After a barrage of earthquakes that herald an impending volcanic eruption, some evacuated residents of the Icelandic town of Grindavik wonder if they will ever return.

“There are going to be a lot of people who don’t want to go there. My mother said, ‘I never want to go there again,’” Eythor Reynisson, who was born and raised in Grindavik, told AFP.

The fishing port of 4,000 people on Iceland’s south coast was evacuated on November 11 after magma shifting under the Earth’s crust caused hundreds of earthquakes — a warning of a likely volcanic eruption.

Thousands of smaller tremors have shaken the region since.

With massive crevices ripping roads apart and buildings’ concrete foundations shattered, the once picturesque Grindavik now resembles a war zone.

The damage to the town hall will take months to repair.

Long-term threat

Even if the magma flow stops and no eruption occurs, “there is the issue of whether one should live in a town like this,” Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told AFP.

The Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption for eight centuries until 2021.

Since then, three eruptions have struck — all in remote uninhabited areas — and volcanologists believe this may be the start of a new era of activity in the region.

Sigmundsson warned that “a difficult period of uncertainty” lies ahead, as eruptions could happen in the coming years.

That has left residents wondering whether it is worth rebuilding their homes.

Sigmundsson said that for the region to be deemed safe, the current activity would first need to cease.

“There is a possibility that the activity will move to another area. And then it could be acceptable to go back to Grindavik,” he said.

Strong community

Despite the conditions, a resilient community spirit was evident as residents this week queued to enter Grindavik to collect belongings they left in their hurried evacuation. 

Residents embraced each other and shared moments of laughter.

“I am really emotional. That’s basically how I am feeling right now,” Johannes Johannesson told AFP.

For some, living around volcanoes comes with the territory.

“We are a strong community, so I think it’s possible to build it up again,” Reynisson said.

Iceland is home to 33 active volcano systems, the highest number in Europe. Towns have been hit before.

In 1973, a fissure erupted just 150 meters (164 yards) from the town center on the island of Heimaey, surprising locals at dawn.

A third of the homes were destroyed, and the 5,300 residents were evacuated. One person died.

In Grindavik, steam fills the air from burst hot water pipes and the electricity grid struggles to keep operating at night because of the infrastructure damage.

Locals are now seeking accommodation in hotels, with friends and family, and at emergency shelters while they wait for life to return to normal.

Authorities have organized occasional trips into the port town, escorting those with homes in the most perilous parts to rescue everything from cherished pets to photo albums, furniture and clothing.

But the operations proceed with utmost caution. On Tuesday the village was quickly emptied as sulfur dioxide measurements indicated the magma was moving closer to the surface.

“There was panic,” Reynisson acknowledged.

Today or in a month

For almost a week, Iceland has been on tenterhooks, prepared for an eruption at any moment.

“There is still a flow of new magma into this crack, and it is widening,” Sigmundsson explained.

As long as there is an inflow of magma into the crack, the likelihood of an eruption remains high.

“We need to be prepared for an eruption happening today or within the coming week or even up to a month,” the researcher said.

The most likely place for an eruption “is from the town of Grindavik northwards,” Sigmundsson said.

For residents, this means an extended and anxiety-filled time over the weeks to come.

“Plans now are to try to manage — try to just get the family into a routine and keep on going,” Johannesson said. 
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Two years after Taiwan opened a representative office in Lithuania, officials from both sides stress progress in bilateral relations while analysts cite risks that the deepened engagement could be affected by domestic political shift in Lithuania.

“After two years of engagement with Taiwan, we have some specific agreements with Taiwanese companies and organizations, especially in the field of semiconductors, but we shouldn’t neglect the risk of some changes in Lithuania’s current relationship with Taiwan and China caused by domestic political shifts,” Tomas Janeliunas, an international relations professor at Vilnius University, told VOA by phone.

He said that while the progress in bilateral relations has largely concentrated on deepening economic and trade exchanges, the overall trend is backed by the current Lithuanian government’s desire to expand cooperation with democracies.

“Before the parliamentary elections in 2020, the current government declared that they would like to foster relationships with democracies around the world, including expanding the relationship with Taiwan,” he said. “It included some economic prospects and cooperation in the field of technology, too.”

Over the last two years, Taiwan and Lithuania have opened trade offices in both capitals, Taipei and Vilnius, and trade between the two countries grew 50% from 2021 to 2022. One of Lithuania’s leading tech companies, Teltonika, signed an agreement with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-funded institute, that would help it launch domestic semiconductor production in 2027 using Taiwanese technology.

In addition, Lithuanian companies involved in specialized laser technology agreed to work with the research institute to set up the Ultrafast Laser Technology Research and Innovation Center in Southern Taiwan, focusing on medical and industrial applications.

“So far, the cooperation has been fruitful and brought both sides some economic successes and benefits,” Karolis Zemaitis, Lithuania’s deputy economic minister, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “We are focusing on high-value-added sectors so high-tech is our main focus. This is a very equal bilateral exchange and cooperation where both sides can see some fruits and results.”

Apart from deepening economic ties, Taiwan and Lithuania have also increased bilateral exchanges through delegation visits and agreements to expand cooperation in such areas as scientific research and agriculture.

“The cooperation is based on values,” Eric Huang, Taiwan’s representative to Lithuania, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “For example, since [semiconductors are] such a sensitive area, I don’t think we will be able to implement cooperation without political trust. It is a multilayered cooperation based on values.”

At the European level, one positive development that extends from Lithuania’s efforts to deepen ties with Taiwan is the European Union’s plan to adopt an anti-coercion instrument, a mechanism that could help the EU deal with countries that try to force changes in EU policies by restricting trade. The European Parliament approved the plan in October after China launched economic retaliation against Lithuania over the opening of the Taiwanese representative office.

With Estonia expressing an interest in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Tallinn earlier this month, some analysts say how China responds to Estonia’s decision will test the effectiveness of the EU’s anti-coercion instruments, which allow Brussels to respond to external coercion forcefully.

“We should monitor whether China will respond to the case of Estonia in a belligerent manner,” Marcin Jerzewski, an analyst of EU-Taiwan relations at the European Values Center for Security Policy, told VOA by phone. “The EU’s reaction will be the perfect test of the sustainability of the developments that we have seen in the case of Lithuania.”

Despite some Lithuanian and Taiwanese officials’ positive views on the state of bilateral relations, there is still some skepticism about the prospect and benefits of deepening ties with Taiwan within the Lithuanian government.

In September, Asta Skaisgirytė, the chief foreign policy adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, told Lithuanian National Television and Radio that the large amount of investment that Taiwan promised when it opened the representative office in Vilnius has not materialized at the scale that Lithuania may have anticipated.

Some analysts think Taiwan has not “done a very good job” of delivering the investment promises. “The appetite for investment in Lithuania is much bigger, but so far the only big deal that has been realized is the one with Teltonika,” Jerzewski told VOA. “Taiwan has to do proper expectation management.”

Apart from domestic skepticism about the economic benefit of the relationship with Taiwan, some analysts highlight the risk of progress in the bilateral relationship between Taiwan and Lithuania being stalled by potential regime changes in Lithuania.

“If we look at opinion polls, the current government is not performing really well, and the Social Democrats and Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Association are becoming the parties of choice in the presidential election scheduled for May 2024,” Jerzewski told VOA. “These are the two parties that have shown the greatest hesitation toward deepening ties with Taiwan.”

Janeliūnas said while some members of opposition parties have declared that they would consider changing the current direction of Lithuania’s relationship with China and Taiwan, he thinks it is unlikely they would make drastic changes to Vilnius’ ties with Taipei if they won the presidential election next year.

“I don’t believe they would go for a radical move like changing the name of Taiwan’s representative office, because the political costs of such a move would be quite high,” he told VOA. “When you are in opposition, you can be bold in your expressions. But when you are in office, you have to calculate all kinds of consequences.”

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said last week officials from Lithuania and China had been talking about potentially normalizing diplomatic relations after Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius in 2021 following the opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania.

While some observers view Lithuania’s move as the government’s response to domestic political pressure, Jerzewski said China could make recalibration of Lithuania’s relationship with Taiwan as a condition for both sides to normalize diplomatic ties. “China might say they would only be willing to restore full diplomatic relations with Lithuania if the name of the Taiwanese representative office is amended,” he told VOA. 
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More than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus’ alleged role in Russia’s forced relocation of Ukrainian children.

The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory.

Yale identified more than 2,000 children who were transported to the Dubrava children’s center in the Minsk region of Belarus between September 2022 and May 2023. More than 390 children were taken to another 12 facilities, the report said.

That’s on top of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from Ukraine to Russia since the war began, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s war crimes prosecutors are investigating the forced transfer of Ukrainian children as potential genocide.

Meanwhile, Russian shelling on Thursday killed two people and wounded at least 12 across southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, local officials said.

Among the dead was a 75-year-old woman who died in her apartment in the region’s biggest town, which is also called Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Eight people were injured, he said on the messaging app Telegram.

Also Thursday, the United Kingdom’s top foreign diplomat, David Cameron, traveled to the Port of Odesa to pledge continued support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Cameron’s visit is the first the former British prime minister has made since being named to his new role of foreign minister.

It also marks the first time a British diplomat has traveled to the port city, a common target for Russian airstrikes during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Cameron said the U.K. would continue to provide whatever support was needed to Ukraine, “but above all, the military support that you need not just this year and next year but however long it takes.”

The visit came as Ukraine faces significant setbacks in the war effort, including attention shifting to the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East, the European Union’s inability to provide all the munitions it promised, and political fighting in the United States threatening additional aid to Ukraine.

The U.K. said its $5.7 billion of military aid to Ukraine was second only to the U.S. and that the country had trained 30,000 Ukrainian troops.

“Russia thinks it can wait this war out and that the West will eventually turn its attention elsewhere,” Cameron said in a statement Thursday. “This could not be further from the truth. In my first discussions with President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in my new role, I made clear that the U.K. and our partners will support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes for them to achieve victory.”

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has seen little success, and the war appears to be reaching a stalemate, a situation that Zelenskyy has warned would create a “volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up.”

“We cannot afford any stalemate,” Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured and killed, is responsible.”

According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia “will come again if it is not put in its place.”

Zelenskyy’s comments came two weeks after General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, told The Economist that the war had “reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

Zelenskyy acknowledged that the situation on the battlefield remained very difficult but said he does not believe that the war has reached a stalemate. He emphasized that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia until it completely withdraws from Ukrainian territories.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Five years ago, Soledad Gallego-Diaz challenged Spain’s last great taboo: sexual abuse inside the Roman Catholic Church.

The newly appointed editor of the left-leaning daily El Pais launched an investigation into allegations of abuse by clergy and lay people against children.

Unlike in the United States, Ireland and France, the Spanish Church had not sought to address this issue.

Echoing The Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, El Pais’ probe sought justice for survivors of abuse.

“I realized that the church was not going to do anything, unlike in the U.S. and Ireland. It had no intention to do anything. It was going to carry on covering up those cases that it knew about. It was the moment to find out the truth,” Gallego told VOA.

Five years after the paper launched its investigation, Spain’s ombudsman published a report estimating that more than 200,000 children suffered sexual abuse from some members of Spain’s Catholic clergy. 

The 700-page report, published October 27, is the first national independent report on this issue. 

Gallego said she believed the government ordered the ombudsman’s report because of the “enormous” public reaction to the paper’s investigation.

Inigo Dominguez, one of two journalists who worked on the investigation from the start, said no other media were covering this issue when El Pais started.

“No other media decided to investigate. It was a deliberate decision. So, El Pais was very alone,” he told VOA.

Their work started shortly after the release of the movie “Spotlight,” about The Boston Globe investigation. 

As the first step in the investigation, El Pais published an email for people to contact the newspaper in confidence. The inbox soon was flooded with people who wanted to tell their stories of abuse. 

Personally, the work has been very tough for the journalists involved, Dominguez said.

“Psychologically, to listen to all these terrible stories, it has put you in contact with human evil. These people have never had anyone to listen to them,” he said.

“When they speak to a journalist, you realize that it is their last hope. You realize that you cannot fail, because it is their last hope.”

But their reporting has gone some way to achieving justice. 

Angel Gabilondo, the Spanish ombudsman, spoke of the “devastating impact” on victims, and criticized the church for its inaction and attempts to cover or deny the abuse.

“What has happened has been possible because of that silence,” he told a press conference.

The ombudsman report is the result of interviews with 8,000 members of the public.

It found that 0.6% of the country’s adult population of roughly 39 million people said they had suffered sexual abuse as children by members of the clergy.

That percentage rose to 1.13% when it included abuse by lay people, making the potential number of victims about 400,000. 

The Spanish Bishop’s Conference apologized to survivors of sexual abuse by priests but questioned the accuracy of the survey that suggested such abuse was far more widespread than previous smaller investigations have found, Reuters reported.

The church’s ruling body expressed its “pain for the damage caused by some church members with the sex abuses and repeated their request to the victims for forgiveness.”

Francisco Garcia, Episcopal conference secretary general, said the church would contribute to a compensation fund but it would have to involve general educational institutions, sports associations and other organizations because abuse happened there too, and not just in the church.

Gallego, who was editor of El Pais from 2018 to 2020, said she has mixed feelings about the ombudsman report. 

“On one hand, it was a relief that a state body, with all the resources at its disposal which are far superior to a newspaper, was uniting all the data and analyzing them. On the other, unhappiness that even the ombudsman was unable to get most bishops to answer his questions. The church hierarchy continues to believe that no one can investigate it,” Gallego told VOA. 

Gallego said the paper’s investigation had revealed more than 2,000 victims and over 1,000 alleged abusers.

The number of reporters increased on the team in the early years of the investigation but has fluctuated throughout.

And the paper is still investigating under current editor Pepa Bueno. 

“The church tried to control the media. I wanted to give a voice to the victims,” she said.

“I hope that Pope Francis, who has pledged to repair the damage, will ensure those priests who have been investigated do not have any more contact with children and are dealt with through the courts.”

Despite falling attendance and the Catholic Church’s influence waning in society, at least 60% of Spaniards describe themselves as Catholic, according to a 2021 survey.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the ombudsman’s findings were a “milestone” in the country’s democracy.

“We are a better country because a reality that everyone knew about for many years but nobody talked about has been made known,” he said.

Dominguez of El Pais said trying to raise the issue of sexual abuse presented journalistic problems.

“These stories are hard to publish because they are often just one person’s word against another,” he said.

The El Pais investigation was recognized with an Association of Investigative Journalists award this year. 

The jury that presented the award said the paper had formed “the first and only database of this type of cases in the Spanish Catholic Church.” 

“The work of El Pais has also served to give voice to the victims, who have found a channel to bring out and share their suffering. This work represents, therefore, a clear exercise of journalistic responsibility,” the jury said. 

Antonio Rubio, president of the Association of Investigative Journalists, told VOA, “It is a work which tries to change something which is the basis of objective investigative journalism.”    
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