Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Myanmar’s cities on Saturday to denounce this week’s coup and demand the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi despite a blockade on the internet by the junta.In an upwelling of anger in the country’s largest city, Yangon, protesters chanted, “Military dictator, fail, fail; Democracy, win, win” and held banners reading “Against military dictatorship.” Bystanders offered them food and water.Many in the crowds wore red, the color of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) which won Nov. 8 elections in a landslide, a result the generals have refused to recognize, claiming fraud.Riot police line up during a protest against the military coup demanding the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 6, 2021.Thousands marched on Yangon’s City Hall. Drivers honked horns and leaned out of their cars and raised the three-finger salute, a gesture returned by protesters. Some of them held up NLD flags or pictures of Suu Kyi and clapped and danced.By evening, the protesters had mostly dispersed. But for a fifth night, a cacophony rose in the darkness as people banged on pots, pans and drums in a show of resistance even as power cuts affected many districts of the city.Thousands more took to the streets in Myanmar’s second city Mandalay and its military-built capital Naypyidaw, home to the nation’s government servants, where demonstrators chanted anti-coup slogans and called for Suu Kyi’s release.The protests built despite a blockade of the internet imposed after demonstrators first began to gather. All day, the state-run broadcaster MRTV showed scenes praising the military.Internet Shutdown in Myanmar as Thousands ProtestIt was the biggest street demonstration seen yet since this week’s coupMonitoring group NetBlocks Internet Observatory reported a “national-scale internet blackout,” saying on Twitter that connectivity had fallen to 16% of usual levels.The junta did not respond to requests for comment. It extended a social media crackdown to Twitter and Instagram after seeking to silence dissent by blocking Facebook , which counts half of the population as users.Facebook urged the junta to unblock social media.”At this critical time, the people of Myanmar need access to important information and to be able to communicate with their loved ones,” Facebook’s head of public policy for Asia-Pacific emerging countries, Rafael Frankel, said in a statement.The United Nations human rights office said on Twitter that “internet and communication services must be fully restored to ensure freedom of expression and access to information.”Norwegian mobile network provider Telenor ASA said authorities had ordered all mobile operators to temporarily shut down the data network, although voice and SMS services remained open.Myanmar civil society groups appealed to internet providers to resist the junta’s orders, saying in a joint statement they were “essentially legitimizing the military’s authority.”Telenor said it regretted the impact of the shutdown on the people of Myanmar but said it was bound by local law and its first priority was the safety of its local workers.Myanmar Residents, Expats Voice Dismay Over CoupResistance to the coup is growing despite the military government’s decision to block access to Facebook, which is how most people access the internet in Myanmar; anger is quickly setting inInternational falloutArmy chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power alleging fraud, although the electoral commission says it has found no evidence of widespread irregularities in the November vote.The junta announced a one-year state of emergency and has promised to hand over power after new elections, without giving a timeframe.Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi, 75, has been charged with illegally importing six walkie-talkies, while ousted President Win Myint is accused of flouting COVID-19 restrictions. Neither has been seen since the coup. Their lawyer said they were being held in their homes.NLD member Aung Moe Nyo, chief minister of the Magway region, said on Facebook before the shutdown: “It is not OK to let the country fall under junta government. I am very much thankful to those who oppose this, to those government staff who oppose this. This act is to save the country.”Sean Turnell, an Australian economic adviser to Suu Kyi, said in a message to Reuters on Saturday he was being detained.Australia’s government, without naming Turnell, said it had summoned the Myanmar ambassador to register “deep concern” over the arbitrary detention of Australian and other foreign nationals in Myanmar.A civil disobedience movement has been building in Myanmar all week, with doctors and teachers among those refusing to work. Every night people bang pots and pans in a show of anger.The protests in Yangon would resume on Sunday, demonstrators said. One, who asked not to be named, said: “We will go and protest again tomorrow. If they arrest one person, we will try to pile in and fill up the truck as a group.”The coup has sparked international outrage, with the United States considering sanctions against the generals and the U.N. Security Council calling for the release of all detainees.It has also deepened tensions between the United States and China, which has close links to Myanmar’s military. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in a phone call on Friday to condemn the coup, the State Department said.The generals have few overseas interests vulnerable to sanctions but the military’s extensive business investments could suffer if foreign partners leave – as Japanese drinks company Kirin Holdings said it would on Friday.Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest after leading pro-democracy protests against the long-ruling military junta in 1988.After sharing power with a civilian government, the army began democratic reforms in 2011. That led to the election of the NLD in a landslide victory four years later. November’s election was meant to solidify a troubled democratic transition.
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Month: February 2021
Tunis Police Block Off City Center as Thousands Protest
Police locked down a large area of central Tunis on Saturday, blocking roads as thousands of protesters, backed by the country’s powerful labor union, gathered in Tunisia’s biggest demonstration for years.The rally was held to mark the anniversary of the 2013 killing of a prominent activist and to protest against police abuses that demonstrators say have imperiled the freedoms won in the 2011 revolution that triggered the “Arab spring.”Riot police deployed cordons around the city center, stopping both cars and many people from entering the streets around Avenue Habib Bourguiba as thousands of people gathered, a Reuters witness said.Unlike previous marches in the wave of street protests that have rippled across Tunisia in recent weeks, Saturday’s rally was backed by the UGTT union, the country’s most powerful political organization with a million members.Protests, which began last month with clashes and rioting in deprived districts over inequality, have increasingly focused on the large number of arrests, and reports – denied by the Interior Ministry – of abuse of detainees.Mohammed Ammar, a member of parliament for the Attayar party, said he had phoned the prime minister to protest against the closure of central Tunis.Protesters chanted slogans against the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, a member of successive government coalitions, and reprised the Arab Spring slogan: “The people want the fall of the regime.”A decade after Tunisia’s revolution, its democratic political system is in crisis, mired in endless squabbling between the president, prime minister and parliament while the economy stagnates.While some Tunisians, disillusioned by the fruits of the uprising, are nostalgic for the better living conditions they remember from the days of autocracy, others have decried a perceived erosion of the freedoms that democracy secured.For some, the febrile climate has recalled the political polarization after a suspected hardline Islamist assassinated secular activist and lawyer Chokri Belaid in February 2013.His death triggered a wave of mass protests in Tunisia that led to a grand bargain between the main Islamist and secular political parties to stop the country sinking into violence.
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Justices: California Can’t Enforce Indoor Church Service Ban
The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t bar indoor church services because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it can keep for now a ban on singing and chanting indoors.The high court issued orders late Friday in two cases where churches had sued over coronavirus-related restrictions in the state. The high court said that for now, California can’t ban indoor worship as it had in almost all of the state because virus cases are high. The justices said the state can cap indoor services at 25% of a building’s capacity.The justices also declined to stop California from enforcing a ban put in place last summer on indoor singing and chanting. California had put the restrictions in place because the virus is more easily transmitted indoors and singing releases tiny droplets that can carry the disease.The justices were acting on emergency requests to halt the restrictions from South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista and Pasadena-based Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, which has more than 160 churches across the state.Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “federal courts owe significant deference to politically accountable officials” when it comes to public health restrictions, but he said deference “has its limits.”Roberts wrote that California’s determination “that the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero—appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.”In addition to Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Amy Coney Barrett also wrote to explain their views. Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas would have kept California from enforcing its singing ban. Barrett, the court’s newest justice, disagreed. Writing for herself and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she said it wasn’t clear at this point whether the singing ban was being applied “across the board.”She wrote that “if a chorister can sing in a Hollywood studio but not in her church, California’s regulations cannot be viewed as neutral,” triggering a stricter review by courts. The justices said the churches who sued can submit new evidence to a lower court that the singing ban is not being applied generally.The court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have upheld California’s restrictions. Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for herself, Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor that the court’s action “risks worsening the pandemic.”She said that the court was “making a special exception for worship services” rather than treating them like other activities where large groups of people come together “in close proximity for extended periods of time.” In areas of California where COVID-19 is widespread, which includes most of the state, activities including indoor dining and going to the movies are banned.“I fervently hope that the Court’s intervention will not worsen the Nation’s COVID crisis. But if this decision causes suffering, we will not pay. Our marble halls are now closed to the public, and our life tenure forever insulates us from responsibility for our errors. That would seem good reason to avoid disrupting a State’s pandemic response. But the Court forges ahead regardless, insisting that science-based policy yield to judicial edict,” she wrote.Charles LiMandri, an attorney for South Bay United Pentecostal Church, said in a statement that he and his clients were “heartened by this order” and “thank the high court for upholding religious liberty.”The court’s action follows a decision in a case from New York late last year in which the justices split 5-4 in barring the state from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues. Shortly after, the justices told a federal court to reexamine California’s restrictions in light of the ruling.
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Australian Scientists Developing Technology to Predict Path of Bushfires
Technology that can predict bushfires is being developed in Australia, one of the world’s most fire-prone countries. It will offer real-time visual displays of how fires are likely to spread. It comes as dozens of homes already have been destroyed this year by fires on the outskirts of the Western Australian state capital, Perth.Bushfires are a perennial menace in Australia. This week, Perth has confronted twin emergencies: raging flames and a coronavirus lockdown.“When I had to evacuate, I didn’t want to come to the evacuation center because I, obviously with the lockdown, I was so concerned that this was going to be like a COVID hot spot,” one resident said. “Yeah, grabbed my animals and just headed straight for the beach, actually. I ended up trying to sleep in my car,” she said.Firefighting in Australia is becoming increasingly sophisticated. A new simulator is being developed to predict well in advance how bushfires will move across the landscape.Currently, there are varying systems of modeling bushfires across Australian states and territories. The new technology could give emergency crews a critical advantage.Mahesh Prakash, a senior principal research scientist at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is working in collaboration with other organizations.“We take real-time weather as well as satellite data feeds for being able to predict the bushfires,” the scientist said. “We also take fuel and vegetation inputs. We are also working with state-based emergency management agencies who are trialing it out as we speak on a monthly basis while we are developing new features in the system as well as making it more robust. In the Australian context, we are intending it to be a nationally operational system over the next two to three years. We are also engaging with agencies in the U.S. such as CAL FIRE as well as with a few organizations in Europe, especially ones based in Spain, Portugal and Italy.”During Australia’s unforgettable Black Summer disaster of 2019 and ’20, 24 million hectares of land were burned, 33 people died and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed. An official report into the tragedy warned that bushfires would become “more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to manage.”Authorities said Saturday that most of the huge fire that has been threatening parts of Perth had now been contained.
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Intruder Throws Spotlight on US Air Force Security Woes
The U.S. Air Force opened an investigation Friday after an intruder managed to board an official plane at a military base near Washington, despite heightened security measures after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill attack.A man managed to enter Joint Base Andrews — which hosts visiting dignitaries in Washington and is where official U.S. planes, including the Air Force One presidential jet, are based — on Thursday, officials said.”Everyone takes this very seriously. (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) takes this very seriously,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said, stressing that the investigation would focus on security measures of the U.S. Air Force around the world.The unarmed man, whom authorities did not immediately link to any extremist group, was able to illegally board a C-40, the military version of the Boeing 737, before being arrested, the Air Force added.The C-40 aircraft stationed at Andrews are used by members of the United States government, senior congressional officials, or senior military officials during their official travels.The Air Force did not specify how the man had managed to enter the base, which is closely guarded, or how long he had spent on the plane.Thousands of National Guard soldiers have been bolstering Washington’s security since the assault on Capitol Hill by pro-Trump protesters that left five people dead.As authorities fear further protests, the Guard is tasked with protecting the Capitol during Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial set to start on Feb. 9.
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Internet Shutdown in Myanmar as Thousands Protest
The Myanmar military shut down the internet in the country on Saturday as thousands of people protested in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon.It was the biggest street demonstration seen yet since this week’s coup.As the protests swelled, witnesses reported a shutdown of mobile data services and Wi-Fi.Earlier, the military ordered mobile operators and internet providers to block access to Twitter and Instagram.A temporary ban had already been put on Facebook, which counts half of the country’s 54 million population as users.Before the shutdown, hashtag #SaveMyanmar and #RespectOurVotes were trending, and many were using the platform to voice their opposition to the military coup.The Ministry of Communications and Information did not immediately answer a request for comment but said previously it had blocked Facebook for the sake of “stability.”A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the block on Instagram to Reuters.A spokesperson for Twitter said, “we will continue to advocate to end destructive government-led shutdowns.”Norwegian telecom Telenor, one of the largest in Myanmar, expressed its concern in a statement and said it had challenged the necessity of the order to authorities.For the fourth consecutive night, Yangon residents banged pots and pans to show resistance against the military takeover and “drive out evil spirits.”There were signs of coup opponents growing bolder on Friday.Staff from various government ministries put on red ribbons in the capital Naypyitaw and some teachers at a university in Yangon refused to work and held a three-finger salute as a symbol of resistance, borrowed from the Hunger Games film series.On Saturday, Sean Turnell, an Australian economic adviser to Suu Kyi, said in a message to Reuters he was being detained.This is the first known arrest of a foreign national in Myanmar since the army generals seized power on Monday alleging fraud in the November election.Suu Kyi and at least 147 people have been detained since the coup, including activists, lawmakers and officials from her government.That’s according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
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Film Screening in Hong Kong Tests University’s Tolerance
Five years ago, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, Hong Kong authorities arrested about 50 people when crowds tried to protect street hawkers selling fishballs in the bustling Kowloon neighborhood of Mong Kok.One of the most densely populated business neighborhoods in the world, Mong Kok is jammed with restaurants, bars, small shops and markets, a street scene scented by the aromas wafting from a buffet of food stalls, many of them illegal but nonetheless beloved.“The street stalls are very much part of Hong Kong culture, but they’ve been disappearing as part of the process of redevelopment and urban renewal,” Fuchsia Dunlop, a Chinese food expert, told The Guardian soon after about 100 people were injured in the so-called Fishball Revolution, a mass action FILE – An unidentified man is escorted by riot police at Mong Kok in Hong Kong, Feb. 9, 2016.The student group responded by contending the administration was hampering academic freedom and suppressing free speech. They emphasized the Fishball Revolution is “an integral part of the history of Hong Kong” and that they “shall never be muted or yield to fear.”FILE – Riot police stand guard as rioters set fires and throw bricks in Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, Feb. 9, 2016.The Fishball Revolution was “the worst outbreak of rioting since the 1960s,” according to The Economist.Police estimated that, at its peak, there were more than 700 people involved. Leung, along with many others, was charged with rioting and assault on a police officer. He is expected to be released early next year.After the first screening, Edy Jeh, president of the Students’ Union, said the documentary production group and director had confirmed the documentary doesn’t breach the National Security Law, and emphasized that the screening is a review of what happened in 2016 from an academic perspective.Jeh said, “We still stand by the claim of academic freedom. We believe the screening is a demonstration of academic freedom.” Tracy Cheng, vice president of the Students’ Union, said Hong Kong’s political situation has undergone great changes under the National Security Law, in which freedom of speech and academics have more constraints.She said, “After 2019, their concern for society or their critical thinking has actually improved a lot. I believe that when students have some views and feelings on the society, they will be able to make a greater contribution to society in the future.”Rebecca, a student at the HKU who attended the screening and did not want her full name used, believes that the Mong Kok riot was an important historical event in Hong Kong, and attending the screening, despite the school’s objection, was even more important. Although she worries that under the National Security Law, the school may punish them afterwards, she has no regrets, saying, “By all means, I think I should have come.”Another Hong Konger who asked to remain unnamed said after the screening that the Fishball Revolution has had a profound impact on Hong Kong’s civil movements, especially the mass protests of 2019 that were, in essence, a referendum on Hong Kong’s loss of autonomy from Beijing.”Leung was among the first ones in the movement. They made people reflect on the feasibility of fighting by force and how much they could do,” said a Hong Konger who remembered the Fishball Revolution. It was one of the first “when they began to mask their faces, and people began to push some debris out to block the roads, etc.”“When you can’t achieve it within the system, you have only two (choices), one is to give up and the other is to fight on the streets, which paved the way for the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement,” the Hong Konger said.
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AP Analysis: US Federal Executions Likely a COVID Superspreader
As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.Other staff members, including those brought in to help with executions, also spread tips to their colleagues about how they could avoid quarantines and skirt public health guidance from the federal government and Indiana health officials.The executions at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, completed in a short window over a few weeks, likely acted as a superspreader event, according to the records reviewed by AP. It was something health experts warned could happen when the Justice Department insisted on resuming executions during a pandemic.Active inmate cases spikeIt’s impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn’t consistently do contact tracing and haven’t been fully transparent about the number of cases. But medical experts say it’s likely the executioners and support staff, many of whom traveled from prisons in other states with their own virus outbreaks, triggered or contributed both in the Terre Haute penitentiary and beyond the prison walls.Of the 47 people on death row, 33 tested positive between Dec. 16 and Dec. 20, becoming infected soon after the executions of Alfred Bourgeois on Dec. 11 and Brandon Bernard on Dec. 10, according to Colorado-based attorney Madeline Cohen, who compiled the names of those who tested positive by reaching out to other federal death row lawyers. Other lawyers, as well as activists in contact with death row inmates, also told AP they were told a large numbers of death row inmates tested positive in mid-December.In addition, at least a dozen other people, including execution team members, media witnesses and a spiritual adviser, tested positive within the incubation period of the virus, meeting the criteria of a superspreader event, in which one or more individuals trigger an outbreak that spreads to many others outside their circle of acquaintances. The tally could be far higher, but without contact tracing it’s impossible to be sure.Active inmate cases at the Indiana penitentiary also spiked from just three on Nov. 19 — the day Orlando Cordia Hall was put to death — to 406 on Dec. 29, which was 18 days after Bourgeois’ execution, according to Bureau of Prisons data. The data includes the inmates at the high-security penitentiary, though the Bureau of Prisons has never said whether it included death row inmates in that count.In all, 726 of the approximately 1,200 inmates at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Of them, 692 have recovered.Social distancing difficultiesAdvocates and lawyers for the inmates, a Zen Buddhist priest who was a spiritual adviser for one prisoner, and even the families of some of the victims fought to delay the executions until after the pandemic. Their requests were rebuffed repeatedly, and their litigation failed. And some got sick.Witnesses, who were required to wear masks, watched from behind glass in small rooms where it often wasn’t possible to stand 2 meters apart. They were taken to and from the death-chamber building in vans, where proper social distancing often wasn’t possible. Passengers frequently had to wait in the vans for an hour or more, with windows rolled up and little ventilation, before being permitted to enter the execution-chamber building. And in at least one case, the witnesses were locked inside the execution chamber for more than four hours with little ventilation and no social distancing.Prison staff told their colleagues they should first get on planes, go back to their homes and then they could take a test, according to two people familiar with the matter. If they were positive, they said, they could just quarantine and wouldn’t be stuck in Terre Haute for two weeks, said the people, who could not publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.Following Hall’s execution in November, only six members of the execution team opted to get coronavirus tests before they left Terre Haute, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The agency said they all tested negative. But days later, eight members of the team tested positive for the virus. Five of the staff members who had tested positive were brought back to Terre Haute for more executions a few weeks later.Yusuf Ahmed Nur, the spiritual adviser for Hall, stood just feet away inside the execution chamber when Hall was executed on Nov. 19. He tested positive for the virus days later.Writing about the experience, Nur said he knew he would be putting himself at risk, but that Hall had asked him to be at his side when he was put to death. He, and Hall’s family, felt obliged to be there.“I could not say no to a man who would soon be killed,” Nur wrote. “That I contracted COVID-19 in the process was collateral damage” of executions during a pandemic.Later, two journalists tested positive for the virus after witnessing other executions in January, then had contact with activists and their own loved ones, who later tested positive as well. Despite being informed of the diagnoses, the Bureau of Prisons knowingly withheld the information from other media witnesses and decided not to initiate any contact tracing efforts.‘Clear to work’By mid-December, prison officials said that both Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs were sick. They were the last two prisoners to be executed, just days before President Joe Biden took office.Death row was put on lockdown after their results, inmates told Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and anti-death penalty activist. But even though they had also tested positive, she said Higgs and Johnson were still moved around the prison — potentially infecting guards accompanying them — so they could use phones and email to speak with their lawyers and families as their execution dates approached. Eve said prisons officials may have worried a court would delay the executions on constitutional ground if that access was denied.In response to questions from the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said staff members who don’t experience symptoms “are clear to work” and that they have their temperatures taken and are asked about symptoms before reporting for duty. (The AP has previously reported that staff members at other prisons were cleared with normal temperatures even when thermometers showed hypothermic readings.)The agency said it also conducts contact training in accordance with federal guidance and that “if staff are circumventing this guidance, we are not aware.”Officials said staff members were required to participate in contact tracing “if they met the criteria for it” and agency officials couldn’t compel employees to be tested.“We cannot force staff members to take tests, nor does the CDC recommend testing of asymptomatic individuals,” an agency spokesperson said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The union for Terre Haute employees declined to comment, saying it did not want to “get into the public fray of this whole issue.”Elsewhere, union officials have long complained about the spread of the coronavirus through the federal prison system, as well as a lack of personal protective equipment and room to isolate infected inmates. Some of those issues have been alleviated, but containing the virus continues to be a concern at many facilities.‘Extensive efforts’No more executions have yet been scheduled under Biden. The Bureau of Prisons has repeatedly refused to say how many other people have tested positive for the coronavirus after the last several executions. And the agency would not answer questions about the specific reasoning for withholding the information from the public, instead directing the AP to file a public records request.The Bureau of Prisons said it also “took extensive efforts to mitigate the transmission” of the virus, including limiting the number of media witnesses and adding an extra van for the witnesses to space them out.It has argued witnesses were informed social distancing may not be possible in the execution chamber and that witnesses and others were required to wear masks and were offered additional protective equipment, like gowns and face shields. The agency also refused to answer questions about whether Director Michael Carvajal or any other senior leaders raised concerns about executing 13 people during a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 450,000 in the U.S.Still, it appears their own protocols weren’t followed. After a federal judge ordered the Bureau of Prisons to ensure masks were worn during executions in January, the executioner and U.S. marshal in the death chamber removed their masks during one of the executions, appearing to violate the judge’s order. The agency argued they needed to do so to communicate clearly and that they only removed their masks for a short time and disputes that it violated the order.Hundreds of staffers participatedIn a Nov. 24 court filing on the spread of COVID at Terre Haute, Joe Goldenson, a public health expert on the spread of disease behind bars, said hundreds of staff participated in one way or another at each execution, including around 40 people on execution teams and those on 50-person specialized security teams who traveled from other prisons nationwide. He said he had warned earlier that executions were likely to become a superspreader.Medical and public health experts repeatedly called on the Justice Department to delay executions, arguing the setup at prisons made them especially vulnerable to outbreaks, including because social distancing was impossible and health care substandard.“These are the type of high-risk superspreader events that the (American Medical Association) and (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have been warning against throughout the pandemic,” James L. Madara, the executive vice president of the AMA, wrote to the Department of Justice on Jan. 11, just before the last three federal executions were carried out.
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Blinken Presses China on Uighurs, Hong Kong in First Call
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Beijing on its treatment of Uighurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong in the first conversation between top officials of the two powers since President Joe Biden took office. “I made clear the U.S. will defend our national interests, stand up for our democratic values, and hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system,” Blinken said on Twitter of his call with senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi. Blinken told Yang that the United States “will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong,” a State Department statement said of the call, which took place Friday, Washington time. Blinken also “pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup in Burma,” it said, using the former name of Myanmar. The top U.S. diplomat said the United States would hold Beijing “accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait, and its undermining of the rules-based international system.” The tough tone comes after Blinken in his confirmation hearing said he would continue former president Donald Trump’s approach to China in a rare point of agreement between the two administrations. Blinken has said he agrees with a determination by the State Department under Trump that Beijing is carrying out genocide in the western region of Xinjiang, where rights groups say more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people have been rounded up in camps. Beijing has also ramped up a crackdown in Hong Kong, arresting leading activists, after imposing a new law against subversion following major protests in the financial hub to which it had guaranteed a separate system. Biden nonetheless offered a small olive branch during a speech on foreign policy on Thursday, saying that while the United states will “confront” China, “We are ready to work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interest to do so.” Blinken has previously spoken of climate change as an area of cooperation as China and the United State are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Beijing has long enjoyed a privileged relationship with Myanmar, supporting the junta that gave way to democracy a decade ago with U.S. support. The military in the Southeast Asian nation this week carried out a coup, arresting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in what Chinese state media described as “a major cabinet reshuffle.” Biden, who has vowed to promote democracy worldwide after Trump’s flirtations with autocratic leaders, strongly condemned the coup and threatened sanctions if the military did not relinquish power.
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Biden Signals New Tone on US-Africa Relations
President Joe Biden delivered a message to African leaders meeting virtually this weekend at the African Union Summit 2021, hosted from Addis Ababa.“The United States stands ready now to be your partner in solidarity, support and mutual respect,” Biden said in a video address, his first speech to an international forum as U.S. president.The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to working with the African Union to advance our shared vision of a better future.Watch President Biden’s Message to African Union Summit Participants: pic.twitter.com/tXFX4Tp9PD— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 5, 2021In his remarks, Biden outlined what he called a shared vision of a better future with growing trade and investment that advances peace and security.“A future committed to investing in our democratic institutions and promoting the human rights of all people, women and girls, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, and people of every ethnic background, religion and heritage,” Biden said.Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat welcomed the message and said the African Union looks forward to “resetting the strategic AU-USA partnership.”Thank you for your good wishes, @Potus. The @_AfricanUnion looks forward to resetting the strategic AU-USA partnership on the basis of mutual respect & our shared values of international cooperation for a safer, healthier and a more just world. https://t.co/hxYBeMwRyD— Moussa Faki Mahamat (@AUC_MoussaFaki) February 5, 2021A new tone“President Biden wanted to signal the desire of the United States to rebuild a strong partnership with the continent, its people, the diaspora, as well as other AU stakeholders,” a senior administration official told VOA on background, adding that the administration is committed to “reinvigorating relationships throughout Africa from a position of mutual respect and partnership.”On his first day in office, Biden repealed the Trump administration’s ban on travelers from Muslim-majority and African countries, including Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.Biden’s moves represent a significant departure from the previous administration, which largely framed its Africa policy within the context of U.S. competition with China or as a theater for fighting violent extremism.In January 2018, President Donald Trump was criticized for allegedly using a derogatory term in describing African nations.“Just the very fact that Biden did it [addressed the African Union] changes the tone immeasurably from the previous administration,” said Michael Shurkin, a senior political scientist focusing on Africa at the RAND Corporation.Shurkin said Biden, in his address, did not mention China or violent extremism.“By focusing on Africa for Africa’s sake, Africans for Africans’ sake, that’s actually a far more effective way to compete with the Chinese,” he added.China is the continent’s largest trading partner, and Beijing has massive influence through its financing of infrastructure projects and coronavirus vaccine diplomacy.As Biden deals with the pandemic and domestic economic recovery, few details have emerged about his Africa policy. However, three weeks into the new administration there is a renewed focus on humanitarian issues.On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and expressed concern about the ongoing armed conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and forces supporting the government. The State Department is also considering actions against President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, a staunch U.S. military ally who recently won his sixth term through a bloody election.“We’re going to see a revival of a focus on democracy and governance, which was sorely lacking under the Trump administration,” said Judd Devermont, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Some African governments are not going to be thrilled about that.”A return to multilateralismBiden’s remarks to the African Union also signaled a return to multilateral engagement, a message he emphasized in his speech at the State Department on Thursday, his first foreign policy speech since taking office.“America is back, diplomacy is back,” Biden said. He pledged to reinvest in alliances, framing his approach as a reset after four years of Trump’s mostly bilateral strategy and America First agenda.“Whereas former Secretary of State (Rex) Tillerson snubbed the AU chair, Moussa Faki, in 2017, Biden’s video and an earlier call from Secretary Blinken indicate that the new U.S. administration intends to take this important regional body seriously,” Devermont said.In his address to the summit, Biden said he wants to work with regional institutions to defeat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, fight climate change and engage in diplomacy with the African Union to address conflicts across the continent.The administration joined COVAX, the global mechanism to ensure lower-income countries have access to the coronavirus vaccine on Jan. 21, the same day it rejoined the World Health Organization. In December the U.S. Congress approved $4 billion funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of the co-leaders of COVAX.Beyond regional engagement, Devermont said that Biden’s decisions to rejoin the Paris climate accord and support COVAX will also positively impact African countries.However, with the return to multilateralism, the future of potential bilateral deals, such as the free trade agreement negotiated by the Trump administration between the U.S. and Kenya is now uncertain, particularly if the Biden administration decides to focus instead on cooperation with the African Continental Free Trade Area.Another uncertainty is the U.S. role in mediating disagreements among Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.Despite Trump’s personal interest in pushing a U.S.-brokered agreement based on Cairo’s request, months of negotiation have failed to produce results. In October, Addis Ababa issued a blunt statement denouncing “belligerent threats” over its massive hydropower dam on the Blue Nile river, following Trump’s statement that Egypt “will end up blowing up the dam.”
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Activists Complain of Weakened US Voting Security Standard
Leaders of the federal agency overseeing election administration have quietly weakened a key element of proposed security standards for U.S. voting systems, raising concern among voting-integrity experts that many such systems will remain vulnerable to hacking.The Election Assistance Commission is poised to approve its first new security standards in 15 years after an arduous process involving multiple technical and elections community bodies and open hearings. But ahead of a scheduled Wednesday ratification vote by commissioners, the EAC leadership tweaked the draft standards to remove language that stakeholders interpreted as banning wireless modems and chips from voting machines as a condition for federal certification.The mere presence of such wireless hardware poses unnecessary risks for tampering that could alter data or programs on election systems, say computer security specialists and activists, some of whom have long complained than the EAC bends too easily to industry pressure.Agency leaders argue that overall, the revised guidelines represent a major security improvement. They stress that the rules require manufacturers to disable wireless functions present in any machines, although the wireless hardware can remain.In a Feb. 3 letter to the agency, computer scientists and voting integrity activists say the change “profoundly weakens voting system security and will introduce very real opportunities to remotely attack election systems.” They demand the wireless hardware ban be restored.“They’re trying to do an end run to avoid scrutiny by the public and Congress,” said Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security for Free Speech for People, a nonpartisan nonprofit, accusing agency leaders of bowing to industry pressure.Seven members of the commission’s 35-member advisory board including its chair, Michael Yaki, wrote EAC leadership on Thursday to express dismay that the standards were “substantially altered” from what they approved in June. At the very least, the wrote, they deserve an explanation why the draft standards “backtracked so drastically on a critical security issue.”Yaki said he was puzzled by the commission’s move because “the mantra adopted by pretty much the entire cyber community has been to take radios or things that can be communicated via wireless out of the equation.”Yaki asked in the letter that the commissioners postpone the Feb. 10 vote, but he withdrew that request on Friday after hearing their explanation for the changes. But he said his concerns remain.FILE – Electoral College ballot boxes arrive to a joint session of the Congress to certify the 2020 election results on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.A modem ban is especially important because millions of Americans continue to believe former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that voting equipment was somehow manipulated to rob him of re-election in November, said Yaki. “You don’t want to give QAnon enthusiasts or the ‘Stop the Steal’ people any reason to think that our voting infrastructure is less than perfect.”EAC Chair Benjamin Hovland noted that the agency relied on experts with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help draft the guidelines. He said objections to the change should not be allowed to hold up the new rules’ significant cybersecurity improvements.The ban on wireless hardware in voting machines would force vendors who currently build systems with off-the-shelf components to rely on more expensive custom-built hardware, Hovland said, which could hurt competition in an industry already dominated by a trio of companies. He also argued that the guidelines are voluntary, although many state laws are predicated on them.“You have people putting their own personal agenda, putting themselves before the health of our democracy,” Hovland said, adding that elections officials are among those supporting the change. “It’s so small-sighted the way some people have been approaching this.”Hovland stressed that the amended guidelines say all wireless capability must be disabled in voting equipment. But computer experts say that if the hardware is present, the software that activates it can be introduced. And the threat is not just from malign actors but also from the vendors and their clients, who could enable the wireless capability for maintenance purposes then forget to turn it off, leaving machines vulnerable.Still, one member of the NIST-led technical committee, Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach, said that while the changes came as a surprise, they don’t seem “catastrophic.” Objections shouldn’t hold up adoption of the new guidelines, he said.FILE – Voters line up early in the morning to cast their ballots in the U.S. Senate run-off election, at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia, Jan. 5, 2021.The states of California, Colorado, New York and Texas already ban wireless modems in their voting equipment. The standards being updated, known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, are used by 38 states either as a benchmark or to define some aspect of equipment testing and certification. In 12 states, voting equipment certification is fully governed by the guidelines.In 2015, Virginia decertified and scrapped a voting machine called the WINVote after determining that it could be wirelessly accessed and manipulated.Created to modernize voting technology following the “hanging chad” debacle in the 2000 presidential election, the Election Assistance Committee has never had much authority. That’s partly because voting administration is run individually by the 50 states and territories.But after Russian military hackers meddled in the 2016 election in Trump’s favor, the nation’s voting equipment was declared critical infrastructure and Democrats in Congress have attempted to exert greater federal control to improve security.Republicans, however, have stymied attempts at election security reform in the Senate. While the most unreliable voting machines — touchscreens with no paper ballots to recount — have largely been scrapped, privately held equipment vendors continue to sell proprietary systems that computer scientists say remains vulnerable to hacking.Experts are pushing for universal use of hand-marked paper ballots and better audits to bolster confidence in election results.
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Fox Business Cancels ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ After a Decade
Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, whose host has trumpeted unfounded assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election, has been canceled.In a statement Friday, Fox News said the move was part of routine programming alterations that it had foreshadowed in an announcement last fall.Fox News “regularly considers programming changes and plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on Fox Business — this is part of those planned changes,” the company said.Whether the cancellation ends Dobbs’ career with Fox News wasn’t addressed, and the company had no further comment. The former CNN host started his show at Fox in March 2011.The statement appeared to distance the show’s end from a multibillion-dollar defamation suit filed against Fox and three of its hosts, including Dobbs, by the election technology company Smartmatic. In a previous statement, Fox News said it would “vigorously defend against this meritless lawsuit in court.”The replacement for Lou Dobbs Tonight will be announced soon, Fox News said. The show last aired Friday, with a guest hosting sitting in for Dobbs, who had no immediate statement.An interim show, Fox Business Tonight, will air starting 5 p.m. Eastern Monday with rotating hosts Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman and repeat at 7 p.m. EST.
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Britain Awaits Word From Biden Team on Trade Talks
British diplomats are anxiously awaiting Senate confirmation of Katherine Tai as America’s new U.S. trade representative, in hopes of early progress on a U.S.-Britain trade agreement to reset the relationship following Britain’s departure from the European Union.Karen Pierce, British ambassador to the United States, told a recent audience at American University in Washington that there had been “successive rounds of formal talks” with the previous administration of President Donald Trump and that informal working groups have continued to discuss details of a possible agreement.“When Katherine Tai, the new USTR, is confirmed, we will need to talk to her about getting back to the formal stage,” Pierce said. “We would like to do that.”At the time of the Brexit campaign, which led to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, the pro-Brexit camp had argued that the breakup would leave London free to negotiate a favorable pact with a sympathetic Trump-led administration in Washington.But President Joe Biden declared during his campaign last year that he would not enter into any new trade deals until necessary investments had been made at home. Now, Pierce said, that leaves open “the question as to what happens to trade deals already in the making, like the U.K. one.”The British envoy pointed out that Britain and the U.S. are among each other’s biggest trading and investment partners, and it would benefit both “to cement that and enhance it in a deal, but we need to see what the Biden administration has to say.”Theodore R. Bromund, a specialist in Anglo-American relations at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said the Biden administration has every right to review what its predecessors have done but that it has essentially three choices.FILE – Katherine Tai, the Biden administration’s choice to take over as U.S. trade representative, speaks during an event at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Dec. 11, 2020.He said the new team could continue the talks within the established framework, seek to revise the content and framework of the talks or abandon the project.But, he said, the two countries share deep affinities and the same high regard for human rights and the rule for law, while wages and living standards are not as far apart as with some other countries.“If the U.S. cannot negotiate a deal with the U.K., who else can it negotiate a deal with?” he asked.Agriculture, health careMichelle Egan, a professor at American University who focuses on comparative politics and political economy, said in a phone interview that some of the biggest sticking points in any trade agreement between the two countries concern agriculture and Britain’s national health system.She said Brexit has left British farmers vulnerable, making it harder for London to offer concessions in the agricultural sector.American demands for greater access to Britain’s health care industry are also a problem for London, according to Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and German Marshall Fund based in Brussels.In written replies to questions from VOA, Kirkegaard said Britain’s National Health Service is seen as sacred by many of its citizens. That reverence has only deepened in response to the coronavirus pandemic.FILE – UK National Health Service employee Anni Adams looks at an NHS app for tracing contacts with people potentially infected with the coronavirus disease, on the Isle of Wight, Britain, May 5, 2020.“Ultimately, it comes down to politics in both U.S. and U.K.,” he said.Pierce admitted that agriculture tends to be a difficult topic in almost any trade negotiation, “to be absolutely honest.” She added that the Biden administration’s “buy American” agenda could also pose a challenge to Britain and America’s other trading partners.“It’s obviously a great concern to America’s trading friends and partners if there’s a very strong push for ‘buy American.’ So we’ll need to talk about that,” she said.Positive notesPierce highlighted some “very good things” that are included in the deal under discussion between her country and the United States, including an emphasis on the role to be played by small- and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs.“Both our economies rely very much on this sector,” she said. “What’s really going to get the economy going again” after the pandemic “is the SMEs, so we think that’s a plus.”She also said the prospective U.S.-British agreement would be the first free-trade agreement to look at digital commerce.
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German Prosecutors Charge Secretary to Nazi Camp Commandant
German prosecutors have charged the secretary of the former SS commandant of Stutthof with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder, arguing that she was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi concentration camp function.The 95-year-old also faces an unspecified number of counts of accessory to attempted murder for her service at the camp between June 1943 and April 1945, Peter Mueller-Rakow, spokesman for prosecutors in the northern town of Itzehoe, said Friday.Despite her age, the suspect will be tried in juvenile court because she was younger than 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, Mueller-Rakow said.The suspect, whom Mueller-Rakow would not identify in line with German privacy laws, is believed to be in good enough health to stand trial.She has previously been partially identified as Irmgard F. by Germany’s NDR public broadcaster, which interviewed her at the retirement home where she now lives in a small community north of Hamburg.She confirmed to NDR that she had worked as the secretary to SS officer Paul Werner Hoppe in Stutthof, but said she never set foot in the camp itself and did not know of murders taking place there.Hoppe was himself tried and convicted of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1957. He died in 1974.NDR cited a 1954 statement Irmgard F. had made when interviewed as a witness ahead of the trial, in which she told authorities all Hoppe’s correspondence with higher SS administration had gone past her desk and that the commandant had dictated her letters daily.She also said she did not know of prisoners being gassed but told authorities at the time she was aware Hoppe had ordered executions, which she presumed were as punishment for infractions, NDR reported.The case against her will rely on new German legal precedent established in cases over the last decade that anyone who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime.”In the trial we will focus on the suspect who was in the camp as a secretary, and her concrete responsibility for the functioning of the camp,” Mueller-Rakow said.Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig — now the Polish city of Gdansk — Stutthof from about 1940 was used as a so-called “work education camp” where forced laborers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died.From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising.Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses.More than 60,000 people were killed there by being given lethal injections of gasoline or phenol directly to their hearts, shot or starved. Others were forced outside in winter without clothing until they died of exposure or were put to death in a gas chamber.Last year, a former SS private, Bruno Dey, was convicted at age 93 of more than 5,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving at Stutthof as a guard and given a two-year suspended sentence.
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Libya’s Factions Choose Interim Government Ahead of Elections
Delegates from Libya’s warring factions on Friday selected four leaders to guide the North African country through to national elections in December, seen as a major — if uncertain — step toward unifying a nation with two separate governments in the east and west.In what could become a landmark achievement to end one of the intractable conflicts left behind by the Arab Spring a decade ago, the 74 delegates chose a list of candidates in a U.N.-hosted process aimed to give balance to regional powers and various political and economic interests.Mohammad Younes Menfi, a Libyan diplomat with a support base in the country’s east, was chosen to head the three-person Presidential Council. Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah, a powerful businessman backed by western tribes, was chosen as interim prime minister.The U.N. process, known as the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, was aimed at choosing an interim authority that will oversee Libya as part of an effort to rebuild state institutions and lead to national elections on Dec. 24.Menfi’s list was elected in a runoff as none of four lists initially proposed secured the required 60% of votes from the delegates in the first round.UN Recognizes ‘Tangible Progress’ on Solving Libya Crisis The next meeting of the Security Council on Libya is scheduled for January 28Capping a U.N.-led diplomatic process that began in Berlin in January last year, forum delegates began meeting on Monday in an undisclosed location near Geneva, before reducing their selection to four, then two, and finally one list of candidates for interim prime minister and presidential council on Friday.The voting took place under the mediation of the U.N. secretary-general’s acting special representative for Libya, Stephanie Williams, in hopes to bring stability to a oil-rich North African country that has been largely lawless since Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011.”I am pleased to witness this historic moment,” Williams told delegates after the results were announced. “The decision that you have taken today will grow with the passage of time in the collective memory of the Libyan people.”Williams stressed that the interim government must fully support the ceasefire and uphold the national elections date. She added that the new executive authority must also launch “a comprehensive national reconciliation process.”Since 2015, Libya has been divided between two governments, one in the east and another in the west of the country, each backed by a vast array of militias.In April 2019, Khalifa Hifter, a military commander allied with the eastern government, launched an offensive to capture the capital, Tripoli. His campaign failed after 14 months of fighting. In October, the U.N. convinced both parties to sign a cease-fire agreement and embark on a political dialogue.The other list of finalists had gotten the highest number of votes in a previous round. It included Aguila Saleh, the politically savvy speaker of Libya’s eastern parliament who ran to head the council, and Fathi Bashagha, the powerful interior minister in the western government.On his Twitter page, Bashagha conceded to the winners and hailed the U.N.-mediated electoral process as “the full embodiment of democracy” — and wished the new government success in running the country.One of the unknowns for Libya is how the international community — and in particular, as many as nine countries that have backed opposing sides in Libya — will respond to the vote.The internationally recognized government in Tripoli has had the backing of Turkey while Hifter has been supported by countries including Egypt, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.The voting process was aired live on several Libyan television channels and streamed on the UNTV website.
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Deposed Myanmar Politicians Defy Coup
Nearly 300 members of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s deposed ruling party proclaimed Friday to be the only lawful representatives of the country’s citizenry and called for global recognition as the stewards of the country’s government.The politicians also formed a committee to execute parliamentary functions, according to the National League for Democracy’s Facebook page.The party posted a letter on social media to the United Nations and the global community requesting targeted sanctions and calling for businesses to sever relations with the Myanmar military, which holds vast lucrative assets.It was not immediately clear whether their declaration would have any practical effect, but the NLD vowed to act “in the best interests of our people and in the very essence of democracy.”The NLD’s announcement came hours after hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Myanmar’s capital Friday, as the military expanded its dragnet against ousted officials.In the largest protests since Monday’s military coup, protesters at Myanmar University and Yangon University, both in Yangon, demanded that the military hand power back to Myanmar’s elected officials.People attend a night protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.They chanted “Long live Mother Suu,” a reference to deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and, “We don’t want military dictatorship.”Suu Kyi was detained Monday and faces charges of illegally importing and using six unregistered walkie-talkie radios found in a search of her home in the capital, Naypyitaw.There was at least one protest in Naypyitaw, where Win Htein, a senior member of Suu Kyi’s NLD, was arrested. A party spokesman said Htein was taken from his home Friday before the university protests began.Suu Kyi’s attorney confirmed Friday that the ousted leader and President Win Myint were being held at their homes, but he was unable to meet with them because they remained under investigation.People burn a portrait of Myanmar’s army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, as they protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.Government officials from various agencies joined the protest in Naypyitaw, including those from the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, and the Ministry of Ethnic Affairs and Social Welfare.Like many other protesters, they donned red ribbons and raised a three-finger salute, a sign of resistance against tyranny in the “Hunger Games” movies.Health care workers at Naypyitaw’s largest hospital also participated in the rally, gathering behind a large banner denouncing the takeover.Protests, sometimes led by people from Myanmar, were also held Friday in India, Indonesia and South Korea.Women wearing red ribbons hold candles during a night protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.Myanmar’s new military rulers blocked access to Facebook on Thursday, prompting thousands of social media users in the country to join Twitter, according to app downloads and an estimate by Reuters.Later Friday, the military rulers ordered mobile operators and internet service providers to block access to Twitter and Instagram in the country “until further notice,” according to Norwegian telecom Telenor.The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology did not immediately answer a request for comment from Reuters. Twitter did not immediately comment on the disruptions.A man attends a night protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.The military takeover began with the detention of Suu Kyi, who was the country’s de facto leader, and other senior government officials. Suu Kyi is healthy as she remains under house arrest at her official residence in Naypyitaw, according to party spokesman Kyi Toe.The Myanmar military said its state of emergency, set to last one year, was necessary because the government had not acted on claims of voter fraud in November elections that were overwhelmingly won by NLD.U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders condemned the coup and called for the elected government to be restored to power.Myanmar, also known as Burma, has long struggled between civilian and military rule but until the coup had been enjoying a hopeful transition to democracy.A British colony until 1948, Myanmar was ruled by military dictators from 1962 to 2010.
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Biden Urges Congress to ‘Do Something Big’ to Spur Economy
President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to quickly pass his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, saying there are more signs the U.S. economy needs help to counter the effects of the ongoing pandemic. “We are going to be in a situation where it will take a long time” for the economy to fully recover, said Biden during a meeting with House Democratic leaders. “People are really feeling [in] the hole. They don’t know how to get out. You’ve given them a lot of hope. … We have the chance to do something big here.” Biden’s proposal includes new $1,400 stimulus checks for many Americans, as well as additional funding for food and nutrition and an extension on unemployment benefits. The Senate passed a budget resolution early Friday, marking a key step that will allow Democrats to pass a relief package without the threat of a filibuster from opposing Republicans, who say Biden’s relief plan is too expensive. The House passed the resolution later in the day Friday. In this image from Senate TV, Vice President Kamala Harris sits in the chair on the Senate floor to cast the tie-breaking vote, her first, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2021.Passage came after a marathon session dubbed “Vote-a-Rama,” in which more than 800 amendments were proposed. Despite the amendments, Biden’s plan remains largely intact. “We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, in a floor speech before voting Thursday. Many Democrats feel the government did not provide enough stimulus during the 2008 recession. The resolution then went to the House of Representatives, where it passed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she hoped the House would send the final package to the Senate in two weeks. Jobs report The U.S. Department of Labor released its monthly jobs report Friday morning, which could bolster the case for the aid package. The report showed the U.S. economy added 49,000 jobs in January, but also revised the number of jobs lost in December to 227,000, up from the 140,000 losses reported in the early January report. The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 6.7% to 6.3% in January.
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Myanmar Residents, Expats Voice Dismay Over Coup
“It was my birthday on Monday [February 1] and my partner woke me up and said Suu Kyi has been detained, the military has taken over, and the first thing I did was cry,” said Shona Cannon, a British national who has been teaching in Yangon for nearly two years.Early Monday, Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, many of her cabinet members, student leaders, monks, bloggers, writers and dissidents were detained by the country’s military leaders following allegations of fraud in the November election, won by the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) — a result the military does not accept.A number of expatriates and locals living in Yangon have spoken to VOA about their reaction to the coup. Some have used pseudonyms for fear of retaliation by the government.“It still hasn’t sunk in what has happened. I feel I can say that I know the people here. I have a lot of Burmese friends and I’m heartbroken for them,” said Cannon.She said all her local friends support Suu Kyi’s NLD, and that she had witnessed people campaigning tirelessly to ensure the party’s victory last year.“A lot of my students are all taking part in the civil disobedience movement,” she said, referring to a pro-democracy campaign involving socially distanced demonstrations, strikes and boycotts in response to the coup.“I’ve got students that are doctors, nurses and engineers,” she said. “You know, we are hearing the pots and pans at night; everyone feels shattered from it. They are all broken.”New tacticsDissidents and activists started the disobedience movement as a way for citizens to voice their rejection of the military takeover.Spurred on by medical workers striking to protest the coup and urging NLD supporters to do the same, the campaign is a new form of political activism for the country. Instead of protesting in large crowds on the street — a response to previous coups that almost always ended in bloodshed — people are abiding by COVID-19 safety measures by staying at home, campaigning on social media and banging pots and pans in their own neighborhoods.Supporters give roses to police while four arrested activists make a court appearance in Mandalay, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.Laura Maiah, a medical doctor working in one of Yangon’s general hospitals who studies English part time, told VOA, “As a citizen of Myanmar, we want peace, justice, democracy and an NLD leader who can develop our country in the same way that other countries have.”In recent times, the NLD has gained widespread support not only from the medical community in Myanmar but also from broader swaths of society during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the NLD has been praised for battling.The NLD has improved international relations, the economy and the education sector, which have all had positive effects on the country and are the main reasons for its landslide victory in the last election. However, it has been criticized internationally for the government’s failure to deal with the military’s human rights abuses against the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state.Communications, media blackoutsResistance to the coup is growing despite the military government’s decision to block access to Facebook, which is how most people access the internet in Myanmar.The Ministry of Communications and Information said in a statement that the social media giant would be blocked until Sunday in order to keep “stability” in the country.Unlike media and communications blackouts during prior coups, citizens with adequate financial means have rushed to purchase VPNs (virtual private networks) in recent days to circumvent the block.Min Nyi Nyi Kon, center left, Pyae Sone Aung, right, Ye Win Tun, left, and Saw Oak Kar Oo, center right, show a salute of protest during their court appearance in Mandalay, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.Although Facebook removed several accounts linked to Myanmar’s military in 2018, including that of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, rumors are circulating that military government officials themselves still rely on Facebook’s Messenger app as a primary means of communication.Facebook service disruptions have nonetheless persisted since late Wednesday night.“Telecom providers in Myanmar have been ordered to temporarily block [our platform],” Facebook said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “We urge authorities to restore connectivity so that people in Myanmar can communicate with family and friends and access important information.”Maung Aung, a local journalist and editor working for a prominent news publication in Yangon, who asked VOA to withhold his real name so that he could speak candidly without fear of retaliation, said, “I am sad to again witness the dark legacy of this country perpetuated again by the seizure of power based on unsubstantiated voter fraud.”The coup is “purely motivated by the power and greed of army chief Min Aung Hlaing,” he said.Aung told VOA that the coup sets a negative precedent for the country, proving that the military can intervene in the country’s electoral process despite recent democratic gains.Legacy of sanctionsAlthough U.S. President Joe Biden is threatening to impose targeted sanctions on wealthy members of Myanmar’s junta, many citizens hope Western governments will take a different approach. U.S. sanctions on Myanmar’s military leaders steadily tightened after Washington first applied them in 1998 in response to a violent military crackdown on street protests.Teachers from Yangon University of Education wear red ribbons and pose with a three-finger salute as they take part in demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 5, 2021.U.S. sanctions eased after reforms by Myanmar President Thein Sein and the release of Suu Kyi from detention, but former President Donald Trump in 2019 introduced new sanctions over the extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims.Wealthy junta generals, say some observers in Yangon, have long proven adept at deflecting international pressure.Prior sanctions, they say, have harmed some of the very civilians now struggling with the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis.While no one can predict what coming weeks will bring for the people of Myanmar, their shock appears to be wearing off and anger is quickly setting in.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Greece Planning to Reopen for Travel by June
The COVID-19 pandemic brought Greece’s most profitable industry, tourism, to its knees.Yet a year since the deadly bug hit this sun-kissed nation of 11 million, causing mass travel cancellations and wreaking financial havoc unseen since Greece’s economy went into freefall over a decade ago, tourism officials say they are now marshaling an industry comeback. They are preparing to reopen the country to world travelers by June 1 with a new “safe travel” plan that lets visitors bypass quarantine regulations with a negative coronavirus test taken within 72 hours of their departure.What’s more, a burst in bookings from the U.K. has industry officials banking on British travelers to spearhead the nation’s travel revival.”Greece has long been a favorite holiday destination for the British,” said Grigoris Tassios, president of the country’s hoteliers federation. “But with the rate of inoculations in the U.K. largely outpacing all others across Europe and beyond, British travelers will be among the safest to travel here by as early as May.”With more than a quarter of Israel’s population of 9 million inoculated in the world’s fastest vaccination drive against COVID-19, Israelis, too, are expected to follow suit, as are Americans.This week, U.S. health officials announced that more Americans had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine than have tested positive for the virus.”These are all promising signs,” Tassios said. “But we still have a way to go.”FILE – Tourists look at the changing of presidential guards outside the Greek parliament , in Athens, July 31, 2020.Tourism stalledGlobal tourism has been among the industries hit hardest by the public health emergency. The pandemic has affected 75 million people employed in a sector brought to a near standstill by travel bans and closed borders.But for Greece, where tourism accounts for 20 percent of GDP, providing one in five jobs in a country still crawling out of its worst financial crisis in recent times, the stakes are higher.A recent report by the financial risk advisory services group Ernst & Young showed Europe’s weakest economy shrinking an additional 10 percent in 2020 because of an 80 percent drop in tourism revenue. It forecast a 50 percent rise this year — half of the record 30 million travelers that flooded Greece ahead of the health crisis in 2019 — but only if, as experts warn, the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis delivers on the daunting task of balancing the safety of a nation with the economic boost more visitors would bring to a country in dire need of financial recovery.It is not an easy challenge. After five strict months, three national lockdowns and a surge in infections that has seen COVID-19 cases here rocket from 3,000 in September to 160,000 this week, Mitsotakis and his closest aides are now said to be considering the fiercest national shutdown orders yet in a bid to stunt a third wave of COVID-19 sweeping Greece — and to salvage the nation’s anemic economy.But until then, tourism businesses and hoteliers, who preferred to remain closed last year, are wasting no time positioning themselves for a stake in the estimated $10 billion in revenues that British travelers are set to bring to Greece this year, beginning in June.FILE – A French family poses in front of the ancient Parthenon, at the Acropolis Hill, during a hot day in Athens, July 31, 2020.’The chips are down’As many as 2 million foreign travelers will be redeeming vouchers for vacation packages canceled last summer because of the pandemic, according to industry data. The number of Israelis and Americans following suit remains unclear.”Not opening is not an option this year,” said Alexis Komninos, a leading hotelier on the iconic island of Santorini. “The chips are down, and it’s clearly crunch time.”But while I and others in the industry are doing our part, doling out the cold cash to refurbish, rebuild and slash my prices by 40 percent in flash sales to lure British, German and other customers, the government must do its part in helping subsidize this national reopening.”This isn’t about some sort of business experiment,” said Komninos. “It is a national gambit. And if this season is lost — well, then we’re all in for a really rough ride.”Tourism ministry officials say they have received assurances from the government that it will subsidize salaries in the industry during the summer. Still, it has yet to decide when and whether incentives will be introduced to cover startup and reopening costs and support a hoteliers bill seen by some as key to any comeback in Greek tourism.
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New US Museum Traces History of Black Music Across Genres
A new museum two decades in the making is telling the interconnected story of Black musical genres through the lens of American history.The National Museum of African American Music, which opened with a virtual ribbon-cutting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is seated in the heart of Nashville’s musical tourism district, alongside honky-tonks and the famed Ryman Auditorium and blocks from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.Even as Nashville has long celebrated its role in the history of music, the new museum fills a gap by telling an important and often overlooked story about the roots of American popular music, including gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.FILE – Lucille, a guitar owned by blues legend B.B. King, is displayed at the National Museum of African American Music, Jan. 30, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn.”When we think of the history of African American music and the important part it has played in our country, it was long overdue to honor it in this type of way,” said gospel great CeCe Winans, who serves as a national chair for the museum.The idea for the museum came from two Nashville business and civic leaders, Francis Guess and T.B. Boyd, back in 1998, who wanted a museum dedicated to Black arts and culture. And while there are museums around the country that focus on certain aspects of Black music, this museum bills itself as the first of its kind to be all encompassing.”Most music museums deal with a label, a genre or an artist,” said H. Beecher Hicks III, the museum’s president and CEO. “So it’s one thing to say that I’m a hip-hop fan or I’m a blues fan, but why? What was going on in our country and our lived experience and our political environment that made that music so moving, so inspirational, such the soundtrack for that part of our lives?”The museum tells a chronological story of Black music starting in the 1600s through present day and framed around major cultural movements including the music and instruments brought by African slaves, the emergence of blues through the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement.FILE – Visitors look at information presented at the National Museum of African American Music, Jan. 30, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn.When Winans recently took a tour of the museum, she saw her own family of gospel singers, The Winans, represented in the museum’s exhibit on spiritual music alongside the artists that influenced her own musical career.”You never start out doing what you’re doing to be a part of history or even be a part of a museum,” said the 12-time Grammy-winning singer.She noted that the museum put gospel music in context with how it inspired social change, especially during the civil rights era.”When you look at all the different movements that have happened down through the years, and Martin Luther King Jr., it was always with the church behind them,” said Winans. “It was the gospel music that inspired us to love one another, to build bridges.”FILE – A trumpet belonging to Louis Armstrong is displayed at the National Museum of African American Music, Jan. 30, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn.The museum has 1,600 artifacts in its collection, including clothes and a Grammy Award belonging to Ella Fitzgerald, a guitar owned by B.B. King and a trumpet played by Louis Armstrong. To make the best use of the space, the exhibits are layered with interactive features, including 25 stations that allow visitors to virtually explore the music.Visitors can learn choreographed dance moves with a virtual instructor, sing “Oh Happy Day” with a choir led by gospel legend Bobby Jones and make their own hip-hop beats. Visitors can take home their recordings to share via a personal RFID wristband.FILE – Armond Carter, left, of Atlanta, and his mother, Latonya Carter, dance together in an exhibit at the National Museum of African American Music, Jan. 30, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn.There will be a changing exhibit gallery, with the first topic to be the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an a cappella group originally formed in 1871 to raise money for Fisk University. The group sang slave spirituals at its concerts. The tradition continues today.After a year of racial reckoning through the movement of Black Lives Matter, Hicks said the timing couldn’t be more perfect to highlight the contributions of Black music to our shared American experience.”[It] is not an accident that we are able to finish and get the museum open in this moment, in this moment where we need to be reminded, perhaps more than others or more than in the recent past, that we are brothers and we share more together than we do our differences,” said Hicks.
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Saudis, Yemen Warring Parties Welcome Biden Pledge to End War
U.S. President Joe Biden says Yemen’s civil war must end and pledges to stop U.S. support for Saudi-led offensive operations in the conflict while maintaining support for Saudi Arabia.Analysts examining the six-year-old war in the Arab world’s poorest nation — now in the grips of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — welcome the decision, but some say details need to be worked out.FILE – In this Feb. 4, 2021, file photo, President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy, at the State Department in Washington.Nabeel Khoury, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, says ending the war in Yemen will achieve key initial goals of the Biden Administration: “restoring the United States’ leadership role in international affairs and reducing tensions in the Gulf. In addition, it would be in the best national security interests of the U.S.”Saudi Arabia and its Arab coalition partners found themselves mired in conflict in Yemen after launching a war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in 2015, in part to contain Iran’s growing influence in the Arab Gulf region. A third of Yemen’s population, the Shi’ite Houthis say they are fighting a corrupt system but they have also launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi population centers.Saudi Arabia, as well as Yemen’s warring parties, welcomed Biden’s statement. Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by the Saudi coalition, stressed the “importance of supporting diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.”While the Houthis, who control much of the country, including the capital, Sana’a, said they support the approach.Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman said the kingdom looked forward to working with its American partners to “alleviate the humanitarian situation and find a solution to the Yemen crisis, and ensure peace and stability.” Adding, that he also appreciated Biden’s commitment to help protect Saudi Arabia and its people.Helen Lackner, a Yemen researcher currently at the University of London’s SOAS Middle East Institute, says the development will also benefit the Saudis.”I’m absolutely convinced the Saudis want to get out. The problem is that they want to get out without being totally humiliated,” Lackner said. “And the Houthi are not inclined to make that easy for them. End of 2019, we all thought things would calm down. The war would sort of disappear in 2020 with or without an agreement. Then, the Houthis started the big offensive in Jawf. The Houthis don’t totally agree and there are different tendencies within them. But there are definitely strong Houthis who are determined to make things as difficult for the Saudis as they possibly can.”Ahmed Nagi, a nonresident fellow at Beirut’s Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, also highlights the complexity of Yemen’s war.“Today, we have not just one conflict, actually we have a series of conflicts,” Nagi said. “Usually, people say what’s happening in Yemen is a conflict between Iran and Saudis and they are fighting each other through their proxies. But if we go deeply inside Yemen, we can find so many conflicts within this big war.”The U.N. says most of Yemen’s 30 million people need some form of aid or protection, with more than 13 million Yemenis facing acute food insecurity. Pentagon officials in recent years warned that neither side will win Yemen’s war and it could expand, dragging the U.S. into a wider regional conflict.
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Russia Expels Western Diplomats Who Attended Pro-Navalny Protests
The Russian government said Friday it was expelling Western diplomats for attending rallies in support of jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny. Diplomats from Poland and Sweden in St. Petersburg and from Germany in Moscow were targeted for participating in “unlawful” rallies on January 23, according to Russia’s foreign ministry. Tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets across Russia that day to express opposition to the arrest of Navalny, the Kremlin’s leading critic. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell hold a joint press conference following their talks in Moscow, Feb. 5, 2021.The ministry made the announcement as the European Union’s most senior diplomat told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the government’s treatment of Navalny represents “a low point” in relations between the 27-nation bloc and Moscow. In a statement, the ministry declared the diplomats “persona non grata” and said they must leave Russia “shortly.” A Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the country refutes Russia’s claim that the Swedish diplomat participated in the demonstration. German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced the move and said after discussing security issues with French President Emmanuel Macron that “We consider this expulsion to be unjustified.” Poland’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “The Polish side expects the Russian authorities to reverse this erroneous decision” or “Otherwise, Poland leaves itself the option to take appropriate steps.” After his virtual meeting with Merkel, Macron said at a Paris news conference that he “very strongly” opposes Friday’s expulsions and Russia’s arrest and alleged poisoning of Navalny. FILE – A still image taken from video footage shows Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny making a hand heart gesture during the announcement of a court verdict in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 2, 2021.A Russian court Tuesday sentenced Navalny to three-and-a-half years in prison, defying condemnation abroad and public outcry at home to send one of the Kremlin’s most vocal critics to jail. The court found Navalny violated his parole from a prior 2014 suspended sentence by failing to notify prison authorities of his whereabouts when he was evacuated to Berlin for treatment following a near-fatal poisoning attack. Navalny insists, and international media investigations suggest, the poison attack was carried out by Russian security services who laced his underwear with a military-grade nerve agent while the opposition leader was traveling in Siberia last August. Russian authorities deny this. FILE – Law enforcement officers stand guard during a demonstration after Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail, in Moscow, Feb. 2, 2021.Navalny’s sentencing triggered new protests Tuesday in Moscow and St. Petersburg that followed large demonstrations over the past two weekends, resulting in the arrest of more 1,400 protesters. Russian police beat many peaceful protesters and used stun guns against some in an attempt to suppress the opposition. Lavrov defended the Russian police response to the protests, contending it was much less forceful than some police actions against demonstrators in Western countries.
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Nigerian Candidate Closes in on WTO Top Job After Rival Withdraws
Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a step closer to becoming the first African and first woman to lead the World Trade Organization, after a South Korean rival withdrew on Friday following months of uncertainty over the body’s leadership.
Okonjo-Iweala faced opposition from the U.S. administration of former President Donald Trump after a WTO selection panel recommended her as chief in October. The decision required consensus.
South Korea’s trade minister Yoo Myung-hee’s withdrawal clears the way for Okonjo-Iweala to be director-general of the global trade watchdog. Okonjo-Iweala said she was looking forward to the conclusion of the race.
“There is vital work ahead to do together,” the former finance minister and World Bank executive said in a statement, saying she wanted to focus on needed reforms.
The embattled Geneva-based body has gone without a director-general since Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo quit a year early in August and his replacement must contend with a COVID-induced recession, U.S.-China tensions and rising protectionism.
In the more than three months since the selection panel recommended Okonjo-Iweala, Yoo had resisted mounting diplomatic pressure to bow out, until Friday.
“In order to promote the functions of WTO and in consideration of various factors, I have decided to withdraw my candidacy,” Yoo said in a statement.
Yoo, who was a finalist selected from among eight candidates to lead the body, said her decision was made after consulting with allies including the United States.
Waiting for Washington
Observers say the leaderless WTO is facing the deepest crisis in its 25-year history. It has not clinched a major multilateral trade deal in years and failed to hit a 2020 deadline on ending subsidies for overfishing.
Some of its functions are paralyzed due to the actions of the Trump administration which blocked judge appointments to its top appeals body.
Many hope that the change of U.S. administration will lead to reform of the organization.
However, Washington under President Joe Biden has not yet publicly said who it is supporting as the next head although it is considering the question.
It also said that it is committed to “positive, constructive and active engagement” on reforming the body.
Okonjo-Iweala has previously stressed the need for the WTO to play a role in helping poorer countries with COVID-19 drugs and vaccines — an issue on which members have failed to agree in ongoing negotiations.
The WTO could in theory call a meeting of its 164 members to confirm the next chief at short notice.
However, some delegates saw that as unlikely given that Biden’s choice of trade representative, Katherine Tai, has not yet been sworn in. Nor has a Geneva-based deputy been selected.
The International Chamber of Commerce’s John Denton urged WTO members to act quickly.
“With geopolitical tensions high, the global economy in recession and ‘vaccine nationalism’ threatening an equitable recovery, there is now no reason for further delay in filling this critical role with the well-qualified candidate at the ready,” he said.
Former U.S. government officials, diplomats and academics also wrote a letter to Biden on Jan. 19 asking him to support Okonjo-Iweala.
If she does get the nod, Okonjo-Iweala will certainly have her work cut out for her as the first woman and also first African to lead the WTO.
The crisis-wracked organization is widely seen as being in need of reform.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it had grappled with stalled trade talks and struggled to curb tensions between the United States and China.
The global trade body has also faced relentless attacks from Washington, which has crippled its dispute settlement appeal system and, under Trump, had threatened to leave the organization altogether.
Twice Nigeria’s finance minister and its first woman foreign minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, 66, trained as a development economist — she has degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard.
She spent a quarter of a century at the World Bank, rising to be managing director and running for the top role in 2012, and is seen as a trailblazer in her home country.
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Hundreds Take to Streets in Largest Protest Since Myanmar Military Coup
Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Myanmar’s capital Friday in the largest protests since Monday’s military coup, as the military expanded its dragnet against ousted officials.Protestors at Myanmar University and Yangon University, both in the city of Yangon, demanded that the military hand power back to Myanmar’s elected officials.They chanted “Long live Mother Suu,” a reference to deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and “We don’t want military dictatorship.” Suu Kyi was detained Monday and faces charges of illegally importing and using six unregistered walkie-talkie radios found in a search of her home in the capital of Naypyidaw.The Myanmar military said its state of emergency, set to last one year, was necessary because the government had not acted on claims of voter fraud in November elections that were overwhelmingly won by Suu Kyi’s NLD party. The coup has been condemned by U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders, who called for the elected government to be restored to power.Myanmar, also known as Burma, has long struggled between civilian and military rule but until the coup had been enjoying a hopeful transition to democracy.A British colony until 1948, Myanmar was ruled by military-dictators from 1962 to 2010.
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