling out for his mother. The video shows Floyd’s head turned to the side, and he does not appear to be resisting. Toward the end of the video, paramedics arrive, lift a limp Floyd onto a stretcher and place him in an ambulance. Authorities later told reporters Floyd died at the hospital.Minneapolis police said Floyd resembled a suspect wanted for allegedly trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill in a food store and that he had resisted arrest.Mayor Frey said early Friday the city is in “a lot of pain and anger” but the looting and burning to protest George Floyd’s death is “unacceptable.”Frey said the damaged properties, including a police precinct, are “essential to our community.” He said he decided to let the precinct burn late Thursday after receiving reports that protesters were trying to breach the premises. Frey said he ordered police personnel to evacuate from the precinct before it was set ablaze because it became too dangerous for them.Frey also responded to Trump’s tweets that Minneapolis suffers from a “total lack of leadership.”Frey said “Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis,” and added, “We are strong as hell.”Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also criticized Trump, saying his references in his tweets to “thugs” and “shooting” are counterproductive.“In the moment where we’re at, in a moment that is so volatile, anything we do to add fuel to that fire is really not helpful,” Walz said at a Friday news conference. “There is a way to do this without inflaming (tensions).”Attorney General William Barr said Friday the images “of the incident that ended with the death of Mr. Floyd, while in custody of Minneapolis police officers, were harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing.” Barr also said an independent investigation is being conducted by the Justice Department and the FBI.Former President Barack Obama tweeted Friday about Floyd’s death, calling on the country to treat all citizens with dignity and respect.“It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’“It shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America,” Obama added. “It can’t be ‘normal.’”My statement on the death of George Floyd: pic.twitter.com/Hg1k9JHT6R— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 29, 2020Floyd and Chauvin knew each other from working security jobs together at the same Minneapolis nightclub, City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins told CNN on Friday.Chauvin was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department who had at least a dozen complaints filed against him about his conduct, according to NBC News and other news outlets. NBC reports that records show Chauvin was not disciplined over the complaints but received one “letter of reprimand.”The other officers involved in Floyd’s restraint have been identified as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng. They are under investigation.Separately, a CNN crew was arrested in Minneapolis on live television early Friday after protests overnight about Floyd’s death.As reporter Omar Jimenez, who is black and Latino, and two other crew members were arrested, the camera continued to run. During the incident, Jimenez asked why he was being arrested. CNN said Walz has apologized to the network.Because of Floyd’s “I can’t breathe,” comment, his death was quickly compared to that of Eric Garner, a black man in New York who died in 2014 after a white officer placed him in a chokehold while he begged for his life. Garner also told officers, “I can’t breathe,” a cry that became a national rallying point against the country’s long history of police brutality.Floyd’s death comes weeks after three people were charged with the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in the southern state of Georgia. The African American man was killed in February, allegedly by a white former Glynn County police officer and his son who claim they mistook Arbery for a burglar while he was jogging. The two were charged only after a video of the shooting emerged several weeks later.
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Protests Around the Country Following Minneapolis Death
The killing of George Floyd, a Minneapolis black man who died after being pinned by the neck by a white police officer’s knee, has triggered a wave of protests across the country, with many demonstrations held Friday.Protesters were planning marches and rallies to demand that police be held accountable for Floyd’s death, an incident seen on a bystander’s video. The Floyd case also focused attention on local incidents linked to racism and policing. Below is a partial list of cities where protests occurred: Minneapolis After three nights in which peaceful rallies gave way to arson, looting and vandalism, authorities were on the alert for further unrest on Friday in the country’s epicenter of rage over Floyd’s death, even after the officer who pinned him by the neck was arrested and charged with murder. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz deployed the state’s National Guard in an effort to halt any further destruction after arson and looting the previous night. An Atlanta Police Department vehicle burns as people pose for a photo during a demonstration against police violence, May 29, 2020, in Atlanta.Atlanta About 1,000 protesters marched from downtown’s Centennial Olympic Park to the state capitol, blocking traffic and an interstate highway along the way. The demonstration was intended not only to call attention to the death of Floyd but also to the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery, 25, a black jogger whose shooting in Brunswick, Georgia, was captured on video. Three white men were charged in his death earlier this month. “I just want people to understand our anger,” protest organizer Zoe Bambara said in a statement. “We have a right to be angry.” Columbus, Ohio Protesters angered by the death of Floyd turned out for a demonstration in Columbus that began peacefully but turned violent early Friday, with windows smashed at the Ohio Statehouse and on storefronts along surrounding downtown streets. Republican Governor Mike DeWine issued a call to unity against racism and police violence and urged protesters to remain peaceful. A participant in a protest over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man in police custody in Minneapolis, squares off with Denver police officers, May 29, 2020, in Denver.DenverOn Friday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered for a second day of protests as police looked on. On Thursday night, Denver police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds where some were vandalizing parked cars at the state capitol and blocking traffic. There were 13 arrests related to the protests.Detroit A “March Against Police Brutality” was held late Friday afternoon outside the Detroit Public Safety Headquarters. Many chanted, “No justice, no peace.” Some of the signs being carried read, “End police brutality,” and “I won’t stop yelling until everyone can breathe.”Houston Hundreds gathered in a protest organized by the group Black Lives Matter at Houston’s City Hall, and the crowd spilled onto Interstate Highway 45’s entrance ramp near downtown Friday. The crowd chanted, “I can’t breathe,” and “No justice, no peace,” local media reported. Las VegasMore than 400 people gathered outside the Bellagio casino, holding signs and chanting, “No justice, no peace,” and “Black lives matter,” before walking north up the Las Vegas Strip, in front of casinos still shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic. Louisville Following a night of violence in the Kentucky city, police were bracing for more street protests on Friday over the killing of Floyd and several others, including Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot by police in her Louisville home in March. During a night of protests on Thursday, at least seven people were shot, one critically. New York City police officers confront protesters in the street as they take a knee to demonstrate against the the death of George Floyd.New York Several groups gathered on Friday afternoon for a “We can’t breathe” vigil and rally in lower Manhattan pressing for legislation outlawing the police “chokehold,” used by a city police officer in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who was also black. Both Garner and Floyd were heard to gasp, “I can’t breathe,” before they lost consciousness. Organizers also are calling for charges to be brought against a white woman who became an infamous social media personality overnight after she called police on a black man in Central Park who asked her to keep her dog on a leash. San Jose, California In a largely peaceful demonstration, hundreds of people marched through the capital of Silicon Valley and temporarily shut down a five-lane section of U.S. Highway 101 in San Jose on Friday to protest Floyd’s death. Washington, DC Protesters marched Friday to near the White House, congregating at Lafayette Park. The White House was put on lockdown for a short while, according to reporters.The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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Arcane Art of Kremlinology Remains Relevant for North Korea
A veteran practitioner of the arcane art of “Kremlinology” says the skills honed to decipher what was really happening in the ruling circles of a secretive Soviet Union remain useful today in trying to determine what is up with North Korea’s leadership.”North Korea is the last bastion of the old Soviet-style communism,” says Alexander “Sandy” Vershbow, U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2001 to 2005. “There is some intelligence collected about internal developments of North Korea, but it’s still opaque. So the old techniques applied to the Soviet Union are still relevant to today’s North Korea.”Vershbow, who also served as the Soviet Union affairs director at the State Department during the last days of the Cold War, had his first foreign posting to Moscow in 1979, as a second secretary at the U.S. Embassy.FILE – NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, speaks at the Parliamentary Assembly’s spring session in Tirana, Albania, May 30, 2016.Soviet officials were not accessible in those days, he said in an interview. Even those who were willing to meet with foreign diplomats “weren’t all that open.”So, like many diplomats at the time, Vershbow became adept at piecing together any tidbits of information that could be gleaned from public appearances and official statements to understand the Soviet leadership’s inner workings. Even the positioning of senior officials in a group photograph could yield clues about changes in status.With his fluent Russian skills, Vershbow studied Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. “Reading between the lines, learning to understand the different pseudonyms that were used for editorials to reflect different levels of leadership was, as we would say, our diplomatic bread and butter in that period,” Vershbow told VOA.During his diplomatic career, Vershbow was centrally involved in Russian and European affairs, but he also served as ambassador to South Korea immediately after leaving Russia. “So watching North Korea from the South was a logical next step for me,” he said.Kim Jong Un health rumorsThe limitations of Kremlinology as applied to North Korea became apparent last month when a number of analysts jumped to unfounded conclusions about a mysterious three-week absence from public view by the nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un.With a lack of any explanation from Pyongyang, the absence stoked intense speculation about Kim’s health. It was not the first time he has disappeared from the public eye, but analysts found it highly unusual that he would have missed an April 15 celebration marking the birth of his grandfather — regime founder Kim Il Sung.A series of unsubstantiated news reports and rumors suggested that Kim had undergone a failed heart surgery, become brain dead or was in a vegetative state. Other reports said he had caught COVID-19 and was in lockdown, or even dead. But he reappeared on May 1 at a fertilizer factory.FILE – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the completed Suchon fertilizer factory, in this picture taken May 1, 2020, and released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on May 2, 2020.”There was no real indication, other than Kim did something out of the ordinary, which is he didn’t go to the April 15th meetings and that led everybody to jump to conclusions,” said Ken Gause, adversary analytics director at CNA, a nonprofit analysis organization in Arlington, Virginia.”If you have done leadership analysis and Kremlinology for a long time, you will learn that there are always exceptions that pop up. And if you connect the dots in a straight way like we did this time, you can often be wrong.”Gause has closely followed North Korean leadership since the late 1980s with the analysis framework he developed to study the Soviet system. In the early 1980s, he was based in Moscow, interviewing defectors from the Soviet Union and analyzing Kremlin politics and decision making.”When you have a totalitarian regime, where the media has a certain coded language to it, which we saw under [Joseph] Stalin, which we see in North Korea, you can actually trust those photographs of who’s standing next to whom. You can pick up some clues,” Gause explained.Communist connectionAndrei Lankov, a respected historian of North Korea, was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University in the 1980s and also studied at North Korea’s Kim Il Sung University.”I was lucky to belong to a generation of Soviet specialists who had opportunities to study in North Korea. When I went there, I realized that this was an area where I probably would have a serious competitive advantage. It was quite clear my Soviet background and general interest in Soviet history would be extremely useful,” Lankov told VOA.FILE – Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert, answers a reporter’s question during an interview in Seoul, South Korea, Sept. 20, 2017.Compared to Kremlinology, a significant challenge for “Pyongyangology” comes from the lack of reliable data on key government officials, according to Lankov.”The Soviet Union was a far less closed society than North Korea, and stories about promotions and demotions, as well as secrets in the top tiers of the leadership, were normally filtered out, eventually reaching the ears of foreign observers,” he said.In North Korea, by comparison, “there are no ‘Pyongyang Kitchens’ where intellectuals, foreign journalists and spies disguised as journalists are drinking Soju [Korean hard liquor].”Lankov said the North Korean government has increasingly closed down communication channels with the outside world in recent years, and many experts have lost their sources inside North Korea. That lack of accurate information helped feed the recent rumors over Kim Jong Un’s health, he said.But Lankov still believes “something was wrong” in Pyongyang during Kim’s mid-April disappearance. “Something did happen to Kim Jong Un between the 11th and 15th of April.” How then, can one develop this hunch into a meaningful analysis?The sixth senseSoo Kim, a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, previously worked as a CIA intelligence officer analyzing North Korean propaganda and leadership styles. Like Lankov, Kim believes it is premature to say the analysts were “wrong” about Kim Jong Un’s health.”I think there are certain fragments of information that have yet to emerge in public, and these may never be revealed or confirmed,” Kim said.When studying North Korea, Kim says, you cannot completely rely on patterns or past behavior.”Dealing with North Korea is not a science. There are nuances, contours, rivets that you sometimes develop an instinct for. Sometimes your instincts are right, sometimes you’re proven wrong. This unpredictability creates a constant state of tension internally.”Michael Madden, a Stimson Center fellow, has spent more than a decade running NK Leadership Watch, a website compiling intelligence on North Korea’s leaders from all available sources. Madden stresses the importance of developing insights to put the available fragments of information into the right context.”One of the problems we have in the North Korean leadership business is hanging too tightly onto precedents in history. You have to read, there’s a lot of books that have been published over the years and academic studies on leadership,” Madden said.”And there are people all over the world following North Korea, such as diplomats, NGO workers who are visiting the country or interact with the country’s officials. So it’s a matter of also developing a network of people to talk to.”And it takes a long time to develop the right instincts, says Gause.”You have to become very familiar, not only with the leadership politics in the country but the cultural aspects, the politics, the rules which the actors operate by. It can take a decade or two to really develop that, to a point where you have almost a sixth sense about how the system works.”
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COVID-19 Could Double Africa’s Food Insecurity, WFP Chief Warns
The head of the World Food Program tells VOA the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity in Africa could more than double due to COVID-19. Executive Director David Beasley says the impact of the virus on the economy and the flow of supplies could affect more than 40 million people in East Africa alone.The head of the World Food Program has warned a failure to keep food supply chains open during the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic could result in more people dying of hunger than of the virus itself.During a four-day trip to Africa, Beasley told VOA there are already grave problems distributing food because of curfews, long delays for truck drivers at border crossings and mandatory quarantines affecting pilots.FILE – People have been displaced from Wachile, Southern Oromia region of Ethiopia, May 5, 2020. The country is trying to avoid a food crisis caused by a huge invasion of locusts.The WFP has identified 28 hot spots in Africa where trade is slow due to coronavirus restrictions, says Beasley.“Quite frankly, we’ve had 350,000 people around the world die from COVID over five months,” said Beasley. “If the supply chain breaks down like we’re looking at, along with the economic deterioration, we could have 300,000 people die per day. Per day. It can’t be COVID versus hunger, we’ve got to thread the needle and balance both.” The WFP chief is calling on governments to more carefully review whether all the restrictions are needed. “Africa is very fragile. If we shut down ports, even for a few days, if we have border restrictions, even for a few days it will have a major hunger and humanitarian impact to the people,” he said. “We are already running into issues. We’re working with the leaders, explaining the complications and the impact ripple effect if they do restrictions unnecessarily.” In April, the WFP said that the number of people facing acute food insecurity globally could nearly double this year to 265 million due to the economic fallout of COVID-19. Most of those people reside in Africa. The number of people living on the verge of starvation has already risen to 135 million today from 80 million four years ago due to a culmination of disasters from flooding in Kenya, insecurity in the Sahel and locust plagues throughout East Africa, says the WFP. In the Horn of Africa alone, there are already approximately 20 million people suffering from severe food insecurity, a number the WFP estimates could rise to 43 million this year due to COVID-19 and other factors, such as locust swarms.In Ethiopia, the region’s most populous country, 7 million people are on the verge of starvation. Beasley says the situation could get worse.“If you do a lockdown in some of the urban areas in Africa and those young people lose their jobs, and they are living day to day hand to mouth, and they lose their job and they don’t have food, you’re going to have disruption. You’re going to have protests and riots and chaos,” said Beasley.FILE – A man attempts to fend off a swarm of desert locusts at a ranch near the town of Nanyuki in Laikipia county, Kenya, Feb. 21, 2020.The WFP has set up two humanitarian hubs at airports in Ethiopia and Ghana to transport medical supplies, food and humanitarian workers across the continent.Beasley, who recovered from the coronavirus in April, said the WFP needs $960 million just to keep the supply chain up and running for humanitarian food aid.Abdi Jama, coordinator of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s food security hub, told VOA supply trucks are backed up at the border between Kenya and Uganda due to measures to contain the virus. Jama reports price hikes due to a lack of supplies.“It’s looking more or less like a doubling of the number of people in need of food aid. In previous years, we used to think more about the agro-pastoralists and [those working in] agriculture,” said Abdi. “But now, we have the issue of these informal settlements in the urban areas, which are really a new group of people that are coming on board.”Jama also said that the Horn of Africa has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people in the world, creating another group at high risk.
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AU, UN Officials Voice Outrage at Death of Man in Police Custody in Minnesota
World leaders are condemning the death in police custody of an African American man, George Floyd, in the Midwestern U.S. city of Minneapolis.Graphic video of Floyd’s arrest Monday shows a white police officer kneeling on his neck, with Floyd pleading to be allowed to breathe. Floyd’s death sparked protests throughout the United States, and on Friday the police officer was taken into custody and charged with third-degree murder.The African Union Commission on Friday issued a strongly worded, rare public statement on the domestic events in the United States.In the statement, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, “strongly condemns” police conduct in the Floyd case and extended his “deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.”’Continuing discriminatory practices’Citing a 1964 Organization of African Unity resolution on racial discrimination in the United States, the commission said it “reiterates the African Union’s rejection of the continuing discriminatory practices against black citizens of the United States of America.”U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet also condemned the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death, which she said was the latest “in a long line of killings of unarmed African Americans by U.S. police officers and members of the public.”“I am dismayed to have to add George Floyd’s name to that of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many other unarmed African Americans who have died over the years at the hands of the police — as well as people such as Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin who were killed by armed members of the public,” she said.The U.N. human rights chief called on U.S. authorities to take serious action to stop such killings, and to ensure justice.Prevention a must“Procedures must change, prevention systems must be put in place, and above all police officers who resort to excessive use of force should be charged and convicted for the crimes committed,” said Bachelet.Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said he had seen the video of Floyd lying on the ground with a policeman’s knee on his neck.”Because of this discrimination, racism on the basis of race, such things are done,” he said during a webcast on compassion Friday. “We see in the news channels, the media, about discrimination on the basis of color or religion these days, and then there is killing due to that, and then there are some who even take it as a pride to be able to kill somebody.”
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Three Wounded in Shootout in Kyiv Suburb; 20 Detained
Dozens of people, some armed with what appeared to be hunting rifles, clashed in broad daylight on Friday in a residential suburb outside the capital Kyiv, and at least three people were wounded, according to officials.The violence, captured in amateur footage taken from surrounding apartment blocks and posted online, occurred in the morning in Brovary.Unidentified men shoot during an armed conflict in the residential area of Brovary town, Ukraine, in this still image from a video taken May 29, 2020. (Oleksandr Tkachenko/Handout via Reuters)According to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, about 100 people took part in the clashes, some of whom came from another region.The footage, which Reuters could not immediately verify independently, showed men in masks and dark clothes exchanging fire with hidden adversaries who were obscured by trees. Reuters counted around 40 shots.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the government to investigate the incident and punish those responsible, the presidential press service said.”The head of the interior ministry reported to the president that the conflict occurred between representatives of companies involved in passenger transportation in Brovary,” it said in a statement.Avakov said 20 people were detained.The interior ministry said that the head of police in the region of Vynnytsya, where some of those who took part in the clashes came from, had been sacked. It was not clear whether the two were related.
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Six Papuan Activists Convicted of Treason Freed
Six activists charged with treason in Jakarta for organizing a protest rally last August outside the presidential palace have been freed from prison. Paulus Suryanta Ginting, Ambrosius Mulait, Charles Kosay, and Dano Anes Tabuni, along with the only woman in the group, Arina Elopere, were freed this past week.Issay Wenda, the sixth person, was released April 28. He had been sentenced to eight months in prison, a month less than the others. At the August 28 rally, a banned separatist flag was raised as activists protested an incident that occurred against Papuans earlier that month in Surabaya in East Java. The Morning Star flag is a symbol of independence for West Papua. Over 40 students takenIn mid-August, Indonesian authorities stormed a university dormitory in Surabaya, where Papuan students live, concerning allegations someone desecrated the Indonesian flag in the building and threw it into a sewer. Police fired tear gas and took 43 students into custody, while an angry mob that had gathered outside the dormitory chanted, “Kick out Papua” and used racial slurs to describe the students.The incident triggered nationwide protests and galvanized the pro-independence movement. The Ministry of Communication and Information responded by blocking the internet in Papua. After that happened, some Papuans burned the office of Telkom Indonesia in Jayapura, the capital of Papua. Ginting, the spokesperson for the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP), said their indictment was unfair. “None of us has the initiative; it never crossed our minds that we want to commit treason. We were only protesting; it was a standard rally to make a statement. The only difference there was that flag on August 28. I assumed it was the initiative from the people at the rally,” he told VOA. ‘No intentions of treason’Michael Hilman, a member of the legal team representing the activists, said that the facts and evidence presented in court proved they were only protesting because of the incident in Surabaya. “There were no intentions of treason, or to attack the head of state, there was no violence whatsoever. But the judge’s decision did not take into account the facts,” he said in a statement. Five of the six were supposed to be released three weeks earlier under a new decree by the Indonesian Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. The decree initiated an assimilation program for prisoners who have served two-thirds of their prison sentences to be released early because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ginting said they signed the release documents on May 11 and had been tested for the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. At the last minute, they were told they could not be granted an early release because they were charged of treason. “We suspect political pressure or alleged abuse of power by the authorities,” Hilman said. The Directorate General of Corrections at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights has not responded to VOA’s requests for comments. Repression in Papua ‘getting worse’ Indonesia annexed the region of West Papua in 1969, after some of the population was forced to vote in favor of joining Indonesia. Since then, the area has become a hot spot of conflict with the government’s crackdown of separatist movements. Veronica Koman, a human rights lawyer, said violations and impunity still occur in Papua. “The repression in Papua is getting worse, because there’s a record of arrest in 2016. There were 5,136 arrests; that’s already during Jokowi’s regime,” she said, referring to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Failed promises?The president made a promise to prioritize infrastructure development in Papua. But the president has never addressed the alleged human rights violations. Koman said if the conflict in Papua is not resolved, it will be a ticking time bomb ahead of a violent uprising. “In a couple of years, there could be a (violent) incident. And then they’d ask, ‘Why did it happen?’ or ‘Who was the provocateur.’ Well, you’re making them (the Papuans) victims repeatedly and robbing them of their dignity,” she said. Meanwhile, Ginting said he would continue to speak out about the problems in Papua, but he acknowledged there is little he can do during the pandemic. He said the arrests have created momentum for people to start a discussion on Papua. “I think there are more people who are now curious. They want to find out what exactly is happening in Papua. A lot more people will be more open-minded,” he said.
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White US Police Officer Charged with Murder in Black Man’s Death
A white police officer in the U.S. city of Minneapolis seen kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed African American man who died in custody after pleading that he be allowed to breathe has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced the charges Friday after he said his office had enough evidence to justify the charges. Freeman did not immediately disclose details but said a criminal complaint would be available later.The victim, George Floyd, 46, was pronounced dead shortly after he was pinned to the ground Monday while handcuffed and Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck.Floyd’s family responded to the charges, saying in a statement it wanted prosecutors to take a tougher approach.“The arrest of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the brutal killing of George Floyd is a welcome but overdue step on the road to justice. We expected a first-degree murder charge. We want a first-degree murder charge. And we want to see the other officers arrested. We call on authorities to revise the charges to reflect the true culpability of this officer.”Protesters demonstrate outside a burning Minneapolis 3rd Police Precinct, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis.Minneapolis remained on edge following another night of violent protests sparked by Floyd’s death.U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he had spoken with Floyd’s family. Speaking during an event at the White House, Trump said “we can’t allow” the demonstrations in Minneapolis “to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.” He said looters should not be able to drown out peaceful protests.Protesters vented their anger in Minneapolis for a third night Thursday, setting a police precinct and businesses on fire and smashing windows of businesses. The National Guard was mobilized as the twin city of St. Paul was also rocked by another night of violence.Demonstrators protest in Centennial Olympic Park, May 29, 2020, in Atlanta. Protests were organized in cities around the United States following the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis.Demonstrations against Floyd’s death and years of violence against African Americans at the hands of police have also spread across the United States. Protesters took to the streets Thursday in New York City and Albuquerque, New Mexico.Trump had tweeted early Friday that the rioters were “THUGS” who were “dishonoring the memory of George Floyd.” He also threatened to bring Minneapolis “under control” and tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020Twitter added a warning to Trump’s tweet about shooting, saying it violated the site’s rules “about glorifying violence.” The social media company later flagged Trump’s reference to “thugs.”The White House later said “the president did not glorify violence, but condemned it.”Trump clarified on Twitter on Friday: “Looting leads to shooting … I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means.”The death of Floyd was captured on cellphone video that went viral after it was posted online. “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man,” Floyd pleaded, while being restrained by Chauvin.Chauvin told a handcuffed Floyd to “relax,” but the officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck after the unarmed man stopped moving. One witness said he heard Floyd calling out for his mother. The video shows Floyd’s head turned to the side and he does not appear to be resisting. Toward the end of the video, paramedics arrive, lift a limp Floyd onto a stretcher and place him in an ambulance. Authorities later told reporters Floyd died at the hospital.Minneapolis police said Floyd resembled a suspect wanted for allegedly trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill in a food store and that he had resisted arrest.The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, said early Friday that the city was in “a lot of pain and anger” but that the looting and burning to protest Floyd’s death was “unacceptable.”Frey said the damaged properties, including a police precinct, were “essential to our community.” He said he decided to let the precinct burn late Thursday after receiving reports that protesters were trying to breach the premises. Frey said he ordered police personnel to evacuate from the precinct before it was set ablaze because it became too dangerous for them.Frey also responded to Trump’s tweets that Minneapolis suffers from a “total lack of leadership.”Frey said, “Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis,” and added, “We are strong as hell.”Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also criticized Trump, saying his references in his tweets to “thugs” and “shooting” were counterproductive.“In the moment where we’re at, in a moment that is so volatile, anything we do to add fuel to that fire is really not helpful,” Walz said at a Friday news conference. “There is a way to do this without inflaming [tensions].”Attorney General William Barr said Friday that the images “of the incident that ended with the death of Mr. Floyd, while in custody of Minneapolis police officers, were harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing.” He also said an independent investigation was being conducted by the Justice Department and the FBI.Former President Barack Obama tweeted Friday about Floyd’s death, calling on the country to treat all citizens with dignity and respect.“It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’“It shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America,” Obama added. “It can’t be ‘normal.’ ” My statement on the death of George Floyd: pic.twitter.com/Hg1k9JHT6R— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 29, 2020Floyd and Chauvin knew each other from working security jobs together at the same Minneapolis nightclub, City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins told CNN on Friday.Chauvin was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department who had at least a dozen complaints filed against him about his conduct, according to NBC News and other news outlets. NBC reported that records showed Chauvin was not disciplined over the complaints but received one “letter of reprimand.”The other officers involved in Floyd’s restraint have been identified as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng. They were under investigation.Separately, a CNN crew was arrested in Minneapolis on live television early Friday after protests overnight about Floyd’s death.As reporter Omar Jimenez, who is black, and two other crew members were arrested, the camera continued to run. During the incident, Jimenez asked why he was being arrested. CNN said Walz had apologized to the network.Because of Floyd’s “I can’t breathe,” comment, his death was quickly compared to that of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man in New York who died in 2014 after a white officer placed him in a chokehold while he begged for his life. Garner also told officers, “I can’t breathe,” a cry that became a national rallying point against the country’s long history of police brutality.Floyd’s death came weeks after three people were charged with the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in the southern state of Georgia. The African American man was allegedly killed in February by a white former Glynn County police officer and his son who said they mistook Arbery for a burglar while he was jogging. The two were charged only after a video of the shooting emerged several weeks later.
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Cell Phone Video of Floyd, Arbery Deaths Expose US Racial Tensions
A viral video of a white police officer in the U.S. pressing his knee on the neck of a black man who died shortly after has again raised the issue of excessive force against black Americans. It’s unlikely that it would have drawn such attention without graphic video. And it’s not the only case stirring interest. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni reports.Camera: Maxamud Mascadde Producer: Henry Hernandez
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Biden: George Floyd’s Death Shows ‘Open Wound’ of US Racism
Joe Biden said Friday that the “open wound” of systemic racism was behind the death of a black man in police custody in Minnesota. Biden also accused President Donald Trump, without mentioning him by name, of inciting violence with a tweet that warned that protesters could be shot.”We are a country with an open wound. None of us can turn away,” Biden said in a brief address.The presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee has built his campaign around a promise to heal “the soul of the nation” and is suddenly getting his chance to try in real time.Biden said he spoke to the family of George Floyd, the man who died in Minneapolis this week after a white police officer knelt on his neck. Floyd’s death touched off violent protests there and elsewhere.The former vice president said now was “no time for incendiary tweets. No time to incite violence.””This is time for real leadership,” he said.That was a reference to Trump, who at first condemned police action in Minneapolis. But the president later warned online that protesters could be shot, prompting Twitter to flag his tweet as glorifying violence. Twitter’s move further escalated tensions between the White House and the social media platform, which fact-checked a tweet of his earlier this week.
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Killing of Seven Health Workers, Shop Owner Shocks Somalia
The bodies of seven health workers and a civilian were found Thursday in a village north of Mogadishu, shocking residents, local authorities and elders said Friday.”We found the dead bodies of the seven young health workers and a shop owner outside Golaley village near Balad district, 30 kilometers north of Mogadishu, a day after they were abducted by men in Somali military fatigues,” Ahmed Mohamed Muse, a local elder, told VOA Somali.It was not clear who was responsible for the killing, but local elders, including Muse, accused Somali government soldiers of being behind the attack.”The abductors were government soldiers and they carried out the execution, apparently as revenge for the killing of nine soldiers by a roadside bomb on Tuesday,” said Muse.Qasim Ali Nur, Balad district commissioner, denied the accusation and instead laid blame on the militant group al-Shabab.”We are still investigating the incident and the initial evidence we have is telling us that al-Shabab militants were behind the killing,” Nur told VOA Somali.He said the seven slain health workers were with the Zamzam foundation, a local aid group that focuses on health care, education, orphan care and peace building.In Somalia, Many Medics Chose Caring for COVID Patients Over Marking EidAs most Somalis celebrated the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, frontline hospital workers stayed behind to look after those in needColonel Abshir Maxamuud, a senior military official operating in the Middle Shabelle region where the incident occurred, also denied any involvement of government soldiers.Omar Jamac, a spokesman for the aid group, confirmed to Reuters that seven of its health workers had been kidnapped from a center in Golaley village.Residents shockedThe executions shocked the residents of Balad town, triggering protests against what they called the “brutal execution of civilians.”The protesters, wearing red head bandannas, marched through main streets of the town Friday, calling on the authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.”We are deeply saddened by the gruesome incident. All we demand is justice and fair investigation that finally results in justice for those murdered civil servants,” Osman Muhumed, a protest organizer, told local media.The federal government, the United Nations and international groups also condemned the incident.U.N. Resident Humanitarian Coordinator Adam Abdelmoula said in a statement Thursday that he was shocked by the killings of the health workers. “Attacks against medical facilities and personnel are unacceptable and a breach of international humanitarian law and any common decency,” he said.Abdelmoula who also is the deputy U.N. head in Somalia, called for a “transparent and thorough investigation” into the incident.A statement from the Somali government said, “The government is sharing the pain with all Somalis and sends condolences to the families of those murdered.”The statement added that the government had ordered an immediate investigation into the incident.This incident came at a time when Somalia has been struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, drought and a locust invasion.Ibrahim Mohamoud and Husein Dhaqane in Beledweyn, Somalia, contributed to this report.
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Tokyo Set to Allow More Businesses to Reopen
Tokyo officials announced Friday that, beginning Monday, they will allow additional businesses, including theaters, cinemas, fitness gyms and retailers to reopen after a coronavirus state of emergency ended this week.Earlier this week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared an end to a seven-week emergency, saying COVID-19 infections have subsided enough to resume social and economic activity under a “new normal” requiring physical distancing and other disease prevention measures.At a news briefing, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said the city is now ready to move to Step 2 of a three-phase plan to gradually reopen businesses in the city. But as Tokyo reported 22 new coronavirus cases Friday, she raised concerns of an underlying risk and a possible second wave of infections.Medical workers react as they watch the Blue-Impulse aerobatic team of Japan Air Self-Defense Force as they salute the medical workers at the frontline of the fight against the coronavirus disease in Tokyo, Japan, May 29, 2020.While Koike said infections are not accelerating and Tokyo hospitals now have space, she urged residents to keep their guard up and take ample precautions as they now must live “with corona.” She said with no vaccine or reliable treatment yet available, “the only measure we can take against the spread of the virus is, at the end of the day, up to our own strong will and actions.”Koike said we all must “live alongside corona … with appropriate fear.”In the city of Kitakyushu in southern Japan, 43 new cases were reported this week after a three-week hiatus, prompting the city to close some businesses again.Koike said libraries, museums and schools — considered to be lowest risk — reopened in Tokyo this week. Under Step 2, theaters, cinemas, fitness gyms, private tutoring schools and retailers can resume businesses, and some gatherings can take place as well.Night clubs, karaoke and live music houses, which are considered more prone to infections, will be last and their safety guidelines are still being worked out.Even though its emergency measures only involved requests for social distancing and some business closures, Japan so far has about 16,700 cases and 870 deaths, significantly fewer than many other countries.
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Hong Kong on Borrowed Time as China Pushes for More Control
Hong Kong has been living on borrowed time ever since the British made it a colony nearly 180 years ago, and all the more so after Beijing took control in 1997 and granted it autonomous status.
China’s passage of a national security law for the city is the latest sign that the 50-year “one country, two systems” arrangement that allowed Hong Kong to keep its own legal, financial and trade regimes is perishable.
China’s communist leaders have been preparing for decades to take full control of the glittering capitalist oasis, while building up their own trade and financial centers to take Hong Kong’s place.
For them, national security and patriotism trump the civil liberties that brought millions of Hong Kong residents into the streets last year, hoping to protect their own vision for their future — protests that would not be tolerated across the border.
In the early 1980s, as China’s own economy began to open up to trade and investment after decades of Cold War isolation and political upheaval, the contrast between the mainland and Hong Kong was evident on crossing the border into the bucolic rice paddies and fish ponds of Shenzhen.
Several generations later, Shenzhen is a metropolis of skyscrapers, high-tech campuses and huge, modern ports that dwarf Hong Kong’s own, at least in trading volume. Railways, roads, bridges and other infrastructure have transformed the Pearl River Delta region that surrounds it into a whole ecosystem of built-up cities that is China’s answer to Silicon Valley and then some. It also is home to increasingly influential tech companies like Huawei Technologies and Tencent.
Railways, roads, bridges and other infrastructure have turned Hong Kong into just one of the big cities of the Pearl River Delta region that surrounds it.
The region has been transformed into a whole ecosystem of built-up cities that is China’s answer to Silicon Valley and then some, and it is home to increasingly influential tech companies like Huawei Technologies and Tencent.
“Hong Kong is a Chinese city,” said Kenneth Courtis, an expert on Asian economies and chairman of Starfort Investment Holdings. Instead of Hong Kong transforming its neighbors in Guangdong province, he said, “it’s more likely that Hong Kong will be more and more absorbed into Guangdong.”
The rise of industrial and financial centers like Shenzhen and Shanghai has sidelined Hong Kong in other respects. The city accounts for less than 3% of China’s economic activity, down from a peak of 27% in 1993, the height of its role as go-between in China’s ascent as an export powerhouse.
China’s promise to leave Hong Kong’s own legal and economic systems intact for 50 years, until 2047, has helped the city of 7 million retain its attraction as a regional financial hub and bastion of Western-style civil liberties.
The national security law endorsed in Beijing followed recent arrests of Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates. Critics say it will undermine civil liberties and might be used to suppress political activity, and many in Hong Kong reacted with dismay.
Many of the millions of Hong Kong citizens who turned out in protests that began a year ago either escaped from the mainland or have parents that left decades ago. Having fled communist rule, they are clinging to liberties forbidden in mainland China, where public dissent is treated as subversive and punishable by long prison terms.
“The most frightening thing is that you will never be able to know exactly what would cross the bottom line for the Chinese Communist Party, or even where that bottom line is. No one knows,” said Philip Chan, who was walking in downtown Hong Kong’s Central district under the watchful eyes of masses of police in riot gear, a common sight nowadays.
Hong Kong’s government has insisted that the new security law will only affect a small minority of people, saying that life will continue as normal for most.
The city’s tycoons planted the seeds both for its success and its eventual undoing when they invested billions in Guangdong, across the border, taking advantage of special incentives and cheap labor, and eventually helping turn China into the world’s factory floor.
For the most part, those ultra-wealthy elites have sought to keep the peace with Beijing in return for wielding enormous influence both in local politics and business.
Billionaire Li Ka-shing, whose fortune has taken a hit over the past year as Hong Kong’s economy stumbled, told local media that he viewed Beijing’s moves as its “sovereign right.” He and his peers have voiced support for the security legislation, saying they hope it will help ensure public order.
Beijing’s insistence on enacting the national security law, among other measures including now-tabled extradition legislation that sparked months of anti-government protests last year, prompted Washington to announce it no longer will treat Hong Kong as being autonomous from Beijing.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will push ahead with the threat to no longer treat Hong Kong as an autonomous free port or how big the impact of such a move would be.
Hong Kong accounted for about 8% of China’s exports to the U.S. and about 6% of its imports from the U.S. in 2018, but its overall role in trade has been eclipsed by big ports to the north.
The city was the world’s second-biggest port after Singapore in 2005 and now is the eighth-largest: Shanghai is by far the biggest and its throughput has doubled during that time while Hong Kong’s has fallen.
The city is utterly dependent on the mainland for much of its water, most of its food, and to a large extent, tourism and investment.
Before the protests and later the coronavirus pandemic virtually wiped out tourism, the city was a thriving cosmopolitan destination. It’s a shopping and dining mecca with a vibrant cultural scene, strong traditions of philanthropy and historic preservation, and mass media and educational institutions largely unfettered by Communist Party dogma and censorship.
At the same time, tensions have been building as the gap between rich and poor has widened. Political sentiment has become polarized as Beijing gradually extended its influence by ensuring its supporters would hold the deciding votes over such decisions as who would be the city’s top leader.
“These issues are very much central to the demonstrations,” Courtis said. “Beijing would be very smart to address some of these issues. Repression isn’t the answer.”
While many in Hong Kong grew frustrated with disruptions from the anti-government protests that turned violent at times, still more have shown with the votes they are able to cast that they favor more, not less democracy.
Some gathered in pop-up demonstrations Friday, including dozens who were chanting in protest n the busy IFC shopping mall downtown.
Jerome Lau, 70, said he feared the government would crack down on public gatherings and free speech.
“Until I take my last breath, I will come out and fight for freedom,” he said.
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Erdogan Plans Controversial Quran Reading at UNESCO Site
For over a thousand years, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia operated as the biggest Greek Orthodox Christian church before being converted into a mosque, then a museum and, most recently, a United Nations-designated cultural landmark.At the direction of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a reading of the Quran will take place Friday at the ancient building.In announcing his decision, Erdogan said the Conquest Sura, a section of the Quran, would be recited at the site, and that prayers would also be held as part of a celebration organized by the country’s culture ministry in commemoration of the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453.FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a teleconference with his cabinet in Istanbul, May 11, 2020.Whether followers will be allowed to pray inside Hagia Sophia or around the massive structure, or across its sprawling courtyard, remained unclear.Erdogan’s announcement comes as Turkey, among the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, moves Friday to ease restrictions as death and infection rates from the pandemic have plummeted, according to state statistics.Still, the Quran recital has angered the neighboring Greeks, the former keepers of the monument.”Any move to change the existing status of Hagia Sophia, as safeguarded by UNESCO, cannot be accepted,” Deputy Foreign Minister Miltiades Varvitsiotis said. “The monument has long relinquished its religious character … and any attempt to alter its status will isolate Turkey even further,” he told the Athens-based Real FM radio station.Pundits, politicians and the press condemned the move Friday, as national television networks topped news bulletins with developments on what they called a “provocation” by Ankara.”It is obvious that Erdogan is playing to his local audience with this move,” Deputy Defense Minister Alkiviadis Stefanis said. “But for us, the Greek nation, it is a move that touches on sensitive chords: our religious and national sentiments.”History of Hagia SophiaBuilt in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia, which means Holy Wisdom in Greek, was converted to a mosque soon after the Ottomans conquered what was then called Constantinople, 567 years ago. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, hundreds of years later, secular Turkish leaders transformed the mosque into a museum in 1935.FILE – An aerial view of the Byzantine-era monument of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, April 24, 2020.A masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, the building features an immense dome propped on massive pillars. It is sheathed with marble and decorated with mosaics.With the Turkish economy stuttering, analysts suggest Erdogan’s play on Hagia Sophia aims to rally his electoral base, fulfilling a longstanding demand by hardline Islamists in his country bent on converting the UNESCO landmark back into a mosque.”This is an act of desperation and will lead to no good,” said Elmira Bayrasli, director of the Globalization and International Affairs program at Bard College.Heightened tensionsErdogan’s announcement comes as relations between Greece and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse.While both NATO allies, Greece has been aggressively boosting its border security since Ankara fanned what Greek officials have called “a migrant offensive,” allowing over 150,000 refugees to travel freely into Europe.Turkey has since then also sent exploratory ships to drill in areas of the eastern Mediterranean, which Greece and Cyprus claim exclusively their own. Mock dogfights between Greek and Turkish fighter jets have also become a daily occurrence over the Aegean Sea that divides the two countries, heightening fears of an accident and all-out offensive between the traditional enemy states.”In just one day this week, we had to send up 62 jet fighters to intercept Turkish aircraft in Greece airspace,” said Stefanis.It was not immediately clear whether Greece would seek recourse with the United Nations or in other international fora to block the Quran readings from proceeding at Hagia Sophia on Friday. Still, opposition lawmakers in Athens are advising a more tempered stance by the government, saying a reading of the Quran does not explicitly constitute prayer or any semblance of disrespect for the 1,000-year-old monument.
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ICC Clears Former Ivory Coast President to Travel Months After Acquittal
The International Criminal Court eased travel restrictions on former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo for the first time Thursday since his acquittal last year over post-election violence that killed 3,000 people.The French News Agency (AFP) said the ICC is allowing Gbagbo to leave Belgium, which agreed to host him after his arrest, provided he return to court for the prosecution’s appeal of his not guilty verdict.Gbagbo was the first head of state to stand trial in The Hague. He and his deputy Charles Ble Goude were cleared of crimes against humanity in early 2019, eight years after his arrest.It is unclear if Gbagbo will return to the Ivory Coast, which is heading toward a presidential election in October.An ICC spokesman said wherever Gbagbo decides to go, the country must approve his stay. Gbagbo and his deputy denied any wrongdoing in connection with the violence that followed a disputed vote in Ivory Coast in 2010.
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7 People Shot at Kentucky Protest Against Police Shooting of Black Woman
At least seven people were shot Thursday night during a Louisville, Kentucky protest of the March fatal shooting by police of Breonna Taylor, an African American woman. At least one of the victims is reported in critical condition. It was not immediately clear who fired a weapon. A city of Louisville police spokesman told the Associated Press in a statement that, “No officers discharged their service weapons.” Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was shot eight times by narcotics detectives after they knocked down her apartment door on March 13. The detectives said they knocked on the door before entering, but Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he did not hear anything. Walker shot a police officer in the leg and was charged with attempted murder, but charges against him have been dropped. No drugs were found in Taylor’s apartment. Her family is suing police. The FBI has opened an investigation. The Thursday night protest happened at the same time demonstrators in the state of Minnesota protested the killing of George Floyd, an African American man who died after a police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck. Several buildings, including a Minneapolis police station, were set on fire Thursday night and 500 soldiers from the National Guard were scheduled to be deployed.
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