An Indigenous New Zealand lawmaker was thrown out of Parliament’s debating chamber Wednesday for performing a Maori haka in protest at what he said were racist arguments.
Rawiri Waititi’s stance came after ongoing debate among lawmakers about the government’s plans to set up a new Maori Health Authority as part of sweeping changes to the health care system.
Some conservative lawmakers have said the plan is separatist. Waititi, the co-leader of the Maori Party, said those arguments amounted to racist rhetoric.
Waititi told lawmakers in the chamber that he was forced to listen to a “constant barrage of insults” directed toward Indigenous people.
If that kind of attitude was acceptable, he said, “then I find this House in disrepute.”
Speaker Trevor Mallard then told Waititi to sit down but instead he performed the haka, a traditional dance or challenge accompanied by a chant.
“Order. The member will now leave the chamber,” Mallard told Waititi, which he did along with his party’s other co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
It’s not the first time Waititi has clashed with Mallard. In February, he won a battle against wearing a tie in Parliament, ending a longstanding dress requirement for men that he described as a “colonial noose.”
Mallard also threw out Waititi from the debating chamber during that dispute after Waititi showed up wearing a traditional pendant around his neck called a hei tiki.
But Mallard backed down the next day, saying neckties would no longer be compulsory, after a committee of lawmakers came out in favor of ending the requirement.
But Waititi’s latest stance isn’t supported by all Maori lawmakers.
After Waititi left, Labour Party Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis pointed out the relatively small support base for the Maori Party.
“Don’t ever think that a party that gets 1.2% of the vote actually represent the views of Maoridom,” Davis told lawmakers.
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Month: May 2021
Months of Lockdown Raise a Pressing Question: Where to Pee in Paris?
Paris begins reopening next week, bringing relief to residents missing its long-shuttered shops, museums, theaters and cafes that make France’s iconic capital so special. Not to mention something more basic—easily accessible toilets. Cecile Briand ducks into a small cement building, tucked inside a northern Paris square. The toilet she’s inspecting is a bit dirty, but no nasty surprises—nothing a little tissue can’t fix. Number one advice walking this city: always bring toilet paper. Briand is a writer and artist. Also possibly this capital’s best resource on restrooms. Her guidebook Ou Faire Pipi a Paris? — or Where to Pee in Paris — is now in its second edition. She earned her expertise firsthand— spending hours on the streets researching a separate Lonely Planet guide on Paris walks. Discovering its hidden and not-so-hidden toilets, she says, is another way of discovering the city.Briand checks out a restroom in a small square and pronounces it “correct.” (VOA/Lisa Bryant)Some of Briand’s top picks include the 5th-floor restrooms at the Galeries Lafayette department store —over a terrace with a stunning view of the capital. There’s also the red-carpeted Drouot auction house, and Josephine Baker swimming pool on the Seine River. Lockdown has shuttered these and many other places — like this public library we pass by. For the desperate — and less choosy — there are always the city’s 435 sanisettes, elegant-looking steel structures that—despite their automatic cleaning— aren’t always so elegant inside. Peeing in Paris has been problematic long before coronavirus. The city hall has long been at war against what it calls ‘wild pipi’ — mostly by men — in public spaces. Residents and tourists mocked the environmentally friendly urinals it set up a few years ago— and this public service announcement featuring actors singing through toilet seats. Meanwhile, critics recently launched an online campaign hash tagged #saccageaparis, or “trashed Paris,” blaming the municipal government, fairly or unfairly, for unkempt streets. Pere Lachaise cemetery, the next stop on Briand’s tour, offers a respite from the controversy. It’s here Frederic Chopin, Honore de Balzac, Jim Morrison and many other famous people are buried. Equally important is its restroom in a little chalet. Visitors Elena and Rosa Marie, from the northern city of Reims, are hunting for the entrance.One of the restrooms at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. (VOA/Lisa Bryant)Elena says it’s very complicated spending time outside in big cities these days. Either you hold off peeing, or you stay at home. The lockdown has brought Briand’s guide more media attention. She’s now waiting to assess its impact on the city’s toilet landscape — before working on the third edition of Where to to Pee in Paris.
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Kremlin-imposed Cuts at US Embassy Leave Thousands Adrift
Under Kremlin orders, the U.S. Embassy has stopped employing Russians, forcing the embassy to cut its consular staff by 75% and limit many of its services. The order went into effect on Wednesday, bringing the sharply deteriorating U.S.-Russia relationship to an intensely personal level. Because of the cuts, the embassy can offer only very limited services, such as considering “life-and-death” visa applications. That leaves Russian businessmen, exchange students and romantic partners adrift because they won’t be able to obtain visas. Even Americans will be unable to register their newborns or renew their passports. For Anastasia Kuznetsova, a 20-year-old engaged to marry a Californian, it’s a crushing blow. She had already spent about two years seeking a fiancee’s visa. The notoriously laborious process for Russians to get U.S. visas had already been slowed by COVID-19. “I felt destroyed, much more depressed than I was before,” said Kuznetsova, who last saw her fiance in January on a trip to Mexico. “We have no idea when it’s going to continue working and if we will be able to see each other even during these years.” Thomas H V Anthony, an American living in Russia, was already frustrated because of a delay in registering the birth of his daughter, a record of the child’s claim to U.S. citizenship. “My expectation was as things get better with the situation with the pandemic, gradually the consulate would open more and more and more,” he said. “It was a big shock to suddenly get an email from them, about two weeks ago, saying effective on the 11th we will no longer be offering any consular services.” For Anthony, this means his daughter, who was born before the pandemic, will not be able to travel to visit her grandparents in the United States in the foreseeable future. The embassy has made no statements on whether it is taking measures to beef up the consular staff with new employees from the United States. Embassy spokespeople could not be reached for clarification on how the mission will handle other jobs also filled by locals, such as security. An order signed last month by President Vladimir Putin called for creating a list of “unfriendly” countries whose missions could be banned from hiring Russians or third-country nationals. The list includes the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Poland and several other European countries, but the United States is the first for which the ban is being enforced. The move followed U.S. sanctions imposed over Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and involvement in the SolarWind hack of federal agencies. Each country expelled 10 of the other’s diplomats. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the ban on local employees is in line with convention. “We rarely employ any local personnel in the country where our diplomatic mission is. And thus we have the full right to transfer this practice onto the regulations which manage the work of the U.S. Embassy and their general consulate in the Russian Federation,” he said last month. Yulia Kukula, a university student who was accepted for a PhD program in sustainable energy at Arizona State University, may have found a laborious and costly way around the problem of getting her visa to attend university. After searching online for advice from others in her situation, Kukula was able to sign up for an interview for a visa at the U.S. consulate in neighboring Kazakhstan. But that’s a 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) trip from Moscow, and the interview isn’t until October. The United States once had three other consulates in Russia — in Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok and St. Petersburg — which somewhat eased the travel burden for people seeking visas. But those consulates have closed or stopped providing visas amid diplomatic spats in recent years, in what Alexis Rodzianko, head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, called “a visa war.” That had already placed a burden on the companies in his chamber whose executives needed to travel. “Now it looks like it’s impossible for the indefinite future,” he said. The travel restrictions of the pandemic have shown that videoconferencing can’t entirely replace the in-person contact of business travel, he said. “They’re especially good for people who already know each other and they’re much less effective for people getting to know each other,” he said. He also sees a larger problem if the visa halt lasts for long. He worries that because the U.S. and Russian governments are adversaries, a lack of contacts between people on both sides could lead to “dehumanization,” adding, “which is very dangerous because that’s what you need to fight a war.” Kuznetsova, who had hoped to celebrate her wedding in the United States this year and had even quit her university in Russia in preparation for the move, feels trapped as a small piece in a large geopolitical dispute. “I understand that there can be problems between countries, it’s normal, it’s happened throughout all of history, but it’s not normal to divide people and separate them, especially when it’s families and the lives of people,” she said.
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China TV Network Accounts for Bulk of Beijing’s Influence Spending in US
China’s big-budget foreign influence operation in the United States is heavily tilted toward television broadcasting and other media activities, according to newly disclosed Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings.The country’s state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) spent more than $50 million on its U.S. operations last year, accounting for nearly 80% of total Chinese spending on influencing U.S. public opinion and policy, according to FARA filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. It was the first year for which CGTN, which began broadcasting in the U.S. in 2012, reported a complete spending figure. In 2019, CGTN had reported partial spending of about $43 million.In total, China spent nearly $64 million on propaganda and lobbying in the United States last year.Counting its television broadcasting operations, China spent more money on influencing U.S. public opinion than any other country. Qatar came in second, reporting nearly $50 million, and Russia ranked No. 3, with $42 million in spending. Both Qatar and Russia run large media operations in the United States.China’s propaganda spending spree comes as Beijing seeks to burnish its global image amid a coronavirus pandemic that originated in the country’s city of Wuhan more than a year ago.The front page of a Chinese newspaper showing the picture of the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden at a newsstand in Beijing on Jan. 21, 2021.China Daily, a government-owned newspaper, reported more than $3 million in spending last year, including expenses related to advertising in American newspapers, down from more than $10 million in 2019, the filings show. While much of China Daily’s spending is related to operating costs, the newspaper routinely runs supplements in U.S. newspapers to influence U.S. policy and public opinion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.China has long denied that it carries out influence operations in the United States.Anna Massoglia, an investigative researcher with the center, said the jump in Chinese influence spending was striking.”It’s attributable primarily to one registrant who was compelled to register by DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice),” Massoglia said.Under FARA, a 1938 law, all foreign governments and other entities that engage in lobbying or influence peddling are required to disclose their activities to the Justice Department. The law makes an exemption for news organizations, but only if they are at least 80% owned by U.S. citizens.The Justice Department has said only outlets that seek to influence U.S. policy need to register under FARA. In 2018, the department directed CGTN and Xinhua News Agency to register. CGTN complied in 2019 and Xinhua just last week.The registrations came as the Justice Department had tightened up enforcement of FARA and forced foreign media outlets to disclose their activities in the United States. Earlier in the Trump administration, the Justice Department forced Kremlin-controlled media outlets RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik to register as foreign agents.Last year, as tensions between Washington and Beijing grew amid the pandemic, the State Department designated CGTN and four other Chinese media outlets as “foreign missions,” subjecting them to the same reporting requirements as foreign embassies and consulates.Maria Repnikova, a professor and global communications expert at Georgia State University, said it is significant that Chinese spending on U.S. public opinion has increased despite escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington.”It means that the Chinese government is still invested in shaping public perceptions in the U.S. and potentially improving the relationship or easing the tensions in its favor,” Repnikova said in an email.A woman wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus browses her smartphone as a masked woman walks by the Huawei retail shop promoting it 5G network in Beijing Oct. 11, 2020.Of the $64 million spent by China on influence operations, nearly $10 million came from nongovernmental entities. Telecom conglomerate Huawei Technologies was the top nongovernmental spender, reporting nearly $3.5 million in lobbying expenditure. Last year, the Justice Department charged the company with conspiracy to steal trade secrets and violate U.S. sanctions on Iran.Massoglia said that spending by Chinese telecom companies is part of a “trend we’ve seen recently as they’ve faced various restrictions and controversies in the United States.”Chinese media outlets were not the only foreign media organizations forced to register under FARA in recent years. Qatar-based Al Jazeera’s U.S. arm as well as Sputnik and RT, which account for most of Russia’s foreign operations spending in 2020, according to Massoglia, have also been compelled.Russia has retaliated with its own requirements, levying hefty fines on U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and requiring the outlet to label its content as “fulfilling the function of a foreign agent.”RFE/RL, a sister news agency to Voice of America, is fighting the foreign agent label and fines.
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US House Republicans Expected to Oust Liz Cheney from Top Party Leadership Post
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are poised to remove Representative Liz Cheney from her party leadership post over her criticism of former President Donald Trump’s claims of fraud in last November’s presidential election. The caucus is expected to vote Wednesday to oust the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney from her post as chair of the Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 17, 2019. She first drew fire within the party when she voted for Trump’s impeachment for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when hundreds of his supporters stormed the building to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. In a speech on the House floor on Tuesday night, Cheney described Trump’s continuing efforts to delegitimize the election results as “ a threat America has never seen before.” “A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence.” Defending her staunch conservative record, Cheney said “the most conservative of conservative principles is reverence for the rule of law.” She said “will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.” Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who has enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s claims, will likely be elected to replace Cheney as party conference chair. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy announced his support for Stefanik during a recent interview on the U.S. cable news network, Fox News.
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US Urges Israel and Hamas to De-escalate Amid Dramatic Rocket Attacks
The United States is calling on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to de-escalate and reduce tensions amid deadly Hamas rocket attacks and Israeli retaliatory airstrikes following clashes in Jerusalem. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more on this latest foreign policy challenge for the Biden administration.Camera: Saine Skype Video interviews
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Russia Denies Involvement in Colonial Pipeline Attack
Russia has denied involvement in the cyberattack that crippled Colonial Pipeline, a critical artery for almost half of the U.S. East Coast’s fuel supply. While the Biden administration has taken steps to address gasoline shortages, drivers are beginning to see higher prices at the pump. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Army of Fake Fans Online Boosts China’s Global Messaging
China’s ruling Communist Party has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media.Liu Xiaoming, who recently stepped down as China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, is one of the party’s most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are both banned in China.Since then, Liu has deftly elevated his public profile, gaining a following of more than 119,000 as he transformed himself into an exemplar of China’s new sharp-edged “wolf warrior” diplomacy, a term borrowed from the title of a top-grossing Chinese action movie.”As I see it, there are so-called ‘wolf warriors’ because there are ‘wolfs’ in the world and you need warriors to fight them,” Liu, who is now China’s Special Representative on Korean Peninsula Affairs, tweeted in February.China’s ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming takes questions from members of the media at the Chinese Embassy in London on Feb. 6, 2020.His stream of posts — principled and gutsy ripostes to Western anti-Chinese bias to his fans, aggressive bombast to his detractors — were retweeted more than 43,000 times from Jun. through Feb. alone.But much of the popular support Liu and many of his colleagues seem to enjoy on Twitter has, in fact, been manufactured.A seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, found that China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people — often without disclosing the fact that the content is government-sponsored.More than half the retweets Liu got from June through January came from accounts that Twitter has suspended for violating the platform’s rules, which prohibit manipulation. Overall, more than one in ten of the retweets 189 Chinese diplomats got in that time frame came from accounts that Twitter had suspended by Mar. 1.But Twitter’s suspensions did not stop the pro-China amplification machine. An additional cluster of fake accounts, many of them impersonating U.K. citizens, continued to push Chinese government content, racking up over 16,000 retweets and replies before Twitter permanently suspended them for platform manipulation late last month and early this month, in response to the AP and Oxford Internet Institute’s investigation.This fiction of popularity can boost the status of China’s messengers, creating a mirage of broad support. It can also distort platform algorithms, which are designed to boost the distribution of popular posts, potentially exposing more genuine users to Chinese government propaganda. While individual fake accounts may not seem impactful on their own, over time and at scale, such networks can distort the information environment, deepening the reach and authenticity of China’s messaging.”You have a seismic, slow but large continental shift in narratives,” said Timothy Graham, a senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology who studies social networks. “Steer it just a little bit over time, it can have massive impact.”Twitter, and others, have identified inauthentic pro-China networks before. But the AP and Oxford Internet Institute investigation shows for the first time that large-scale inauthentic amplification has broadly driven engagement across official government and state media accounts, adding to evidence that Beijing’s appetite for guiding public opinion — covertly, if necessary — extends beyond its borders and beyond core strategic interests, like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.Twitter’s takedowns often came only after weeks or months of activity. All told, AP and the Oxford Internet Institute identified 26,879 accounts that managed to retweet Chinese diplomats or state media nearly 200,000 times before getting suspended. They accounted for a significant share — sometimes more than half — of the total retweets many diplomatic accounts got on Twitter.It was not possible to determine whether the accounts were sponsored by the Chinese government.Twitter told AP that many of the accounts had been sanctioned for manipulation, but declined to offer details on what other platform violations may have been at play. Twitter said it was investigating whether the activity was a state-affiliated information operation.”We will continue to investigate and action accounts that violate our platform manipulation policy, including accounts associated with these networks,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “If we have clear evidence of state-affiliated information operations, our first priority is to enforce our rules and remove accounts engaging in this behavior. When our investigations are complete, we disclose all accounts and content in our public archive.”China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it does not employ trickery on social media. “There is no so-called misleading propaganda, nor exporting a model of online public opinion guidance,” the ministry said in a statement to AP. “We hope that the relevant parties will abandon their discriminatory attitude, take off their tinted glasses, and take a peaceful, objective and rational approach in the spirit of openness and inclusiveness.”
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Prosecutor Calls Georgia Spa Shooting Hate Crime; Will Seek Death Penalty
A man accused of killing eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, in shootings at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was indicted Tuesday on murder charges, and a prosecutor filed notice that she’ll also seek hate crime charges and the death penalty.A Fulton County grand jury indicted Robert Aaron Long, 22, in the March 16 slayings of Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63. The indictment only covers those four killings that happened at two spas in Atlanta, and not the attack in Cherokee County in which Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54, were killed.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also filed notice that she intends to seek hate crime charges and the death penalty against Long, who is white. The hate crime charges are based on the actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender of the four women killed, the notice says.Georgia’s new hate crimes law does not provide for a stand-alone hate crime. After a person is convicted of an underlying crime, a jury must determine whether it’s a hate crime, which carries an additional penalty.The indictment charges Long with four counts of murder, four counts of felony murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and one count of domestic terrorism, according to online records.The domestic terrorism charge says Long committed a series of illegal acts “which were interrelated by distinguishing characteristics, with the intent to cause serious bodily harm and to kill individuals and groups of individuals, and with the intent to intimidate the civilian population of this state and of its political subdivisions.”Four of the aggravated assault charges have to do with the shootings of the four victims who died. For the fifth, the indictment says Long pointed a gun at another woman, causing her “reasonable apprehension of immediately receiving a violent injury.” The notice of intent to seek hate crimes charges says she was targeted based on her actual or perceived sex and gender.Long was arrested the night of the shootings on murder charges and is being held without bond after waiving an initial court appearance in March in Cherokee County Magistrate Court. A Cherokee County grand jury was scheduled to meet Monday and Tuesday this week, but it was not immediately clear whether prosecutors presented potential charges to the grand jury for the shooting at a spa near suburban Woodstock in which four were killed and one person was wounded.Willis’ decision to seek the death penalty is a departure from her stance during her campaign to be district attorney last year.During a candidate forum last year, Willis answered yes when asked: “Will you commit to refuse to seek the death penalty?”The killings are eligible for the death penalty because each was committed while Long was in the act of committing another capital offense, namely the killings of the victims, the notice of intent says. Each killing was also “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved depravity of mind” and was committed during an act of domestic terrorism, the notice says.Police have said Long shot and killed four people, three of them women and two of Asian descent, at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock just before 5 p.m. on March 16. He also shot and wounded a fifth person, investigators said.He then drove about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south to Atlanta, where he shot and killed three women at Gold Spa before going across the the street to Aromatherapy Spa and fatally shooting another woman, police have said. All of the Atlanta victims were women of Asian descent.After the shootings at the two Atlanta spas, Long got back into his car and headed south on the interstate, police said.Long’s parents called authorities to help after recognizing their son in still images from security video that the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office posted on social media. They provided cellphone information that allowed authorities to track their son to rural Crisp County, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) south of Atlanta.State troopers and sheriff’s deputies spotted his SUV on Interstate 75, and one of them forced Long to spin to a stop by bumping his vehicle. Long then surrendered to authorities.In an initial interview with investigators, Long claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and authorities said he apparently lashed out at businesses he viewed as a temptation. But those statements spurred outrage and widespread skepticism given the locations and that six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.
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Internal Emails Reveal WHO Knew of Sex Abuse Claims in Congo
When Shekinah was working as a nurse’s aide in northeastern Congo in January 2019, she said, she was offered a job from a World Health Organization doctor at double her salary — in exchange for sex. “Given the financial difficulties of my family … I accepted,” said Shekinah, 25, who asked that only her first name be used for fear of repercussions. She said the Canadian doctor, Boubacar Diallo, who often bragged about his connections to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made the same proposition to several of her friends. When a staffer and three Ebola experts working in Congo informed WHO management about sex abuse concerns regarding Diallo, they were told not to take the matter further, The Associated Press has found. WHO has been facing widespread public allegations of systemic abuse of women by unnamed staffers, to which Tedros declared outrage and emergencies director Dr. Michael Ryan said, “We have no more information than you have.” However, an AP investigation has now found that despite its public denial of knowledge, senior WHO management wasn’t only informed of alleged sexual misconduct in 2019 but was asked how to handle it. The AP has also for the first time tracked down the names of two doctors accused of sexual misconduct, Diallo and Dr. Jean-Paul Ngandu, both of whom were reported to WHO. FILE – Anifa holds her phone, displaying a photo of former World Health Organization doctor Boubacar Diallo, of Canada, during an interview in the eastern Congo town of Goma, March 5, 2021.Ngandu was accused by a young woman of impregnating her. In a notarized contract obtained by the AP, two WHO staffers, including a manager, signed as witnesses to an agreement for Ngandu to pay the young woman, cover her health costs and buy her land. The deal was made “to protect the integrity and reputation” of WHO, Ngandu said. When reached by the AP, both Diallo and Ngandu denied wrongdoing. The investigation was based on interviews with dozens of WHO staffers, Ebola officials in Congo, private emails, legal documents and recordings of internal meetings obtained by the AP. Eight top officials privately acknowledged WHO failed to effectively tackle sex abuse during the Ebola outbreak, according to emails, recordings of internal meetings, legal documents and interviews with dozens of aid workers and WHO staffers. WHO declined to comment on any specific sex abuse allegations or how they were managed and said it had taken steps to address the problem. “We are aware that more work is needed to achieve our vision of emergency operations that serve the vulnerable while protecting them from all forms of abuse,” WHO spokeswoman Marcia Poole said in an email. WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan acknowledged in internal meetings that sexual abuse problems during the agency’s outbreak responses were unlikely to be exceptional. “You can’t just pin this and say you have one field operation that went badly wrong,” he said. “This is in some sense the tip of an iceberg.” As WHO struggled to control spiraling Ebola cases in Congo in early 2019, emergency operations manager Dr. Michel Yao received an email with the subject line: “Private. Chat.” “We cannot afford to have people tarnishing the sweat and effort of individuals sacrificing themselves thru (sic) inappropriate sexual harassment and bullying,” the staffer wrote, saying he was concerned about Diallo. Yao responded that the matter would be handled, but the staffer said his concerns were dismissed. An internal WHO investigation failed to corroborate the charges, but those who complained about Diallo were not interviewed. FILE – World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrives by helicopter at Ruhenda airport in Butembo, eastern Congo, June 15, 2019.Diallo was described as a charismatic manager with connections to WHO’s senior leaders, including director-general Tedros. On WHO’s website, Tedros, Yao and Diallo are pictured smiling and bumping elbows during one of Tedros’ 14 trips to Congo during the outbreak. Diallo rejected claims of sexual misconduct. “I have never offered a woman a job in exchange for sex and I have never sexually harassed a woman in my life,” he told the AP. In April 2019, Yao received another email detailing more alleged sexual misconduct, this time about the other doctor the AP tracked down, Ngandu. “I hereby inform you that we have a colleague who has impregnated a girl from Beni,” outbreak manager Mory Keita wrote to Yao. Keita told Yao a young woman and her aunt had come to Beni’s Hotel Okapi looking for WHO managers, with two armed police officers. The woman’s aunt said the young woman had been having an affair with Ngandu and was now pregnant. They asked WHO to cover the cost of the woman’s medical costs and for money to buy land, “given that Dr. Jean-Paul will abandon the girl and she will be obliged to raise her child alone.” Keita said he felt that Yao should be informed “so that you would give us your directions for how to better manage this problem.” One week after the email was sent, Ngandu signed a notarized contract confirming he would pay the young woman $100 a month until her baby was born, cover her pregnancy costs and buy her a plot of land. Keita and Achile Mboko, a WHO human resources staffer, signed as witnesses. Ngandu said he wasn’t the father of the baby and the deal was a “private matter.” He said he agreed to it after his WHO colleagues, including Keita, “advised me to settle out of court to avoid sullying the reputation of the organization and myself.” The young woman declined to talk to the AP. It is unclear if Yao reported the abuse allegations to his superiors, as required by WHO protocol. He has since been promoted to be director of WHO Geneva’s Strategic Health Operations Department. On October 15, Tedros appointed an independent panel to investigate sex abuse during the Ebola outbreak in Congo; no findings are expected until the end of August. At a town hall meeting in November, Ryan acknowledged sex abuse issues had been “neglected” for years. Back in Congo, Shekinah said she “couldn’t count how many times” she had slept with WHO’s Diallo after accepting a job for which she was not qualified. “I wanted to quit. But because of my financial problems, I endured it,” she said. Even after they separated, Shekinah said he continued to message her, asking her to send him nude pictures. Diallo should be punished “for his sexual abuse of all those girls in Beni as a lesson to these international organizations that this should not happen again,” she said. “I would like justice to be done.”
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US Motorists Urged Not to Panic at Pumps
Amid regional shortages and panic-buying of gasoline, the U.S. government is seeking to reassure motorists that fuel will be fully flowing again within days through a critical pipeline shut down after a Russian cyberattack. The secretaries of energy and homeland security were at the White House podium Tuesday afternoon attempting to calm concerns and issue a warning amid predictions gas prices are heading to heights not seen in years. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged that several state governors are concerned about “gas stations running out of fuel.” The states of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia are seeing the largest impact from the shutdown of the pipeline that runs nearly 9,000 kilometers, she told reporters. A warning sign is posted along the path of the Colonial Pipeline in Garnet Valley, Pa., May 10, 2021.Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, on Tuesday declared a A gasoline station posts signage saying that it has run out of unleaded and mid-grade fuel and has a $20 limit on super, at the pump in Atlanta, May 11, 2021.The company acted responsibly, according to Granholm, by halting the pipeline’s operation “so the ransomware wouldn’t spread.” The U.S. government and states are taking a number of temporary actions and considering others to alleviate the supply crunch of gasoline and jet fuel. Some fuel taxes are being suspended. Emergency fuel-air-emissions waivers have been issued. Allowing foreign ships to transport fuel is being evaluated, which would require an exemption to the Jones Act, which requires all goods shuttled between domestic ports to be carried on American ships. Some airlines are flying in fuel for their own use. Railroads may also be requested to carry gasoline. “There are no easy solutions,” responded Granholm when asked by VOA about the use of the rails to do that. “Pipe is the best way to go.” The attack on the pipeline company’s computers was designed to cripple its operations until an undisclosed amount of ransom is paid. Criminal hackers usually request ransom in Bitcoin cryptocurrency, which makes it impossible to trace the recipient. Neither government officials nor the company have commented on whether Colonial Pipeline has paid any ransom. A Colonial Pipeline station is seen in Smyrna, Ga., near Atlanta, May 11, 2021.”There’s no company too small to suffer a ransomware attack,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, told White House reporters. “We are seeing increasingly small- and medium-sized businesses suffer a ransomware attack.” A Russia-based cyber-criminal group, known as Darkside, has claimed responsibility for the Colonial Pipeline attack and has said in a statement it is after only money and was not intending to cause political, economic or social disruption. Moscow is not to blame, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Russia has nothing to do with these hacker attacks, nor with the previous hacker attacks,” Peskov told reporters. “We categorically reject any accusation against us.” Peskov’s counterpart at the White House was asked on Tuesday about suspected Russian government involvement. Given that the Federal Bureau of Investigation attributes the ransomware attack to Russian soil, “that country has a responsibility to act responsibly,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “We’ll wait for our intelligence community to make a full assessment before we have more to convey about it.”
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Somalia’s Low Vaccination Rate Attributed to Ramadan, Cultural Myths
Somalia received 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine in March, but health officials say less than half the doses have been used. Authorities attribute the slow uptake to fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and misinformation about the vaccine itself. Mohamed Kahiye reports from Somalia’s capital. Camera: Mohamed Rage
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75 Years On, World War II Leningrad Battle Is Still Felt
Among the many stories of World War Two, Nazi Germany’s Siege of Leningrad — the Soviet city now known as Russia’s Saint Petersburg — stands among the most harrowing. It also helped shape the world we live in today, as Charles Maynes reports for VOA, from St. Petersburg.Camera: Ricardo Marquina Montañana
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South Sudan President Dissolves Assembly, Reconstitutes Parliament Per Peace Deal
South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Monday reconstituted the National Legislative Assembly, one day after he dissolved the 400-member parliament in accordance with the revitalized peace agreement.The new parliament must now accommodate 550 members, including additional lawmakers from the formerly warring parties of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In Government (SPLM-IG), the SPLM-In Opposition (SPLM-IO), the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), Other Opposition Parties (OPP), and Former Detainees.The former transitional government nominated 332 members, the SPLM-IO nominated 128, the SSOA got 50, the OPP got 30, and the Former Detainees nominated 10.Lam Akol, head of the National Democratic Movement, a member of the umbrella opposition group South Sudan Opposition Alliance, said the parliament should have been reconstituted last year under the peace agreement, noting opposition parties submitted their nominations several months ago but Kiir’s ruling SPLM-IG party delayed the process because they had not nominated their members.Akol told South Sudan in Focus that Kiir dissolved parliament now in order to impress U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan Ambassador Donald Booth and UK Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan Ambassador Robert Fairweather, both of whom arrived in Juba on Saturday.“We are now implementing the activities of the pre-transitional period rather than implementing the activities of the transitional period, so 18 months have gone and we are still talking of formation of government — what we should have done about 15 months before that. There is no political will to implement the agreement, and the time is ticking and they were talking about extending the transitional period,” said Akol.Responding to the agreement’s obligations at this late date is not helpful, according to James Okuk, a senior research fellow at the Juba-based Center for Strategic Policy Studies. Okuk is not optimistic about the prospects of an oversized parliament working in the interests of the South Sudanese people, noting that the lawmakers are appointed, not elected, and that most of them are holdovers.FILE – Civilians celebrate the signing of peace agreement between the Sudan’s transitional government and revolutionary movements to end decades-old conflict, in Juba, South Sudan, Oct. 3, 2020.“We know their attitudes and we know their behaviors. The best they are going to tax from their country is demanding for loans — you may call it car loans or also for medical bills — and this will really consume a lot of money from the government, given the fact that this parliament has been expanded to 550 members,” Okuk told South Sudan in Focus.Okuk said if the parliament wants to be taken seriously, it must impeach ministers and fire other top officials “who do not respect public property and who do not respect the laws in the country,” adding, “that’s the only time I will say we have a real parliament.”Although the parties to the peace deal took a long time to reconstitute parliament, Juba resident Oliver Joseph said he is glad it finally happened. “We need those appointed to look at how we can co-exist again. They should raise up those issues in parliament and how we can come up with the strategies to calm the situation in those different areas. Second of all, we need to look at education as a whole, we need to add more budget [dollars] into the education system,” Joseph told South Sudan in Focus.Data Gordon, an activist with the OKAY Foundation, a nonprofit that deals with policy advocacy, said he wants the new parliament to take up policy decisions that were left hanging by the previous parliament.“There is also the youth policy, the youth enterprise development fund, the nurses and midwifery policy, as well as the HIV/AIDs policy because this conflict has made interventions in most of these areas a nightmare, so if they can focus on these it’s very important. Secondly, let’s have a national budget because for almost a year or so the country is running not on a national budget,” Gordon told South Sudan in Focus.Analysts have said the lack of a functioning legislature over the past several months has made it nearly impossible for lawmakers to pass laws or approve sweeping reforms stipulated in the revitalized peace agreement.
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China Pushes Back Over Scrutiny of Uyghur Rights at UN Event
China is urging U.N. member states not to attend a Wednesday meeting on the human rights of ethnic Uyghur Muslims that several Western countries and rights groups are hosting, calling it politically motivated and denying there is any problem in Xinjiang.“The current situation in Xinjiang is at its best in history with stability, rapid economic development and harmonious co-existence among people of all ethnic groups,” China’s U.N. mission said in a statement, speaking about the autonomous region in northwestern China where Uyghurs and several other ethnically Turkic Muslim minority groups live. “The U.S. and other co-sponsors are obsessed with fabricating lies and plotting to use Xinjiang-related issues to contain China and create [a] mess in China.”The Chinese mission also called for the virtual event at the United Nations to be canceled, saying it interferes with China’s internal affairs.Demonstrators hold a protest in front of the State Department to urge the U.S. and the international community to take action against China’s treatment of the Uyghur people, May 5, 2021.For years, Beijing has come under strong international criticism from the West and many Muslims for its treatment of Uyghurs, which includes widespread government surveillance and abuses including forced birth control. Human rights groups say China has sent more than a million Uyghurs to detention camps. China says the compounds are “vocational education centers” intended to stop the spread of religious extremism and terrorist attacks.Critics of the policy say the measures are aimed at destroying Uyghur identity.The United States, along with several other Western nations, has described the treatment of the Uyghur population as genocide. Washington imposed sanctions on several Beijing officials in March, and the European Union followed suit. The U.S. also has restricted trade with Xinjiang and sanctioned some Chinese companies accused of using Uyghurs as forced labor.Wednesday’s meeting is co-sponsored by Britain, the U.S. and Germany, as well as several groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and the World Uyghur Congress.According to the event invitation, it is intended to bring together participants to “discuss how the U.N. system, member states and civil society can support and advocate for the human rights of members of ethnic Turkic communities in Xinjiang.”British Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward poses for a photo, Jan. 5, 2021, in New York.“The situation in Xinjiang is one of the gravest human rights crises of our time,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said. “At the U.N., we are asking for immediate access to Xinjiang for the U.N. high commissioner for Human Rights.”The high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has been pressing Beijing to allow her to visit Xinjiang for some time. In late February, the Chinese government said it had invited her, but no visit has materialized.”China may not want more scrutiny of its appalling human rights abuses in Xinjiang but that’s exactly what this event will bring,” HRW’s U.N. Director, Louis Charbonneau, told VOA. “Beijing has been trying for years to bully governments into silence but that strategy’s failed miserably, as more and states step forward to voice horror and revulsion at China’s crimes against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.”China’s 2010 census put the total population of Uyghurs at just over 10 million, less than 1% of China’s total population. They are the largest ethnic group in the autonomous region of Xinjiang.
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Biden Administration Announces New Major Wind Energy Project
The Biden administration announced on Tuesday the approval of a plan to build the first U.S. large-scale offshore wind project. The project, off the coast of the northeastern state of Massachusetts, is designed to generate 800 megawatts of power.A joint statement from the U.S. Interior and Commerce departments said the project, known as Vineyard Wind, will be built about 22 kilometers to the south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands. The administration says the project will create 3,600 jobs and, when completed, will feature up to 84 wind turbines that will provide enough power for 400,000 homes and businesses. Construction is scheduled to begin later this year, with the wind farm possibly becoming operational in 2023. In a statement, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the project “demonstrates that we can fight the climate crisis, while creating high-paying jobs and strengthening our competitiveness at home and abroad.” Environmental groups and clean power advocates are applauding the announcement, and the project will help the administration meet its goal of generating 30 gigawatts of energy from offshore wind by 2030.But some commercial fishing groups on the U.S. East Coast have argued that offshore wind farms could make it difficult to harvest seafood such as fish, scallops and lobsters. Others have complained wind farms block ocean views. The Associated Press reports an earlier wind project proposed for the area, Cape Wind, had been scrapped after widespread opposition saying it would have been too close to shore.
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Biden Pushing New Ways to Boost Vaccine Numbers
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced new ways to help more Americans get vaccinated against the coronavirus pandemic. The White House said that as Biden met with a bipartisan group of six U.S. governors, he laid out plans for the ride-sharing companies Lyft and Uber to provide free rides to and from vaccination sites for anyone getting vaccinated by July 4. The date is the country’s annual Independence Day holiday and the day Biden has set as the goal for 70% of adult Americans to have received at least one inoculation shot. The figure now stands at 58%. Biden also announced that some of the country’s largest community colleges will serve as vaccination sites for students, staff and local communities throughout May and June. The U.S. government is also making funding immediately available for states to pay for phone banking and door-to-door canvassing to urge people to get vaccinated, and pop-up vaccination sites in workplaces and churches. Biden’s actions come as the pace of vaccinations has fallen in the U.S. to about 2.1 million shots a day, down from more than 3 million a few weeks ago. About a fifth of Americans say they either have no intention of getting a shot or remain skeptics for one reason or another. The U.S. has recorded 582,000 coronavirus deaths and 32.7 million cases, more than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University. But the number of new cases has fallen sharply as more Americans get vaccinated.
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Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Presents Government Agenda
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth delivered the official Opening of Parliament speech Tuesday, her first ceremonial appearance since the death of her husband, Prince Philip.The speech, traditionally a large-scale event full of pageantry in which the queen opens the new parliament, was scaled back considerably due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the queen wearing a day dress instead of the usual robes and crown.The queen presented Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agenda, focusing on economic recovery and development in a post-pandemic Britain. Johnson’s Conservative majority party made gains in regional elections late last week and is expected to press that advantage by pushing through reforms sidelined by the pandemic in the past year. The queen outlined several bills the government hopes to pass during the next year on everything from job creation and strengthening the National Health Service to stripping back post-Brexit bureaucracy.In a speech prepared by Johnson’s cabinet the queen said, “My government’s priority is to deliver a national recovery from the pandemic that makes the United Kingdom stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before.”The queen said the government will balance opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses and economic growth and addressing the impact of the pandemic on public services.”Much of Tuesday’s “Queen’s Speech” comprised policies and proposals already offered, prompting the opposition Labour Party to challenge the government to turn its “rhetoric into reality.”While Johnson solidified his majority in parliament, last week’s elections also brought him problems in Scotland. There, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ruling party won a pro-independence vote majority, and she told him Saturday that is not a question of “if, but when” Scotland will hold another referendum on independence from Britain.
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Jailed Cameroonian Convict Charged With Impersonating African Presidents, Fraud
Cameroonian convict Jacques Calvin Eyafa has been bound to a wheelchair at the Yaoundé maximum security prison for the past two years. But authorities say that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to steal money from people over the phone.Police in Cameroon say they have charged Eyafa with impersonating African presidents over the phone to defraud victims, including the government of Niger.
Judicial police officer Vincent De Paul Meva says Eyafa is accused of using a smuggled mobile phone to impersonate officials, including Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.
Meva said Eyafa’s skills are so good, he managed to con Niger’s embassy in Cameroon last year out of an undisclosed sum of money before he was caught.
Meva said in March 2020, the office of the president of the republic of Cameroon reported that someone was impersonating Biya and his cabinet director, Mvondo Ayollo. He said the impostor called Niger’s then-President Mahamadou Issoufou on the phone several times. He said Issoufou alerted Biya of the suspicious calls and Biya asked the police to open investigations and track the calls.
Meva said the search led to the prison and Eyafa, who is serving a three-year sentence for running a fake employment agency that promised jobs for a fee.
Police say Eyafa mimicked Biya’s voice in calls where he vowed to rally Nigeriens in Cameroon to vote for Issoufou in December’s election – for a price.
Niger’s embassy in Yaoundé confirmed that people they believed were Biya and other state officials called them and made some inquiries but declined to go into detail.
Meva said Eyafa got the embassy to give him the personal telephone number of Niger’s President Issoufou.
He said Eyafa is suspected of cheating or attempting to cheat several French-speaking African leaders, international aid groups, and private companies.
Meva would not disclose the amount of money Eyafa allegedly received by mobile money transfer from Niger or name any other victims.
Catherine Penda, who owns a road construction company called Construct Cameroon, said Eyafa duped her out of what she called a “huge amount of money.”
She said she never for a second suspected that Eyafa was an impostor. Penda said she doesn’t want to disclose the amount of money Eyafa extorted after promising to give her contracts to build roads in Cameroon. But she said Eyafa did not act alone and pleads with Cameroon’s and Niger’s police to track his network, which according to her is well organized.
Cameroon police say they are investigating a network of impostors, allegedly led by Eyafa, who impersonate and cheat high-ranking state officials and investors in central African states.
Germain Ntono Tsimi, a lecturer of law at the University of Yaounde, said Eyafa could get up to 40 more years in prison if found guilty.
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Cameroon Military Says Rebels Turning to IEDs as Numbers Fall
Cameroon authorities say anglophone separatists have been increasing their use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which killed 24 people in the past two weeks. Cameroon’s military held an emergency meeting on the issue Monday.Cameroon’s Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo held two emergency meetings in the past week over the increasing use of improvised explosive devices in the country’s west.After the meeting on Monday, Assomo said IEDs planted by anglophone separatists were resulting in almost daily casualties.He says as the number of separatist fighters is reducing, the few groups of rebels remaining have resorted to IEDs to fight government troops. Assomo says the military has destroyed many separatist camps, weapons, and fighters, while some have surrendered. He says the military seizes or destroys IEDs on a daily basis, adding that Cameroon’s troops will never stop protecting civilians.Anglophone rebels on social media posts deny that their numbers are dropping and say the IEDs are targeted at the military, to chase them from the western regions. But, Assomo said at least 24 troops and civilians were killed by IEDs within the past two weeks.Twenty-four-year-old University of Yaoundé student Chris Verla says the public bus he was riding Sunday from the northwest town of Ndop to Yaounde hit an IED. Verla says three passengers died on the spot while he and four others were severely injured. “Some of us have amputated hands and legs. We have now become beggars,” said Verla. “We can no longer take care of our families because of these bombs, so we are begging that whoever is doing it should stop. We have suffered a lot because of this crisis. We do not want to be victims of this crisis.”Cameroon’s military confirmed the Sunday bombing took place near Sabga village and said troops detonated four other IEDs in the area. Separatists via WhatsApp and Facebook claimed responsibility for the attack, but said it was targeted at the military. Cameroons Rights Group activist Clifford Akomone condemned the rebels’ use of IEDs on roads used by civilians. “It is a strategy used by separatist fighters to oust the military from the territory which they claim to be theirs, but their method is disturbing the civilians,” said Akomone. “Many people abandon their properties just because the area is uncomfortable for them.”Defense Minister Assomo on Monday said Cameroon is deploying special troops to the western regions to detect and destroy IEDs. Cameroon’s anglophone separatists have been fighting since 2017 to create a English-state from the French-speaking majority country.Rights groups have blamed both the rebels and government troops for atrocities, including against civilians. The UN says the conflict has left more than 3,000 people dead and 600,000 displaced.
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European Union Seeks to Reopen Travel with Vaccination Pass
As COVID-19 infection rates begin to drop in the region, European Union ministers met in Brussels Tuesday in hopes of reaching an agreement on a “green certificate” travel pass designed to make it easier for fully vaccinated tourists to travel in the continent in time for the summer vacation season.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, first suggested the plan earlier this year, patterned after the so-called “Green Pass” issued in Israel that allows vaccinated people access to certain venues or events.
In Europe, the commission suggested the certificates would allow EU residents who can prove they have been vaccinated, as well as those who tested negative for the virus or have proof they recovered from it, to move freely around the continent.
The EU parliament wants the COVID-19 certificates to allow easy travel, without member states imposing extra restrictions on certificate holders such as quarantines, tests or self-isolation measures. But border control is something member nations see as a sovereign right, leaving the initiative with hurdles to overcome.
Speaking to reporters before their meeting, German Europe Minister Michael Roth said solving the issue is “of the utmost importance.” He said, “This is not just important for a few. It is important for all of us because it’s a symbol that means we are able to act together and to send a clear signal for freedom of movement and for mobility in the European Union.”
Roths’s French counterpart, Clement Beaune, expressed confidence a solution can be reached on the travel issue. He said, though, EU coordination in the fight against COVID-19 is essential before summer begins.
The European Commission predicts about 70 percent of the EU adult population will be vaccinated by the end of the summer. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reports as of Tuesday, almost 32 percent of adults in the EU have received at least one dose of vaccine.
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US Professor Who Found Stereotypes Influence Use of Deadly Force Inspires Police Reforms
Long before police brutality emerged as a dominant public issue in the United States, Cynthia Lee, a George Washington University professor and an expert on race and self-defense, devoted much of her research to deadly police shootings of unarmed Black men and women. In a People hold up signs, including one with an image of George Floyd, outside the courthouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 20, 2021, after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the death of Floyd.In Delaware, members of the Law Enforcement Accountability Task Force have also expressed interest in her model, Lee said. While Washington, Virginia and Connecticut account for only a handful of the more than 1,000 deadly police shootings a year in the U.S., reform advocates hope that these changes will help rein in police use of excessive force. The controversy over police use of force is front and center on Capitol Hill, where Senate Democrats and Republicans are fighting over House-passed legislation that would end qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects individual police officers from lawsuits for misconduct. In March, the House approved the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that would, among other things, ban the use of chokeholds, strengthen federal civil rights laws and end qualified immunity. Lee is hoping that her model statute finds its way into the national debate. “It’s the kind of change we need because we need to make sure the police officers are treating people fairly and with respect and that people are not getting unnecessarily hurt or killed by the use of force,” said Democratic Virginia state Senator John Bell, an early supporter of Lee’s proposal. Criticism of model statute Critics say the changes force juries to second-guess police officers’ split-second decisions on the use of deadly force, whether to fire a gun or wrestle a suspect to the ground or subdue him or her in some other life-threatening hold. “They changed the law to say, ‘What would a civilian who looks at the use of force say about whether it was reasonable or not,'” said John Krupinsky, president of the Connecticut State Fraternal Order of Police. Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who has argued that a dearth of laws has left police to police themselves, praised Lee’s proposed reform. “We need to pass statutes to tell the police specifically how it is that they should police, and her statute is an effort to do that,” he said. While other states such as California, Colorado and Maryland, spurred by the Black Lives Matter protest movement, have enacted strict police use-of-force standards in the past couple of years, none stemmed from the work of Lee. “Of course, you always hope that your research will have real-world impact,” Lee told VOA. “I wanted to inform discussions about policing, but I never imagined that my work would actually become law in any state, let alone two states and the District of Columbia.” Given that juries largely remain sympathetic to police officers, Lee’s model statute is unlikely to lead to a sharp increase in convictions. Lee said it could have a deterrent effect, however, encouraging police officers to “act with more care” before using deadly force. But changing police culture is likely to take time. The Washington statute has yet to be made permanent. The Virginia legislation went into effect March 1, while the Connecticut statute doesn’t take effect until next year. Demonstrators blocking Public Square in Cleveland during a protest over the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Nov. 25, 2014.But Lee said that a jury relying on her model statue could reach a different conclusion. The jury would note that by driving too closely to Rice, the officers put themselves in a vulnerable position, increasing the risk of using deadly force to protect themselves. Had they parked their car further away from the scene, they could have talked to the boy and convinced him to drop his gun, instead of “immediately firing on him.” Lee’s model is hardly a recipe for radical change. To critics on the left, it doesn’t go far enough. Still, it took nothing short of Floyd’s death beneath the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin — and an enthusiastic outreach effort by Lee’s students — for legislators to take a close look at her model statute. In January 2020, a former student, then working for District of Columbia Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, shared Lee’s model statute with her boss. But it wasn’t until after Floyd’s death that Lee learned that McDuffie had incorporated her measure into a use-of-force bill. Within days, the council unanimously adopted the statute as part of emergency police and justice reform legislation. “I was floored when I found out that D.C. had enacted police reform legislation that included my model statute,” Lee said. But the council took her statute one step further, she said. It held that police officers may use deadly force only after “all other options have been exhausted.” “This was a great addition to my model statute,” Lee said. Gregg Pemberton, chairman of the D.C. Police Union, said many of the provisions in the district legislation had been enacted by the Metropolitan Police Department years ago. “The MPD does not have issues with racial profiling or police brutality,” Pemberton said.
Less than a month after the District of Columbia adopted her model statute, an official in Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s office emailed Lee to inform her about proposed changes to the state’s use of deadly force statute based on her model legislation. “I was surprised and pleased to learn that Connecticut was looking into adopting key provisions from my model statute,” Lee said. In late July, Lamont, a Democrat, signed the bill into law, with an effective date of April 1. Shortly before the bill was to take effect, however, Lamont, under pressure from law enforcement groups, signed a bill delaying the effective date until January 1, 2022. Around the time Connecticut lawmakers were debating changing the state’s use-of-force standards last year, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, called a special session of the state general assembly to meet on August 18 to pass criminal justice and policing reform. At that time Virginia was one of nine states that didn’t have a use-of-force statute. So Lee drafted a model statute for Virginia, including the District of Columbia requirement that an officer exhaust all other options before using deadly force. She had her research assistant send the document to about a dozen lawmakers. In October, Northam signed into law police reform legislation sponsored by state Senator Mamie Locke. It went into effect March 1. Unlike in Washington D.C. and Connecticut, law enforcement agencies were relatively open to the proposed changes. Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said the group worked with state lawmakers “to make sure that there was a standard in there that allowed a law enforcement officer to protect his or her own life.”
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Former Top EU Official Calls for Immigration Halt
Former top European Union official Michel Barnier, who led the bloc’s fraught Brexit negotiations, says immigration to France should stop for three to five years and the Schengen system of free movement between member states needs reexamination. The French politician, who according to some French media outlets is considering challenging Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential election, says immigration in the EU is “not working” and that the bloc’s external borders have become a “sieve.” FILE – Kurdish migrants gather to organize their attempt to cross the French border in Claviere, Susa Valley, Alps Region, north-western Italy, Apr. 22, 2021.His remarks, made to a French television station Tuesday, are likely to be seized on by nationalist populists in central and southern European countries that have been increasingly critical of the Schengen system of free movement between member states on the grounds that the bloc’s external borders are porous. The former French foreign minister told France Television, “I try to look at the problems as they are, in the way the French people live them every day and to find solutions and I think that effectively we need to take some time over three to five years and suspend immigration.” He added: “I’m not talking about students, I’m not talking about refugees who must be treated with humanity and strength, but we need to rebuild the whole process. We need to talk to our neighbors, about the Schengen Agreement, we possibly need to put in stricter border controls.” FILE – A street sign marks the beginning of Schengen zone, Luxembourg, Jan. 27, 2016.He said that it might be necessary to renegotiate Schengen rules and reintroduce cross-border controls for EU citizens. Central European populist leaders, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have long railed against Schengen, arguing that the absence of strict enforcement of the EU’s external borders has been facilitating a migration crisis.Orban and other Central European populists have declined to participate in EU migrant-burden sharing plan for asylum seekers, largely from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, who have landed on the coasts of southern Europe to be redistributed across the bloc.FILE – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Italy’s League party leader Matteo Salvini pose for a picture after a news conference following their meeting in Budapest, Hungary, Apr. 1, 2021.“If you are willing to repatriate immigrants, we will try to help with repatriation,” Orban said at one summit. “Shared distribution, not. Shared repatriation would be very good.” He rejected the idea migration can lead to cultural enrichment, arguing integration fails and warned migration brings “public safety problems.” Barnier, in his Tuesday comments, also touched on security concerns, saying there are “links” between immigration and “terrorist networks that infiltrate migrational flows.” He cited human trafficking as a major concern, too. The end of bordless travel? The free movement Schengen zone is seen by Europhiles and those backing deeper EU political and economic integration as crucial. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has argued that the bloc’s “linchpin” is a “fully functioning Schengen.” Barnier, too, was a strong advocate of Schengen and during Brexit negotiations he emphasized that the single market’s “four freedoms” — free movement of goods, capital and people and the freedom to establish and provide services — are indivisible. “Cherry picking is not an option,” he warned at the start of Brexit negotiations in 2016.His remarks Tuesday prompted lively tweets with the chief foreign correspondent of Britain’s Financial Times noting a Brexit “irony.” “If the EU had allowed much milder restrictions on free movement of people, Brexit would probably never have happened,” he noted. Some commentators suggested French presidential ambitions may be behind Barnier’s skepticism about Schengen. FILE – Migrants and refugees cross the border between Hungary and Austria, near Nickelsdorf, Austria, Sept. 10, 2015.Since leaving the EU bureaucracy in February, the 70-year-old Barnier, a former EU commissioner, has leveled a string of criticisms on how the bloc is functioning and has published a diary of his time as the chief Brexit negotiator. While highly critical of the British government and Britain’s decision to relinquish EU membership, he has warned that, although an “unlikely event,” other member states could decide to quit, saying, “less bureaucracy, more democracy” is needed in Brussels. Last week, he told another French channel, “In Brussels and Paris alike, it is urgent that we demonstrate the added value of the European project. Maybe — and it’s a suggestion I’m making for the upcoming French presidency next year — there will be a need to assess each European competency and policy to see which ones still have an added value and which ones don’t have that anymore. Where competencies ought to be given back to states.” British politician Nigel Farage, a key Brexit figure, joked in response on Twitter that Barnier, who for years has been seen as a europhile hero, is becoming a “euroskeptic.” EU member states broke with Brussels last year over border controls, which they imposed unilaterally because of the pandemic. EU officials told national governments that they shouldn’t close borders or stop the free movement of people within the Schengen zone without group agreement. They were ignored. FILE – German police officers guard a closed bridge at the French-German border at the river Rhine in Kehl, Germany, March 16, 2020. German government allowed only restricted access from France to Germany.Some politicians argued last year that the Schengen system of borderless travel may never be fully restored after the coronavirus has been suppressed or run its course. Luca Zaia, governor of the Veneto region, one of Italy’s worst-hit areas, told reporters last year that Europe’s borderless zone was “disappearing as we speak. Schengen no longer exists,” he said. “It will be remembered only in the history books,” he predicted.
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3 Myanmar Journalists Arrested in Thailand
Three reporters working for a now-banned news broadcaster in Myanmar have been arrested in Thailand on charges of illegally entering the country.
The three journalists work for the Democratic Voice of Burma, an online and broadcast news outlet that was recently shut down by the ruling military junta.
DVB Executive Editor Aye Chan Naing said in a statement the trio was arrested Sunday in the northern city of Chiang Mai, along with two activists. He urged the Thai government not to deport the five people back to Myanmar, saying their lives “will be in serious danger if they were to return.”
Aye Chan also appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
DVB is one of several independent news organizations whose operating licenses was revoked since the military ousted the civilian government on February 1 and detained its civilian leadership, including de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Dozens of reporters have also been arrested.
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