An air of calm settled over Barcelona after hundreds of thousands of Catalans attended a rally Sunday for Spanish unity.  The atmosphere of the rally was peaceful, as police helicopters monitored from above.

Amid a forest of Spanish national flags and chants of “Viva Espana,” protesters called for the jailing of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who on Friday issued a declaration of independence shortly before the Spanish government stripped Catalonia of its autonomy.  

But the calm that followed the rally in the Catalan capital attended by an estimated 300,000 people had the quality of the stillness before a storm.  Few are ready to hazard a prediction of how events in Catalonia may unfold in the coming days in a confrontation that has seen intransigence from both sides.

How Madrid starts imposing direct rule Monday on its restive northeast region, and how separatists respond, will determine the next phase in the month-long cat-and-mouse standoff between the politicians in Madrid and Catalan secessionists.  Both appear to be banking on the other side tiring like a bull played by a matador.

But fears are growing the perilous confrontation, at times visceral and seamed with past historical grievances including from the era of Gen. Francisco Franco, will degenerate into violence, despite the separatists’ determination to remain non-violent and Madrid’s eagerness not to repeat the national police violence that accompanied an October 1 independence referendum.

Olive branch

Despite the sacking of Puigdemont by Madrid among a raft of direct-rule measures announced Friday, including the dissolving of the regional parliament, Spanish ministers offered an olive branch Sunday by suggesting the Catalan leader is not barred from continuing in politics and even welcomed the idea of him taking part in regional elections Madrid has called for December 21.

“If Puigdemont takes part in these elections, he can exercise [his] democratic opposition,” said government spokesman Íñigo Méndez de Vigo.  That suggests the implacable deputy Spanish prime minister, María Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría Antón, a 46-year-old former prosecutor who is charged with overseeing direct rule, is not planning to kick off by arresting Catalan separatist leaders, a move some analysts say would be inflammatory, if it is tried.

Nonetheless, there will be several flash-points in the coming week that could push the confrontation, the worst political crisis to roil Spain since a failed military coup in 1981, down paths neither Madrid nor the secessionists want or could control, say analysts.  They worry the type of clashes seen on October 1, when the national police and Civil Guard tried to distort the referendum, will be seen when Madrid decides  to enforce direct-rule by closing down Catalonia’s parliament and regional government.  “I really will be amazed if we don’t see more of that, sadly,” said Sally Ann-Kitts, a lecturer in Hispanic studies at Britain’s University of Bristol.

“All sides seem to be living in Wonderland,” according to John Carlin, who was fired from his job at the Spanish newspaper El País earlier this month over an article he wrote highly critical of the Spanish government for its response to the independence referendum.

In an article for the London Sunday Times, Carlin argued the biggest risk may come if the idea takes hold “among highly energized independence-seeking youth that they have been the victims of a Franquista coup d’état.”

Another risk is that provocateurs on either side, violent anarchists or hardline Spanish nationalists take advantage of the mess Catalonia is in and organize an incident to provoke a reaction from their opponents.  On Friday young Spanish nationalists attacked a Catalan radio station.

Rival administrations

As things stand, Catalans will wake up Monday to two rival administrations in their region claiming legitimacy, the Puigdemont-led regional government and an emergency authority staffed by Spanish civil servants and led by Sáenz de Santamaría.  On Saturday, Puigdemont defied the fact that he was formally dismissed by the Spanish government and urged Catalans to “defend” the new republic in a televised address.

Separatist leaders and their supporters appear determined to wear Madrid down much as a matador does with a bull by obstructing and resisting the orders issued by Madrid. “The only answer we have is self-defense – institutional self-defense and civil self-defense.  I hope Catalans won’t be intimidated by Madrid,” says Abel Escriba, a pro-independence political scientist.

Madrid is banking on Catalonia’s 200,000 public employees and the executives of public companies in the region accepting direct-rule and ignoring the instructions of the Puigdemont-led regional government.  Public employee, teacher and firefighter unions have proclaimed their members will ignore Madrid’s instruction.

“We are going to ask them to be professional and to continue to provide services for their citizens,” a Spanish official told VOA last week.  The strategy is to be as light-touch as possible as the region is steered to the snap elections in December, which the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is gambling will go against the separatists.

A poll published by El Pais Saturday suggested a small majority of Catalans (52 percent to 43 percent) favor the dissolution of the regional parliament and the holding of the early elections.  Fifty-five percent of Catalan respondents opposed the declaration of independence, with 41 percent in favor of secession.

 
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Iceland’s ruling Independence Party took the largest share of the vote in the island nation’s parliamentary election but faces difficult negotiations to form a new government after populist candidates showed unexpected strength.

A record eight parties won seats in Saturday’s vote as the 2008 global financial crisis continues to roil the island’s politics.

Despite topping the poll, the Independence Party saw its support dip to 25 percent. The three-party governing coalition lost a total of 12 seats, leaving it 11 seats shy of a majority in parliament, known as the Althingi. The opposition Left Green Movement finished second with 17 percent, despite predictions it could win the election.

“Everyone lost,” said political analyst Gunnar Smari Egilsson said. “The current opposition gained no seats while the ruling coalition lost 12 seats. Populists alone triumphed.”

The upstart Center Party and People’s Party both exceeded expectations, winning 11 percent and 7 percent of the vote, respectively, with promises to work for the average Icelander. That proved appealing at a time when many working-class people feel they’ve been left behind by the island’s tourism boom.

Iceland became a poster-child for the global financial meltdown in 2008, when its debt-laden banks collapsed. That triggered political as well as economic chaos on this North Atlantic island of 330,000 people, with around 40 percent of the sitting members of parliament losing their seats in each election since the crisis. The current government, which had been in power only a year, collapsed in September amid allegations that the prime minister’s father backed an effort to help the job prospects of a convicted pedophile.

Voters took to social media Sunday to lament the country’s third government in four years — though some joked that the position of prime minister was probably the most unstable job in the gig economy.

Tourism has bolstered Iceland’s economy in recent years, largely because of the publicity surrounding the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. While ash spewed into the air by the eruption initially stranded millions of travelers worldwide, tourists later flocked to the island to see its pristine glaciers, fjords and the Northern Lights.

Despite that growth, many Icelanders fear the financial crisis is not yet over. On social media, debate centered on those still struggling after the “hrunid,” or the collapse.

Egilsson — the former editor-in-chief of Frettabladid, Iceland’s largest daily — said left-wing parties missed an opportunity this weekend to defeat the “most unpopular government in history.”

“The left focused on middle-class politics, which did not resonate with the vast number of people excluded from the current economic boom,” Egilsson said.

The populists promised change and cash.

The People’s Party, founded by Inga Saeland, a former contestant on “The X Factor,” capitalized on anger and frustration over corruption. Although she has been criticized for Islamophobic statements and critical remarks about refugees, Saeland sidestepped immigration questions during the campaign.

The Center Party, meanwhile, promised to give a windfall to “every Icelander” by distributing shares in government-owned banks to the public.

That put the party over the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the Althingi, even though party founder Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was ousted as prime minister only last year after documents leaked as part of the Panama Papers showed his wife held an account in an offshore tax haven.

On election night, spirits were high among Center Party supporters who gathered in Reykjavik, the capital. The predominantly middle-aged men attending the celebration reflected the party’s electoral base.

Tour guide Magnus Kjartansson said he voted for Center because he supported Gunnlaugsson and believes the media has smeared the former prime minister.

“He is going to solve issues the rest of them are not brave enough to tackle,” he said.

 
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The political landscape of Iceland has changed, according to preliminary results from Saturday’s election.

The Independence Party, which has won almost every election since independence from Denmark in 1944, is losing its center-right grip thanks to two scandals. Stepping in to that void are left-leaning parties.

Part of the current ruling coalition, the Independence Party, won 26 percent of the vote, down 3 percentage points from last year.

The main opposition Left Green Movement came in second with 17 percent of the vote.

The newly formed Center Party of former Prime Minister David Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was third with 11 percent of the ballots. Gunnlaugsson was forced out of office last year when his name was found in the Panama Papers scandal that exposed worldwide tax evasion networks.

Katrin Jakobsdottir, leader of the Left Green Movement, told Reuters she is not ruling out working with the new Center Party. 

“Nothing is out of the picture, but our first choice is to work with the parties on the left,” she said. “We’d hoped that the opposition would get a majority, but that is unclear now.”

Talks to form a ruling coalition government are expected to last for several months.

Current Iceland Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson, a member of the Independence Party, called the election last month after a member of the three-party center-right coalition resigned over a controversy about granting clemency to a child molester.

The clemency scandal coupled with the Panama Papers scandal led to the collapse of the government, prompting the second snap parliamentary election in a year.

Iceland has recovered spectacularly from the 2008 financial crisis, which forced the country into near bankruptcy. But the scandals have fueled anger and distrust among voters, who are increasingly concerned about inequality and immigration threatening one of the world’s most homogeneous countries.

Iceland’s 63-member parliament is one of the oldest in the world.
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Hundreds of people have attended an opposition-organized anticorruption rally in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.

The protest Saturday was organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF) — an umbrella group of Azerbaijani opposition forces, under the slogan “No To Robbery.”

Activists from the Popular Front Party, People’s Democratic Party, National Statehood Party, Musavat Party youth organization, Muslim Union, and NIDA movement attended the rally.

The rally held in the Mehsul stadium in Baku’s Yasamal district was approved by the city authorities. Police said the protest was attended by an estimated 1,000 people, although opposition activists say the number was higher.

Protesters chanted slogans like “End to corruption” and “Freedom for political prisoners!”

Police cordoned off the area around the stadium as part of increased security measures.

No incidents were reported, and the rally ended peacefully, police said.

The opposition, as well as Western governments and international human rights groups, have criticized Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s government for persistently persecuting independent media outlets, journalists, and opposition politicians and activists.

Aliyev, who has ruled the oil-rich South Caucasus country of nearly 10 million people since shortly before his father’s death in 2003, has shrugged off the criticism, and the authorities deny that there are political prisoners in the country.

Recent international corruption investigations have also found that Aliyev’s family makes frequent use of offshore companies to hide its wealth and mask the ways it gains shares in Azerbaijan’s most lucrative businesses.

During the rally, Ali Karimli, the leader of the Popular Front Party, which is part of the NCDF, denounced government corruption. He said the government doesn’t use oil revenues effeciently, and high-level corruption deprives Azerbaijanis from benefiting from oil billions.

Human rights activist Oktay Gulaliyev told the rally that freedom of speech was under threat in the country.

“Access to independent, critical Internet sites has been blocked,” Gulaliyev said. “There are more than 160 [political] prisoners in the country, and up to 20 of them are journalists and bloggers.”

The rally came after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) earlier this month voiced concerns over Azerbaijan’s “unprecedented crackdown on human rights” as well as checks and balances, and the functioning of justice in the country.

PACE on October 11 passed a resolution blasting “the reported prosecution and detention of leaders of NGOs, human rights defenders, political activists, journalists, and bloggers,” although some of them were released last year.

PACE cited cases of “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest, in police custody, and in prisons, and the lack of effective investigations, violations of the right to a fair trial, and violations of the right to freedom of expression, association, and assembly.”

The resolution also called on Azerbaijani authorities to “begin real and meaningful reforms” to remove the obstacles to the work of journalists and rights defenders.
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Hundreds of people attended on October 28 an opposition-organized anticorruption rally in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. The protest was organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF) — an umbrella group of Azerbaijani opposition forces, under the slogan “No To Robbery.” Protesters chanted slogans like “End to Corruption” and “Freedom for Political Prisoners!” (RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service)
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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.
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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.
…

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.”
…

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.
…

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.
…

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.
…

A new strain of malicious software has paralyzed computers at a Ukrainian airport, the Ukrainian capital’s subway and at some independent Russian media.

The Odessa international airport in Ukraine’s south, the Kyiv subway and prominent Russian media outlets such as Interfax and Fontanka on Tuesday reported being targeted.

The cyberattack appears to be similar to a major attack in June that locked the computers of hospitals, government offices and major multinationals with encryption that demanded a ransom for their release. The software appeared to have originated in Ukraine.

Moscow-based cyber security firm Group-IP said in a statement Wednesday the ransomware called BadRabbit also tried to penetrate the computers of major Russian banks but failed. None of the banks has reported any attacks.

Moscow-based cyber security company Kaspersky Lab said it was aware of more than 200 companies in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Germany targeted by the ransomware.

The Odessa airport said in a statement its information systems have been affected, although it continues to service flights. The subway in the capital, Kyiv, said it cannot process online payments and bank card payments.

The operations of Russia’s only privately owned news agency, Interfax, have been paralyzed since Tuesday.

 
…

Sometime in 2014, a group of analysts walked into the office of Eugene Kaspersky, the ebullient founder of Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, to deliver some sobering news. The analysts were in possession of a cache of files belonging to the Equation Group, an extraordinarily powerful band of hackers that would later be exposed as an arm of the U.S. National Security Agency. But the analysts were worried; the files were classified.

“They immediately came to my office,” Kaspersky recalled, “and they told me that they have a problem.”

According to him, there was no hesitation about what to do with the cache.

“It must be deleted,” Kaspersky says he told them.

The incident, recounted by Kaspersky during a brief telephone interview on Monday and supplemented by a preliminary timeline provided by company officials, could not be immediately corroborated. But it’s the first public acknowledgement of a story that has been building for the past three weeks — that Kaspersky’s popular anti-virus program uploaded powerful digital espionage tools belonging to the NSA and sent them to servers in Moscow.

The account provides new perspective on the U.S. government’s recent move to blacklist Kaspersky from federal computer networks, even if it still leaves important questions unanswered.

To hear Kaspersky tell it, the incident was an accident borne of carelessness.

Kaspersky was already on the trail of the Equation Group when one of its customers in the United States — Kaspersky referred to them as a “malware developer” — ran at least two anti-virus scans on their home computer after it was infected by a pirated copy of Microsoft Office 2013, according to Kaspersky’s timeline. That triggered an alert for Equation Group files hidden in a compressed archive which was spirited to Moscow for analysis.

Kaspersky’s story at least partially matches accounts published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. All three publications recently reported that someone at the NSA’s elite hacking unit lost control of some of the agency’s powerful surveillance tools after they brought their work home with them, leaving what should have been closely guarded code on a personal computer running Kaspersky’s anti-virus software.

But information security experts reading the bits of information dropped by anonymous government officials are still puzzling at whether Kaspersky is suspected of deliberately hunting for confidential data or was merely doing its job by sniffing out suspicious files.

Much of the ambiguity is down to the nature of modern anti-virus software, which routinely submits rogue files back to company servers for analysis. The software can easily be quietly tweaked to scoop up other files too: perhaps classified documents belonging to a foreign rival’s government, for example.

Concerns have been fanned by increasingly explicit warnings from U.S. government officials after tensions with Russia escalated in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.

Kaspersky denied any inappropriate link to the Russian government, and said in his interview that any classified documents inadvertently swept up by his software would be destroyed on discovery.

“If we see confidential or classified information, it will be immediately deleted and that was exactly [what happened in] this case,” he said, adding that the order had since been written into company policy.

An AP request for a copy of that policy wasn’t immediately granted.

Kaspersky’s account still has some gaps. How did the analysts know, for example, that the data was classified? And why not alert American authorities to what happened? Several reports alleged that the U.S. learned that Kaspersky had acquired the NSA’s tools via an Israeli spying operation.

Kaspersky declined to say whether he had ever alerted U.S. authorities to the incident.

“Do you really think that I want to see in the news that I tried to contact the NSA to report this case?” he said at one point. “Definitely I don’t want to see that in the news.”

So did he alert the NSA to the incident or not?

“I’m afraid I can’t answer the question,” he said.

Even if some questions linger, Kaspersky’s explanation sounds plausible, said Jake Williams, a former NSA analyst and the founder of Augusta, Georgia-based Rendition InfoSec. He noted that Kaspersky was pitching itself at the time to government clients in the United States and may not have wanted the risk of having classified documents on its network.

“It makes sense that they pulled those up and looked at the classification marking and then deleted them,” said Williams. “I can see where it’s so toxic you may not want it on your systems.”

As for the insinuation that someone at the NSA not only walked highly classified software out of the building but put it on a computer running a bootleg version of Office, Williams called it “absolutely wild.”

“It’s hard to imagine a worse PR nightmare for the NSA,” he said.
…

Three-quarters of the world’s people live in countries that either restrict the right to religion or belief or have “a high level of social hostility involving religion or belief,” the U.N. special investigator on religious rights said Tuesday.

Ahmed Shaheed told the General Assembly’s human rights committee that religious intolerance is prevalent globally – and rising around the world.

He said over 70 countries currently have anti-blasphemy laws that can be used to suppress dissenting views, in violation of international human rights standards.

Shaheed, a former politician and human rights expert from the Maldives, urged those countries to repeal the blasphemy laws.

He also called for the repeal of all laws that undermine the exercise of the right to freedom of religion or belief – or discriminate against that right.

Shaheed urged countries to adopt and enforce “adequate criminal sanctions penalizing violent and particularly egregious discriminatory acts perpetrated by state or non-state actors against persons based on their religion or belief.”

He said governments must also pay “particular attention” to uphold the obligation to protect religious minorities.

“Increases in unlawful government restrictions against religious groups remain one of the primary and most fundamental factors resulting in higher levels of religious intolerance in any given society,” Shaheed said.

Some forms of discrimination are direct, such as prohibiting some or all religions or beliefs, he said. But others may be indirect, like zoning laws that prevent construction of certain houses of worship or bans on refugees or immigrants, “ostensibly for national security reasons, from countries where majority populations belong to particular faith communities,” he said.

The special investigator, or rapporteur, on freedom of religion or belief is an independent expert appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council. Shaheed previously served for almost six years as special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.
…

Russia used its U.N. veto Tuesday to block a resolution extending the mandate of the investigators probing chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

In a Security Council vote, 11 countries supported extending the mission for another year, while Russia and Bolivia voted against the measure, and China and Kazakhstan abstained.

The investigating team, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism or JIM, is expected to make public a report on Thursday that could identify the party responsible for a deadly April 4 attack in the rebel-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib that killed and sickened scores of civilians.

Three days later, the United States launched an airstrike on a Syrian air base which Washington accused the regime of Bashar al-Assad of having used to launch the poison gas attack.

Accountability

While the question of whether sarin or a sarin-like substance is not disputed, who used it still has to be officially confirmed, and it is anticipated the JIM’s report could shed light on the matter.

It would be politically embarrassing for Russia, a staunch ally of President Assad, if evidence shows that the regime — and not, for example, Islamic State militants — are responsible for the attack. In Syria, the government is the only party to the conflict that possesses air capabilities. Russia has previously suggested that the gas was released from a bomb on the ground and not in the air.

Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, first sought to postpone Tuesday’s vote through a procedural measure until after the release of the JIM’s report, saying the hastily-called vote was an effort by Washington to embarrass Moscow.

“You need to show up Russia and show that Russia is guilty of not extending the JIM, in fact you are the one who is begging for confrontation,” Nebenzia said of the U.S. delegation, which drafted the text and pushed for the vote.

While the procedural vote had the support of China, Kazakhstan and Bolivia, it fell short of the required eight-vote majority and failed to prevent the other vote going ahead, forcing Russia to use its veto.

Eighth veto on Syria

“I want to underscore that today’s voting is senseless also, because it won’t have any impact on the future of the JIM,” Nebenzia said after casting his veto — the eighth time Russia has done so on Syria. “We will return to the issue of extension in the future — we have not stopped it.”

The mission’s mandate does not expire until November 16, so the council has three weeks to approve an extension without disrupting the team’s work, as happened last year when consensus could not be reached on the JIM’s extension.

“The question we must ask ourselves is, whether the JIM is being attacked because it has failed in its job to determine the truth in Syria, or because its conclusions have been politically inconvenient for some council members,” said U.S. envoy Michele Sison.

“Russia called for the formation of the JIM, they negotiated its terms, they agreed its mission, and yet when faced with the prospect of the JIM revealing the truth, why has Russia alone chosen to shoot the messenger?” asked British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.

Some diplomats said the move for the vote now was intended to avoid politicizing whatever conclusions the report draws and avoiding having them affect votes for the extension.

All council members expressed the hope that they could return to the issue and reach consensus on extending the JIM’s mandate before it expires next month.
…

A trial began in Istanbul Tuesday for eleven prominent human rights activists, including two foreign nationals, in a case that is drawing criticism from international human rights organizations who say it is part of a campaign by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to silence criticism and scrutiny in Turkey in the wake of last year’s coup attempt.  

The defendants face prison sentences of up to 15 years in prison.

Amnesty International’s chairman in Turkey, Taner Kilic, and Idil Eser, Amnesty International’s Turkey director, are among those on trial. The case centers on a digital security seminar that was held on Buyukada, an island on the Sea of Marmara near  Istanbul, that focused on security and coping with stress. In a 15-page indictment, prosecutors allege the meeting was part of a conspiracy to unseat the government by inciting civil unrest

“It’s a completely baseless case, there is not a shred of evidence,” said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher. “It’s an attempt to scare and silence human rights civil society. That’s why Turkey’s most prominent human rights defenders and human rights organizations have been swept up in this case,” he said.

Key members of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, one of Turkey’s most respected and oldest human rights groups, are among those on trial Tuesday.

Erdogan has vigorously defended the charges against the activists, portraying the case as an example that no one is above the law and evidence that Turkey faces a threat by international conspirators and unidentified countries following the failed coup. Erdogan on Tuesday lashed out at EU nations whose leaders have been critical of his crackdown and what they see as tightening controls on free speech.   “We expect European leaders to stop targeting Turkey and to return to common sense,” the Turkish leader said at an event in the capital, Ankara, on Monday.  

Mounting tensions with Europe

Tuesday’s trial is likely to further ratchet up tensions between Turkey and Europe. Two of the defendants are European nationals:  Swedish national Ali Gharavri and German Peter Steudtner, both of whom were giving seminars at the meeting where the human rights advocates were arrested.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel has strongly criticized the arrests, saying “Innocent people are caught up in the wheels of justice,” in Turkey.”

“Linking the work of Steudtner and other human rights activists, who are on trial with him, to the support of terrorism, to imprison and prosecute them, is highly absurd,” wrote European Parliamentarian Rebecca Harms in a statement released Tuesday. “The arbitrary detention of foreign citizens in Turkey proves to be more and more a measure by which the Turkish leadership wants to pressure the home countries of those concerned,” she said.

Under emergency rule introduced last year following the botched military coup, more than 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 others have lost their jobs.

Critics point to what they see as a lack of evidence to justify many of the prosecutions.

“If you look at the evidence, for example, against Idil Eser, Amnesty International’s director, it’s all to do with an Amnesty International campaign and public documents,” said Gardner. “The prosecutors have had three months of investigations to come up with evidence against human rights defenders and came up with nothing.”

Among the evidence against the defendants is a Tweet telling participants to turn off their phones and “enjoy the boat ride” to the island where the seminar was being held.

Courts as intimidation tool

There is a growing suspicion among observers that the trial is part of a campaign to intimidate wider civil society.

“The arrests of the human rights activists, I think, gives us a very bleak picture of the Turkish civic society, or what the regime means by ‘civic society,'” observes political scientist Cengiz Aktar. “It’s not very different from what we see in Russia, completely curtailed and diminished.”

Tuesday’s prosecution of human rights advocates comes amid a rash of arrests and trials of journalists. Media freedom groups have dubbed Turkey the world’s worst jailor of journalists, claiming more than 150 reporters are imprisoned.

On Tuesday, six more journalists went on trial for reporting on leaked emails that allegedly were written by Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of President Erdogan, and Turkey’s energy minister. The emails are considered to be in the public domain, yet observers note the journalists are being prosecuted for publishing state secrets.

The clampdown on media and freedom of expression is drawing further condemnation among Europeans already skeptical of Turkey’s readiness to continue its bid to some day join the EU.

“There cannot be an effective political debate when journalists cannot report or question political leaders without fear of harassment or arrest,” said Tanja Fajon, a Slovenian politician with the Social Democrats and member of the European Parliament. “As Turkey’s political situation worsens, it remains imperative to offer support to, and speak about, those imprisoned for their journalism.”

 
…

The international aid group Save the Children is suspending its efforts to rescue migrants making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya.

Tuesday, the organization said the combination of falling numbers of crossings and worsening security forced it to stop sending its ship, the Vos Hestia, out from its port in Italy.

Save the Children said the ship rescued as many as 10,000 migrants over the past year after the smugglers’ vessels they were in foundered at sea.

The announcement comes just a day after Italian authorities searched the Vos Hestia as part of Rome’s efforts to deter people smuggling across the Mediterranean. Save the Children said the decision to suspend operations wasn’t related to the search and it told journalists that Italian prosecutors had given assurances it is not under investigation. It seems the search might be linked, however, to crew members on the boat.

In August, police seized a boat operated by a German aid organization, saying there was evidence some people smugglers escorted migrants to that boat. Save the Children says it has nothing to do with that case.

Save the Children was one of the first aid groups to sign a voluntary code of conduct with the Italian government to ensure they aren’t colluding with or encouraging smuggling.

The number of arriving migrants is down about 25 percent so far this year from last year, to around 110,000. And the drop will get worse as the winter closes in. Very few rescue boats are heading out into the Mediterranean now because of falling need.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere have struggled to sail from Libya to Italy over the past few years. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have also trekked through Turkey to Europe.

Thousands have died in the sea crossing, prompting both rescue efforts by private aid groups and efforts by the Italian government to staunch the flow.

Rome, with the EU’s backing, has helped Libya with efforts to police its vast desert land borders and to patrol its coast to prevent migrants from entering.
…

Britain’s democracy is one of the most secure in the world and will remain so, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday in response to a question about a suggestion that there may have been foreign interference in the Brexit vote.

Opposition lawmaker Ben Bradshaw last week urged the government to look into reports by an advocacy group suggesting that the origin of some Brexit campaign funds was unclear.

Bradshaw said in parliament the issue should be investigated “given the widespread concern over foreign and particularly Russian interference in Western democracies.”

At a regular briefing with reporters, May’s spokesman was asked if the prime minister was concerned about the reports. “I am not aware of those concerns,” he said.

“More broadly, as we’ve always said, the UK democratic system is amongst one of the most secure in the world and will continue to be so.”

The Electoral Commission, which regulates political finance in Britain, said in April it was investigating campaign spending by pro-Brexit organization Leave.EU, without giving details.

A spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission said on Monday that investigation was still going on and it would not provide any further information until it was complete.

 
…

The building that houses EU summits, where toxic fumes forced EU leaders to switch venues last week, will be closed for a further week as investigators

seek to resolve the problem.

The fumes leaking from the drains have forced the Europa Building, also known as “The Egg,” to be evacuated twice this month, including before a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday.

The new building was opened in January amid controversy over its 321-million-euro ($378 million) price tag.

Staff and meetings will be temporarily transferred to the next door Justus Lipsius building until the issue is resolved.

About 20 catering staff had to go to hospital on October 13 and an unspecified number on Wednesday. An EU official said the Council and Belgian health and safety agencies believe the two incidents were due to the same source.

Reporting by Lily Cusack; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Toby Chopra.
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U.S. and Turkish diplomats continue talks on resolving a dispute over recent visa curbs, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan steps up his rhetoric against Washington. Bilateral relations are set to be further strained by an upcoming court case over Iranian sanction busting involving Turkish citizens.

Erdogan launched a scathing attack Sunday on the country’s Western allies.

He warned Turkey would respect its strategic alliances with its partners as long as those countries respected the law. Ankara has accused some of its NATO partners of conspiring against it and offering sanctuary to people it accuses of being involved in last year’s coup.

Erdogan specifically targeted Washington.

“They say the United States is the cradle of democracy. This can not be true, this can not be democracy,” he said. ” If the United States issues arrest warrants for my 13 bodyguards in a country where I went upon invitation, I am sorry, but I will not say that country is civilized.”

Erdogan’s body guards are accused by U.S. prosecutors of assaulting peaceful protesters outside the Turkish embassy during his visit to Washington in May.

The Turkish president’s scathing attack comes as diplomats from both countries are continuing efforts to resolve the mutual curbing of visas.

Washington imposed visa restrictions following the arrest on terrorism charges of two local employees working at U.S. diplomatic missions in Turkey.

That move saw Ankara retaliating with its own visa restrictions.

The U.S. State Department described the talks Thursday as productive.

Political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website said Erdogan’s increasingly tough rhetoric against Washington should be viewed in a wider context of the importance of bilateral relations to both sides.

“He [Erdogan] is a master of coming out with bellicose remarks at unexpected and sensitive moments. But we must realize Erdogan was in New York very recently and had a very chummy meeting with Donald Trump who called him a special friend. So Turkey is aware for all the problems it has with America, [it] too it has to tread carefully,” said Idiz.

Observers point out Erdogan’s tough rhetoric is in part motivated by domestic politics. A tough anti American stance plays well with Turkish nationalists Erdogan is courting for 2019 presidential and general elections.

But U.S. Turkish relations could be further strained with an upcoming Iranian sanction busting court case in the United States that involves Turkish-Iranian businessmen Reza Zarrab and senior members of a Turkish State bank.

Political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source partners warns the case can only add to bilateral tensions.

“This upcoming Reza Zarrab case which we [Turkey] consider a big conspiracy of the American deep state, so the possibility of these political shocks tampering off is almost nil,” said Yesilada.

Washington’s ongoing support of Syrian Kurdish militia fighting the Islamic State, also continues to infuriate Ankara who accuse the militia of being, linked to an armed insurgency in Turkey.
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Amid the turmoil in Spain’s separatist-minded Catalonia region, two wealthy Italian regions voted overwhelmingly Sunday for more autonomy from Rome.

Referenda were held in Veneto – the northern region that includes the tourist haven of Venice – and in Lombardy, another northern region with the city of Milan as its main attraction.

The presidents of both regions say more than 90 percent of those who cast ballots voted in favor of more autonomy.

Both referenda are non-binding. But the presidents say the voices of their people give them a strong mandate and more leverage when they open talks with Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Leaders of both regions want to keep more tax revue and have a greater say over such matters as education, immigration, security, and the environment.
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Several thousand Maltese citizens rallied Sunday to honor an investigative journalist killed by a car bomb, but the prime minister and opposition leader who were chief targets of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s reporting stayed away from the gathering.

Participants at the rally in Malta’s capital, Valletta, placed flowers at the foot of a memorial to the 53-year-old reporter that sprang up opposite the law court building after her October 16 slaying.  

Some wore T-shirts or carried placards emblazoned with words from Caruana Galizia’s final blog post: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate” in the European Union nation of some 400,000 people.

Police removed a banner describing Malta as a “Mafia state.”

Hundreds of participants later held a sit-in outside police headquarters, demanding the resignation of Malta’s police commissioner. Some hurled tomatoes, cakes and coins against an enlarged photograph of the commissioner spread out on the street.

The homicide of a journalist who devoted her career to exposing wrong-doing in Malta and raised her three sons there united many of the nation’s oft-squabbling politicians, at least for a day.

Caruana Galizia had repeatedly criticized police and judicial officials.

Malta’s two dominant political forces, the ruling Labor and opposition Nationalist parties, participated in the rally which was organized to press demands for justice in her slaying.

Official no-shows

But Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told his Labor party’s radio station a few hours before the event’s start time that he wouldn’t attend because he knew the anti-corruption reporter’s family didn’t want him to be there.

“I know where I should be and where I should not be. I am not a hypocrite and I recognize the signs,” Muscat said, adding that he supported the rally’s goals of call for justice and national unity.

Nationalist leader Adrian Delia also skipped the rally, saying he didn’t want to “stir controversy.”

“Today is not about me, but about the rule of law and democracy,” Delia told reporters.

Muscat and Delia, while fierce political rivals, have another thing in common:  Both brought libel lawsuits against Caruana Galizia. Delia withdrew his pending libel cases last week after her killing.

Caruana Galizia’s family has refused to endorse the government’s offer of a 1 million euro ($1.18 million) reward and full protection to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of her killer or killers.

Instead, the family, which includes a son who is an investigative journalist himself, has demanded that Muscat resign. In their quest for a serious and efficient investigation, Caruana Galizia’s husband and children also want Malta’s top police office and attorney general replaced.

“The killers decided to silence her, but they won’t silence her spirit, they won’t silence us,” Christophe Deloire, a French journalist from the journalism advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders, said.  “From us they will not have more than one minute of silence.”

On Sunday morning, all seven national newspapers had their front pages black in Caruana Galizia’s memory. Printed in bold letters against the black backgrounds were the words: “The pen conquers fear.”

‘Crooks everywhere’

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were ‘crooks everywhere’ in Malta. The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and the island’s drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.  

After the rally ended, several hundred participants walked to police headquarters, and sat in the street outside shouting “Shame on you!” and “Resign!”

Malta President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca received a delegation from the Civil Society Network, a non-partisan organization of university professors, businessmen, opinion writers and authors in Malta.

The car bombing was “an attack on all of us, every single one of us,” Coleiro Preca told them. “We need to see how we are going to work together. We need to unite to have the reform that is needed.”
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Slovenia’s incumbent president Borut Pahor won the most votes in Sunday’s election, but not enough to avoid a runoff.

With nearly all the ballots counted, Pahor is expected to finish with 47 percent, while his main challenger, former comedian Marjan Sarec, will win about 25 percent.

Pahor said he expects to win the November 12 runoff as he thanked voters for backing him in Sunday’s first round.

Slovenia is a former Yugoslav republic which has frequently been in the news in the past year as the birthplace of U.S. first lady Melania Trump.

The Slovenian presidency is a largely ceremonial office. But the president nominates the prime minister, and presidential opinions greatly influence government policies.

 
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Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced Saturday he would dismiss Catalonia’s separatist government and call for new elections in an attempt to prevent the semi-autonomous region from declaring its independence.

Rajoy made the announcement after an emergency Cabinet meeting to deal with the political crisis caused by secession efforts undertaken by the regional leadership of Catalonia.

Rajoy’s office invoked Article 155 of Spain’s constitution, which gives the government the power to take away some or all of Catalonia’s autonomy. Opposition political parties have agreed to support the imposition of central rule over Catalonia. Rajoy is nearly certain to get the required votes next week from Spain’s upper legislative body, which is ruled by Rajoy’s conservative party.

Carles Puidgemont, Catalonia’s leader, said the prime minister’s move was “the worst attack on institutions and Catalan people” since the era Francisco Franco, and called for a meeting of the Catalan parliament. Franco was Spain’s military dictator from 1939 to his death in 1975.

“Mariano Rajoy has announced a de facto coup d’etat with he goal of ousting a democratically elected government,” said Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell. She said Rajoy’s new move is “an authoritarian blow within a member of the European Union.”

Rajoy said Saturday Puidgemont’s threat to secede “has been unilateral, contrary to the law, and seeking confrontation.”

Barcelona police say 450,000 demonstrators took to the streets in the regional capital Saturday with many waving Catalonia’s red and yellow separatist flag. Some protesters shouted “freedom” and “independence.”

“We are here because the Spanish government made a coup without weapons against the Catalan people and their government institutions,” said Joan Portet, a 58-year-old protester.

Voters in Catalonia voted in favor of independence in the October 1 referendum, but fewer than half of those eligible to cast a ballot took part, with opponents boycotting the process. Rajoy’s government dismissed the referendum as illegal.
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