'Butcher' Putin 'cannot remain in power': Biden

Yahoo – AFP, Aurélia END, 26 March 2022 

US President Joe Biden, with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz (c) visiting Ukrainian
refugees in Warsaw on Saturday (AFP/Brendan Smialowski)

President Joe Biden on Saturday called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a "butcher" who "cannot remain in power" after meeting top Ukrainian ministers for the first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Within minutes of his comments during a visit to Warsaw, a White House official played down the remarks saying Biden "was not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change". 

"The president's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region," the official said. 

Biden compared Ukraine's resistance against Russia to the anti-Soviet "battle for freedom" and said the world must prepare for a "long fight ahead". 

"We stand with you," he told Ukrainians in a sweeping speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, which he began with the words of late Polish pope John Paul II: "Be not afraid." 

He said Russia had suffered a "strategic failure" in Ukraine and told ordinary Russians they were "not our enemy", urging them to blame Putin for the heavy sanctions imposed by the West. 

He also warned Russia not to move on an "inch" of NATO territory, reiterating the "sacred obligation" of collective defence for alliance members. 

"We will have a different future, a brighter future rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light. 

"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," he said, concluding his address. 

Russian missile fragment 

Biden earlier on Saturday met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who made a rare trip out of Ukraine in a possible sign of growing confidence in the fightback against Russian forces. 

The meeting took place at the Marriott Hotel in the city centre -- opposite a Warsaw train station where there has been a constant flow of Ukrainian refugees since the conflict started. 

Biden sat at a long white table between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, facing Kuleba and Reznikov, an AFP reporter saw. 

There were Ukrainian and US flags in the background. 

During the meeting Biden was flanked by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (far right, facing) and sitting opposite Kuleba and
Reznikov (front 3rd right) (AFP/Brendan Smialowski)

Kuleba gave Biden the fragment of a Russian missile that struck a base in Yavoriv near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv close to the Polish border. 

"The invincible character of Ukrainians and Western ones, especially US ones, are the recipe for our victory," Kuleba said after the meeting. 

Kuleba said he had discussed new sanctions that could be imposed against Russia and how to ensure the current ones are properly implemented. 

Blinken and Austin "pledged continued support to meet Ukraine's humanitarian, security, and economic needs", State Department spokesperson Ned Price said. 

Biden last met Kuleba in Washington on February 22 -- two days before Russia launched its assault. 

Since then, Kuleba has also met Blinken in Poland, next to the border with Ukraine on March 5. 

'He's a butcher' 

The US leader later visited a refugee centre at the National Stadium in Warsaw where he met several refugees, including some from the city of Mariupol which has suffered the worst of Russia's assault. 

Asked by reporters what he thought of Putin's actions, Biden responded simply: "He's a butcher." 

"I remember what it's like when you have someone in a war zone and every morning you get up and you wonder, you are just wondering, you are praying you don't get that phone call," said Biden, whose son Beau served in Iraq before dying of a brain tumour. 

He also said he was "not sure" that Russia had changed its strategy in Ukraine after assertions by Russian officials that they were altering their war aims to concentrate on the eastern Donbas region. 

During his visit, Biden also told Polish President Andrzej Duda that NATO's collective defence was a "sacred commitment" for the US, adding: "You can count on that... For your freedom and ours." 

Duda told him that Poles felt a "great sense of threat" from the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.

Femicide: A global scourge

Yahoo – AFP, Lucie PEYTERMANN and Mariette LE ROUX, November 19, 2019

The share by gender of homicides and partner-killings worldwide.
(AFP Photo/Maryam EL HAMOUCHI)

Paris (AFP) - Every day in 2017, 137 women and girls were intentionally killed by their partner or a family member somewhere in the world, according to UN statistics.

This adds up to over 50,000 women's lives ended by those closest to them, a scourge blamed on deep-rooted gender inequality and damaging stereotypes of women as weaker and less valuable members of society.

Here is an overview of the worldwide killings of women, also called femicide.

The toll

In 2017, some 87,000 women and girls were murdered worldwide, according to a 2018 report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Of these, 58 percent had their life taken by someone in their inner circle -- 30,000 by their spouse or intimate partner, and another 20,000 by a member of their own family.

The report showed that men were four times more likely than women to fall victim to homicide (they form 80 percent of all murder victims) but more often than not died at the hands of a stranger.

Fewer than one in five murdered men were killed by their life partner, compared to 82 percent for women.

Women in Africa are most likely to be killed by a spouse or family member, with a rate of nearly 70 percent (19,000 murders) compared to 38 percent (3,000 murders) in Europe, the region with the smallest share, said the UNODC.

In absolute numbers, Asia had the most severe toll, with 20,000 women killed by a partner or family member in 2017.

Husbands, fathers, brothers, mothers

The high murder rate among women is a consequence of rampant gender-based violence.

Nearly a third of women who have been in a relationship reported having experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partner, or a non-partner, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Many of the victims of 'femicide' are killed by their current and former partners, but they are also killed by fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters and other family members because of their role and status as women," said the UNODC.

These killings, it added, do "not usually result from random or spontaneous acts, but rather from the culmination of prior gender-based violence. Jealousy and fear of abandonment are among the motives."

The WHO report also blamed "unequal power of women relative to men" and the "normative use of violence to resolve conflict".

War

Emergencies such as poverty, war and humanitarian crises make women even more vulnerable.

Countries topping a UN-compiled list of "intentional homicides, female" are mostly in Latin America and Africa, regions which struggle with gang and ethnic wars, unemployment and privation.

Topping the list is El Salvador with 13.9 out of every 100,000 women murdered in 2017, followed by Jamaica with 11 per 100,000 in the same year.

The Central African Republic was in third place with 10.4 per 100,000 based on 2016 statistics, followed by South Africa with 9.1 per 100,000 in 2011.

The real numbers are likely to be higher, with reports based on whatever data is gathered by national statistical systems -- severely lacking in many countries in Africa and Asia.

Many wars, from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi to Kosovo and Iraq, are known for the tactic of targeting women, who are raped, beaten, taken as sex slaves, and often killed, as a "weapon of war".

Family

According to the UN, some 1,000 of the 5,000 so-called "honour killings" reported around the world every year, are committed in India.

These are crimes committed by close relatives after a woman or girl is deemed to have diverted from religious or traditional mores and values -- often for falling in love with a man from the wrong family, or for engaging in sex before marriage.

They are shot, stoned, burned, buried alive, strangled, smothered, or stabbed to death with what the UN describes as "horrifying regularity", often in countries where the laws exempt the perpetrators from punishment.

Pakistan sees hundreds of these killings every year, while in Afghanistan 243 cases were recorded between April 2011 and August 2013.

Change coming?

Spain is hailed in some quarters for turning the tide in the battle against femicide through a 2004 law against gender-targeted violence that sought to address the problem in different spheres simultaneously -- social, educational and correctional.

About 100 special courts and police units were also set up.

Last year, 50 women were murdered in Spain, and 51 so far this year, down from 71 in 2003.

Activists say the number is still too high in a country where judges are accused of bungling cases involving violence against women.

Last month, a court caused widespread anger by convicting five men accused of gang-raping a teenager of a lesser charge of sexual abuse on the grounds that she did not fight back.

There are action plans to combat violence against women in all of Canada's 10 provinces and marital violence has fallen since 2009.

"Training police has been one of the most beneficial factors," said Manon Monastesse, of the federation of homes of refuge for women.

But a woman still dies in Canada every six days at the hands of her partner, with indigenous Canadians six times more at risk.

Chagos islands: The fight over Africa’s last British colony

DW, 22 November 2019

A piece of Britain lies between Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. To date the Chagos Islands are still under British control and their inhabitants live in exile. But the UK has missed a deadline to return them.

   

The anger in his voice is clearly audible. There is a lack of goodwill on the side of the British government, Olivier Bancoult says. The fight over the Chagos archipelago has been dragging on for too long. "We are continuing to put pressure [on the British government]," Bancoult told DW. As a young boy, Bancoult was one of the Chagos residents who were forced to resettle. Today he lives in Mauritius and as a lawyer has been fighting for the people of Chagos and their descendants to return to the islands. On Friday, November 22, the United Nations deadline for the return of the islands to its people. Bancoult is amongst the organizers of a demonstration outside the British High Commission in Mauritius.

Mauritius, which had once been part of the same colonial territory as the Chagos islands, gained its independence in 1968. Between 1968 and 1973, up to 2,000 residents of the Chagos archipelago were forced to move to Mauritius, the Seychelles and UK in order to establish a military base on the main island, Diego Garcia. In the meantime, the UK has leased it to the US until 2036. Chagos served as a military base for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The largest island, Diego Garcis, serves as a US military base

Geostrategic importance

"We were poor people who are living in peace and harmony until they made the decision to giv one of the largest islands to America to make a military base. Since that time our nightmare started. Many of us were forcibly removed from our native land to live in Mauritius and the Seychelles," Bancoult told DW. In February the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruled that the archipelago is legally a part of Mauritius. The court said that Britain had illegally separated the islands from Mauritius and should give them back.

The British government rejected the ruling. "The UK has no doubt as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814," read a statement by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The statement, however, alleged that Britain had pledged  to hand over the islands to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for defense purposes.

In May, the UN General Assembly also called on the UK to handover the islands. The deadline for the handover expired on November 22, but the resolution is not binding and the UK seems to have no intention to make such a move in the near future.

The strategic location and the military role of the island, make the very calls for its independence very difficult.  Philippe Sands, a British lawyer who advises the Mauritian government on the Chagos matter, believes that talks between the UK, the US and Mauritius will continue to take place. "Mauritius has indicated that the military base could even remain on the island," Sands told DW.

Read more: The Commonwealth: Still relevant for Africa today?

The archipelago belings to the same island group as Mauritius which
gained independence from Britain in 1968

Clinging onto the last African colony

Sands believes that Britain's reluctance to bow to international pressure lies in the fact that it is still coming to terms with its new place in world politics. "[The UK] is a diminished power. It has lost its judge at the International Court of Justice, it has lost a series of resolutions at the UN General Assembly. I think its just taking time to come to the realization, that ist legal situation and is very different, but ultimately I think the UK will comply with the court," Sands said.

The UK, Sands explained, is paying a high price for its political losses. "They're in the process of leaving the European Union, and they have to negotiate new trade agreements and political agreements with several countries. The government is in real trouble and I think that is why it is clinging on to its last colony in Africa," Sands said.  For him, keeping the islands under British control amounts to a crime against the people of Chagos.

Chagossians celebrate the news of the UN resolution calling on the
UK give up control of the islands (February 2019)

Hopes set on upcoming UK elections

According to Sands, the UN is already preparing new maps which show the Chagos islands as part of Mauritius. Additionally Mauritius is the only country that can have legal rights to fishing and overflying rights of the area.

Sands and Bancoult have the hope that the upcoming UK elections set for December 12 could make a difference. "The Labour party has promised to respect the ruling of the International Court of Justice," Sands said. "If the next government is under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn that would be very good,” Bancoult said. "He already supports us."

According to Bancoult, 596 Chagossians who were forced to leave the islands are still alive today. All in all, he said, they have 9.800 descendants who identify as Chagossians. Bancoult himself finds the thought of growing old away from his homeland difficult. "Most old people want to die where they were born," he said.

Lebanese keep protest alive in northern city of Tripoli

Yahoo- AFP, November 2, 2019

Lebanese protesters wave flags and shout slogans during an anti-government
demonstration at al-Nour Square in the northern port city of Tripoli on
Saturday (AFP Photo/Ibrahim CHALHOUB)

Tripoli (Lebanon) (AFP) - Thousands of Lebanese flocked together in Tripoli Saturday, an AFP reporter said, to keep a protest movement alive in a northern city dubbed "the bride of the revolution".

Despite its reputation for conservatism, impoverished Tripoli has emerged as a festive nerve centre of anti-graft demonstrations across Lebanon since October 17.

The movement has lost momentum in the capital since the government resigned this week, but in the Sunni-majority city of Tripoli late Saturday it was still going strong.

In the main square, protesters waved Lebanese flags and held aloft mobile phones as torches, before bellowing out the national anthem in unison, the reporter said.

"Everyone means everyone," one poster read, reiterating a common slogan calling for all political leaders from across the sectarian spectrum to step down.

Many people had journeyed from other parts of the country to join in.

Ragheed Chehayeb, 38, said he had driven in from the central town of Aley.

"I came to Tripoli to stand by their side because they're the only ones continuing the revolution," he said.

Leila Fadl, 50, said she had travelled from the Shiite town of Nabatiyeh south of Beirut to Tripoli to show her support.

"We feel the demands are the same, the suffering is the same," she said.

In Tripoli, more than half live at or below the poverty line and 26 percent suffer extreme poverty, a UN study found in 2015.

On Tuesday embattled Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his cabinet would step down.

But it is still unclear what a new government would look like and if it would meet protesters' demands that it include independent experts.

Roads and banks have reopened after nearly two weeks of nationwide paralysis.

Fahmy Karame, 49, called for a "rapid solution to the economic crisis".

"We're waiting for a government of technocrats," he said.

In the Lebanese capital, hundreds protested on Saturday evening after a day of rain.

"Down with the rule of the central bank," they shouted at the top of their lungs, clapping their hands near the institution's headquarters.

Economic growth in Lebanon has stalled in recent years in the wake of repeated political crises, compounded by an eight-year civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Ex-SS guard, 93, 'sorry for what he did', German court hears

Yahoo – AFP, Mathieu FOULKES, October 17, 2019

A 93-year-old former SS guard holds his walking stick during his trial at
the regional court in Muenster, Germany (AFP Photo/Guido Kirchner)

Hamburg (AFP) - A former SS guard, 93, said he was sorry for his actions as he went on trial in Germany on Thursday for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 people at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

In what could be one of the last such cases of surviving Nazi guards, Bruno Dey stands accused of abetting the murder of 5,230 people when he worked at the Stutthof camp near what was then Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland.

While he insisted that he did not join the deadly operation voluntarily, he voiced regret for his actions.

"That's what he said in his interrogation: He felt sorry for what he did," said his lawyer Stefan Waterkamp.

"It was also clear to him that (the inmates) were not in there because they were criminals, but for anti-Semitic, racist and other reasons. He had compassion for them. But he did not see himself in a position to free them."

Seated in a wheelchair, Dey wore a hat and sunglasses and hid his face behind a red folder as he entered the courtroom.

Waterkamp said his client was "ready to respond to all questions", underlining that Dey "did not join the SS voluntarily".

Prosecutors said nevertheless that as an "SS guard at Stutthof concentration camp between August 1944 and April 1945, he is believed to have provided support to the gruesome killing of Jewish prisoners in particular".

Although the trial comes decades on, Ben Cohen, grandchild of a survivor, said "it's a really powerful way to acknowledge that we're not just going to look away and we're not just going to just turn around and say 'this is finished, we do not need to think about it anymore.' These things are as relevant today as they ever were."

Jewish groups underlined the trial's importance in light of contemporary far-right anti-Semitic violence after last week's deadly shooting in the eastern city of Halle that included a synagogue.

"Why are you doing this trial today? Remember what happened in Halle," said Efraim Zuroff of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

The 93-year-old Bruno Dey admitted in court to being an SS guard, but the 

defence underlined that he did not join the SS voluntarily' (AFP Photo/Markus Scholz)

'Cog in the murder machine'

During Dey's time at the camp, the "Final Solution" order to exterminate Jews was issued by the Nazi leadership, leading to the systematic killing of inmates in gas chambers, while others died of starvation or because they were denied medical care, prosecutors said.

Dey is being tried by a juvenile court in Hamburg because he was 17 when he first worked at Stutthof.

According to German media, Dey, who now lives in Hamburg, became a baker after the war.

Married with two daughters, he supplemented his income by working as a truck driver, before later taking on a job in building maintenance.

The law finally caught up with him as a result of the legal precedent set when former guard John Demjanjuk was convicted in 2011 on the basis that he served as part of the Nazi killing machine at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland.

Since then, Germany has been racing to put on trial surviving SS personnel on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

In the same vein, Dey is "accused of having contributed as a cog in the murder machine, in full knowledge of the circumstances, so that the order to kill could be carried out," prosecutors said.

'Speak up'

During pre-trial questioning, Dey said he ended up in the SS-Totenkopfsturmbahn (Death's Head Battalion) that ran the camp only because of a heart condition that prevented him from being sent to the front, according to Tagesspiegel daily.

Dey also reportedly confirmed he knew of the camp's gas chambers and admitted seeing "emaciated figures, people who had suffered", but insisted he was not guilty, according to the daily Die Welt.

The Nazis set up the Stutthof camp in 1939, initially using it to detain Polish political prisoners.

But it ended up holding 110,000 detainees, including many Jews. Some 65,000 people perished in the camp.

Since the landmark Demjanjuk ruling, German courts have convicted Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at the same camp, for complicity in mass murder.

Both men were found guilty at the age of 94 but died before they could be imprisoned.

Nobel laureates challenge world to end sexual violence

France24 – AFP, 9 Dec 2018

Murad and Mukwege will be jointly presented with the prize in Oslo on Monday for
"their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed
conflict"    Oslo (AFP)

Nobel peace laureates Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege said Sunday they hoped their award would help them push the international community to act to end rape in conflict and deliver justice for victims.

Yazidi activist Murad and Congolese doctor Mukwege will be jointly presented with the prize in Oslo on Monday for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".

Murad, 25, who was taken hostage in Iraq by the Islamic State group (IS) in 2014 but escaped, said the prize was an honour for all of her Yazidi community, and "a sign" for the thousands of women still held by jihadists.

"This prize, one prize cannot remove all the violence and all the attacks on pregnant women, on children, on women and give them justice," she told a press conference in Oslo.

But she said she hoped it would "open doors so that we can approach more governments", to bring the perpetrators to court and "so that we can find a solution and actually stop what is happening".

Fellow laureate Mukwege, who has spent two decades treating rape victims at his hospital in conflict-torn eastern DR Congo, said the Nobel spotlight made it harder for the world to ignore sexual violence.

"We cannot say that we didn't act because we didn't know. Now everyone knows. And I think now the international community has a responsibility to act," he said.

He said the prize was not a "victory", but could be seen "as the start of a new struggle, a new struggle against this type of evil".

Murad has spent the years since her escape campaigning for the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community that follows an ancient religion and was targeted by IS as it swept through her homeland.

More than 6,800 Yazidis were kidnapped, of whom 4,300 either escaped or were bought as slaves, while 2,500 remain missing, according to a recent report from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The United Nations is due to send a team into Iraq next year to investigate atrocities, following a Security Council resolution in September 2017 to bring those responsible for IS war crimes to justice.

The UN has described the massacre of the Yazidis by IS jihadists as possible genocide.

Murad, now a UN ambassador for victims of human trafficking living in Germany, said the "steps towards justice" had given her hope.

But she stressed that "not a single ISIS terrorist" has appeared in court, adding "this injustice will continue in this world if it is not dealt with now".

UK defence giant BAE Systems to axe almost 2,000 jobs

Yahoo – AFP, October 10, 2017

BAE faces slowing demand for the Eurofighter Typhoon jet, developed with the
 help of Italy's Finmeccanica and Airbus as part of a European consortium (AFP
Photo/SAUL LOEB)

London (AFP) - British military equipment maker BAE Systems said Tuesday it plans to cut almost 2,000 jobs, mainly owing to weaker demand for Hawk and Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets.

There will be cutbacks in BAE's military, maritime and intelligence services divisions under moves to streamline the group overall.

"To ensure production continuity at competitive costs... and based on the profile of currently contracted and expected aircraft deliveries, actions continue to be taken to reduce the group's current Typhoon and Hawk production rates," BAE said in a trading update.

"As a result, the group has today announced a proposal to reduce the workforce of the military air and information business by up to 1,400 roles."

Those job losses will fall across five sites over the next three years, including Warton and Samlesbury in northwestern England, where Eurofighter warplanes are assembled.

Approximately 375 redundancies will also hit BAE's maritime servicing and support business, mainly affecting Portsmouth on the south coast.

The company's cyber intelligence business in London and nearby Guildford will lose about 150 jobs.

BAE faces slowing demand for the Eurofighter Typhoon jet, developed with the help of Italy's Finmeccanica and Airbus as part of a European consortium.

At the same time, the group is easing back Hawk production ahead of an expected order from Qatar.

Most of the military air job cuts will go in 2018 and 2019, while BAE plans to achieve as many voluntary redundancies as possible.

"The organisational changes we are announcing today accelerate our evolution to a more streamlined... organisation, with a sharper competitive edge and a renewed focus on technology," wrote BAE chief executive Charles Woodburn.

"These actions will further strengthen our company as we deliver our strategy in a changing environment."

BAE's share price was down 0.2 percent in late morning deals on London's rising stock market following the announcement.

"Those actions are necessary and the right thing to do for our company, but unfortunately include proposed redundancies at a number of operations," Woodburn added.

"I recognise this will be difficult news for some of our employees."

Britain's biggest trade union Unite blasted the announcement as a "short-sighted" move that would hurt the country's defence capability.

"These planned job cuts will not only undermine Britain's sovereign defence capability, but devastate communities across the UK who rely on these skilled jobs and the hope of a decent future they give to future generations," said Unite assistant general secretary, Steve Turner.

"These devastatingly short-sighted cuts will harm communities, jobs and skills."