Zimbabwe’s conservation groups have welcomed a government ban, announced Tuesday, on all mining in the country’s national parks. The government declared the mining halt after weeks of campaigns calling for a stop to Chinese coal-mining grants in Hwange, Zimbabwe’s largest national park. The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association on Wednesday welcomed the government’s decision to ban all mining in national parks.The group had filed an urgent request Monday at the Harare High Court, arguing that Chinese mining inside Hwange National Park risked permanent damage to the ecology.Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association’s Richard Ncube in Harare, Sept, 9, 2020, welcomes the government’s decision to ban all mining in national parks but going ahead with the court challenge.(Courtesy Photo)Despite the apparent win, the association’s Richard Ncube said they are going ahead with the court challenge.“The reason being that we still have a valid argument to make: as long as there are still valid authorizations that allow the mining company to continue mining in the national park we still have a case to make and we have to get an order before the court so as to stop the mining companies from mining,” he said.The ban followed weeks of conservationists’ campaigns using the hashtag “SaveHwangeNationalPark.”The conservationists demanded the cancellation of licenses given to Chinese companies to mine coal in Hwange, the country’s biggest national park.Zimbabwe’s Minister of Mines Winston Chitando talks to journalists, Sept. 8, 2020.Minister of Mines Winston Chitando said the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) was given permission before President Emmerson Mnangagwa came to power.“The mining concession was granted in 2015 to ZMDC (Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation) who have held that mining concession since then…They haven’t done much work on the concession and they proceeded to get a partner to undertake mining in the particular area.”The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association cites Chitando and ZMDC as defendants in their High Court petition against mining in Hwange.It also names Zimbabwe’s Environmental Management Agency and two Chinese mining companies.Conservationists fear that without a court order, Zimbabwe’s government could grant the companies an exemption or easily rescind the blanket ban on mining in national parks.Simiso Mlevu, spokeswoman for the Center for Natural Resource Governance says Hwange national park is a unique and an important enclave. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Simiso Mlevu is spokeswoman for the Center for Natural Resource Governance.“Hwange national park is a unique and an important enclave because it is home to more than 45,000 elephants and all other animals which make up the big five. We don’t think there is any tourist who would visit Zimbabwe to check on production of any mine. Tourists are attracted by wildlife. We hope government will genuinely stay by its word,” she said.Tourism is one of the industries Zimbabwe hopes will revive the country’s struggling economy.But China is also a major investor in Zimbabwe, which hopes that investment in coal mining will help it to become a net energy exporter by 2023.
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Month: September 2020
Cambodians Express Joy, Sorrow, Relief After Death of Dreaded Khmer Rouge Commandant
Cambodians greeted the death of Khmer Rouge commandant Kaing Guek Eav – also known as Duch – with a mix of happiness, sorrow and relief, as this country continues to move on from its tragic past.Duch died on September 2, while serving a life sentence at the Kandal Provincial Correctional Center for crimes against humanity and the deaths of more than 16,000 people in Cambodia’s notorious Killing Fields between 1975 and 1979. His conviction was one of three obtained at a United Nations-backed court, which found the former math teacher and born again Christian had ruthlessly lorded over prisoners he deemed fit for extermination at S-21, a prison converted from a high school at Tuol Sleng in the capital city of Phnom Penh. By 1971 he had already established a prototype torture center, which would serve as a model for 196 such camps across Cambodia once Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot had seized control of the country four years later.His techniques included electrification and disembowelment. Children were taken from their mothers, prisoners were left chained to rotting corpses for days in the tropical heat. Meals were rare, beatings were common and death inevitable.They were then taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.Shortly after Duch died, Chhay Hoc Pheng, an author and retired French judge, was paying his respects to relatives who perished under Pol Pot at Choeung Ek, where most of Duch’s prisoners would meet a violent end.“I believe that the souls of people who die here will definitely ask Duch: ‘Why did you kill us? Why try to destroy us? What did we do wrong?’ he said. “I believe Duch will go where he deserves to go because of the deadly sins he committed. I do not mean this out of revenge or anger but it is the truth,” said the author of Genocide Orphans.Some of his prisoners were Westerners who – like at least 5,000 others – were forced to confess.One former guard testified that an Australian was shackled and taken outside the gates of S-21 where he was made to sit as a tire drenched in gasoline was pulled over him and lit on fire.Americans Michael Deeds and Christopher DeLance were among the last to be executed, shortly before a Vietnamese invasion ousted the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh in January 1979, forcing Pol Pot into the countryside where a civil war continued for another two decades.Canadians, New Zealanders, and Britons also perished.Rob Hamill is a New Zealander whose family was torn apart after learning his brother, Kerry, was captured by the Khmer Rouge and perished along with a handful of other Westerners at S-21.“He effectively ran the secret police. He developed the system. He was the mathematical genius who created the killing machine that the rest of the country followed,” Hamill said after Duch was jailed for life in 2012.The U.N.-backed court heard Duch had established M-13, a previously unknown death camp, as a prototype in a communist-held zone in 1971, when Pol Pot’s forces were still battling the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government for control of the country.Duch told the court, from behind a wall of bullet-proof glass, that M-13 was designed to “detain, to torture and to smash, that is to kill” and it was here that Duch was “happy like a madman” when torturing prisoners.One M-13 worker testified that he watched Duch hang a woman from a tree, strip off her shirt and burn her breasts with a lit kerosene rag.Mao Thel has worked as a grave keeper at Choeung Ek since 1980 and says Cambodians were happy and relieved that nearly all senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge had died. Both of his parents died of starvation under Pol Pot.“The People who see that he died are happy because Cambodians don’t like the Khmer Rouge. People are angry because the Khmer Rouge killed all their families, he said. “My mother and father died, starving of food, my mother — my father… today only one, me.”While many older Cambodians remain haunted by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge tribunal and the passing of those responsible for the slaughter of about two million people has enabled this once troubled country to move ahead, despite its tragic past.Ny Chann contributed to this report.
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Global Coalition Calls for Greater Scrutiny of China on Rights
A global coalition of 321 civil society groups from 60 countries is calling for China to face greater scrutiny for its alleged systemic and serious human rights violations. The coalition plans to demand an end to China’s impunity at the U.N. Human Rights Council, during the council’s upcoming session next week. The group sent an open letter to the U.N. Secretary General and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights raising its concerns about China’s human rights record. The signatories stress the need to address what they call rampant human rights violations across China, including in Hong Kong, Tibet, and the northwestern province of Xinjiang.FILE- (L-R) Pan-democratic legislator Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, Vice convener for Hong Kong’s Civil Human Rights Front Figo Chan, and activist Leung Kwok-hung, march at the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China from Britain, Hong Kong, July 1, 2020.China Director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, says the sheer magnitude of the violations committed inside China and outside the country warrant a fundamental different response from the U.N. Human Rights Council.“It is high time the Chinese government actually has some sense that it would face consequences for doing things like continuing to arbitrarily detain a million people simply on the basis of their ethnic identity and for a slew of other serious violations,” said Richardson.One million mainly Muslim Uighurs reportedly are incarcerated in so-called re-education camps in Xinjiang.In its statement, the coalition highlights China’s efforts to distort the mandate of the U.N. Human Rights Council. It says China persecutes activists who seek redress from repression. It says the government in Beijing opposes initiatives to shine a light on its alleged serious rights violations and international crimes committed in countries around the world. The Chinese government rejects the U.N.’s assessment of its human rights record as “gross interference.”Geneva Director at Human Rights Watch, John Fisher, says the U.N. needs to act on the growing chorus of voices calling for China to be held accountable for its rights abuses.“I think what has been striking around this appeal has been to say that so many NGO’s from so many different countries, not just expressing concern at China’s suppression of rights within its own borders, which are serious enough and warrant scrutiny on their own terms, but also the global impact of China’s contempt for human rights,” Fisher said.The global coalition is calling for a special session of the Human Rights Council to explore the range of violations by China’s government. It urges the council to establish an impartial and independent U.N. mechanism to closely monitor and report on China’s human rights situation annually. It says the U.N. must insist that the government comply with its international human rights obligations.
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US Announces More Troop Withdrawals from Iraq
The U.S. military has announced the withdrawal of more of its service members from Iraq this month. The head of the U.S. Central Command, General Frank McKenzie, said during visit to Iraq Wednesday that the U.S. troop presence in the country would be cut from 5,200 to 3,000. “This reduced footprint allows us to continue advising and assisting our Iraqi partners in rooting out the final remnants of ISIS [Islamic State] in Iraq and ensuring its enduring defeat,” McKenzie said. “This decision is due to our confidence in the Iraqi security forces’ increased ability to operate independently.”The U.S. troops in Iraq are performing counterterrorism operations and training Iraqi forces. There are another 8,600 U.S. military service members in Afghanistan. FILE – U.S. troops patrol at an Afghan National Army (ANA) Base in Logar province, Afghanistan, Aug. 7, 2018.A senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reporters traveling with President Donald Trump late Tuesday, said another announcement about U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan was likely later this week. Trump said while campaigning for president in 2016 that he wanted to end what he called the country’s “endless wars.” FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in the Oval Office of the White House, Aug. 20, 2020, in Washington.“We have been taking our troops out of Iraq fairly rapidly, and we look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there,” Trump said last month as he hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House. “And hopefully Iraq can live their own lives and they can defend themselves, which they’ve been doing long before we got involved.” Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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Chinese Refugees Fearful as Thailand Cooperates More with China
Chinese dissidents fleeing abroad have long used Thailand as a route for escaping repression at home. In recent years, Thailand’s government has been cooperating more with Beijing’s effort to pursue dissidents overseas, putting them at risk. Several cases show how Chinese police are working through Thai law enforcement agencies, or even traveling to Thailand on their own, to try to find fleeing dissidents and bring them back to China. Jian Xing escaped to Thailand in 2015 after volunteering for a Chinese civil rights website and speaking out about corruption in the local government. He told VOA that before he qualified to move to New Zealand in 2019, four police officers came to his residence in Thailand and took away his belongings without a search warrant. “They told me that they could kill me in Thailand, and nobody would even know,” Xing said. Yong Hua, an exiled artist, fled Thailand in 2019 after being stalked, arrested and sent to re-education camp by Chinese authorities because he said he voiced opposition to what the Chinese government has done to its people over the years. He recalled being constantly on the run to avoid Chinese agents hired by the government. Hua told VOA that a Twitter account with no followers sent him a YouTube video on Aug. 28, saying, the “Thai Chinese Chamber of Commerce” offered a reward of $1,600 (50,000 baht) for him, accusing him of scamming money and saying they will post a “wanted notice” with his photograph on it in Bangkok and other places. “I don’t know if the so-called Chamber of Commerce is real,” Hua said. “I suspect they are the Chinese spies.” A VOA reporter called the phone number on the notice, but no one answered. Some dissidents say the situation in Thailand has become so difficult that some of them are choosing to go back to China “voluntarily” under pressure from the Thai and Chinese governments. Xing refused. “I told them if you deport me forcefully, then you will only get my corpse,” he said. Xing’s incident caused panic among Chinese refugees stranded in Thailand. Other refugees sent the video of police in Xing’s home to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to seek help. By then, Xing had already been sent to an immigration detention center waiting to be repatriated to China. Eventually, he received emergency humanitarian assistance and was resettled in New Zealand. Hua is making a documentary on the plight of Chinese refugees in Thailand waiting to relocate to third countries, which connected him with other refugees. He said many people who have fled China to Thailand, and even among those who qualify for refugee status, are living in very difficult situations. “I think they are suffering too much,” said Hua. “This suffering has two sides. The first one is economic, because you can’t work in Thailand. It’s illegal. Even if you get the refugee card, Thailand doesn’t recognize it. If your passport expired, you can get caught if you stay here. So, they are under a lot of financial pressure,” Hua told VOA. “Some people go to temples, to places that don’t charge them, because they have no money.” Hua said even worse is the second kind of suffering, the mental pressure. “I think refugees all have severe or mild depression. They are not very healthy mentally,” he said. Many refugees have been in Thailand for years waiting to be resettled, and their state of mind is very worrying. Hua said because many people are Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and activists, they are afraid of being followed by people from China. So, they are very nervous and tense. Hua has been to the U.S. Embassy and the UNHCR to seek help and share his experience. He hopes to move to the United States where he thinks he will be safe. Hua said he received a case number from the UNHCR and was told that the second interview would be held next year. But he said the U.N. officer told him there are too many cases like his. Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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US Considers Belarus Sanctions
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday the United States is deeply concerned about attempts by the government of Belarus to forcibly expel opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova. The top U.S. diplomat said the United States and other countries are considering bringing sanctions in response to recent events in Belarus. “We commend the courage of Ms. Kalesnikava and of the Belarusian people in peacefully asserting their right to pick their leaders in free and fair elections in the face of unjustified violence and repression by the Belarusian authorities, which included brazen beatings of peaceful marchers in broad daylight and hundreds of detentions (on) September 6, as well as increasing reports of abductions,” Pompeo said in a statement. He said the potential sanctions would be aimed at promoting “accountability for those involved in human rights abuses and repression in Belarus.” Kolesnikova was detained Monday along with two other opposition movement members, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, and on Tuesday they were driven to the border between Belarus and Ukraine where Kolesnikova tore up her passport and was held on the Belarusian side.FILE – Maria Kolesnikova, one of Belarus’ opposition leaders, gestures during a rally in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 30, 2020.Rodnenkov and Kravtsov did cross into Ukraine. “She was shouting that she won’t go anywhere,” Rodnenkov said at a news conference in Kyiv. “Sitting in the car, she saw her passport on a front seat and tore it into many small fragments, crumpled them and threw them out of the window. After that, she opened the back door and walked back to the Belarusian border.” A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement expressing his concern about “the repeated use of force against peaceful protesters, as well as reported pressures on opposition civil society activists.” Thousands of people have taken part in five weeks of protests following the August 9 election in which longtime President Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner, but opposition parties, the United States and European Union allege was rigged. More than 7,000 protesters have been arrested, and widespread evidence of abuse and torture has been reported in the month of protests. At least four people are reported to have died during the demonstrations.
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Gusty Winds Pose Continued Wildfire Threats in California
Wildfires raged unchecked throughout California Wednesday, and gusty winds could drive flames into new ferocity, authorities warned. Diablo winds in the north and Santa Ana winds in the south were forecast into Wednesday at a time when existing wildfires already have grown explosively. On Tuesday, 14 firefighters were forced to deploy emergency shelters as flames overtook them and destroyed the Nacimiento Station, a fire station in the Los Padres National Forest on the state’s central coast, the U.S. Forest Service said. They suffered from burns and smoke inhalation, and three were flown to a hospital in Fresno, where one was in critical condition. In the past two days, helicopters were used to rescue hundreds of people stranded in the burning Sierra National Forest, where the Creek Fire has destroyed 365 buildings, including at least 45 homes, and 5,000 structures were threatened, fire officials said. Flames threatened the foothill community of Auberry between Shaver Lake and Fresno. In Southern California, fires burned in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, and the forecast called for the arrival of the region’s notorious Santa Anas. The hot, dry winds could reach 50 mph at times, forecasters said. People in a half-dozen foothill communities east of Los Angeles were being told to stay alert because of a fire in the Angeles National Forest. “The combination of gusty winds, very dry air, and dry vegetation will create critical fire danger,” the National Weather Service warned. The U.S. Forest Service on Monday decided to close all eight national forests in the southern half of the state and shutter campgrounds statewide. More than 14,000 firefighters are battling fires. Two of the three largest blazes in state history are burning in the San Francisco Bay Area, though they are largely contained after burning three weeks. California has already set a record with nearly 2.3 million acres (930,800 hectares) burned this year – surpassing a record set just two years ago – and the worst part of the wildfire season is just beginning. “It’s extraordinary, the challenge that we’ve faced so far this season,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. The threat of winds tearing down power lines or hurling debris into them and sparking a wildfire prompted Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, to shut off power to 172,000 customers over the weekend. More outages were expected Wednesday, with power not expected to be completely restored until Wednesday night. To the south, Southern California Edison warned roughly 55,000 customer accounts may lose power while San Diego Gas & Electric said 16,700 customers are at risk of a preemptive outage. In the Sierra National Forest east of Fresno, dozens of campers and hikers were stranded at the Vermilion Valley Resort after the only road in – a narrow route snaking along a steep cliff – was closed Sunday because of the Creek Fire. Well before dawn Tuesday, the sound of helicopter blades chopping through the air awoke Katelyn Mueller, bringing relief after two anxious nights camping in the smoke. “It was probably the one time you’re excited to hear a helicopter,” Mueller said. “You could almost feel a sigh of relief seeing it come in.” The use of military helicopters to rescue a large number of civilians for a second day _ 164 before dawn Tuesday and 214 people from a wooded camping area on Saturday _ is rare, if not unprecedented. “This is emblematic of how fast that fire was moving, plus the physical geography of that environment with one road in and one road out,” said Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College who has written extensively about wildfires. “Unless you wanted an absolute human disaster, you had to move fast.” Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger wildfires in America to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much drier. A drier California means plants are more flammable. “The frequency of extreme wild fire weather has doubled in California over the past four decades, with the main driver being the effect of rising temperature on dry fuels, meaning that the fuel loads are now frequently at record or near-record levels when ignition occurs and when strong winds blow,” Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said in an email.
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Uncertainty, Anxiety Mount in Zimbabwe Over Land Compensation Promise
Anxiety and confusion have gripped Zimbabwe’s Black farmers after the government said it would return land to some white farmers who were kicked off their land under former president Robert Mugabe. Authorities are seeking to reassure resettled Black farmers in what some fear may be a reversal of land reforms. Heinrich von Pezold lost part of his land in 2001, in Mazowe district about 100 kilometers north of Harare, as Zimbabwe’s government adopted a sweeping land reform policy and began forcing whites off their farms. Now he may get it back, under an agreement between the German and Zimbabwean governments to protect private investments in their respective countries, known as the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. The German national took Zimbabwe’s government to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The arbitration court, based in Washington, ordered the Zimbabwe government to pay compensation to von Pezold.Heinrich von Pezold lost part of his land in 2001, in Mazowe district about 100km north of Harare is cautiously optimistic following the government’s announcement that it would give back land to some white farmers Sep. 8, 2020 (VOA/Columbus Mavhunga)He is cautiously optimistic following Zimbabwe government’s announcement last week that it would give back land to some white farmers. “It is a very positive step that the government recognizes its international obligations. However, we have had such announcements before and we are looking for deeds and not the words. We are interested in seeing what the government actually does,” Pezold said.The Commercial Farmers Union, which represents white farmers in Zimbabwe, refused to comment on last week’s announcement by the government. Back in July, Zimbabwe’s government signed an agreement with the union to pay $3.5 billion in compensation to white farmers who lost their land, although it remains unclear how the government will raise the money. Sixty-three year old Emilliana Duri, a former Zimbabwean soldier, is one of those who received part of von Pezold’s land in 2001. She hopes the government’s repossession of land will not affect her.Sixty-three year old Emilliana Duri, a former Zimbabwean soldier, hopes the government’s repossession of land will not affect her new place in Mazowe district Sep. 5, 2020. (VOA/Columbus Mavhunga)“It would be painful that the land that we fought for I am being asked to pave way for a white person, when he had left, it’s really painful. I will then start to ask: what did I fight for? It’s the land only. So I must not be displaced. Even for another black person because there is no one who is more important than the other. We are all equal. So it’s painful,” Duri said.Zimbabwe’s government says only about three percent of those who received land will be affected by new announcement. The rest of the white farmers would be paid for developments they made on their former properties, but not get back their land. “It’s such a minute proportion of the beneficiaries. The position of the government is that the land reform program is irreversible,” Minister of Agriculture Anxious Masuka said. The government, meanwhile, wants farmers to concentrate on preparing for the 2020-21 agriculture season, which began last week with tobacco planting. Government critics say Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector, once the backbone of the economy, went into free fall when Mugabe confiscated land from white commercial farmers and gave it to inexperienced black farmers like Duri. The government attributes the decline to recurring droughts, which it blames on global climate change.
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Demonstrators in Bamako Show Support for Malian Junta
Hundreds of people demonstrated in Mali’s capital on Tuesday in support of the junta that has seized power in a coup, as debate rages over the timeframe for the country’s return to civilian rule. Months of protests over the simmering jihadist insurgency, bloody ethnic violence and endemic corruption in the country boiled over when rebel troops arrested the president and took control on August 18. The protests were led by an opposition coalition called the June 5 Movement, and a new group calling itself the Popular Movement of September 4 organized the rally in Bamako on Tuesday. After the coup, the junta pledged to hold fresh elections and initially proposed a three-year, military-led transition back to civilian rule, before ratcheting it back to two. “We want the army to stay in power for as long as it takes,” shopkeeper Hamza Sangare said at the Bamako protest over the din of the crowd. “Why not three years, by end of the mandate of former president IBK?” he suggested, referring to ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, whose second five-year term had been scheduled to end in 2023. But the 15-nation West African regional bloc ECOWAS has demanded the transition take place in 12 months — and be led by a civilian president and prime minister. ECOWAS, which has hit Mali with sanctions including closing borders and trade bans over the coup, said Monday that the civilian transition leaders should be appointed by September 15. While the coup has provoked international outrage, it has received support among some in Mali, fatigued by the country’s bloodshed and economic struggle. “The soldiers, the soldiers,” a group at the Bamako rally chanted, holding up Malian flags, placards saying “long live the army,” and pictures of junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita. Dozens of green minibuses that generally provide public transport were mobilized to transport the demonstrators to Bamako’s Independence Square, which was a main rallying point for protesters before the coup. The junta has organized three days of consultations with political parties and civil society groups from Thursday to plan the transition. Ousted president Keita has been released and flew to the United Arab Emirates on Saturday for medical treatment after suffering a mini-stroke last week.
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Polish-Based Blogger Becomes Driving Force in Belarusian Protests
Five years ago, a Belarusian teenager studying film in Poland set up a YouTube channel to show videos that he made and poke fun at his country’s longtime leader, Alexander Lukashenko. After tangling with YouTube copyright laws, the student, Stsyapan Putsila, shifted his Nexta channel and his tactics in 2018 to Telegram, the messaging app. Its encryption technologies have made it wildly popular in Russia, Iran and other countries whose governments have suppressed independent media and communications. Fast forward two years, and Putsila’s Nexta – taken from the Belarusian word for “someone” and pronounced “nekhta” — has grown in popularity, first and foremost among Belarusians seeking uncensored information in a country whose state-run media usually serve only as a mouthpiece for the government. A mix of user-submitted photos and videos, forwarded news items, biting opinion, and instructions for street protesters, the channel’s Telegram subscribers now total more than 2 million, making it one of the biggest information sources for Belarusians. And with protests against Lukashenko showing no sign of relenting a month after a deeply disputed election in which he claimed to have won a sixth term, Nexta is at the vanguard – both in documenting the demonstrations and in encouraging them. ‘A bit like revolutionaries’ “Even before the start of the Belarusian revolution, we were a nontraditional media [outlet],” Putsila, 22, said in a telephone interview with RFE/RL’s Russian Service Thursday. “We did not have a centralized website on the internet — we are a modern information channel, mainly for young people.” Since the protests began, “we have changed a little and become a bit like revolutionaries, because people want that from us,” he said. “We are asked to publish plans describing what to do, because there are simply no clear leaders in Belarus, especially ones with such an audience,” Putsila said. “If there had been, it is clear that they would have been immediately detained. Now we not only inform, but to some extent also coordinate people.” With a team of six working out of a community center Warsaw, Putsila, who also uses the pseudonym Stepan Svetlov, pushes out dozens of items on the Telegram channel. On Monday, one day after tens of thousands of Belarusians surged into Minsk’s streets for the 29th day of protests, Nexta published — in Russian, which is spoken by nearly everyone in Belarus — a statement of support from European Union leaders and news items about the disappearance of one of the country’s leading opposition figures. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya spoke via videolink to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Tuesday.Belusus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya takes part in an U.N. General Assembly online debate from Vilnius, Lithuania, Sept. 4, 2020.Mixed in were videos of the Sunday protest in Minsk, whose numbers Belarusian authorities said totaled just 30,000 — an estimate that Nexta and Belarusian opposition groups said was laughably low — as well as an aerial photo with a diagram showing which streets protesters could use to get around riot police blocking a key boulevard. “We do not force anyone to protest,” Putsila said. “We tell people that they can go out, defend their rights. Belarusians come out on their own.” A native of Minsk, Putsila went to the Polish city of Katowice to study film, and then moved to Warsaw, the Polish capital, after graduating. He has not been in his homeland since 2018, when Belarusian authorities opened a criminal investigation accusing him of “insulting the president” on YouTube. YouTube eventually pulled down Putsila’s channel after Belarusian authorities complained of copyright violations, prompting the move to Telegram. “We’ve received dozens of threats against us; we’ve even received threats that our office would be blown up,” he said. His parents and his younger brother have fled to Poland, fearing for their safety. News reports say Polish police now guard the building where he has his offices; Putsila would not comment. In 2019, Nexta began publishing classified and confidential documents that purported to come from within Belarus; the channel gained new popularity after revealing that a traffic police officer whom authorities said had committed suicide was in fact the victim of a killing. “People have always been unhappy, especially in recent years, when they really became tired of him,” Putsila said of Lukashenko, who came to power in 1994 and has extended his rule though elections and other votes that international observers have called undemocratic. ‘Great example’After the August 9 election, which opponents say was falsified to give Lukashenko more than 80% of the vote, “people managed to unite, and now they feel they are the masters of their own land,” Putsila said. “Nevertheless, there are also the ‘enforcers’ — this is how we call police and security officials, who are the foundation of Lukashenko’s regime. However, he no longer has support among many officials; they don’t support him, but only themselves,” he said. Putsila said that Belarusians had genuine hopes in Lukashenko, but that his actions over 26 years in office have worn on them. And that the official election result and the harsh police crackdown — the violent arrest of hundreds of people and evidence that some have been tortured — was the last straw. “Belarusians have set a great example for the rest of the world. During the protests, people even were taking off their shoes when they climbed onto benches, they brought each other water, food, flowers. This shows a high level of self-organization,” he said. “Lukashenko tells Belarusians that the state has raised them and made people out of them, and they are ungrateful,” he said. “However, it is the people themselves who are teaching children in schools, who are creating jobs, and the state, as represented by Lukashenko, does not respect these people.” Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Mike Eckel based on reporting by Daria Yurieva, a contributor to RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
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Iran State TV: British-Iranian Aid Worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe Faces New Charge
British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on Tuesday and informed about a new charge, state television reported. “Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court summoned Nazanin Zaghari and her designated lawyer this morning and informed her of a new indictment,” state television cited an unnamed official as saying on its website. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit. She was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment. Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was temporarily released from jail in March amid concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in Iran’s prisons but is barred from leaving the country. The Thomson Reuters Foundation urged British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “to intervene promptly” to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s permanent release. “The Thomson Reuters Foundation utterly condemns the latest move by the Iranian authorities to prolong Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s inhumane and unjust ordeal,” said Antonio Zappulla, Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO, in a statement. Britain’s Foreign Office said Iran’s action was unacceptable. “Iran bringing new charges against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is indefensible and unacceptable. We have been consistently clear that she must not be returned to prison,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
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In Fresh Flare-Up Along India-China Border Both Sides Accuse Each Other of Firing Warning Shots
Tensions increased along the India-China border as both sides accused each other of firing warning shots at their disputed Himalayan boundary, where a military standoff is now in its fifth month. An Indian army statement denied firing shots and blamed China’s military for “provocative activities” to escalate tensions, while the Chinese foreign ministry said the action is being considered a “serious military provocation.” Both sides have a longstanding agreement to not use firearms along the border to prevent conflagrations between their troops, who often stand within meters of each other. The latest face-off occurred along the southern bank of the strategic Pangong Tso Lake, an icy, high altitude lake in Ladakh, where both sides accuse each other of breaching the defacto border known as the “line of actual control.” The flare-up comes days after the defense ministers of the two countries said they had agreed to work toward defusing tensions along their contested border. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that Indian troops had illegally crossed the line of control and were the first to fire shots. “Indian troops blatantly fired warning shots at our border patrolling troops, who were there for consultation. Our troops were compelled to take measures to stabilize the situation,” Lijian told a news briefing in Beijing. He did not specify what the measures were. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian takes a question at the daily media briefing in Beijing on April 8, 2020.The Indian army denied any transgression into Chinese territory or resorting to any “aggressive means, including firing.” In a statement, it said that Chinese soldiers had tried to surround an Indian military post and had fired a few shots in the air, when the Indian soldiers “dissuaded” them. Saying that Indian troops had “exercised great restraint,” the Indian statement accused the Chinese side of blatantly violating agreements and carrying out “aggressive maneuvers while engagement at military, diplomatic and political level is in progress.” Calling it the first incident of firing along the border in 45 years, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao urged India to “discipline its frontline troops.” That incident took place on the south side of Pangong Tso Lake a week after the Indian army said it had deterred Chinese troops from occupying an area hilltop, which it says is Indian territory. “The Indian army thinks it has given enough way to the Chinese and they have to recover ground somewhat and what they now occupy, they will keep,” says Bharat Karnad, a security analyst at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “The Indian army is fairly serious that it will simply not budge.” The military standoff between the two countries began in May after India accused China of intruding across the line of actual control at several points in the high Himalayas. In mid-June, their worst border clash in decades led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, dealing a serious blow to their decades-long efforts to maintain peace along their undemarcated border. Since then both sides have held talks at military and diplomatic levels with the aim of disengaging but have failed to make much headway. The highest level political contact between the two countries took place last Friday when the Indian and Chinese defense ministers met in Moscow on the sidelines of a summit. After the meeting, New Delhi said in a statement that both sides had agreed that neither side should take action that “could either complicate the situation or escalate matters in the border areas.” But the situation along their borders continues to be volatile, say analysts.
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Despite Trump Tweet, Order to Dissolve Stars and Stripes Not Yet Rescinded
Despite a tweet from President Donald Trump vowing to reverse his own administration’s budget plan to cut government funding for an independent military newspaper, Stars and Stripes employees say they remain worried because the order to defund the news outlet has not yet been rescinded by the Pentagon. “There’s a great deal of anxiety in the staff,” Max Lederer, the publisher of Stars and Stripes since 2007, told VOA Tuesday. “A little less anxiety since Friday, but since it (the funding decision) is still not final, there’s a lot of concern.” The Department of Defense spending plans, released in February, cut out all government funding for the paper for the 2021 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. On Friday, President Trump tweeted that he planned to reverse the planned Pentagon budget cuts that would have ended the Stars and Stripes publication. “The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!” Trump tweeted.The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2020The tweet came mere hours after media outlets reported on the Pentagon’s plans to dissolve the publication. But the president’s tweets alone do not indicate policy or dictate law, and Lederer said the Pentagon is “still discussing” the status of the budget order. The House of Representatives passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2021 on July 31, 2020, which included additional funding for the publication. The Senate did not include funding for the publication in its defense spending bill, but both houses of Congress have resolutions supporting its mission. A Defense Department memo by Defense Media Activity Acting Director Army Col. Paul Haverstick last month instructed the Stars and Stripes publisher to provide a plan of action “no later than September 15” to discontinue Stars and Stripes publications and dissolve the news organization “no later than January 31, 2021.” In the case of a continuing resolution (CR) from Congress, which would prevent a government shutdown and extend funding temporarily, the memo (obtained by VOA) instructed the publisher to plan the “last date for publication of the newspaper” “based on the end of the CR or other circumstances.” A bipartisan group of 11 Democratic and four Republican senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week, calling on the Department of Defense to maintain funding for the publication, which has more than 1 million readers. “The $15.5 million currently allocated for the publication of Stars and Stripes is only a tiny fraction of your Department’s annual budget, and cutting it would have a significantly negative impact on military families and a negligible impact on the Department’s bottom line,” said the letter, signed by the senators. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, also sent a letter opposing the budget cut, citing strong support for Stars and Stripes in Congress. “As a veteran who has served overseas, I know the value that the Stars and Stripes brings to its readers,” Graham wrote. Stars and Stripes started during the Civil War as a publication for Union troops. Today, it distributes to U.S. service members stationed across the globe, including in war zones. Most recently, the publication shed light the Defense Department’s failure to shut down schools on U.S. military installations in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite Japanese public schools ruling shutdowns as necessary to stop the spread of the coronavirus. “Stars and Stripes tells the military’s story like no other publication can. It was held by GIs in the trenches of World War II and held by special forces members at remote outposts in Syria after being flown in by Osprey in the battle against ISIS,” Tara Copp, a reporter for McClatchy who was the Pentagon correspondent for Stars and Stripes from 2015-2017, told VOA. “It is a rounding error (an inconsequential amount) to DOD, but it is much, much more than that to the men and women and their families who read it,” she added. Copp said that the publication provides the time and resources to look into stories many other outlets do not. For example, her in-depth investigation into the 2000 Osprey crash at Marana Regional Airport near Tucson, Arizona, for the publication in 2015 led to former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work exonerating the two Marine Corps pilots who had been blamed for the crash.
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Study Finds Transgender Americans Face Voting Barriers in 2020 Presidential Election
One segment of the electorate may be unable to vote if poll workers are not able to certify their identity. It is the reality facing hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. An estimated 378,000 eligible transgender voters do not have identification such as a driver’s license that reflects their name, appearance or new gender identity, according to a study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. “If those poll workers decide that those ID’s don’t adequately or accurately reflect the person who is standing in front of them, they wouldn’t be able vote,” said Jody Herman, a research scholar and co-author of the report. The Los Angeles-based organization founded in 2001 conducts independent nonpartisan research on sexual orientation, gender identity law and public policy. Registered voters in states with strict identification laws must produce a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot at polling locations. “Trans people in general are frequently placed under immediate suspicion if they don’t conform visually to what their ID shows,” Sasha Buchert, a senior lawyer with Lambda Legal, told VOAIn this Friday, Feb. 28, 2020 photo, pedestrians pass signs near a polling site in San Antonio.Obtaining ID documents Some states have made it easier to make changes in identification documents such as gender markers on birth certificates, a process that varies state by state. Name changes can cost $500, in addition the costs of hiring an attorney. Advocates say in some states, transgender people must undergo gender affirming surgery that many consider invasive before their birth certificates and other identification documents can be updated. “The process can be very costly and sometimes even impossible for trans people to complete,” Herman, the report co-author, said. “Ohio and Tennessee don’t allow any changes to a birth certificate at all.” Advocates say transgender people of color are likely to be more impacted than white voters because they have more difficulty in obtaining a proper ID. They believe the measures could have a chilling impact and keep people from voting, especially if they cannot vote by mail. “We found just under a million trans adults would be eligible to vote in the 2020 election, but about 900,000 of those voters reside in 45 states where they do not conduct elections entirely by mail,” Herman told VOA. “Voters in those places would have to show up for in-person voting.” Political observers predict an unprecedented number of Americans will vote by mail because of the coronavirus. Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia allow excuse-free absentee voting, according to state websites. If transgender voters are turned away at the polls, they could be made to vote on a provisional ballot instead of a regular ballot. Provisional ballots are only counted if certain requirements are met in strict voter ID states. That means they would have to come back to the election officials within a certain amount of time with an acceptable ID for their vote to be counted, according to the Williams Institute. Increasing voter participation Nationwide, there are an estimated 11 million LGBTQ voters, of which 1.4 million are transgender, according to surveys by Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based organization. According to its U.S. transgender survey, the party affiliation for the respondents was heavily Democratic. “Keeping trans people from voting could favor the Republican Party that is more conservative than its Democratic rival,” said Professor Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. In 2016, the outcome of the presidential election was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. “Transgender people should not be denied their opportunity to participate in our democracy because laws and regulations around identification documents haven’t kept up with reality,” said Mara Keisling, head of The National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund. While some transgender Americans report progress in obtaining updated ID’s, human rights advocates maintain transgender people of color, young students, low income, and those with disabilities are overrepresented among those who would face barriers to voting. “We hear about folks in our community who feel so uncomfortable or who are made to feel so uncomfortable that they simply give up when they are challenged on their own identity,” said Tori Cooper, a Black transgender woman and director of community engagement for Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative. “I know someone who is listed on a voter registration form as female, which does not accurately reflect their current gender identity, which is male. He’s afraid the way he looks and presents himself could actually keep him from being able to vote in person,” Cooper told VOA. “Voting is not about challenging people on their identities. It is giving people an opportunity to express their constitutional right to vote,” she said. Election observers say mail-in voting will remove possible negative interactions between transgender voters and poll workers. “We are trying to break down barriers, making sure folks have the tools they need to get to the polls safely or get their mail-in ballots,” said Jay Brown, senior vice president of Human Rights Campaign Foundation. “We are empowering trans people to do whatever they can and vote.”
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Journalists’ Union Urges South Sudan Security to Free Reporter
The Union of Journalists in South Sudan is calling on the government to release Jackson Ochaya, a journalist who was detained a week ago after he contacted a rebel group spokesman for a story.A family member who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals told Ochaya’s newspaper, the No. 1 Citizen, that agents of the National Security Service (NSS) are holding Ochaya at their headquarters in Jebel.Ochaya is likely being detained because he contacted the spokesman for the rebel National Salvation Front (NAS) for comment on an article he was writing, according to Oliver Modi, chairperson of the Union of Journalists in South Sudan.Reporter, managing editor questioned On August 31, the NSS summoned Ochaya and the newspaper’s acting managing editor, Stella Kiden, to their headquarters for questioning.“The security just questioned those of the No. 1 newspaper on how they came to write that story and particularly their communication with, of course, the NAS. That’s the cause of everything, but according to the journalist, this is a balancing of a story. According to the principles of journalism, when you are writing a story, the story should not be a one-sided story,” Modi told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.Kiden said the NSS released her and Ochaya that evening, then asked Ochaya to return the following day to pick up his identity card.Kiden said Ochaya returned to work at the paper on September 1 but later asked permission to leave so he could meet an uncle who had asked Ochaya to meet him in the Thingpiny residential area. That was the last time she saw him.It is a mystery as to why security agents would release Ochaya on August 31 and detain him the next day, said Modi.’What is the problem.’“The family members found him in the national security office where he was being questioned. So now, the media authority and the Union of Journalists are wondering what is the problem again,” Modi told VOA.The National Security Service has not commented on Ochoya’s detention.The journalists’ union does not have the legal right to visit Ochaya at the detention center except through permission from the South Sudan Media Authority, said Modi.Call for release of reporterModi called on the security operatives to release Ochaya immediately.“I don’t see the reason why they actually called the journalist and his editor; they have talked, they have agreed, they then released this journalist to go and do their work and then after some hours, they then came back and took the journalist. They should not treat journalists like criminals,” Modi said.Under South Sudan’s constitution, a detained person is supposed to appear in a court of law within 24 hours of their detention.No. 1 Citizen management declined to comment in more detail.
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Hundreds of Migrants Call for Freedom at Camp on Gran Canaria
A group of migrants being held at a dockside camp on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria chanted “freedom” on Tuesday as they tried to force open a police fence and the coast guard brought in more people rescued from boats on the Atlantic sea.Although sea-borne migration to Spain is down nearly 19% this year, arrivals to the Canary Islands have surged 573% to 3,933 migrants, data from Spain’s interior ministry shows.A coast guard spokeswoman said 81 North African men were rescued from three small boats and taken to the port of Arguineguin on Gran Canaria, while another 29 reached the island on their own by boat.A Spanish Red Cross spokesman said another boat with around 10 migrants had also arrived.At the crammed makeshift camp in Arguineguin, police with batons rushed to the area after a group of migrants moved a fence that encircles the camp, and made the protesters retreat without force. Some jumped the fence but were quickly told by police to go back into the camp.Migrant reception centers across the Canary Islands are stretched to capacity and around 420 people are being held at the camp, the Red Cross said. Some of them have been there for several days enduring hot temperatures, sleeping on blankets on the concrete floor, amid increasing despair.Analysts have suggested that beefed-up security in the Mediterranean is pushing more people to risk the perilous crossing to the Canaries, located around 60 miles west of Morocco.Following local politicians’ request for more help, the Spanish government said it plans to open more migrant centers on the island as the camp is meant to house migrants only for the first days, an immigration department spokeswoman said.An interior ministry source said the government had not been transferring migrants from the archipelago to mainland Spain for several years, and their deportation processes were mostly handled locally.
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US Voters Told To Be Patient with Presidential Election Results
Officials charged with securing the upcoming U.S. presidential election warn the greatest danger may come from a wave of disinformation unleashed by U.S. adversaries in the hours after polls across the country begin to close.The officials fear that is when the country will be most vulnerable, with many Americans expecting to see a winner declared on Election Day. But because of the heavy reliance this year on mail-in and absentee ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, those results may not come election night or even the next day.Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 22, 2019.“This is probably going to take a little bit longer to do the counting because of the increase in absentee ballots,” Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said Tuesday at the virtual Billington Cybersecurity Summit.“Have a little bit of patience,” he said in a message to voters. “Democracy wasn’t made overnight.”This is not the first time Krebs has issued such a warning, but the message is becoming more urgent with less than two months to go until the election and with increased focus on voting by mail..FILE – In this March 5, 2020 file photo, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson speaks at a news conference in Lansing, Mich.”Efforts to sow those seeds of doubt in our electorates’ minds have come from domestic sources and from foreign sources this year, more than ever before,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told lawmakers during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last month.“We’ve partnered with professional athletes, business leaders and other influencers to help get that information out in a way that will reach the voters and push back against the rhetoric,” she said.At the same time, officials and some private sector companies have been working to reassure prospective voters that the voting systems are secure.”Every tabletop exercise, every penetration test, every risk and vulnerability assessment that we’ve been a part of says that our defenses are good,” said Chris Wlaschin, vice president of systems security at Election Systems & Software, the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the U.S.“The likelihood of a polling place machine — whether it’s a ballot marking device or a precinct scanner — the likelihood of those being hacked to somehow manipulate unofficial results is very low,” he added Tuesday during the Billington Cyber Security Summit.Ultimately, election officials are hoping that voters understand that just because there will likely be a delay in getting final results does not mean that something is wrong.“That just is the process working,” Homeland Security’s Masterson said.“Election officials are going to focus on accuracy and correctness,” he added. “They’re going to process those ballots, and they’re going to count them. And you’re going to get the results certified and correct, as you’d expect.”
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US Expanding Restrictions on Chinese Students
U.S. officials are considering broader restrictions against Chinese students attending American schools, as part of a deepening standoff between the two countries.Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hopes that China’s government-funded “Confucius Institutes,” which have branches on American university campuses, will all be shut down by the end of the year.“I think everyone’s coming to see the risk associated with them,” Pompeo said An undergraduate student, left, shows her watercolor painting at a traditional Chinese painting class at the Confucius Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., on May 2, 2018.The crackdown may also target Chinese academics who have relied on state funding for their overseas studies. On August 26, the University of North Texas (UNT) terminated an exchange program for 15 visiting Chinese researchers sponsored by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), a group backed by China’s Ministry of Education.The action marked the first time a United States university cut ties with a Chinese national scholarship fund following the increased attention on academic espionage. In an article published in the university’s newspaper, administrators said they took the action following detailed briefings from federal and local law enforcement.Each of the 15 Chinese government sponsored students received an e-mail from the UNT office of the provost and vice president for academic affairs on August 26. The e-mail stated that the school “has come to a decision to end its relationship with visiting scholars who receive funding from the Chinese Scholarship Council (also known as the Chinese Scholarship Fund).”The scholars have been informed their J-1 visas have also been terminated, leaving them with one month before they have to return to China.Flurry of new restrictionsPompeo said at a news conference last week that the State Department recently wrote to the boards of several U.S. universities to alert them to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. He said that these threats may include illegal funding for research, intellectual property theft, intimidation of foreign students, and opaque recruitment.On the same day, the State Department announced that the entry of senior Chinese diplomats to U.S. campuses would require approval from the State Department. Gordon Chang, lawyer and author of The Coming Collapse of China, told VOA that American officials are responding to years of academic and intellectual property theft by China, which largely went overlooked.“They come to U.S. campuses not to learn but to download databases and take information to be used by Beijing,” he said. “So this is a fundamental problem for the United States.”What is the China Scholarship Council?Established in 1996 by the Ministry of Education of China, the CSC provides scholarships for foreign students studying in China and Chinese students studying abroad. These funds are mainly derived from the government.Its official purpose is to “strengthen friendship and understanding between China and the people of the world and promote China’s socialist modernization and world peace.” Experts told VOA that the CSC tends to offer scholarships to senior researchers and postdoctoral students, as well as students studying technologies in fields that are in line with China’s development strategy. These scholars are required to return to China after their studies. Experts warned that the U.S. needs to be vigilant about this strategy.According to a report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Diplomacy in July, about 7% of Chinese students studying abroad, or roughly 65,000, received scholarships from the CSC each year.In addition, the report notes that the CSC prioritizes funding for “urgently needed talents serving major national strategies, important industries, key fields, major projects, cutting-edge technologies, and basic research.”The author of the report, Ryan Fedasiuk, research analyst at Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, told VOA that the number of cooperation projects between the CSC and foreign universities has soared in the past two years.“We found that last year in 2019, the number of programs that the CSC has approved between Chinese universities and elite foreign universities had increased significantly, from about 19 in 2018 to some 120 in 2019,” Fedasiuk said.He also said that the CSC’s job is to try to persuade or in some cases, compel those students to return to China after completing their scholarship programs.“This is done through a variety of incentives,” he said. “In some cases, they simply ask them to return, and the CSC will in some cases award Chinese students who are overseas not otherwise receiving funding from the Chinese government with funds in the hopes that they will return afterward. But in some cases, they do require that applicants for scholarships list financial granters who will be held responsible for the full sum of the award that was paid plus penalties if they don’t return to China after completing their program.”Despite this pressure, however, more than 85% of Chinese doctoral students studying STEM at U.S. universities choose to stay in the U.S., according to the report.
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Report: US Global War on Terror Has Displaced Up to 59 Million People
The U.S. war against global terrorism has displaced as many as 59 million people since 2001, according to a new report released Tuesday by Brown University.The study, published by the Rhode Island-based university’s “Costs of War Project,” says between 37 million and 59 million people in eight countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East “fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001,” when the al-Qaida terror group attacked the United States.The figures in the report, titled “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States Post-9/11 Wars,” show that displacements have risen sharply from 21 million in 2019. The majority of those displaced were from Iraq, with at least 9.2 million. Syria saw the second-highest number of displacements, with at least 7.1 million, and Afghanistan was third with at least 5.3 million people displaced.The study’s authors say the estimate was derived by counting refugees, asylum seekers pursuing protection as refugees, and internally displaced people or persons (IDPs) in the eight countries that the United States has most targeted in the post-9/11 wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria.The report said 37 million displaced people is “almost as large as the population of Canada” and “more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II.”“We are not suggesting the U.S. government or the United States as a country is solely responsible for the displacement. Causation is never so simple. Causation always involves a multiplicity of combatants and other powerful actors, centuries of history, and large-scale political, economic, and social forces,” the study’s authors noted. “Even in the simplest of cases, conditions of pre-existing poverty, environmental change, prior wars, and other forms of violence shape who is displaced and who is not.”The study does not include “the millions more who have been displaced by other post-9/11 conflicts where U.S. forces have been involved in ‘counterterror’ activities in more limited yet significant ways, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.”
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Despite Strict Lockdown, Spain Sees Sharp COVID-19 Spike
Deirdre Carney suspected she might have COVID-19 when her temperature began to fluctuate above the normal 37 degrees Celsius. “It was a bit of a shock when I was diagnosed. I could not believe that I had got it. I had not mixed with that many people,” Carney, an English teacher from California living in Madrid, told VOA. In the Spanish capital, which now has about a third of Spain’s coronavirus cases, authorities have been forced to impose several restrictions to try to halt the surge in infections. Since imposing one of the most draconian lockdowns in Europe, Spain became the first Western European country to report more than 500,000 cases, health authorities said Monday. With the number of infections reaching 525,000 Tuesday, Spain has 255.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 35.2 in Britain, 125.2 in France and 30.6 in Italy, once one of the worst-affected European countries at the start of the pandemic. Spanish Civil Guards on a checkpoint for all residents of the small village of Alfaro, La Rioja Province, northern Spain, which has been placed in lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak, Sept. 8, 2020.Fighting the disease in isolation, Carney said she was not contacted by case tracers — a key deficiency that experts say is part of the reason for the surge in infections. “The only people who carried out the tracing was my employer,” she said. New restrictions Madrid, a city of 6.6 million people who often live in densely populated neigborhoods, will limit social gatherings to 10 people inside or outdoors. Many outbreaks have been linked to family gatherings or when young people get together for outdoor drinking sessions, known as botellones. Bars, restaurants, weddings and funerals will also face curbs on capacity. A new wave of contagion has been less deadly than at the start of the pandemic, and the number of infections seems to have slowed from the daily peak of over 10,000 more than a week ago. The death rate also remains well below the peak in April when over 900 people died in one day. Nevertheless, many are asking why Spain has once again become the “Sick man of Europe.” FILE – People wearing face masks walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 30, 2020.Experts suggest a complex mixture of factors have conspired to bring the country back almost to square one just as 8 million children return to school and Spaniards head back to work. “We had a very strict lockdown then relaxed this too quickly in a country with a high propensity to socialize and for family networks to stay very close,” Ildefonso Hernández, a professor of public health at the University Miguel Hernández near Alicante in southeast Spain, told VOA in an interview. “The picture is not homogeneous, but some regions also failed to employ enough case tracers when outbreaks started. It also has to be said that the number of tests being carried out has increased dramatically since March and April, so we are seeing more positive diagnoses,” he said. Hernández also said part of the blame lay with regional authorities’ responses to migrant fruit pickers who travel around the country getting work where there are harvests. Many are forced to live in cramped conditions in which social distancing is difficult, if not impossible. “Some authorities, in Catalonia and Aragon, failed to provide adequate accommodation for these people,” Hernandez said. FILE – Francisco Espana, 60, faces the Mediterranean from a promenade next to a hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 4, 2020. He spent 52 days in intensive care at the hospital, but was allowed by his doctors to spend 10 minutes outdoors for recovery.Worrying situation In Madrid, the number of hospital beds occupied with COVID-19 cases is approximately 18%, compared with the national average of 7%. “The situation in Madrid is worrying. The number of COVID-19 cases is putting pressure on the ability of some hospitals to carry out other operations,” Hernández said. Analysts also point to weaknesses in Spain’s system of governance as a factor. Spain is one of the most decentralized states in Europe, with responsibility for health care and education farmed out to the 17 regional governments. “At the start of the pandemic, the central government took control over the management of the crisis from the regions. Apart from ideological differences with the central government, some regional pride was peaked,” Miguel Otero-Iglesias, an economist at the Elcano Royal Institute, a think tank in Madrid, told VOA. “At the same time, the regions look to the center for leadership. Spain does not have a proper central government, and it does not have a federal state.” In order to improve infection tracing, Spain has called in the army, deploying 2,000 specialized soldiers to help regional authorities. Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa sought to calm fears. “The situation now is nothing like it was in March or April in terms of pressure on hospital beds or intensive care units,” he told reporters at a press conference.
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Exiled Belarus Opposition Leader Pleads for ‘Help Now’
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has called the situation in her country “absolutely unacceptable” and pleaded for international pressure to dislodge embattled President Alexander Lukashenko who she said no longer represents Belarus.In a virtual appearance before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on September 8, Tsikhanouskaya urged international pressure including sanctions on Lukashenko and his government.”My country, my nation, my people now need help,” she said. “We need international pressure on this regime, on this one individual desperately clinging on to power. We need sanctions on individuals who issue and execute criminal orders that violate international norms and human rights. We need an immediate release of all political prisoners and to start a civilized dialogue in order to find ways for our country to move forward.”Law enforcement officers scuffle with demonstrators during a rally in support of detained Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 8, 2020.She added an appeal on behalf of Belarusians currently being victimized by the mass detentions, beatings at the hands of security forces, and apparent forced disappearances.”I refuse — as millions of Belarusians — to accept that this is the fate of my country,” she said. “I refuse, as do millions of Belarusians, to accept that the world will simply stand and watch these countless abuses of human rights, this blatant disregard for human dignity, this complete annihilation of any basic respect for human decency. I refuse, like millions of Belarusians, to stand down and give up.” Tsikhanouskaya told the PACE representatives that “countries and parties that make deals with Mr. Lukashenko do so at their own risk” and should not expect a subsequent, democratically elected government to uphold treaties “made against [Belarusians’] will by an illegitimate regime.” Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko in an August 9 election that the opposition says was rigged. She fled to Lithuanian days later amid massive protests and rumors she had been slated for arrest. Unprecedented daily protests have continued, calling for Lukashenko to resign and a new election to be held. Her PACE appearance comes just hours after Belarusian authorities said they had detained a Tsikhanouskaya ally after she and two other opposition organizers mysteriously appeared at a checkpoint on the Ukrainian border amid fears they had been abducted in Minsk a day earlier. FILE – Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko gestures as he delivers a speech during a rally held to support him in central Minsk, Aug. 16, 2020.Tsikhanouskaya was quoted by Reuters as saying that the apparent abductions of opposition Coordination Council members on September 7 looked like authorities were trying to stamp out protest momentum and intimidate the opposition. Tsikhanouskaya is scheduled to visit Warsaw later this week to hold meetings with top Polish officials.Lukashenko is doing his own travel, with plans to visit Russia “within days,” a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said on September 7. Dmitry Peskov reportedly told TASS that “preparations are in full swing.”
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«Даже и не думай!»: стратегические B-52 послали обиженному карлику намёк с подтекстом
«Даже и не думай!»: стратегические B-52 послали обиженному карлику намёк с подтекстом.
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Обиженный пукин снова борется с Порошенко и сливает слуг зелёного карлика
Обиженный пукин снова борется с Порошенко и сливает слуг зелёного карлика.
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Против украинских политиков в путляндии ввели санкции. Как и ожидалось санкции были введены против пятого президента Украины Петра Порошенко и еще нескольких десятков народных депутатов Украины, кроме слуг зелёного карлика
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Nightmare Ends for Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Stranded at Sea
UN agencies are providing medical aid and other assistance to a group of nearly 300 Rohingya refugees who have been allowed to disembark in Indonesia after being stranded at sea for more than seven months. Reports say approximately 330 Rohingya refugees embarked on their journey in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh early this year. Their odyssey finally ended early Monday after surviving a sea journey that lasted more than seven months. Most of the refugees are women and children. After landing in northern Aceh, Indonesia they told aid workers that more than 30 of the passengers had died en route. The UN refugee agency reports the refugees recounted the desperate conditions aboard their sea vessel and their anguish at not knowing when or if they would ever be rescued. In Video Testimony, Ex-Myanmar Soldiers Confess to Atrocities Against Rohingya MuslimsRecorded accounts, the first ever offered by Myanmar soldiers, match descriptions provided by dozens of witnesses to UN human rights investigatorsUNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch tells VOA the refugees are describing a traumatic ordeal. “It is really, really troubling that seven months, desperate refugees have been adrift in the sea without finding a safe port or safe land to disembark,” said Baloch. “Refugees have told UNHCR staff that they departed Bangladesh in early February this year and tried to land repeatedly in different countries without success.” He says UNHCR has not been able to verify details of the refugees’ accounts as yet and is continuing to seek further information. “UNHCR has access to the refugee arrivals and is interviewing them with assistance of interpreters as required” said Baloch. “At this stage, our main priority is the safety and health of the people, which consist of many vulnerable women and children.” UNHCR and International Organization for Migration aid workers are supporting local authorities in Aceh to assess the needs of the refugees. They are testing all arrivals for COVID-19 as required by Indonesian authorities.The agencies say they also are providing first aid, medical and trauma care, as well as shelter, water and other essential needs.
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