Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch. 

Ukraine defiant in face of Russian threat 

Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva said Friday that her country will not bow to threats of military action from Russia and is prepared to fight to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. 

Ukraine Remains Defiant in Face of Russian Invasion Threat 

Hunger spreading in Horn of Africa

UNICEF warned Wednesday that the Horn of Africa is facing a climate-induced emergency. As many as 20 million people in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could need water and food assistance in the next six months due to severe recurring drought. 

Horn of Africa Facing Climate-induced Emergency 

Coups on the rise in Africa 

Military coups have been on the rise in Africa over the last year-and-a-half, prompting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to declare that there is an “epidemic” of them. Burkina Faso is the latest, and Guinea-Bissau averted one on February 2. VOA takes a deeper look at the factors fueling these power grabs. 

By the Numbers: Coups in Africa 

In brief 

— Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. On the sidelines, he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. According to a readout, they discussed the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and world conflicts. The secretary-general also told the Chinese officials that he expects them to allow for a “credible visit” of his High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to China, including to Xinjiang, the province where the country’s oppressed Uyghur Muslim minority lives. China has been promising such a visit for several years, and recently said it is fine as long as Bachelet comes to have an exchange, not an investigation. Beijing denies it violates the rights of Uyghurs and says it is combating terrorism. 

— Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed traveled to Addis Ababa for the African Union Summit last weekend. She then visited conflict zones in northern Ethiopia, going to Tigray where she met with the regional president, and to the neighboring provinces of Afar and Amhara, where fighting and its consequences have spilled over, as well as to the Somali region. The U.N. has been seeking a halt to the fighting in the north and expanded access for humanitarian workers. 

— Tropical Cyclone Batsirai made landfall on the east coast of Madagascar on Saturday night, local time. The intense storm killed at least 21 people, including several children, and displaced more than 62,000 people. The U.N. said this week that it is working with its humanitarian partners and coordinating with the government. Surge teams have been deployed and a humanitarian air bridge set up. By Friday, the WFP had distributed 10,000 hot meals at shelters and distributed other food aid to displaced persons. 

— UNESCO expressed concern on Thursday about journalists working in Myanmar. The U.N.’s cultural organization said that in the past year since the military seized power, at least 146 journalists have been arrested, while some 52 journalists, including 12 women, remain under detention. At least three reporters are known to have died in detention. 

Some good news 

After a year-long absence, the iconic tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece “Guernica,” was returned to its place of honor outside the U.N. Security Council on Saturday. 

Iconic Tapestry of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ Back at UN 

 

Quote of note 

“What we’re appealing for as humanitarian organizations on the ground, is that this military, political strategic chess game, involving Moscow and Minsk and Brussels and Washington and other capitals, that it is concentrating on helping people survive on the ground, protecting them, and avoiding a senseless conflict. Everybody would lose from the conflict, but first and foremost the two million people who live within 20 kilometers from the frontline.” 

— Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, telling VOA in an interview on Monday about his visit last week to eastern Ukraine. 

What we are watching next week 

On February 17, the U.N. Security Council will hold its annual meeting on the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which lay out the path to a political settlement in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv and Russian-backed separatists. In February 2015, the Security Council endorsed Minsk II in a resolution. This year’s discussion takes place against the backdrop of the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Did you know? 

The U.N. corridors and grounds are full of art, sculptures and unique objects donated by governments, foundations and individual donors, many of which can be seen on public tours of the complex. The Guernica tapestry, mentioned above, is a gift of the American Rockefeller family. (They also donated the land the U.N. complex is built on in New York.) There is also a section of the Berlin Wall on the compound’s north lawn and a fountain paid for by U.S. schoolchildren at the southern entrance to the complex. Among the objects on display in the corridors is a model of the ornate Royal Thai Barge “Suphannahong” carved from teak wood, and a black pot from 300 B.C. from Sudan. On the first floor, there is a painting of a white dove of peace by Macedonian painter Vasko Taskovski. 

 

 
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As Russia builds up forces along Ukraine’s borders and Chinese officials seek to punish Lithuania for opening a door to Taiwan, the heads of the Lithuanian parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committees called on their allies in Washington for support.

Their message was clear: Lithuania is holding the line against two of America’s most powerful challengers and that U.S. support is critical to its success in defending against aggression from Moscow and Beijing.

“This week in Washington, we’re here to address two issues. One is security, and it’s about Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic region. The other one is China. Those are trade issues, but not only trade issues. It’s about our security as well,” Laima Liucija Andrikiene, chair of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told VOA as she and her colleagues wrapped up a weeklong trip to Washington on Feb. 3.

The delegation was made up of four lawmakers in charge of national security, defense and foreign affairs committees in the Lithuanian parliament, known as the Seimas. They met members of both the Senate and House Baltic caucuses, as well as Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and Republican Senator James E. Risch, the chairman and ranking senior minority member of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, among others.

“The biggest thing happening right now is Russian buildup around Ukraine, it creates so-called strategic uncertainty, which means different scenarios are possible,” said Laurynas Kasciunas, chairman of the National Security and Defense Committee. Whether through negotiations or the “military scenario,” Russia’s goals are the same, he said.

He said Moscow wants not only to “have the veto right” to prevent any NATO enlargement to the east, but also to “create a two- or three-tiered NATO, with second-class membership for the Baltic states,” meaning Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would remain in NATO formally but “without military exercises in our region, without NATO deployment in our region.”

“We are against that, we reject that, it’s very good for the U.S. and NATO to respond and say they reject this as well,” he said.

Kasciunas also voiced concern about Belarus, his country’s neighbor to the east, which he said has “lost its sovereignty and neutrality” since President Alexander Lukashenko turned to Moscow for help when threatened by mass protests over a disputed 2020 election.

Lithuania has since become a safe haven for activists fleeing Belarus, including exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and her children.

Russia’s deployment of troops into Belarus as part of a buildup for a potential invasion of Ukraine demonstrates how quickly Lithuania — a NATO member state — could be subjected to similar pressure, Kasciunas said. “If two years ago Lukashenko could have 48 hours neutrality, now he [presents] zero neutrality.”

Lithuania this week welcomed decisions made by Germany and the Netherlands to increase the number of troops deployed to Lithuania. U.S. help is also critical, Kasciunas said. He described what this help could look like.

“We have now a rotating military battalion, but we need more combat-ready, more integrated into our national system,” he said. Even more importantly, “no gaps” between rotations, he said.

Until now, U.S. troop rotations into Lithuania have sometimes been separated by weeks or even months, an official at the Lithuanian Embassy told VOA.

Dovile Sakaliene, another National Security and Defense Committee member who was not part of the delegation, said she agrees. “Deterrence is much cheaper than defense,” she said in a phone interview from Lithuania.

“We feel like West Berlin in Cold War times,” Kasciunas said. “We have only a small corridor, the Suwalki Gap, which links us Baltic states with the rest of the NATO system via Poland. Just like NATO defended and deterred the Soviets in West Berlin, we’re also asking NATO to deter possible attacks in the Baltics.”

Kasciunas also recounted some of the decisions made during what he called “a year of anti-communism fight” that angered Beijing, beginning with a strong investment screening mechanism aimed at protecting Lithuania’s strategic assets and ending with an agreement to let Taiwan establish a representative office using the name Taiwan.

“They decided to punish us, not only to punish us but also to prevent others from following suit,” Kasciunas said.

“They not only banned our exports to China, but also Chinese export to Lithuania, which created a lot of problems for companies that depended on Chinese import for their production. And they also harassed international companies, which in their supply chain had some small Lithuanian element, especially German companies.

“They want to make Lithuania a noncredible financial partner, not attractive to foreign direct investment,” he said.

Andrikiene, the Foreign Affairs Committee chair, pointed out that Lithuania became an independent state after 50 years of Soviet occupation 32 years ago. “Without allies, like-minded countries, other democracies from whichever region of the world, we simply wouldn’t have survived, let alone become a successful European Union and NATO member state,” she said.

The presence and concrete support of worldwide democracies is critical, the Lithuanian lawmakers say, if they are to rally their own population and stand up to China’s attempts to isolate the country and harm its image.

One way the U.S. could help is by connecting their northeastern European state with countries providing market access in the Asia-Pacific region, Andrikiene said.

“The United States maintains a dialogue with the Indo-Pacific region, and we were asking for their expertise, their experience and their support for Lithuania. That would be a very concrete assistance and support in addition to political support and resolutions,” she said.

Kori Schake, a senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, told VOA in an exchange of emails that China “is draconian in response to small states’ bravery, fearing that if they aren’t made examples of, others will also gain the courage to resist China’s intimidation.”

Ensuring Lithuania’s success, she said, “is the right response” because it demonstrates solidarity with frontline states that dare to question and spotlight Chinese strategic intentions and practices.

“Same for Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and other countries China is trying to intimidate,” she said.

VOA’s Mandarin Service assisted with filming and video editing.
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A ranking officer in one of North Korea’s elite military cyberwarfare units is being held in an undisclosed location in far eastern Russia after Moscow’s agents thwarted his attempt to defect, according to sources familiar with the matter and documents obtained by VOA’s Korean Service.

Major Choe Kum Chol, a top information technology (IT) specialist in the North Korean People’s Army (KPA), has been held by North Korea’s consulate general in Vladivostok since September after being arrested by Russian police in Razdolnoe, a city about an hour by car from the Pacific Ocean port city. Choe, 33, had been hiding in Razdolnoe to avoid North Korean authorities who had been hunting for him since July when he left his post in Vladivostok after deciding to seek asylum from the Moscow office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), according to multiple sources in Russia who knew Choe.

VOA’s Korean Service has verified the credibility of sources who provided information on Choe and has been in touch with them for several months. To protect their identities, the service cannot provide further information about them. The sources approached VOA hoping to generate international interest in Choe’s case. They provided a copy of Choe’s passport, screenshots of text messages Choe exchanged with several of them, and other documents.

Vladivostok has long maintained Russia’s connections with North Korea. Despite United Nations prohibitions on employing North Koreans, many still work in the area and send home their ruble wages to a regime starved for hard currency. And, according to Japan’s Kyodo News, a group of North Korean IT experts moved from Hong Kong to Vladivostok to evade United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2397 passed in December 2017, prohibiting countries from authorizing work permits to North Korean workers and requiring their departure from overseas jobs by December 2019.

VOA’s Korean Service contacted the UNHCR’s Moscow and Europe regional bureaus as well as the Russian Foreign Ministry and asked if they were aware of Choe’s attempts to seek asylum. Only the Moscow UNHCR office replied, saying Tuesday, “Please note that UNHCR does not provide comments on individual cases.”

Elite education and career

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in 2013 that cyberwarfare, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, are an “all-purpose sword” that guarantees the military’s strike capabilities.

The regime selects young students to train them as hackers, according to a report by South Korea’s public media outlet, KBS.

According to Choe’s credentials obtained by VOA’s Korean Service, he was among those selected for elite training. He received his education in Pyongyang, attending the prestigious Geumseong School for middle and high school and Kim Chaek University of Technology for undergraduate and graduate school. North Korea combines middle and high school education in a six-year program.

Most Kim Chaek graduates are assigned to cyberwarfare units to work as hackers.

But even though Choe was an elite member of an elite force, like any other North Korean working overseas, he was under constant surveillance by Pyongyang, first in China and then in Russia.

The computer encryption specialist was assigned to Vladivostok in May 2019, according to VOA’s Korean Service sources, where he worked in a cyberwarfare unit tasked with undertaking intelligence missions while obtaining much-needed hard currency.

The North Korean won is largely worthless on international markets, and international sanctions have reduced Pyongyang’s access to trade that once provided foreign currency.

North Korea has increasingly resorted to attacks conducted by its cyberintelligence units to steal cryptocurrencies to support development of its nuclear and missile programs to replace income lost due to sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

According to the report, “DPRK cyberactors stole more than $50 million between 2020 and mid-2021 from at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia.” North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also uses its hackers to steal technical information.

Shattered dream

According to sources and documents obtained by VOA’s Korean Service, Choe made the decision to defect after losing hope for his future.

North Korea is one of the of the most repressive countries in the world, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Under Kim, the third leader of a nearly 75-year dynasty, the totalitarian government maintains “fearful obedience using threats of execution, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and forced labor.” During the pandemic, the country has become even more isolated, according to the report.

A source told VOA’s Korean Service that Choe “would see [while working overseas] that nothing in North Korea changed.”

The same source said Choe had spoken of why he wanted to defect.

“He was young. He said he didn’t want to sacrifice his life for Kim Jong Un’s regime. It rules with lies and dictatorship. He said his dream was to live happily in a free world,” continued the source. 

According to VOA’s Korean Service sources, Choe evaded his minders in Vladivostok in July and hid in Razdolnoe as instructed by a network that helps defectors seek asylum from the Moscow office of the UNHCR.

Plan thwarted

The source who knew of Choe’s decision to defect said he last heard from Choe on Sept. 20, the day he was arrested by Russian police. VOA’s Korean Service could not determine how the police knew where Choe was hiding.

“I received a text message from Choe asking for help. He said five police officers came looking for him,” said the source.

Russian authorities handed him over to the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok.

Russian police have a history of arresting North Korean defectors at the request of Pyongyang. According to the U.S. State Department’s human rights report on Russia released in March 2021, Russian police “committed enforced disappearances and abductions” in 2020.

“The Civic Assistance Committee reported that a North Korean citizen who was seeking asylum in Vladivostok was taken to the Artyom City Police Department by individuals in civilian clothes, where he subsequently disappeared,” the report said.

The Civic Assistance Committee (CAC) is a Moscow-based nonprofit organization comprised of a team of lawyers, doctors, consultants, aid workers and interpreters who help refugees and migrants in Russia.

According to a report by the CAC released in 2020, Russia’s Deputy Head of the Federal Migration Service Nikolay Smorodin signed an agreement with North Korean Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Pak Myung Guk in February 2016 to transfer North Koreans who are trying to defect.

“The Russian government legalized the forcible deportation to the DPRK of those Koreans,” said the report.

Svetlana Gannushkina, who heads CAC, told VOA’s Korean Service on Wednesday she had been unaware of Choe’s situation until contacted by the Korean Service.

“We have a lawyer in that city who knows all about Koreans who reside there,” said Gannushkina, referring to Vladivostok. “I’ll try to get more information about (Choe),” she said through an interpreter.

Dangerous decision

The source who last heard from Choe said they and others decided to disclose Choe’s information to VOA’s Korean Service hoping the international community would step in to help.

Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation and a leading North Korean human rights activist, said, “It’s extremely dangerous” for North Koreans who are trying to defect and seek asylum.

“The UNHCR is doing the best (it) can trying to facilitate any refugees that are seeking asylum, but it’s such a difficult environment. And I think North Korea is very aggressive at tracking down and trying to force back anybody who’s trying to escape,” said Scholte.

Several sources said Choe might not have been repatriated to North Korea immediately after his arrest due to Pyongyang’s fear that he might bring COVID-19 into the country. North Korea has virtually sealed itself off from the world since January 2020, although last month it partially reopened the borders it shares with China to allow passage by North Korean freight trains, according to commercial satellite images tracked by The Associated Press.

Value of knowledge

According to Choe’s passport, screenshots of text messages Choe exchanged with several sources and other documents obtained by VOA’s Korean Service, Choe was deeply involved in Pyongyang’s overseas cyberoperations handled by its Enemy Collapse Sabotage Bureau.

The bureau is part of the General Staff Department overseen by North Korea’s military. The Enemy Collapse Sabotage Bureau and the Reconnaissance General Bureau are North Korea’s main cyberwarfare units, and the latter harbors known hacking operations such as the Lazarus Group and Hidden Cobra.

Mathew Ha, an analyst at national security research institute Valens Global, said a defection by a North Korean with Choe’s understanding of North Korea’s cyberwarfare landscape would be of “immense” value to countries such as the U.S. and South Korea.

“In terms of being able to attribute attacks back to North Korea,” a high-level defector from its military cyber command provides value “because the North Koreans have consistently denied any sort of claims from the United States or South Korea regarding (its) culpability on any major cyberattacks including (on) Sony” Pictures Entertainment in 2014.

“It (would) be very valuable,” said Ha. A defector like Choe “could potentially provide crucial information that we really want to know” about. 

 

 

 

 
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French police warned Thursday they would prevent so-called “Freedom Convoys” from blockading Paris, as protesters against COVID-19 rules began to drive toward the capital.

Inspired by truckers paralyzing the Canadian capital, truckers and other motorists from across France are answering a call to converge on Paris on Friday.

The movement has raised fears of a repeat of the 2018 “yellow vest” anti-government protests that rocked France, only two months before President Emmanuel Macron is expected to seek reelection.

“There will be a special deployment … to prevent blockages of major roads, issue tickets and arrest those who infringe on this protest ban,” the Paris police force said in a statement.

The city’s ban will remain in force until Monday.

Protesters face fines

Police said that anyone blocking roads faced up to two years in prison, a fine of $5,140 and a three-year driving ban.

“If people want to demonstrate in a normal fashion, they can do so,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the LCI channel. But, he added, “If they want to block traffic, we will intervene.”

The authorities in neighboring Belgium also issued warnings as participants appeared to want to move on to Brussels, the Belgian and European Union capital, on Monday for what they called “a European convergence.”

Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said the city would ban the demonstrations on the simple grounds that no one had applied for a permit for the convoys to enter.

“Measures have been taken to prevent the blockade of the Brussels region,” Close wrote on Twitter.

And Austrian police said no “Freedom Convoy” would be allowed in Vienna, saying the vehicles would cause an “unacceptable nuisance” as well as pollution from fuel emissions.

Many protesters appeared undaunted in France.

“We’ll be heading to the capital whatever happens,” Adrien Wonner, who was planning to set off from the northern Normandy region, told AFP.

‘Yellow vest ‘ prostests

The 27-year-old, a past “yellow vests” protester, added that demonstrators wanted “to make our voices heard” but “not to blockade” Paris.

Anger over coronavirus restrictions is high on their agenda, particularly the “health pass” system that prevents the unvaccinated from entering enclosed public areas such as restaurants, bars, long-distance trains or sports stadiums.

Remi Monde, a prominent social media backer of the convoys, told AFP that their top demand was a “withdrawal of the health pass and all the measures that compel or pressure people to get vaccinated.”

After conventional demonstrations failed to achieve results, “we want to try something else, and see what the government’s response will be to joyous, pacifist people,” he added.

COVID isn’t only issue

But like in Ottawa, the French protests were poised to extend beyond COVID-19 issues, including low wages and high energy costs, the same grievances that fueled the “yellow vest” demonstrations.

The “yellow vests,” so called because they wore fluorescent safety jackets that vehicles in France are required to have, had quickly added “anti-system protests” to their original grievance over fuel price rises, Laurence Bindner, a co-founder of JOS Project, a platform for the analysis of extremist online content, told AFP.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said he recognized the public’s weariness with infection control measures. He also indicated that the country may be in a position to drop its obligatory vaccine pass in late March or early April as cases fall.
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French researcher Luc Montagnier, who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering HIV and more recently spread false claims about the coronavirus, has died at age 89, local government officials in France said. 

Montagnier died Tuesday at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a western suburb of the capital, the area’s city hall said. No other details were released. 

Montagnier, a virologist, led the team that in 1983 identified the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, leading him to share the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine with colleague Francoise Barré-Sinoussi.

The French minister for higher education and research, Frédérique Vidal, praised Montagnier’s work on HIV in a written statement Thursday and expressed her condolences to his family.

Inspired by discoveries

Montagnier was born in 1932 in the village of Chabris in central France.

According to his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website, Montagnier studied medicine in Poitiers and Paris. He said recent scientific discoveries in 1957 inspired him to become a virologist in the rapidly advancing field of molecular biology.

He joined the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1960 and became head of the Pasteur Institute’s virology department in 1972.

“My involvement in AIDS began in 1982, when the information circulated that a transmissible agent — possibly a virus — could be at the origin of this new, mysterious disease,” Montagnier said in his autobiography.

In 1983, a working group led by him and Barré-Sinoussi at the Pasteur Institute isolated the virus that would later become known as HIV and was able to explain how it caused AIDS.

American scientist Robert Gallo claimed to have found the same virus at almost exactly the same time, sparking a disagreement over who should get the credit. The United States and France settled a dispute over the patent for an AIDS test in 1987. Montagnier was later credited as the discoverer of the virus, Gallo as the creator of the first test.

Shunned for recent views

Since the end of the 2000s, Montagnier started expressing views devoid of a scientific basis. His opinions led him to be shunned by much of the international scientific community.

As COVID-19 spread across the globe and conspiracy theories flourished, Montagnier was among those behind some of the misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.

During a 2020 interview with French news broadcaster CNews, he claimed that the coronavirus did not originate in nature and had been manipulated. Experts who have looked at the genome sequence of the virus have said Montagnier’s statement was incorrect.

At the time, AP made multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Montagnier.

Last year, he claimed in a French documentary that COVID-19 vaccines led to the creation of coronavirus variants.

Experts contacted by The Associated Press explained that variants found across the globe began emerging long before vaccines were widely available. They said the evidence suggests new variants evolved as a result of prolonged viral infections in the population and not vaccines, which are designed to prevent such infections.

Earlier this year, Montagnier delivered a speech at a protest against vaccine certificates in Milan, Italy.

Montagnier was emeritus professor at the Pasteur Institute and emeritus research director at the CNRS. He received multiple awards, including France’s highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
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