The number of people who suffered a major depressive order worldwide rose 28% in 2020 during the pandemic, to an estimated 246 million cases. And those suffering from anxiety disorders rose 26%. These findings come from a Lancet survey using data from studies collected in North America, Europe and East Asia. As Laurel Bowman reports, the study found women fared worse than men.
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Month: January 2022
Airstrikes in Ethiopia’s Tigray Kill Over 100 Civilians This Year
The U.N. human rights office says at least 108 civilians have been killed and many more injured in several air strikes allegedly carried out by the Ethiopian air force in the country’s northern Tigray region since the start of the new year.
In the past two weeks, air strikes have hit Tigray’s state-owned Technical Vocational Education and Training Institute, a camp for displaced people, a flour mill, a private minibus, and numerous other civilian targets.
U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell says the number of dead and injured is based on information gathered from different sources by colleagues monitoring the situation in Ethiopia.
“The deadliest airstrike so far, which hit the Dedebit Internally Displaced Persons camp on the 7th of January, left at least 56 people dead and 30 others wounded. We have since established that three of those who were critically injured later died in hospital while receiving medical treatment, pushing the death toll from that single strike to at least 59,” she said.
Throssell says monitors continue to receive deeply disturbing reports of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian sites resulting from airstrikes in Tigray.
“We call on the Ethiopian authorities and their allies to ensure the protection of civilians and civilian objects, in line with their obligations under international law. Any attack, including airstrikes should fully respect the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack…Failure to respect the principles of distinction and proportionality could amount to war crimes,” she expressed.
The Ethiopian government has not commented on allegations of responsibility for airstrikes in Tigray.
The United Nations reports tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly two million displaced since the conflict between pro-Ethiopian government forces and Tigrayan forces erupted in November 2020. It says 5.2 million people are in need of life-saving assistance, with 400,000 living in famine-like conditions.
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Cameroon Says Separatists Frustrated by Inability to Disrupt African Football Attack Schools, Civilians
Cameroonian authorities say Anglophone separatists have been trying to disrupt the continent’s top soccer tournament, the Africa Football Cup of Nations, which Cameroon is hosting. The military says rebels have launched small-scale attacks in the towns of Buea and Limbe, which are holding matches. Authorities have also blamed the separatists for the killing of a Cameroonian lawmaker this week.
In a video shared by Cameroon separatist fighters on social media platforms, armed men are seen shooting indiscriminately in the air while ordering about 15 children dressed in school uniforms to strip naked.
In the video, two armed men brandish weapons and threaten to kill any student who attempts to disobey the fighters’ orders. Other voices are heard ordering the students to lie down or be killed. The students plead for their lives to be spared.
Cameroon’s Secondary Education Ministry Friday said the incident happened Thursday near Government High School Buea. Buea is a town in Cameroon’s English-speaking South-West region.
The ministry says 15 students were on their way to school when separatist fighters stopped and assaulted them. None of the students was injured, but their school has been closed since Thursday, the government said.
The military acknowledged Thursday’s attack on students. In a release read over Cameroon state radio, CRTV, military spokesperson Colonel Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo blames separatists for the attack.
Anglophone separatists fighting in Cameroon’s western regions to break away from the majority French-speaking nation have vowed to disrupt the continent’s top soccer tournament in Buea and Limbe.
Buea and Limbe are hosting football fans, players and match officials for group matches for teams from Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, and Tunisia.
The military says it has been in running battles with fighters since the tournament began Sunday ((1/9)).
Twenty-one-year-old University of Buea student Clementine Yaji says many people have been wounded in heavy gunfire and shooting in the outskirts of Buea. He spoke via a messaging app from Buea.
“People have been shot, some wounded. We have been scared because of those gunshots. It is really tense here and students cannot study under such a tense environment so we are pleading with the government to try and see how they will resolve this issue [shooting] in Buea, he spoke via a messaging app from Buea.
The Cameroon military says the separatists have increased attempts to infiltrate Buea and Limbe. The military says separatists are frustrated over their inability to disrupt matches of the Africa Football Cup of Nations.
Capo Daniel is deputy defense chief of the Ambazonia Defense Forces, a rebel group in Cameroon’s western regions.
“One Cameroon military man died in that attack, two others later died in the hospital, bringing a total of three Cameroon [military] casualties during this football tournament. We have also destroyed one armored personnel carrier of the Cameroon military. In addition to this, a Cameroon government school was closed down,” he says.
The military says none of its troops died and none of its equipment was destroyed. Civilians say they saw government troops evacuating the corpse of their colleague after heavy gun battles in Mutengene, a town near Buea.
The military says it has killed several fighters around Limbe and Buea but gives no details.
The military also blames separatists for Tuesday’s killing of an influential lawyer and opposition member of the Senate, the upper house of Parliament.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s killing of Henry Kemende in Bamenda, an English-speaking northwestern town.
Tamfu Richard, a human rights lawyer and member of the Cameroon Bar Council says the association of Cameroon lawyers has asked for investigations to be opened to determine Kemende’s killers.
“This is somebody who has always been seeking for social justice. My heart bleeds sincerely. This is somebody who was an outstanding lawyer within the Cameroon Bar Association, who was outstanding when he went [was elected] to the Senate. It is a shame on those who did that to [killed] him,” Richard says.
The military says two other people were also killed by separatists this week in Bamenda, and three civilians, including two women, were abducted and taken to an unknown destination.
Cameroon’s government and the military this week said attacks have increased in English-speaking western regions since the tournament started, but that English-speaking towns hosting it are safe. The government says troops will protect all civilians and calls on people to cooperate with the military by reporting suspects and strangers in their towns and villages.
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Angolan Migrants Who Fled Drought Start Return Home
Namibian authorities say thousands of Angolans who entered Namibia in the past year to escape drought back home, have been returning amid fresh rains. Authorities this month said at least 18 Angolan infants, whose parents fled hunger, died in Namibia from malnutrition.
The acting health director in the Omusati region of northern Namibia, Dr. Francina Ananias, said most of the Angolan migrants arrived in the country in terrible condition, leading to the deaths of several infants, who had accompanied their mothers in search of food and water.
“We assessed them to find out that they had malnutrition,” said Ananias. “So, we have been giving them formulas that we have so that they can pick up, but unfortunately some of them died.”
The governor of the Omusati region, Erginus Endjala, who oversees the migrants’ safe return to Angola, said the recent rains have encouraged them to return home in order to tend to their fields.
“For the past five years, they did not receive enough rain. It means climate change have really brought severe drought to that part of Angola, that’s now the southern part of Angola,” Endjala Ananias. “When they came you could see from their bodies that they were malnourished and of course, as a result, some of those kids could not survive due to the lack of food and also their mothers did not have enough milk to breastfeed them. That is the reason I think we have recorded that high number of infant mortalities.”
Local journalist Maria Davids spoke to some of the migrants who are being repatriated by the Namibian government to Angola.
“The group were excited to return home, saying they were willing to re-start over and be re-united with their families,” said Davids.
In Namibia and Angola, incidents of hunger, both rural and urban, are increasing. The COVID-19 pandemic, drought and changing weather patterns are reversing gains made in terms of both countries realizing United Nations sustainable development goals.
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EU Condemns Cyberattack on Ukraine, NATO Pledges ‘Enhanced Cyber Cooperation’
European Union officials have condemned Friday’s cyberattack on Ukraine that shut down government and emergency services websites and pledged to use EU resources to assist the nation.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry reported Friday the websites of the country’s cabinet — seven ministries, including the treasury, the national emergency service and the state services, where Ukrainians’ electronic passports and vaccination certificates are stored — were temporarily unavailable Friday as a result of the hack.
The websites contained a message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, saying Ukrainians’ personal data has been leaked into the public domain. The message said, in part, “Be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future.”
Ukraine’s State Service of Communication and Information Protection told the Associated Press there was no evidence personal data has been leaked.
In a statement, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg strongly condemned the attacks, saying the alliance’s cyber experts have been exchanging information with their Ukrainian counterparts on “the current malicious cyber activities.” He said NATO allied experts in the country also are supporting the Ukrainian authorities.
“In the coming days, NATO and Ukraine will sign an agreement on enhanced cyber cooperation, including Ukrainian access to NATO’s malware information sharing platform,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brest, France, EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell issued the “strongest condemnation” of the attack and said an emergency meeting of the EU political committee would be held to discuss how to react. He pledged to “mobilize all our resources to help Ukraine” increase its cyberattack-resistance capability.
When asked if he knew who was behind the attack, Borrell said they are still investigating, noting it is often difficult to trace cyberattacks, though he added “I don’t have any proof, but one can guess …”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia has a long history of such attacks. The incident also follows weeks of apparently failed diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions on the border with Russia and Ukraine where Moscow has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops and equipment, raising fears of an imminent invasion.
Russia insists the troops are there for its own protection, but is demanding NATO provide guarantees it will stop its eastward expansion, beginning with not allowing Ukraine to join the alliance, a move Moscow perceives as a threat. NATO has repeatedly rejected that request, saying Russia has no veto over NATO membership.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Masks Rules Get Tighter in Europe in Winter’s COVID-19 Wave
To mask or not to mask is a question Italy settled early in the COVID-19 outbreak with a vigorous “yes.” Now the onetime epicenter of the pandemic in Europe hopes even stricter mask rules will help it beat the latest infection surge.
Other countries are taking similar action as the more transmissible — yet, apparently, less virulent — omicron variant spreads through the continent.
With Italy’s hospital ICUs rapidly filling with mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, the government announced on Christmas Eve that FFP2 masks — which offer users more protection than cloth or surgical masks — must be worn on public transport, including planes, trains, ferries and subways.
That’s even though all passengers in Italy, as of this week, must be vaccinated or recently recovered from COVID-19. FFP2s also must now be worn at theaters, cinemas and sports events, indoors or out, and can’t be removed even for their wearers to eat or drink.
Italy re-introduced an outdoor mask mandate. It had never lifted its indoor mandate — even when infections sharply dropped in the summer.
On a chilly morning in Rome this week, Lillo D’Amico, 84, sported a wool cap and white FFP2 as he bought a newspaper at his neighborhood newsstand.
“(Masks) cost little money, they cost you a small sacrifice,” he said. “When you do the math, it costs far less than hospitalization.”
When he sees someone from the unmasked minority walking by, he keeps a distance. “They see (masks) as an affront to their freedom,” D’Amico said, shrugging.
Spain reinstated its outdoor mask rule on Christmas Eve. After the 14-day contagion rate soared to 2,722 new infections per 100,000 people by the end of last week — from 40 per 100,000 in mid-October — Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was asked whether the outdoor mask mandate was helping.
“Of course, it is. It’s not me saying it. It’s science itself saying it because (it’s) a virus that is contracted when one exhales,” Sanchez said.
Portugal brought masks back at the end of November, after having largely dropped the requirement when it hit its goal of vaccinating 86% of the population.
Greece has also restored its outdoor mask mandate, while requiring an FFP2 or double surgical mask on public transport and in indoor public spaces.
This week the Dutch government’s outbreak management team recommended a mask mandate for people over 13 in busy public indoor areas such as restaurants, museums and theaters, and for spectators at indoor sports events. Those places are currently closed under a lockdown until at least Friday.
In France, the outdoor mask mandate was partially re-instated in December in many cities, including Paris. The age for children to start wearing masks in public places was lowered to 6 from 11.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer announced last week that people must wear FFP2 masks outdoors if they can’t keep at least 2 meters apart.
In Italy, with more than 2 million people currently positive for the virus in a nation of 60 million and workplace absences curtailing train and bus runs, the government also sees masks as a way to let society more fully function.
People with booster shots or recent second vaccine doses can now avoid quarantine after coming into contact with an infected person if they wear a FFP2 mask for 10 days.
The government has ordered shops to make FFP masks available for 85 U.S. cents. In the pandemic’s first year, FFP2s cost up to $11.50 — whenever they could be found.
Italians wear them in a palette of colors. The father of a baby baptized this week by Pope Francis in the Sistine Chapel wore one in burgundy, with matching tie and jacket pocket square. But the pontiff, who has practically shunned a mask in public, was maskless.
On Monday, Vatican City State mandated FFP2s in all indoor places. The tiny, walled independent state across the Tiber from the heart of Rome also stipulated that Vatican employees can go to work without quarantining after coming into contact with someone testing positive if, in addition to being fully vaccinated or having received a booster shot, they wear FFP2s.
Francis did appear to be wearing a FFP2 when, startling shoppers in Rome on Tuesday evening, he emerged from a music store near the Pantheon before being driven back to the Vatican.
In Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has focused on vaccination, masks have never been required outdoors.
This month, though, the government said secondary school students should wear face coverings in class. But Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that rule wouldn’t apply “for a day longer than necessary.”
When the British government lifted pandemic restrictions in July 2021, turning mask-wearing from a requirement to a suggestion, mask use fell markedly.
Nino Cartabellotta, president of the Bologna-based GIMBE foundation, which monitors health care in Italy, says Britain points to what can happen when measures like mask-wearing aren’t valued.
“The situation in the U.K, showed that use of vaccination alone wasn’t enough” to get ahead of the pandemic, even though Britain was one of the first countries to begin vaccination, he said in a video interview.
your ad hereDutch King Won’t Use Carriage Criticized for Colonial Image
The Dutch king ruled out Thursday using, for now at least, the royal family’s Golden Carriage, one side of which bears a painting that critics say glorifies the Netherlands’ colonial past, including its role in the global slave trade.
The announcement was an acknowledgement of the heated debate about the carriage as the Netherlands reckons with the grim sides of its history as a 17th-century colonial superpower, including Dutch merchants making vast fortunes from slaves.
“The Golden Carriage will only be able to drive again when the Netherlands is ready and that is not the case now,” King Willem-Alexander said in a video message.
One side of the vehicle is decorated with a painting called “Tribute from the Colonies” that shows Black and Asian people, one of them kneeling, offering goods to a seated young white woman who symbolizes the Netherlands.
The carriage is currently on display in an Amsterdam museum following a lengthy restoration. In the past it has been used to carry Dutch monarchs through the streets of The Hague to the state opening of Parliament each September.
“There is no point in condemning and disqualifying what has happened through the lens of our time,” the king said. “Simply banning historical objects and symbols is certainly not a solution either. Instead, a concerted effort is needed that goes deeper and takes longer. An effort that unites us instead of divides us.”
Anti-racism activist and co-founder of The Black Archives in Amsterdam, Mitchell Esajas, called the king’s statement “a good sign,” but also the “bare minimum” the monarch could have said.
“He says the past should not be looked at from the perspective and values of the present … and I think that’s a fallacy because also in the historical context slavery can be seen as a crime against humanity and a violent system,” he said. “I think that argument is often used as an excuse to kind of polish away the violent history of it.”
The Netherlands, along with many other nations, has been revisiting its colonial history in a process spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the world after the death of George Floyd, a Black man in the United States.
Last year, the country’s national museum, the Rijksmuseum, staged a major exhibition that took an unflinching look at the country’s role in the slave trade, and Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema apologized for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capital’s former governors in the trade.
Halsema said she wanted to “engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city’s identity.”
your ad hereNorth Korea Launches Another Missile After US Imposes New Sanctions
North Korea launched what appear to be two more ballistic missiles, South Korea reported Friday, Pyongyang’s third missile launch of the new year.
The launch came hours after North Korea’s foreign ministry warned of “stronger” measures in response to U.S. imposition of sanctions for its previous missile tests.
South Korea’s military, which closely monitors such launches, said the North fired what are presumed to be two short-range ballistic missiles from North Pyongan province Friday afternoon.
Earlier, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported that the test involved a single ballistic missile, which it said landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
The reason for the discrepancy between the Japanese and South Korean reports was unclear.
North Korea has already tested four missiles, during three separate launches, within the last 10 days — a pace reminiscent of 2017, when U.S.-North Korea relations were at a low point.
The previous two tests involved what North Korea claims are hypersonic missiles. Although defense analysts say North Korea may be overstating its capabilities in this area, such weapons are likely more difficult for U.S. missile defenses to detect and intercept.
It is not clear what missiles the North launched Friday. Typically, North Korea does not unveil its launches until state-run newspapers are published the following day.
Firmer US response
The United States this week issued a stronger than usual condemnation of the North Korean launches. It also imposed unilateral sanctions on five North Koreans it alleged were helping procure supplies for Pyongyang’s weapons program.
In an interview Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the North Korean tests “profoundly destabilizing” and meant in part to “get attention.”
“It’s done that in the past, it’ll probably continue to do that. But we are very focused with allies and partners in making sure that they and we are properly defended and that there are repercussions, consequences for these actions by North Korea,” Blinken told MSNBC, a U.S. cable news network.
North Korean response
Early Friday, before its latest launch, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry lashed out at Washington, accusing the United States of “intentionally escalating the situation” with unilateral sanctions.
“If the U.S. adopts such a confrontational stance, the DPRK will be forced to take stronger and certain reaction to it,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, according to state media, which used an abbreviation of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Under President Joe Biden, the United States has repeatedly offered to hold nuclear talks with North Korea “anywhere, anytime.” North Korea has ignored or rejected the offers, saying Washington must first provide more concessions and drop what it calls a “hostile policy.”
North Korea walked away from talks with the United States in 2019, after the two sides could not agree on a deal to relax U.S. sanctions in exchange for steps by North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Bigger tests coming?
Duyeon Kim, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said it is obvious that North Korea is “angry and protesting” the U.S. sanctions.
“We should expect Pyongyang to protest through a show of force, which serves a dual purpose of perfecting its nuclear weapons technology through tests to achieve Kim Jong Un’s goals he set out last year,” Kim told VOA.
“Washington is right to, and should, penalize any provocation that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions and threatens the region,” she added in an email.
North Korea has several possible motivations for testing missiles, including shoring up domestic political support, ensuring the performance of new weapons, demonstrating deterrence, and provoking the United States and its allies.
However, since it resumed missile tests following the breakdown of talks in 2019, North Korea has refrained from any nuclear tests or long-range missile tests that would risk a firmer U.S. response.
Analysts have said North Korea may be unwilling to conduct more provocative tests ahead of the Winter Olympics, to be hosted next month by China, North Korea’s ally.
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Spider-Man Comic Page Sells for Record $3.36M Bidding
A single page of artwork from a 1984 Spider-Man comic book sold at auction Thursday for a record $3.36 million.
Mike Zeck’s artwork for page 25 from Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars No. 8 brings the first appearance of Spidey’s black suit. The symbiote suit would eventually lead to the emergence of the character Venom.
The record bidding, which started at $330,000 and soared past $3 million, came on the first day of Heritage Auctions’ four-day comic event in Dallas.
The previous record for an interior page of a U.S. comic book was $657,250 for art from a 1974 issue of The Incredible Hulk that featured a tease for the first appearance of Wolverine.
Also Thursday, one of the few surviving copies of Superman’s debut, Action Comics No. 1, sold for $3.18 million, putting it among the priciest books ever auctioned.
None of the sellers or buyers were identified.
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Panetta: US Should Tell North Korea Provocations Put Regime at Risk
The Biden administration should send a strong message to Pyongyang in response to North Korea’s recent missile tests, a former U.S. defense secretary said.
Leon Panetta, secretary of defense and CIA director during the Obama administration, said the United States and its allies “must make clear that we’re not going to tolerate aggression” by the North Koreans, and “if they continue to take provocative actions, they are endangering themselves” and “putting their own regime at risk.”
In an interview Wednesday with VOA’s Korean Service, Panetta said, “That, I think, needs to be the message that we continue to send” to the North Koreans – “that if they act this way, they are going to confront not only the United States but our allies.”
North Korea test-fired what it claimed was a supersonic missile on Tuesday. The test followed its first test of the year conducted on January 5, which the regime claimed also was a supersonic missile.
Calling North Korea’s recent missile tests “very provocative,” Panetta said it would become “much more difficult to be able to defend against it” now that Pyongyang has raised the possibility of developing a hypersonic missile “that can go almost 10 times the speed of sound.”
Status quo not possible
“It’s very important that the administration not just assume (it) can take a status quo approach to North Korea,” Panetta said. “When you’re dealing with an adversary … your relations are either getting better or they’re getting worse.
“Right now, it’s getting worse,” he said.
In response to Panetta’s comments, the U.S. State Department told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday that “the United States harbors no hostile intent” toward North Korea, and that it is “prepared to meet” with Pyongyang “without preconditions” for denuclearization talks.
The spokesperson said Washington hopes Pyongyang will “respond positively” to its outreach as it continues “to consult closely with Republic of Korea, Japan, and other allies and partners about how to best engage” North Korea.
In response to North Korea’s missile launches, the U.S. on Wednesday imposed sanctions targeting five North Koreans for procuring goods for the regime’s weapons programs.
Panetta said, “The only way you get North Korea’s attention” for serious negotiations “is by taking steps that challenge North Koreans.” He suggested the U.S. and South Korea “reopen exercises of our military capabilities.”
The U.S. had held off large-scale military exercises with South Korea since 2018 to accommodate denuclearization talks with the former Trump administration.
Some analysts question whether a strong message from Washington would move Pyongyang toward talks.
Ken Gause, director of the Adversary Analytics Program at CNA, said, “We have not offered any carrots” that “we can take away.” Gause continued, “North Korea has nothing to lose” and is “not going to pay any attention” to what the regime perceives as “empty threats” by the U.S.
Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest, said North Korea is likely “to match any perceived provocation with an action of its own.”
After the second test launch, North Korea warned on Friday, January 14 Pyongyang time, that it will take “stronger” action in response to the sanctions the U.S. imposed on the regime over its missile tests.
Consequences of failed policy
Panetta said Pyongyang is likely to continue its nuclear and missile activities to raise tensions further.
“It’s only a matter of time (until) they renew testing of an intercontinental missile and testing of their nuclear capabilities,” Panetta said. “The path we’re on right now, I don’t think this is a good path.”
North Korea last tested a long-range missile and a nuclear weapon in 2017 while its leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump exchanged harsh rhetoric throughout the year.
Trump’s “fire and fury” remarks unleashed at Kim that year drastically turned to showers of praise after the two held a historic summit in Singapore in June 2018.
“President Trump was very naïve in the way he approached Kim Jong Un in thinking that somehow just through the strength of personality alone, they could arrive at a denuclearization agreement,” Panetta said.
“I don’t think leaders ought to meet unless there is an effort by both countries to lay the groundwork for those discussions,” Panetta continued.
Panetta thinks the Biden administration must deal with the consequences of Trump’s failed policy that focused on personal diplomacy with Kim.
“The failure to achieve anything has led to the tension that we’re now facing,” he said. “Kim Jong Un is trying to figure out how does he get the attention of the world again,” he continued. “That’s why he’s conducting these tests.”
China’s role
Panetta suggested China could play a positive role in diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons despite Washington-Beijing rivalry.
“The relationship has gotten a lot more tense between the United States and China, but I still think there’s a possibility that China might be able to serve as perhaps a go-between here to try to see if we can be successful at opening up discussions,” Panetta said.
China, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, approved sanctions on North Korea in 2016 and 2017 passed in response to its nuclear and missile tests.
Jiha Ham of VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report.
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Former Guantanamo Detainee: ‘I’m Still in Guantanamo 2.0’
It has been 20 years since the first prisoners in the war on terror arrived at the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least 800 people have been detained there over the last two decades, the vast majority of whom were never charged with a crime. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb speaks with Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee who has devoted his life to closing the prison.
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US House Panel Subpoenas Social Media Firms in Jan. 6 Attack Probe
The U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol subpoenaed Meta, Alphabet, Twitter and Reddit on Thursday, seeking information about how their social media platforms were used to help fuel misinformation in a failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps – if any – social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence,” the House Select Committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, said in a statement.
“It’s disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions.”
The subpoenas are the latest development in the panel’s investigation into the causes of the attack on the Capitol by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters, and the role played by Trump, who has pushed false claims that he lost a rigged election to Joe Biden.
The committee has issued more than 50 subpoenas and heard from more than 300 witnesses. It is expected to release an interim report in the summer and a final report in the fall.
Spokespeople for the four social media companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Social media platforms were widely blamed for amplifying calls to violence and spreading misinformation that contributed to the January 6 attempt to violently overturn the election results.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were grilled by lawmakers last March in a hearing on misinformation about the role of their companies in the Capitol riot.
In a letter sent this week to Zuckerberg, Representative Thompson said that “despite repeated and specific requests for documents” related to Facebook’s practices on election misinformation and violent content, the committee had still not received these materials. Letters to the other three CEOs contained similar criticisms.
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California Governor Denies Parole for RFK Assassin Sirhan Sirhan
California’s governor on Thursday rejected releasing Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan from prison more than a half-century after the 1968 slaying left a deep wound during one of America’s darkest times.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has called RFK his political hero and embraced the historical significance of his decision, rejected a recommendation from a two-person panel of parole commissioners. Newsom said Sirhan, now 77, poses an unreasonable threat to public safety.
“Mr. Sirhan’s assassination of Senator Kennedy is among the most notorious crimes in American history,” Newsom wrote in his decision. “After decades in prison, he has failed to address the deficiencies that led him to assassinate Senator Kennedy. Mr. Sirhan lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of dangerous decisions he made in the past.”
He said factors in his decision including Sirhan’s refusal to accept responsibility for his crime, his lack of insight and the accountability required to support his safe release, his failure to disclaim violence committed in his name, and his failure to mitigate his risk factors.
Sirhan will be scheduled for a new parole hearing no later than February 2023.
Sirhan will ask a judge to overturn Newsom’s denial, said his defense attorney, Angela Berry.
“We fully expect that judicial review of the governor’s decision will show that the governor got it wrong,” she said.
State law holds that inmates are supposed to be paroled unless they pose a current unreasonable public safety risk, she said, adding that “not an iota of evidence exists to suggest Mr. Sirhan is still a danger to society.”
Parole commissioners found Sirhan suitable for release “because of his impressive extensive record of rehabilitation over the last half-century,” she said. “Since the mid-1980’s Mr. Sirhan has consistently been found by prison psychologists and psychiatrists to not pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the public.”
Kennedy, the U.S. senator from New York, was shot moments after he claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary. Five others were wounded during the assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
His brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in 1963.
The parole panel’s recommendation in August to release Sirhan divided the Kennedy family, with two of RFK’s sons — Douglas Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — supporting his release. But six of Kennedy’s nine surviving children and Ethel Kennedy, RFK’s wife, urged Newsom to block his parole.
The panel’s decision was based in part on several new California laws since he was denied parole in 2016 — the 15th time he’d lost his bid for release.
Commissioners were required to consider that Sirhan committed his crime at a young age, when he was 24; that he now is elderly; and that the Christian Palestinian who immigrated from Jordan had suffered childhood trauma from the conflict in the Middle East.
In addition, Los Angeles County prosecutors didn’t object to his parole, following District Attorney George Gascón’s policy that prosecutors should not be involved in deciding whether prisoners are ready for release.
Sirhan originally was sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972.
He now has a heart condition and has survived prostate cancer, Valley fever and an attack by another prisoner in 2019, said Berry, his attorney.
Munir Sirhan has said his older brother can live with him, if he is freed and not deported to Jordan. Sirhan Sirhan waived his right to fight deportation.
your ad hereWestern Diplomats Warn of Impending Disaster in Sahel
Western diplomats fear the spread of extremist groups and persistent economic and social problems in Western Africa and the Sahel are nearing a tipping point that could have disastrous consequences for the region and beyond.
The officials from both Europe and the United States warned Thursday that international efforts have so far failed to counter factors that are driving young people to take up arms and called for increased cooperation with countries in the region.
“The rise of violent extremism and the worsening of the humanitarian situation in the Sahel and the wider West African region is threatening the future of the entire African continent and of all of us,” European Union Ambassador to the U.S. Stavros Lambrinidis told the virtual conference. “This is as high stakes as it gets.”
U.S. officials described the situation as no less dire.
“Despite a decade of robust international investments, the region continues to trend in the wrong direction,” said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Gonzales.
“Armed groups continue to expand their presence as well as their capabilities and their violence,” Gonzales added. “We need to address the underlying drivers of insecurity more holistically in order to turn the tide.”
The biggest concern has been Mali, where terrorists linked to groups like Islamic State and al-Qaida have continued to make inroads, and where the military government, which seized power in August 2020, postponed elections scheduled for this February until 2026.
Earlier this week, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) imposed a series of sanctions against Mali’s interim government for refusing to hold elections as initially agreed, including the suspension of all commercial and financial transactions, and putting financial assistance on hold.
The EU on Thursday announced it would follow suit with its own sanctions against Mali’s interim government.
“Despite all the warnings that we made to the Malian authorities, we see no sign of progress on the part of these authorities,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said following a meeting with the EU defense minister in the French city of Brest.
“The risk that the situation in this country [Mali] continues to deteriorate is evident,” he said. “We will follow the situation closely.”
Borell said that despite the imposition of sanctions, EU missions to Mali to train and advise Malian armed forces will continue.
Mali’s ambassador to the United Nations decried the ECOWAS sanctions as “illegal, illegitimate and inhumane” but said the interim government remains open to additional talks with its neighbors.
Further complicating matters, European officials have raised concerns about Mali’s decision to bring in mercenaries from the Russia-based Wagner Group to bolster its security forces – a charge that Mali’s interim government has denied.
The U.S. Defense Department, while declining to confirm the reports, described the prospect as worrying.
“Given the Wagner Group’s record, any role for Russian-backed Wagner Group forces in Mali will likely exacerbate an already fragile and unstable situation,” spokesperson Cynthia King told VOA.
The U.S. suspended military training and cooperation with Mali following the August 2020 coup.
Germany, which has about 1,000 troops in Mali, has said it would be taking another look at its mission. France, which had 3,000 troops in Mali, has slowly been reducing its military footprint, withdrawing from all but one of its military bases in the country.
Despite the drawdown, French officials insist they remain committed to helping Mali defeat terrorist groups on its soil.
“France will not abandon Mali or the other Sahel countries,” French Ambassador to the U.S. Philippe Etienne told Thursday’s virtual conference on the region. “At the request of African nations, France is continuing to combat these armed groups in the Sahel with very appreciated support from the United States.”
“Young recruits who join these terrorist organizations are doing this not necessarily because they want to engage in jihad but also because they have no other prospects,” he said. “Stabilizing the Sahel in the long term will take time, and there’s a long way to go.”
Emanuela Del Re, the EU special representative for the Sahel, said the goal, ultimately, is to “keep Mali engaged and not isolate it.”
“We must keep the dialogue open and alive and hold the transitional authorities to their commitments,” she said.
VOA’s Margaret Besheer and Annie Risemberg contributed to this report.
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Africa Cup of Nations – Day 5
Africa Cup of Nations – Day 5
Cameroon vs Ethiopia | 4-1
Cape Verde vs Burkina Faso | 0-1
your ad hereRights Group Calls for More Accountability Among Sahel Governments
Human Rights Watch has released its World Report for 2022, which gives a country-by-country review of human rights in more than 100 states over the last year.
In the HRW report released Thursday, which cites reporting by VOA at times, the monitoring group criticizes governments in the western Sahel region and their international partners, including France, the EU and the U.S., for reluctance to hold security forces to account for human rights abuses.
Ida Sawyer is the deputy director of HRW’s Africa division.
“We’ve seen how international partners have regularly issued statements to denounce abuses by Islamic armed groups, but they remain reluctant to denounce abuses by pro-government forces or to publicly press the national authorities to investigate the allegations of abuse,” Sawyer said.
Sawyer added that some international partners offering military support in the region were also failing to hold their own armed forces to account for alleged abuses.
“We have specifically called for a thorough investigation into allegations that a French airstrike killed 19 civilians in Bounti village in central Mali last January,” Sawyer said.
France has denied the findings of a U.N. report into the incident, saying the people killed were combatants and the report is “biased.”
Meanwhile, Sahel governments have rejected accusations by HRW that their armed forces are committing atrocities. For example, Burkina Faso’s government denied a HRW report in 2020 saying that more than 180 people were executed and buried in a mass grave in the northern town of Djibo.
Mali — and later Niger and Burkina Faso — has been embroiled in a conflict with armed groups linked to Islamic State and al-Qaida since 2012.
According to data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, more than 8,000 civilians died in the conflict in those countries during that period.
The report says that Sahel governments and international partners have taken steps to engage security forces in human rights training.
The report also expresses concerns for the human rights of people displaced by the conflict. The United Nations refugee agency says there are almost 3.5 million displaced people in the western Sahel.
Alexandra Lamarche, senior advocate for West and Central Africa at Refugees International, spoke with VOA.
“Numerous reports of atrocities and human rights violations, including murder, rape, torture and violent persecution based on ethnic and religious grounds,” Lamarche said. “All of which fuels intercommunal violence and continues to force people to flee their homes and the temporary displacement camps they sought refuge in.”
Lamarche added that efforts have been made by governments to protect the displaced from such abuses.
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Dictators Face Democratic Backlash, Says Human Rights Watch
Autocratic leaders are facing a democratic backlash from their people in several countries around the world, according to the organization Human Rights Watch in its annual global report, which was published Thursday.
The report said that in the past 12 months there have been a series of military coups and crackdowns on opposition figures.
In Myanmar, the military seized power last February and ousted the democratically elected government, jailing President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
In Nicaragua, opposition members were jailed on treason charges ahead of the November election, as President Daniel Ortega consolidated power.
In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni was re-elected in January 2021 after security forces arrested and beat opposition supporters and journalists, killed protesters, and disrupted opposition rallies.
Democratic Backlash
“The conventional wisdom these days is that autocrats are in the ascendancy and democratic leaders are in the decline, but when we looked back over the last year, we found that that view is actually too superficial, too simplistic,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, in an interview with VOA.
In fact, there are encouraging signs of democratic uprisings, Roth said. “There’s an emergence of a series of popular demonstrations, popular protests for democracy against the autocrat. And we’ve seen this in a range of countries: in Thailand, Myanmar and Sudan, in Uganda, Nicaragua, Cuba, Poland, many parts of the world, these outpourings of support for human rights, for democracy, and against autocratic rule.”
Despite the optimistic tone, the report catalogues the suppression of democracy and human rights in more than 100 countries. Tens of thousands of opposition activists, human rights defenders and civilians have been jailed, beaten or killed.
Russia
In Russia, opposition leader Alexey Navalny remains in prison on parole-related violations after surviving a nerve agent attack he blamed on the Kremlin. Russia denied involvement.
“The legislative crackdown that started in November 2020 intensified ahead of the September 2021 general elections,” the Human Rights Watch report says. “Numerous newly adopted laws broadened the authorities’ grounds to target a wide range of independent voices. Authorities used some of these laws and other measures, to smear, harass, and penalize human rights defenders, journalists, independent groups, political adversaries, and even academics. Many left Russia for their own safety or were expelled. Authorities took particular aim at independent journalism.”
Since December 2020, the report says, “the number of individuals and entities (that) authorities branded (as) ‘foreign media—foreign agent’ exploded, reaching 94 by early November. Most are prominent investigative journalists and independent outlets,” the report said.
Human Rights Watch says Moscow continues to suppress democracy at home and lend support to autocrats overseas, including President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, who has jailed hundreds of anti-government demonstrators and activists following the 2020 election that critics say was rigged.
Russia earlier this month sent troops to Kazakhstan to help its autocratic president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, crush anti-government protests. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, continues to offer military support to his Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of crimes against humanity in his brutal suppression of the 2011 uprising and its aftermath.
China
The report says China has locked up thousands of pro-democracy activists and has intensified its crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong following the imposition of the National Security Law on the territory.
“With President Xi Jinping at the helm, the Chinese government doubled down on repression inside and outside the country in 2021. Its ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards COVID-19 strengthened the authorities’ hand, as they imposed harsh policies in the name of public health,” the Human Rights Watch report says.
“Authorities (are) committing crimes against humanity as part of a widespread and systematic attack on Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass detention, torture, and cultural persecution. Tibetans continued to be subjected to grave abuses, including harsh and lengthy imprisonment for exercising their basic rights,” the report adds. China has denied committing abuses in Xinjiang.
Rule by force
Roth says, despite the seemingly overwhelming force wielded by oppressive states, there is cause for hope.
“To maintain power by force is a very short-term strategy. If you look at Myanmar where the junta performed a coup almost a year ago, all they have is force. The entire population is against them. I think in Sudan, the military is facing something similar. They’ve just ousted the civilian prime minister, but they now face such a hostile population,” Roth told VOA.
Opposition coalitions
The report says that in countries that still permit reasonably fair elections, opposition politicians – and electorates – are getting more sophisticated.
“We’ve seen the emergence in a number of countries that still permit reasonably fair elections of broad political coalitions, alliances for democracy. And we saw these coalitions oust Prime Minister (Andrej) Babiš in the Czech Republic, they got rid of (Benjamin) Netanyahu in Israel, they were really behind the coalition that chose Joe Biden to contest (U.S. President) Donald Trump. And today in Hungary and in Turkey, Prime Minister (Viktor) Orbán and President (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan are facing similar broad coalitions that are really putting their grasp on power in jeopardy,” Roth said.
Democratic duty
Human Rights Watch says the leaders of democratic countries must end their support for autocratic regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt – and they must do a better job of delivering for their own people.
“Particularly today when there really are big global challenges, climate change, the pandemic, poverty and inequality, the threats from technology. These are huge problems that demand visionary leadership,” Roth told VOA.
“But instead, typically we’re getting from democratic leaders minimalism, incremental change, really short-term steps, and that’s not enough. If that’s all that they can come up with, they’re going to generate despair and frustration, which are going to be a breeding ground for a second wind for the autocrats.”
The Human Rights Watch report strikes an optimistic tone – but cautions that the “outcome of the battle between autocracy and democracy remains uncertain.”
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Dictators Face a Democratic Backlash, Says Human Rights Watch
Despite a series of military coups and opposition crackdowns in dozens of countries, there are encouraging signs of democratic uprisings around the world, according to the latest annual report from the organization Human Rights Watch, published Thursday. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Opens its Eye
NASA scientists rejoice at the continued progress of their next-generation space telescope. Plus, the International Space Station gets presidential backing, and a prank from space resurfaces on social media. More in The Week in Space from VOA’s Arash Arabasadi
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Biden Ramps Up Fight Against Coronavirus
U.S. President Joe Biden sympathized with coronavirus-weary Americans Thursday while ramping up the government’s effort to combat the surge of the omicron variant across the country.
“I know we’re all frustrated as we begin the new year,” Biden said in a short White House speech. “It’s been a long road, but we’re going to get through this.”
In his latest effort to fight the highly transmissible omicron variant, Biden said the government would by next week start sending free face masks to all Americans and now plans to buy 500 million more COVID-19 test kits, on top of the half-billion he previously announced.
Biden said that by next week, anyone in the U.S. who wants free test kits will be able to order them online. In the U.S., 15 million COVID-19 tests are now being conducted daily, and there are 20,000 free testing sites around the country.
In addition, Biden said the military is deploying a total of 120 physicians, nurses and other medical personnel to hospitals in six of the 50 U.S. states where health care workers have been particularly overwhelmed by new coronavirus cases. It is the beginning of an eventual deployment of 1,000 military health care workers.
He identified the states as New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island in the eastern part of the country, Ohio and Michigan in the Midwest, and New Mexico in the southwest region of the U.S.
Since late November, the U.S. already has dispatched more than 800 military and other federal emergency personnel to 24 states, tribes and territories, according to the White House. That includes more than 350 military doctors, nurses and medics helping staff hospitals.
Biden said most Americans are “safe” from serious illness from the coronavirus because they have been fully vaccinated. But he acknowledged that “the unvaccinated are dying.” He again implored the estimated 40 million unvaccinated people to get inoculated.
In all, more than 208 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, and 77 million of those have also had booster shots, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the U.S. leads the world with more than 840,000 coronavirus deaths, and another 1,800 are dying daily. Recently, an additional 780,000 coronavirus cases were being recorded each day.
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Kenyan LGBT Students Protest Suggestion They be Banned from Boarding Schools
A group of Kenyan LGBT students protested Thursday against a Cabinet minister’s recent suggestion they be banned from boarding schools. The schools are common in Kenya and the students and rights groups say a ban would be discriminatory and compromise their safety.
Dozens of angry students took to the streets of Nairobi Thursday in a peaceful protest to Kenya’s Ministry of Education.
They were armed with placards that denounced a suggestion by the Cabinet secretary for education, George Magoha, that homosexual students be barred from boarding schools.
MaryLiz Biubwa, one of the protesters, said Magoha’s comment is beginning to have an effect at some schools.
“Because of the directive Magoha has given, I have two students who have reached out, one I am planning to start the journey of helping them tomorrow, because she was already sent out of school. She has KCSE in March, she can’t go back because she will be told she is gay,” said Biubwa.
KCSE is Kenya’s certificate of secondary school examination.
In their two-page petition to the education secretary, the protesters called on him to withdraw his December remarks, and to criminalize all types of phobias they say put people’s lives at risk, including the lives of homosexual students.
Makena Njeri is the founder of Bold Africa, a gay rights network.
“Being a gay student going through high school already was a challenge all the way down to even being very close to being expelled. This already is discriminating me as a child when I was growing up.Now that the government is adding more pressure to institutions to continue discriminating [against] the kids [and] is something that we’ll not stand,” said Njeri.
Kenya is one of many African countries that outlaw homosexuality.
VOA has established that the cabinet secretary has yet to officially order boarding schools in Kenya to bar suspected gay students.
A state education official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ordinarily, a formal circular would be sent to all heads of boarding schools.
“Implementing such a directive would be very difficult and can lead to a lot of fury. You can see that the statement he made is already causing chaos. What if a principal of a school was seen doing that? it would be a disaster,” said the education official.
The LGBT community leaders who presented their petition to the Ministry of Education are expected to meet with Magoha next week.
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Nobel Panel: Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed Has ‘Special Responsibility’ to End Tigray Conflict
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, said Thursday that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the honor in 2019, bore special responsibility for ending the bloodshed in Tigray.
“As Prime Minister and winner of the Peace Prize, Abiy Ahmed has a special responsibility to end the conflict and contribute to peace,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the committee, said in a statement to AFP.
Northern Ethiopia has been beset by conflict since November 2020 when Abiy sent troops into Tigray after accusing the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of attacks on federal army camps.
The fighting between forces loyal to Abiy and the TPLF and their allies has killed thousands of people and forced several million from their homes.
Tigray is under what the United Nations calls a de facto blockade that is preventing life-saving medicine and food from reaching millions, including hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.
“The humanitarian situation is very serious and it is not acceptable that humanitarian aid does not get through sufficiently,” Reiss-Andersen said.
Speaking at a press conference, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth appealed for countries to press Abiy to allow aid to get through.
“The big threat there is the Ethiopian government’s blockade of humanitarian assistance that is desperately needed by millions of people in the region,” Roth told reporters.
“This is a classic case of collective punishment. This is not punishing Tigrayan military forces. It is punishing the people… in Tigray,” he added.
The conflict in Tigray has sparked calls to strip Abiy of the Nobel, but this is not possible under the award’s statutes.
The Norwegian committee said it could not comment on what factors were emphasized when the prize was awarded to Abiy beyond “the reasons given in connection with the award,” as the panel’s discussions are confidential.
Abiy’s prize “was awarded on the basis of his efforts and the legitimate expectations that existed in 2019,” Reiss-Andersen said.
“The peace initiatives that Abiy Ahmed launched and for which he received the Nobel Prize were based on his contribution to the peace agreement with Eritrea and his comprehensive political initiative for democracy and the development of civil rights,” she added.
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German Court Convicts Former Syrian Intelligence Officer of Crimes Against Humanity
In a landmark ruling, a German Court Thursday convicted a former Syrian intelligence officer of crimes against humanity for his role in state-sponsored torture and murder under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The regional court in the western city of Koblenz found 58-year-old Anwar Raslan guilty of overseeing the murder of 27 people at the al-Khatib detention center in Damascus, also known as “Branch 251”, in 2011 and 2012.
Raslan has denied all charges.
Raslan and another defendant, junior officer Eyad al-Gharib, were put on trial in April 2020. Gharib was accused of helping to arrest protesters and deliver them to the detention center. He was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison last year.
Their trials were the first to address state-led torture during Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011.
Efforts by the U.N. Security Council to refer Raslan’s and other cases from Syria to the Hague-based International Criminal Court have been blocked by Syria’s main allies, Russia and China. The German court tried the two men under the principle of universal jurisdiction for serious crimes.
Human rights activists hope the trial will set a new precedent. Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth told the French news agency, AFP, the verdict was historic, and expressed his hope the trials will allow nations around the world to try suspects for war crimes, and mass atrocities in their own countries.
Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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EU Drug Regulator Warns Against Overuse of COVID Booster Shots
The European Union’s drug regulator is warning that too many doses of COVID-19 vaccines could eventually weaken the body’s immune system, rendering the extra shots ineffective.
Marco Cavaleri, the head of vaccine strategy for the European Medicines Agency, said earlier this week that booster shots can be administered “once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we think should be repeated constantly.” Cavaleri said instead that boosters should be administered just like an annual flu vaccination.
Cavaleri is the latest health expert to urge against offering a fourth shot of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine in an effort to provide extra protection against emerging variants of the coronavirus. Britain’s Health Security Agency said last week there was “no immediate need” for people to get a fourth shot, as the current booster regimens are providing good levels of protection. The World Health Organization has repeatedly said that providing first doses to poorer nations is a higher priority than richer nations offering boosters.
In China, authorities in the central city of Xi’an have ordered two hospitals to temporarily shut down amid reports they denied treatment for critical patients in two incidents. A pregnant woman suffered a miscarriage after personnel at Gaoxin Hospital refused to admit her because she did not have a valid COVID-19 test. Meanwhile, a woman posted on social media that her father died of a heart ailment after he was refused treatment at Xi’an International Medical Center.
The city of 13 million people, home of the world-famous Terracotta Warrior sculptures, has been under strict lockdown protocols since December, sparked by a wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the delta variant of the coronavirus. Residents have not been allowed to leave their homes unless they have essential jobs or are undergoing testing, which has led to a massive backlash.
At least three-quarters of all teachers in France walked out of their classrooms Thursday to protest what they said are the government’s inconsistent COVID-19 health protocols for educators and students.
France’s largest teachers union, SNUipp-FSU, says the strike “demonstrates the growing despair in schools” as the government has issued three changes in coronavirus testing rules in the space of a week. Teachers are also angry over a lack of highly protective masks and air quality monitors.
Separately, France’s minister of tourism says it will relax restrictions on travelers from Britain effective Friday. Fully vaccinated visitors will not be required to enter into quarantine upon their arrival, nor will they have to provide a compelling reason for traveling to France, but will still have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 24 hours of their trip.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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