The Spanish region of Catalonia that once enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy is now under the direct control of Madrid.

The Spanish prime minister dissolved Catalonia’s parliament, just hours after the regional body voted Friday in favor of independence from Spain.

In addition to dismissing parliament, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has called for snap Catalan elections Dec. 21 and has stripped Catalonia’s most senior police officials of their powers.

​Resolution to secede

The resolution to secede from Spain was drafted and presented to Catalonia’s parliament by the more radical separatist factions of the regional coalition headed by Catalonia President Carles Puigdemont. It passed with 70 votes in favor, 10 against, and two blank votes.

WATCH: Fears of Violence as Spain Imposes Direct Rule Following Catalonian Independence Declaration

Spain’s ruling center-right Popular Party and the mainstream opposition socialists, who hold just under half the seats in the Catalan parliament, boycotted the session.

Spain’s Senate responded to Catalonia’s independence move by approving the application of constitutional article 155, which officially authorizes the central government to suspend Catalan authorities and take over the region’s administration.

Immediately following the Spanish senate vote to impose direct rule on Catalonia, the government issued an official bulletin announcing that Puigdemont and his Vice President Orio Junqueras were no longer the heads of the Catalonia regional government.

“We will not allow a group of people to liquidate the country,” said Prime Minister Rajoy.

Catalan leader Puigdemont encouraged supporters to “maintain the momentum” of an independent Catalonia in a peaceful manner.

​Allies back Spain

The European Union Council President Donald Tusk, who has supported Madrid’s approach to the crisis, said via Twitter that he hoped “the Spanish government favors force of argument, not argument of force.”

NATO, of which Spain is a member, said in a statement, “The Catalonia issue is a domestic matter which should be resolved within Spain’s constitutional order.”

Madrid’s efforts to keep the country united also has the continued support of the U.S. government. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement, “… the United States supports the Spanish government’s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united.”

Voters in Catalonia voted in favor of independence in an Oct. 1 referendum, but fewer than half of those eligible to cast a ballot took part, with opponents boycotting the process. Rajoy’s government has dismissed the referendum as illegal. 
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Italian prosecutors will not accept as evidence a DNA test that could exonerate an Eritrean man accused of smuggling thousands of Africans to Italy.

It’s the latest setback for Medhane Tesfamariam Berhe, whose trial has continued for more than a year, despite mounting evidence that Italian authorities are prosecuting the wrong person.

Berhe’s lawyer, Michele Calantropo, argued during a 45-minute hearing Wednesday that his client is the victim of mistaken identity in a case that has gained worldwide attention.

Berhe’s mother, Meaza Zerai Weldai, 59, flew this week from Asmara, Eritrea, to complete a DNA test to prove her maternity and establish Berhe’s identity.

Calantropo contends that the actual person suspected of trafficking migrants shares Berhe’s first name. He believes Berhe was wrongfully identified in 2016 when he was arrested in Sudan and extradited to Italy.

​Mistaken identity

Soon after the extradition, doubts emerged about the identity of the person Italian and British authorities had captured.

Prosecutors released photos of a man who looked nothing like the person they had taken into custody. Instead, the person in the photos resembled Medhanie Yehdego Mered, whom many believe to be the real trafficker.

Other discrepancies include:

Numerous documents vouch for Berhe’s whereabouts in Eritrea at times prosecutors say he was trafficking people in Libya.
Vocal analysis did not produce a match between Berhe and a conversation that authorities wiretapped with the suspected smuggler in 2014.
Individuals smuggled by Mered say Berhe is not the same person.
Even Mered’s wife, Lidya Tesfu, who lives in Sweden, says authorities have the wrong man. Tesfu did not immediately respond to a request for comment from VOA.
In July, The New Yorker reported that it had talked by phone to Mered, who confirmed his involvement with trafficking and expressed amazement at the incompetence of European authorities. “These European governments, their technology is so good, but they know nothing,” he told the magazine.

Prosecutors block evidence

The Italian investigators prosecuting the case would not accept the new DNA test as evidence in Berhe’s trial, blocking its admission. In Italy, both the prosecution and defense must agree to admit evidence that emerges outside of an investigation.

“We are basing our legal proceedings on other data, not on DNA,” Prosecutor Annamaria Picozzi said in court this week, according to The Guardian.

Lead prosecutor Calogero Ferrara did not respond to VOA’s email or phone requests for an interview.

The sister of the man being held in custody, Hiwet Tesfamariam Berhe, believes this is a miscarriage of justice.

“I don’t understand it. In a country where there is democracy, where there is justice, they violated my brother’s rights. And they kept him for more than a year for something he has no knowledge of and to say that we have human rights, puffing out their chest and claim that there is human rights? I don’t know where human rights are,” she told VOA by telephone from Norway, speaking in Tigrigna.

The next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9, a year and a half after authorities extradited Berhe. Despite failing to produce evidence linking Berhe to the crimes he is accused of committing, prosecutors show no signs of giving up the case.

“Instead of playing with one poor, innocent kid’s life and time, why don’t they really find the people who are really committing these things. They are using us as a way to buy time because they know the truth,” Berhe’s sister said.
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The ever expanding field of consumer technology just got several dozen new specimens, showcased at the Netherlands’ first Consumer Electronics Show. None are expected to spectacularly change our lives … but at least some of them may prove to be truly useful. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The Catalan regional parliament voted for independence from Spain on Friday by approving a resolution to convene a constitutional assembly to form a sovereign republic. The move was accompanied by applause and embraces between lawmakers present, who sang the Catalan anthem.

The resolution to secede from Spain was drafted and presented by the more radical separatist factions of the regional coalition headed by Catalonia President Carles Puigdemont, and it passed by 72 votes in favor, 10 against and 2 blank votes.

Spain’s ruling center-right Popular Party and the mainstream opposition socialists, who hold just under half the seats in the Catalan parliament, boycotted the session.

Friday’s resolution by the Catalan regional parliament ends a period of uncertainty over Catalan independence that has prevailed since an October 1 referendum on independence that won 90 percent of the vote in a 50 percent voter turnout.

Puigdemont has held back from declaring independence for fear of triggering direct rule by the central government, which has been moving to take over the region’s finances, police services, and key infrastructure and administrative bodies.

“It was very astute on the part of Puigdemont to let parliament vote on independence resolution prior to declaring it, as it gives him certain legal cover,” a former senior member of the Spanish parliament told VOA.

Puigdemont could face a 25-year prison sentence for sedition. The central government already has jailed two separatist leaders and is prosecuting other officials accused of using public resources to support the independence bid.

Spain’s Senate responded to Catalonia’s independence move by approving the application of constitutional article 155, which officially authorizes the central government to suspend Catalan authorities and take over the region’s administration.

“The turn of events … has left us with no recourse but the application of constitutional prerogatives to reinstitute the legal order in Catalonia,” said Spain’s senate president.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy appealed for national “calm” and called together a special cabinet meeting for later Friday.

“The government will take whatever measures are necessary. We will not allow a group of people to liquidate the country,” he told reporters.

Puigdemont, accompanied by other members of the Catalan regional government, lawmakers and hundreds of mayors, crowded onto the steps of the parliament building to address thousands of supporters gathering outside, shouting “liberty.”

In a short speech, Puigdemont said, “We ourselves must now form our own structures and our own society.”
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History is a battlefield in the contentious independence standoff between Spain and Catalan secessionists, pressed into service by each, shaped as a weapon and hurled with abandon.

Both sides in the confrontation that threatens the territorial integrity of Spain have raised the political temperature by citing some of the darkest chapters in Spanish and Catalan history to provoke or to bolster support.

Underscoring the struggle for hearts and minds are disputes about who did what to whom, stretching back to 1714, an emblematic year for Catalans, when after a long siege the Catalan capital of Barcelona, which was loyal to the Habsburg dynasty, fell to the troops of the Bourbon monarch, Felipe V.

The victorious king shuttered Catalonia’s parliament, closed the city’s universities and banned Catalan as the official language.

Since then, the Catalans have struggled with three centuries of exclusion and repression by Madrid, enjoying short periods of autonomy and recognition, and long periods of being forced into a cultural homogeneity dictated by the dominant Castilian nationalism of Spain.

When Spain’s current monarch, Felipe VI, broadcast earlier this month in an unprecedented televised address, his condemnation of Catalan separatists for their “lack of loyalty to the Spanish government,” casting their October 1 independence vote as illegal and undemocratic, Catalan secessionists reacted by referencing the 18th century repression of his namesake.

Catalan commentators, even those holding pro-unity sentiments, complained the king was not the best person to deliver a scathing attack on the independence aspirations of Catalan secessionists, arguing he was merely feeding into the separatist narrative of Madrid’s long-standing disdain for the sub-nationalisms of the Catalans, Basques and Galicians, and the Castilian oppression of Catalonia stretching back to 1714.

The most frequent references to the past that both sides have used to frame the independence standoff roiling Spain, however, is to the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

Regional autonomy was a key driver of the Spanish Civil War — Franco and the nationalist army opposed the leftwing Republican government’s extension of autonomy to Catalonia and the Basques.

To hear some Catalan separatists speak, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is the second coming of General Franco, a hyperbolic comparison considering that in the purges following the civil war the Franco regime executed an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Catalans.

That’s a far cry from the violent clashes at voting stations on October 1 when 800 were injured as police, on the orders of Madrid, sought to close voting stations in Barcelona.

“The suppression Catalans lived with during the Franco dictatorship has remained in people’s hearts, and has been transmitted to my generation,” argued Catalan filmmaker Irene Baque.

Some critics of the separatists counter that more Catalans likely were killed during the civil war by the Communist-dominated Republican government as it sought to purge anarchists, Trotskyites and other political undesirables from its ranks — an action that fractured the left as it sought to fend off Franco’s fascist uprising.

And they note that during the 1939-1975 Franco dictatorship there were plenty in the ranks of Catalonia’s middle and landed classes who saw conservative values and law and order as higher priorities than Catalan nationalism. They were supportive of the regime and thrived under it.  

Some hardline Spanish nationalists have gleefully stoked the fires of past controversy.

Earlier this month, Pablo Casado, a lawmaker with Rajoy’s ruling People’s Party, warned Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont that history might repeat itself. Casado said his fate could be similar to that of one of his predecessors, Lluis Companys, who ended up being shot in 1940 by General Franco.

And there was deliberate provocation by Spanish nationalists in Madrid last month when some cheered national police units as they headed to Catalonia to try to prevent the October 1 independence vote by shouting “Viva Franco.”   

“This is a very long lasting political conflict,” said Josep Costa, a political scientist. “The issue of the status of Catalonia within Spain is a problem that comes out every time there is a democratic opening of Spanish society.”

Both sides can be accused of airbrushing the complex history of Spain. Most Spaniards remain unaware the first book printed in Spain was in Catalan. Pro-unity Catalan historians complain that they get snubbed by Catalonia’s cultural institutions, which are dominated the pro-secessionists.

Spanish and Catalan historians have been guilty of mutual ignorance for years, with Spanish historians disregarding Catalan contributions and glorifying the story of the Castilians, and their Catalan rivals doing the reverse and demonizing Spain, according to Swiss journalist Raphael Minder.

“National identity is rooted in history, which is why so much importance is attached to celebrating one event rather than another,” he wrote in his new book on Catalan rebel politics, The Struggle for Catalonia.

He added, “When there is serious disagreement over the past, it becomes even harder to agree over the present, let alone the future.”

 
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British Security Minister Ben Wallace said Friday Britain believed “quite strongly” that North Korea was responsible for a global cyberattack earlier this year.

The cyberattack, which occurred in May, disrupted government services and businesses throughout the world, including one-third of English hospitals.

“North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack on our systems,” Wallace said in an interview with the BBC. He added the British government was “as sure as possible.”

More than 300,000 computers in 150 countries were infected within days of the “WannaCry” attack, dubbed as such because the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm was deployed.

A report released Friday by Britain’s National Audit Office (NAO) said WannaCry was a relatively simple attack that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) could have prevented if it adhered to basic information technology best practices.

NHS digital security head Dan Taylor described the event as “an international attack on an unprecedented scale” and said the agency has “learned a lot.”

Minister Wallace said Britain must act quickly to strengthen its cybersecurity program.

“It’s a salient lesson for us all that all of us, from individuals to governments to large organizations, have a role to play in maintaining the security of our networks,” Wallace said.

Ransomware attacks utilize a type of malware that encrypts files on infected computers and demands money to unlock them.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused by critics of amassing power and creating the latest in a series of autocratic governments in the country, faces a new political threat after the launch Wednesday of the Iyi Party by Meral Aksener.

The former interior minister boosted her profile by campaigning against a referendum on extending the Turkish president’s powers, and now observers see her as potentially posing the biggest challenge to Erdogan’s re-election bid. Some polls show she could secure more than 20 percent of the vote and threaten the majority that Erdogan’s party now holds in parliament.

Aksener, a right-wing nationalist, is promising to shake up Turkish politics with the launch of her Iyi, or “Good,” Party.

“It is time to say new things,” she said Wednesday in a speech at the kickoff of her party, where she promised to take things in a new direction. “Yes, we have major problems. But Turkey has enough powers to resolve them. We have hopes and dreams. We want a prosperous and just Turkey. We want a free society. We want a happy Turkey.”

Criticism on human rights

The Good Party seeks to place itself in the center-right of Turkey’s political spectrum. In what appeared to be a jab at the Erdogan government and its post-coup-attempt crackdown on journalists, Aksener took aim at the country’s recent human rights record.

“Media should not be under pressure. Democratic participation, a strong parliament and the national will are irreplaceable,” she said.

Turkey has been under emergency rule since last year’s failed coup, with tens of thousands arrested or dismissed from their jobs.

Aksener, interior minister during the 1990s, gained prominence this year in a formidable campaign against a referendum to extend Erdogan’s powers. The ballot measure was approved, but by the narrowest of margins — something analysts attributed to the success of Aksener’s campaign.

Several recent opinion polls have suggested she enjoys strong support, with one poll giving any party she leads more than 20 percent in what political analysts say could be a rising tide of discontent about the crackdown.

“She clearly rides the wave of current political anxiety and dissatisfaction of voters with existing political parties,” said political consultant Atilla Yesilada of GlobalSource Partners, a political and economic analysis service. “The economy is slowing down and the currency is going down. People are accumulating foreign currency. There is anxiety about what the future will bring.”

Turkey is suffering both double-digit inflation and unemployment, while the currency is approaching record lows fueled by diplomatic tensions with many allies and concerns about the country’s large foreign debt. A driver of Erdogan’s success at the polls was a booming economy, characterized by massive infrastructure projects.

Appeal to AKP constituency

If Erdogan’s fortunes are in fact changing, and supporters insist they are not, Aksener could benefit.

“She is getting cross-party support,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar, highlighting that a parliamentary deputy of the center-left CHP Party had joined her ranks. “But the natural terrain of her party where she can really grow is the constituency of the [ruling] AKP Party.”

The timing of the founding of the Good Party is opportune for Erdogan opponents, coinciding with what observers say are signs that Erdogan’s AKP is in disarray. Erdogan is in the midst of purging dozens of the country’s mayors — including those of the capital, Ankara, and Istanbul — in an effort to revitalize his party ahead of general and presidential elections in 2019.

“This whole process is demoralizing the [AKP] party. Their willingness and desire to fight the next election is diminishing as we speak,” said political consultant Yesilada. “It’s like the old joke in the office: ‘Whippings will continue until morale improves.’ It does not work that way,” the analyst said.

While opinion polls give AKP a commanding lead over its rivals, some polls record a softening in AKP support, with as much as 20 percent of its voters considering not supporting the party. But Aksener’s political past is seen as a potential handicap.

“Her party of origin is the extreme right MHP Party, which is far from being a center-right party,” said Aktar. “Her brain team [advisers], her very close team, are almost all [of] MHP origin. Among them are some very radical figures. She needs to broaden her political staff if she is to broaden her constituency. For the time being, in Turkish public opinion, she is considered an offspring [of] the MHP.”

Winning over Kurdish voters

In the eyes of skeptics, Aksener’s political baggage will be her biggest hurdle in seeking to win over AKP Kurdish voters, who account for about a fifth of its support. The MHP, her old party, is deeply hostile to the granting of greater rights to Turkey’s large Kurdish minority. But with Erdogan increasingly courting nationalist voters, he has enforced a major military crackdown in Kurdish regions. Ankara’s tough stance against the recent Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum, some analysts say, has further alienated traditional AKP Kurdish voters.

“The AKP Kurds have no alternative, even though Erdogan has been quite tough on the Kurds. The traditionalist Kurds know CHP or MHP is no alternative. They will evaluate now whether the Iyi Party is serious,” said Aktar.

Aksener reportedly is planning to spend time in the Kurdish region. Critics charge that the logo of her party, perhaps by coincidence, is an image of the sun, a traditional symbol of Kurdish nationalists.

“Aksener, during her time as interior minister, was considered a heavily anti-Kurdish politician, so she needs to change this image and it won’t be easy. There are no good memories about her among the Kurdish population,” said Aktar.

Aksener’s tenure as interior minister was at the height of fighting against the Kurdish separatist group, the PKK. She was then a member of the center-right DYP Party, which traditionally secured significant Kurdish votes despite the conflict, a legacy observers say she will seek to resurrect.

On Kurdish rights, as on most key policy issues, Aksener has not yet revealed her hand.

“She is going to get reaction votes, but whether she really can put together an agenda that will appeal to all those unsatisfied voters is an unanswered question,” said Yesilada.
…

NATO has accused Russia of misleading the Western military alliance about the military exercises it held last month with Belarus.

“There is a discrepancy between what Russia briefed before the exercise … and the actual numbers and the scale and the scope of the exercise,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday.

Russian defense officials said the Zapad 2017 exercises involved 12,700 troops, but NATO contends there were nearly 100,000 troops from the Arctic to eastern Ukraine and that they simulated attacks on the West.

Alexander Grushko, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, disputed the claim. “NATO countries are counting all the military activities that took place in the Russian Federation and counting them as part of Zapad,” he said. “We don’t accept the propaganda about the Russian exercises.”

In the run-up to the exercises, there was concern in the West that Russia would use the war games to seize parts of the Baltics that have high numbers of Russian minorities, as it did with Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

There was also concern that Moscow would leave troops at NATO’s borders, for possible future confrontation with the West. But Stoltenberg said there was no indication Russia had done so.

Grushko insisted there was “no proof” of the claims NATO was making. “All efforts have been to demonize Zapad,” he said.
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More than four decades after selling 1,000 Volvos to North Korea, Sweden is still trying to get paid for the cars.

The vehicles were part of a $131 million trade package delivered to North Korea in 1974, during a period of openness. But Pyongyang never paid anything on the deal, leaving a debt that has now accumulated with interest to $328 million, according to the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

North Korea owes millions elsewhere in Europe from purchases made during the early 1970s, when Pyongyang was expanding economic relations with the West.

“Volvo Car Corporation sold approximately 1,000 of our 144 sedan(s) to North Korea in 1974,” said Per-Åke Fröberg of Volvo Heritage in the company’s press office in Sweden, who added that he did not know what else was included in the deal. The Swedish government was also unable to say what else was included.

Fröberg said the sale of the Volvos was insured through the Swedish Export Credit Agency, or EKN. “When North Korea failed to pay for the cars, EKN stepped in, meaning that Volvo Cars did not suffer financially,” he said. “The deal was closed from our point of view.”

But not for EKN, which twice a year reminds North Korea of its outstanding balance.

“For the most part, we get no response,” Carina Kemp, the EKN press manager, told VOA’s Korean service. However, “EKN’s position is that claims will be recovered.”

Many of the Volvos remain in service, as shown by an October 2016 tweet from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang describing “one of the Volvo’s from yr 1974 still unpaid for by DPRK.”

Sweden and North Korea have a long-standing relationship. It was the first Western European nation to establish diplomatic relations with Pyongyang; two years later, in 1975, it was the first to set up an embassy in Pyongyang.

Expanding relations

At the time, North Korea was expanding economic relations with the West. “In 1972-1973, before the global oil crisis, the prices of gold, silver, lead, zinc and other export items of North Korea were rising and Pyongyang must have been confident of its payment capabilities,” said Yang Moon-soo, professor of North Korean economy at the University of North Korea Studies, in the March 2012 issue of the KDI Review of the North Korea Economy, which is published by the Korea Development Institute, a think tank run by the South Korean government.

North Korea, after noting South Korea’s economic development through introduction of Western technologies, decided “to spur development with large-scale buildup of manufacturing plants with Western equipment and financing,” he said.

Of the 16 countries that owe a total of $729 billion to Sweden, North Korea’s share accounts for 45 percent, according to the EKN Annual Report 2016. Cuba, which is the next largest debtor, owes $225 billion as of December 2016 and began making payments that year, the EKN report shows.

Experts on sovereign debt told VOA there aren’t many ways for nations to recover what they are owed by cash-strapped North Korea.

“No payment has been made since 1989,” Katarina Byrenius Roslund, deputy director of the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s press office, told VOA in an email.

“This is the largest claim that Sweden has on a single country,” Roslund wrote. “Responsibility for the claim now lies with the Swedish Export Credits Guarantee Board, which sends a reminder to North Korea every six months.”

Roslund said the Volvos “are no longer a common sight on Pyongyang’s streets, but the odd Volvo 144 is still rolling down the country roads, often as a taxi.”

Paths to spare parts

Volvo’s Fröberg said he did not know whether the original deal included spare parts for the cars. But because the model purchased in bulk by North Korea, the 144, “was sold all over the world, they might have had their ways to get hold of parts through various channels.”

North Korea owes money elsewhere in Europe. The Swiss government reports it has claims for $241 million as of December 2016. North Korea owes Finland and private Finnish businesses more than $35 million, according to a YLE Uutiset report. Pyongyang “ordered paper machines and other assorted equipment” in the 1970s, according to YLE.

Isabel Herkommer, media spokeswoman at Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), told VOA via email that “Swiss Export Risk Insurance (SERV) has an agreement with North Korea, which exempts the country from payment at the moment.”

According to the SERV Annual Report 2016, the agency signed a new restructuring agreement with North Korea in October 2011. Herkommer wrote that “there has not been a debt settlement with North Korea,” and when asked whether the Swiss government considered waiving all or part of the debt owed by North Korea as Russia recently did, she said, “No, this has not been considered.”

Outi Homanen of Finnvera, Finland’s export credit agency, said “that although the debts were not paid [on] original due dates, there are no defaulted receivables at the moment.”

However, experts on sovereign debt and the international monetary system say that there aren’t many ways for countries to recover their claims from North Korea. In 2014, Russia forgave 90 percent of the nearly $11 billion in debt that it and the Soviet Union before it was owed by North Korea.

“International debt is typically thought of as having two enforcing mechanisms. The first is that if a country wants to be able to borrow more, it has to be repaying or have repaid its previous debts,” said Dane Rowlands, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, Ontario. “Since North Korea seems happy not to engage officially with the international community and capital market, cutting them off is not a useful enforcement tool.”

Asset seizure

He added that seizing exposed assets is another option for lenders but one that would not be effective against North Korea.

Hamid Zangeneh is an economics professor at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. An expert in the debt of economically developing nations, he said that in North Korea’s case, “it really doesn’t matter because it is not part of the international monetary system.”

Rowlands speculated that Switzerland and North Korea might have made a deal when they signed the debt restructuring agreement in 2011.

“Given the relatively few channels of international finances that North Korea has access to, I could see them doing a deal with Switzerland saying we [North Korea] will pay back a portion of the debt. … What that would end up doing is Switzerland forgives the rest of the debt and they don’t have claim on seizing North Korean deposits for example,” he said.

According to the SERV 2016 report, the Swiss agency had claims of 179.1 million Swiss Francs ($210 million) with North Korea as of the end of 2016. However, the report says the claims have been reduced to 17.9 million Swiss Francs ($21 million), or about 10 percent of the original claim.

SECO’s Herkommer said, “There has not been any debt cancellation. We cannot make any further comment.”
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The three parties exploring a possible coalition in Germany face an early test of their willingness to compromise on Thursday when they try to reach a common stance on deeply divisive immigration and asylum policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to patch together a tricky three-way coalition after her party suffered bruising losses in a national election three weeks ago, losses that even some of her allies blame on her refugee policies.

Germany’s demographic landscape changed overnight in 2015 with her decision, in the face of refugee flows on a scale not seen since World War II, to open the borders to more than a million migrants fleeing war in the Middle East and Africa.

Merkel in middle

While some hailed the move as a humanitarian act, it was less popular in her own conservative camp, where many blame her for the subsequent surge in the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, which took seats from her bloc.

Within her conservative bloc, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) is demanding a cap on refugee numbers, rejected by Merkel as unconstitutional. To her left, the Greens oppose what they see as a populist-driven tightening of asylum rules.

With parties far apart, Christian Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) warned that talks could rapidly descend into conflict with Greens on the sensitive matter of allowing family members to join migrants in Germany.

“The CSU’s talk of an upper limit is empty,” Lindner told Der Spiegel magazine. “But I have sympathy for the CSU’s calls for a change in immigration policy given the need for order,” he added, warning Merkel against compromising with the Greens.

“Once control has been re-established, then we can be more open again on family reunification,” he said. “Until then it must be strictly limited to cases of hardship and to the core family — parents and children.”

First rounds go well

In the first two rounds of coalition talks, the three parties defied expectations by finding substantial common ground on fiscal policy.

But politicians from all parties have said it could take months to clinch agreement on what would be Germany’s first three-way coalition for decades.
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Middle Eastern regional rivalries spilled over Wednesday into a U.N. meeting on human rights in Iran, when a Syrian diplomat’s outburst brought the proceedings to a temporary halt.

The meeting, an annual exercise in the U.N. committee that reviews the human rights situation in some of the countries with the worst records, began predictably enough.

Special Rapporteur Asma Jahangir outlined concerns about the rate of executions in Iran — 435 since January this year —  that included some women and juveniles. She also detailed reports she has received about the harassment, intimidation and prosecution of human rights defenders.

Jahangir, who took up her mandate in November last year, addressed the dangerous conditions for journalists, bloggers and social media activists, noting that more than two dozen were in Iranian jails as of June.

She went on to address discrimination against women, who must wear garments that cover them in public, are not allowed to watch sporting events at stadiums, are excluded from some occupations and face double the unemployment rates of men. When they do work, they are paid 41 percent less than their male counterparts.

She also expressed concern about the situation of ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Baha’is, who face “unabated discrimination” and even arbitrary arrest, torture and prosecution.

Some praise for Iran

Jahangir, an independent human rights expert who received her mandate from the U.N. Human Rights Council, also had some positive things to say.

She noted high participation rates in the May presidential and local elections and President Hassan Rouhani’s pledge to address the rights of women in Iran. She also welcomed the relatively good communication she has had with the government in carrying out her mandate, although a request to visit the country has not been granted.

Regional disputes erupt

When the discussion was opened to the floor, regional disputes came into play.

“Iran would like to divert the international community’s attention through stoking tension and instability in other countries and also through fueling hate crimes,” Saudi Arabia’s representative said. “Iran is sponsoring all problems in the Middle East.”

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran are arch enemies. They support different sides in the Syrian civil war and are fighting each other directly and indirectly in Yemen. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia backs the legitimate government, while Iran arms the militant cum political movement Hezbollah.

Syrian diplomat Amjad Qassem Agha began by accusing the Special Rapporteur of relying “on fabricated reports provided by intelligence agencies in countries that seek to destabilize Iran.”

Agha then suggested that before appointing a Special Rapporteur for Iran, there should be one assigned to look into Saudi Arabia or countries that were involved in Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s representative asked to address the remark about his delegation and the chair allowed it.

“We are now discussing the report on human rights in Iran, I do not think it appropriate to refer to other countries in this context,” he said. “I ask the Syrian representative not to address countries that have nothing to do with this item.”

Undiplomatic behavior

“What is his country’s concern to talk about Iran in this way?” Syrian diplomat Agha shouted. “How he has to dare to talk about Iran and he needs other countries not to talk about Iran, to protect Iran!” he yelled. He lost all composure and continued shouting for four minutes.

The committee’s secretary, Moncef Khane, could be heard speaking to the chair saying, “He’s completely out of line; it’s never happened (before),” expressing his shock at the undiplomatic outburst.

Syria is Iran’s main regional ally. Iran, along with Russia, intervened militarily in the conflict to save the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, when it appeared it might fall to the opposition.

The Syrian representative’s microphone was ultimately shut off, but he could still be heard screaming, ultimately provoking the committee secretary to warn that if he continued, U.N. security would be called. Ultimately, the chair suspended the session.

After a 10-minute hiatus, that included both the Iranian representative and committee secretary Khane speaking to the Syrian diplomat, the meeting resumed and so did the insults.

“If only one reason was needed to prove how debased the third committee has become to consider country-specific situations, the Saudi intervention provides that,” said Iranian envoy Mohammad Hassani Nejad Pirkouhi.

“Saudi — a bad child killer that has recently upgraded to a good child killer — kills more children in Yemen than al-Qaida, ISIS and al-Nusra put together around the globe,” Pirkouhi said, referring to Saudi Arabia’s listing on a U.N. blacklist of countries that kill and maim children in conflict.

This year, Riyadh was listed for coalition bombings in Yemen, but the U.N. noted it has put in place measures to improve child protection.
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Turkey has freed eight human rights activists, pending the outcome of their trials for alleged terrorism.

Those freed Wednesday included Amnesty International’s Turkey director, Idil Eser, and German and Swiss citizens.

They were arrested in July while attending a digital security workshop on Buyukada Island. They have been behind bars ever since.

A total of 11 activists have been charged with terrorism for allegedly having contact with Kurdish and leftist militants, as well as suspected members of a movement led by exiled Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen.

Turkey said Gulen and his backers were behind last year’s failed coup, a charge Gulen denies.

Amnesty International said there was not “a shred of evidence” against the defendants. One of them, Ozlem Dalkiran, a member of the group Citizens’ Assembly, told the judge during his court appearance, “I have no idea why we’re here.”

The United States has condemned the arrests and urged Turkey to drop the charges.

Turkey has long had its eyes on joining the European Union. But some in the EU have expressed concern that Turkey may be sliding closer to authoritarianism under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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