Climate activists take to the trees to save German village

Climate activists take to the trees to save German village
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Trees stand in a small park in Frankfurt, Germany, on Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo)
Climate activists take to the trees to save German village
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Climate activists protest on the transport ministry's building in Berlin, Germany on Nov. 11, 2022. (REUTERS)
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Updated 12 November 2022

Climate activists take to the trees to save German village

Climate activists take to the trees to save German village
  • Europe’s largest economy has restarted part of its mothballed inventory of coal power plants to relieve the pressure on gas-powered facilities, following a cut to supplies from Russia

LÜETZERATH Germany: After the last farmer packed up and left in October, climate activists are the only people left in the village of Luetzerath, Germany, which sits above a rich vein of coal.
In huts perched six meters (19 feet) above ground in the trees, the young campaigners say they can hold out against the authorities if they try to clear them out.
They are there in an effort to stop the village being bulldozed to allow the extension of a neighboring open-air coal mine.
They do not know when the police might come to force them out, but with Germany in need of more coal, most think it will be soon.
Europe’s largest economy has restarted part of its mothballed inventory of coal power plants to relieve the pressure on gas-powered facilities, following a cut to supplies from Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
Several thousand protesters are expected to descend Saturday on Luetzerath, now a symbol of the resistance to fossil fuels, to urge more action from participants in the COP27 conference in Egypt.
“We do not know when the evacuation is planned,” says Alma, a French activist who uses a pseudonym.
“It’s a question of responsibility, one that is difficult to take for the authorities because it’s a huge operation, for which thousands of police officers need to be mobilized over several weeks,” she says.

After studying, Alma decided to go full time as an activist and was one of the first to set up the activist camp in Luetzerath two years ago.
One by one, the residents of Luetzerath have left as their homes were expropriated and they were compensated and rehoused.
She and the dozens of others who have joined her in the occupied village felt betrayed earlier this year when the government, led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, announced a compromise with the energy giant RWE to allow the extension of the nearby mine.
Under the agreement, five nearby villages will be spared, but Luetzerath is set to disappear.
Even though RWE, long one of Europe’s biggest emitters, said it would stop producing electricity with carbon in 2030, the activists are not persuaded.
“If RWE extracts all the coal under Luetzerath, Germany will certainly violate the Paris (climate) accord because of the emissions from the mine. The village is therefore not just a symbol, it’s a critical point in the fight against climate change,” says Alma.

On the other side of the road, sits the coal pit, where excavators move across golden-black dunes of sand.
The lignite still in the ground here will be needed “from 2024” to supply power plants as other mines close, RWE says.
According to a 2021 report by the DIW economic think-tank, the energy company could extract a further 100 million tons of coal without having to demolish Luetzerath and the other five villages.
Despite resorting to more coal power in the current energy crisis, Germany says it is not wavering from its aim of exiting coal power in 2030.
Though the climate activists want action accelerated to bring down emissions.
In recent months, some activists have turned to more extreme means to get their voices heard — including by sticking themselves on main roads and halting traffic.
Recently, some activists also flung mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in a Potsdam museum.
In Luezerath, climate activists have set up an intricate camp in the trees to avoid being quickly evicted by the police.
Using a network of cables, they have connected their encampment. The militants think they can hold out for several weeks, six meters (12 feet) above the ground.
On the ground in the middle of the camp, around twenty militants try to raise a pole made of a giant tree trunk with a system of pulleys.
“The poles are tied to the trees in a way that ought to make it impossible to cut the ropes without putting someone’s life in danger,” Alma says.
Underlining their commitment, an anonymous activist said facing death is the activists’ “entire strategy.”
 


US report lists ‘significant human rights’ abuses in India

US report lists ‘significant human rights’ abuses in India
Updated 21 March 2023

US report lists ‘significant human rights’ abuses in India

US report lists ‘significant human rights’ abuses in India
  • Human Rights Watch has said the Indian government’s policies and actions target Muslims while critics of Modi say his Hindu nationalist ruling party has fostered religious polarization since coming to power in 2014

WASHINGTON: The annual US report on human rights practices released on Monday listed “significant human rights issues” and abuses in India, including reported targeting of religious minorities, dissidents and journalists, the US State Department said.
The findings come nearly a year after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some government, police and prison officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation’s rights record.
US criticism of India is rare due to close economic ties between the countries and India’s increasing importance for Washington to counter China in the region.
Significant human rights issues in India have included credible reports of the government or its agents conducting extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials; political prisoners or detainees; and unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, the US report added.
Advocacy groups have raised concerns over what they see as a deteriorating human rights situation in India in recent years under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Human Rights Watch has said the Indian government’s policies and actions target Muslims while critics of Modi say his Hindu nationalist ruling party has fostered religious polarization since coming to power in 2014.
Critics point to a 2019 citizenship law that the United Nations human rights office described as “fundamentally discriminatory” by excluding Muslim migrants from neighboring countries; anti-conversion legislation that challenged the constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief; and revoking Muslim-majority Kashmir’s special status in 2019.
The government dismisses the accusations by saying its policies are aimed at the development of all communities.
In 2022, authorities also demolished what they described as illegal shops and properties, many of them owned by Muslims, in parts of India. Critics say the demolition drive was an attempt to intimidate India’s 200 million Muslims. The government defended the demolitions, saying they were enforcing the law.
“Human rights activists reported the government was allegedly targeting vocal critics from the Muslim community and using the bulldozers to destroy their homes and livelihoods” without due process, the US report released on Monday added.
Since Modi took office in 2014, India has slid from 140th in World Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking by non-profit Reporters Without Borders, to 150th place last year, its lowest ever. India has also topped the list for the highest number of Internet shutdowns in the world for five years in a row, including in 2022, Internet advocacy watchdog Access Now says.
“Civil society organizations expressed concern that the central government sometimes used UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) to detain human rights activists and journalists,” the US report said.

 


Biden signs law declassifying US intel on COVID origin

Biden signs law declassifying US intel on COVID origin
Updated 21 March 2023

Biden signs law declassifying US intel on COVID origin

Biden signs law declassifying US intel on COVID origin

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law a bill requiring the release of intelligence materials on potential links between the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
“We need to get to the bottom of Covid-19’s origins..., including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Biden said in a statement.
“In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible,” he added.
“I share the Congress’s goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin” of Covid, he said.
Biden said that in 2021, after taking office, he had “directed the Intelligence Community to use every tool at its disposal to investigate.”
That work is “ongoing,” but as much as possible will be released without causing “harm to national security,” he said.
The bill posed political risks for Biden, who is negotiating a difficult relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Beijing vehemently rejects the possibility that a leak during research at the Wuhan lab could have unleashed the global pandemic.
However, much of Congress wants to pursue the theory further, and the issue has become a rallying point in particular for Biden’s Republican opponents.
Congress passed and sent the bill to Biden in March.
The Covid-19 outbreak began in 2019 in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan, leading to almost seven million deaths worldwide so far, according to official counts, over a million of them in the United States.
But health officials and the US intelligence community remain divided over whether it was spread randomly to humans from an infected animal or leaked during research undertaken at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The US Energy Department — one of the US agencies investigating the disaster — concluded with “low confidence” that the virus probably came from a lab, agreeing with the assessment of the FBI, but contradicting the conclusions of several other agencies.


Biden pays tribute to Iranian women at Nowruz celebration

Biden pays tribute to Iranian women at Nowruz celebration
Updated 21 March 2023

Biden pays tribute to Iranian women at Nowruz celebration

Biden pays tribute to Iranian women at Nowruz celebration
  • US President said that he wished Nowruz holiday would be a moment of ‘hope for the women of Iran fighting for their human rights and fundamental freedoms’
  • Joe Biden: ‘We’re going to continue to hold Iranian officials accountable for their attacks against their people’

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden used a White House event to mark Persian New Year on Monday to pay tribute to Iranian women and girls who took to the streets of Iran to protest following the death last year of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini and vowed to keep pressure on Tehran.
Biden said he wished the Nowruz holiday, a nearly 4,000-year-old tradition known as the Festival of Fire that’s linked to the Zoroastrian religion, would be a moment of “hope for the women of Iran fighting for their human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
“The United States stands with those brave women and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their conviction,” Biden said, describing the reception as the biggest White House Nowruz celebration to date. “We’re going to continue to hold Iranian officials accountable for their attacks against their people.”
The United States, Europe and the United Kingdom have imposed a series of fresh sanctions on dozens of Iranian officials and organizations, including the country’s special military and police forces, for their violent clampdown.
The protests began in mid-September when Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.
The protests mark one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 revolution.


Serbia’s refusal to sign agreement with Kosovo will not halt progress, says US official

Serbia’s refusal to sign agreement with Kosovo will not halt progress, says US official
Updated 20 March 2023

Serbia’s refusal to sign agreement with Kosovo will not halt progress, says US official

Serbia’s refusal to sign agreement with Kosovo will not halt progress, says US official
  • Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has verbally agreed to normalize relations with the breakaway former province but will not sign any legally binding international documents
  • US State department official Gabriel Escobar said the ‘important and historic’ deal is binding nonetheless and leaders on both sides had shown political courage and vision
  • Both countries seek EU membership and the bloc set normalized bilateral relations as a condition for this; Escobar said they will now be judged by their actions under the agreement

CHICAGO: The refusal by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to sign a formal agreement for establishing diplomatic ties with its breakaway former province, Kosovo, will not prevent the normalization of relations process from moving forward, a US official said on Monday.

Gabriel Escobar, the deputy assistant secretary for the Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said that Serbia had verbally agreed to implement a Western-backed plan to establish ties. But he acknowledged it represents just the first step in efforts by the formerly warring nations to resolve their differences.

Vucic has made it clear that he wants Serbia to join the EU, but the latter has made it a condition of membership that the former normalize its relations with Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority but a large community of Serbs.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 but Serbia refuses to recognize this and continues to consider it a province. During a meeting with EU officials on Saturday, Vucic verbally agreed to the normalization proposal but declined to sign any legally binding international documents.

“The United States is very happy to welcome this important and historic agreement,” said Escobar. “It sets the conditions for normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, on European terms, and in that regard it took a lot of political courage and a lot of vision from both Serbian President Vucic and Kosovan Prime Minister (Albin) Kurti to reach this agreement.

“This agreement is a legally binding obligation on both parties and both parties will be judged by their performance under the agreement. And that agreement will continue to be the basis of our policy for the United States going forward, and the basis for European engagement in the region.”

Escobar reiterated that despite the lack of formal signing, the agreement reached by the negotiators from Kosovo and Serbia is nonetheless “legally binding in every respect” and both sides have made commitments as they seek EU membership.

“So the signature was not the issue,” he added. “It was the obligation that both countries freely entered into and, again, the understanding, the clear understanding from both sides, of what was expected and what each side would receive. So, it is an agreement in every respect.

“The next steps, really, are for both sides to start on the implementation as it was outlined on Saturday. Both sides have legally binding obligations that they have to meet.”

On the Serbian side, Escobar said, this means the beginning of a process of recognizing “Kosovo’s documents and other national symbols … and things of that nature.”

He added: “For Kosovo, it’s important for them to begin the drafting of their version of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities. There are many other obligations but I think those are the most important ones.”

The significance of the negotiations and the agreement between the two nations marks “the start of the reconciliation between Serbia and Kosovo,” Escobar said. “So there will be a lot of work to continue to be done beyond this agreement. Additionally, the EU-facilitated dialogue will also continue.

“So there’s a lot here but what’s important is that we have set clear markers on how the two countries are going to relate to each other going forward.”

As the two nations move forward they “will receive the benefits flowing” from European nations and from the US, he added.

In turn, the responsibilities that both Serbia and Kosovo have accepted are clear, he said.

“I think … for Kosovo the most important thing, and the thing that will get them the most benefit, is greater Euro-Atlantic integration. So that’s our focus: Integration into European structures,” said Escobar.

“For Serbia, their insistence on the implementation of the legally binding obligation to … begin talks and implementation of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities remains key.”

While acknowledging that it has only been two days since the agreement was announced, he added that everyone is hopeful it will succeed and lay the foundations for further progress for both nations.

After generations of conflict dating back to when the Balkans were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 on June 10, 1999, which placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration and authorized the deployment of a NATO-led peacekeeping force called the Kosovo Force. It provided for Kosovo to be granted autonomy, initially under the former Yugoslavia and then under successor nation Serbia.


Rohingya refugees ask for citizenship, rights guarantee before Myanmar return

Rohingya refugees ask for citizenship, rights guarantee before Myanmar return
Updated 20 March 2023

Rohingya refugees ask for citizenship, rights guarantee before Myanmar return

Rohingya refugees ask for citizenship, rights guarantee before Myanmar return
  • Bangladesh hosts, supports around 1.2 million Rohingya people
  • Myanmar now more willing to start repatriation process: Bangladesh foreign ministry official

DHAKA: Rohingya refugees said on Monday their citizenship and basic rights must be guaranteed before returning to Myanmar, as the first step of a potential repatriation got underway.

Around 1.2 million Rohingya people are living in squalid camps in the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, most of whom fled violence and persecution in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.

A team from Myanmar arrived last week to verify Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps for their potential return as part of a pilot repatriation project, which has been delayed for years.

Authorities were expecting 400 people to be cleared to return to their homeland, part of more than 1,100 listed as a potential first batch of returnees. The documents of the rest were already cleared by Myanmar authorities remotely.

“I am willing to return to Myanmar if we are guaranteed citizenship and other associated rights, like freedom of movement,” Abdur Rahman, an 18-year-old Rohingya refugee in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.

Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group. Most were rendered stateless under the country’s 1982 Citizenship Law and had been excluded from the 2014 census. Many in the Buddhist-majority country refer to members of the community as Bengalis, suggesting they belong in Bangladesh.

“Our houses were burnt down,” Rahman said. “Some of my relatives are still living in Rakhine, I talk with them almost every day. As they told me, the situation in Rakhine is far better now.”

Rakhine State, one of Myanmar’s poorest states, was at the center of the 2017 violence.

Though Rahman’s village is still deserted, his relatives told him that some public facilities, including schools and hospitals, in other areas have been rebuilt.

However, repatriation was still uncertain even with the ongoing verification process, a Bangladesh foreign ministry official, who wished to remain anonymous, told Arab News.

“At the moment, it’s difficult to specify any time frame in this regard. We can say that both parties are working to solve the problems,” the official said, adding that the Myanmar delegation was expected to conclude its mission on Tuesday.

For a long time, Myanmar authorities “were going very slow” in verifying Rohingya refugees, leading to an extended delay of the repatriation process, the official said, adding that Myanmar officials now appeared “a little bit more willing than before” to start the project.

However, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said conditions in Rakhine State were still “not conducive to the sustainable return of Rohingya refugees.”

In a statement, the UNHCR said it was “not involved in the discussions” of a potential return of the Rohingya people in Bangladesh to Myanmar, though it was aware of the bilateral repatriation project between the two countries, which was reportedly mediated by China.

“We reiterate that every refugee has a right to return to their home country based on an informed choice, but that no refugee should be forced to do so,” the UNHCR added.

Mohammed Nur, a 22-year-old Rohingya refugee living in Kutupalong camp, told Arab News that he wanted to go back to Myanmar.

“I am very much willing to return to my homeland,” he said. “But it cannot happen without the rights of citizenship in Myanmar.

“If our rights are ensured, I believe all of us would return to Myanmar, because a refugee’s life has no dignity.”