Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

Analysis Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?
The message for Labour’s Keir Starmer is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted. (Reuters)
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Updated 09 July 2024
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Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?
  • Some experts think policy focus will shift from migration, counterextremism to Palestine, closer Gulf ties
  • Loud and clear election message is that support of Britain’s Muslim community cannot be taken for granted

LONDON: Before last Thursday, few British voters outside of the east London constituency of Ilford North had heard of Leanne Mohamad, the independent candidate running for election in the seat held by one of the Labour Party’s biggest names.

Mohamad’s name was no better known after the election, in which Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, held on to the seat he had captured from the Conservatives in 2015.

But the success of the 23-year-old British-Palestinian in coming within a whisker of defeating Streeting was one of several warning shots fired across the bows of a Labour Party which has now woken up to the fact that the UK’s Muslim community might have an equal or even greater say in its chances of remaining in power for more than one term as the UK Jewish lobby, which the party has spent the past five years courting assiduously.

Streeting, who is now Labour’s new health secretary, squeezed back in by just 528 votes — 15,647 to Mohamad’s 15,119 — an unprecedented collapse of support over a single issue of foreign policy.

He was not the only senior party member who felt the wrath of the Muslim community and its supporters over Labour’s half-hearted stance on Gaza.




Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. (Reuters)

In the constituency of Holborn & St. Pancras, even Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s 2019 majority of 36,641 was slashed in half.

His chief opponent was another independent, Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician and the son of a Holocaust survivor who criticized Starmer’s pre-election position on Gaza, having previously argued that the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is “a peaceful mechanism to weaken and thus force concessions from” an “apartheid Israel.”

Over 120 miles north in Birmingham Ladywood, long-serving Labour MP Shabana Mahmood, who secured 79 percent of the constituency’s votes in 2019, saw her majority cut in half and almost equaled by Akhmed Yakoob, yet another pro-Palestinian independent candidate.

In the neighboring constituency of Birmingham Yardley, Labour’s Jess Phillips saw her 2019 majority of 10,659 slashed to fewer than 700 votes by newcomer Jody McIntyre, running for the Workers Party.

Her setback came her November 2023 resignation from the shadow cabinet in protest over her party’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, declaring she had to vote “with my constituents, my head, and my heart, which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.”




The new health secretary, Wes Streeting, narrowly escaped defeat to Pro-Palestine independent Leanne Mohamad. (Reuters)

And they were the lucky ones. In 21 seats in the UK where more than one-fifth of the population is Muslim, Labour saw its share of the vote fall by 25 percent, and four MPs lost their seats to independents on pro-Gaza tickets.

The message for Labour, which has been received loud and clear, is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted.

As Shabana Mahmood said after holding on to her Birmingham Ladywood seat, “we have bridges to rebuild … we have trust that we must earn back from my own community.”

There are already signs that Britain’s new government, whose program of social and economic reform is dependent upon securing a second term in office five years from now, is taking steps to do just that.

Starmer, whose wife is Jewish, inherited the leadership of the Labour Party in April 2020 from Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause whose five years as leader were overshadowed by persistent accusations that the party he presided over was antisemitic — allegations that Corbyn and his supporters saw as an orchestrated campaign motivated by Labour’s support for Palestine.




Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, regained his seat as an independent candidate. (Reuters)

A report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the UK’s human rights watchdog, published in October 2020, concluded there were “serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”

The report had a Catch-22 air about it, concluding as it did that Labour’s protestations that the multiple accusations of antisemitism against it — from organizations including the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and Jewish Voice for Labour — were manufactured smears, was, in itself, evidence of antisemitism.

Starmer set out to rebuild the trust of the Jewish community, declaring that he would “tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members.”

It seems to have worked. In the 2019 general election an estimated 11 percent of British Jews voted Labour; last Thursday it was closer to 50 percent.




Staremer, whose wife is Jewish, told The Guardian, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.” (AFP)

But Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. As he told The Guardian in an interview last month, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.”

Now that the election is over, and his party has been badly bruised at the ballot box by the perception that it has turned its back on the plight of the Palestinians, a cause traditionally close to Labour’s heart, Starmer faces the puzzle of how to retain UK Jewish support while bringing Muslims back on board.

“Labour has been very vocal about the need to counter antisemitism, and this now puts it in a very awkward position,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“On the one hand, they have portrayed themselves as the people who are going to clean up the Labour Party, but on the other they have to grapple with the reality that many independent candidates won because Labour’s stance on the war in Gaza was unsatisfactory for many.”

It is possible, she believes, that Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza and the broader question of Palestinian statehood until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled.




Israel has been conducting a devestating military assault on the Gaza Strip since October last year. (AFP)

If, as seems increasingly likely, Donald Trump returns to the presidency, “there could well be alignment with the Trump administration, leading to a bias toward Israel, which is already evident in the nature of some of the candidates Labour selected to run in the election.”

For example, one of Labour’s new parliamentarians is Luke Akehurst, the MP for North Durham and former director of the pro-Israeli activist group We Believe in Israel, who has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as proportionate.

But for now, at least, the new UK government’s foreign policy is already showing signs of taking a turn for the pro-Palestinian.

Before the election, the then Conservative government had challenged the decision by the International Criminal Court to consider approving the chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants to be issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The UK questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction in the case, but the new Labour-led government has hinted it may withdraw the objection.




Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave has killed more than 35,000 people. (AFP)

The news leaked after two early calls to leaders in the region by Starmer. In one, he spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, expressing his concern about “the ongoing suffering and devastating loss of life” in Gaza, and restating the support for a Palestinian state that David Lammy, his foreign secretary, had already articulated.

Starmer’s other call was to Netanyahu. According to a Labour transcript, the new prime minister spoke of the “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza, adding that it was “also important to ensure the long-term conditions for a two-state solution were in place, including ensuring the Palestinian Authority had the financial means to operate effectively.”

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Starmer also urged the Israeli leader to act with caution in his dealings with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.

Meanwhile, Lammy has said that the Labour administration will reexamine legal advice given to the Conservative government that UK arms being sold to Israel were not being used in breach of international humanitarian law.

Lammy has also suggested the UK might reverse its decision to stop funding UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency. In January, major donors to the agency, including the US, the EU, the UK and Germany, withdrew funding when it emerged that a dozen of UNRWA’s 30,000 Palestinian employees were suspected of having been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.




Britain’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street. (Reuters)

By April, most of this international funding had been restored and “the UK is now in the weird position where it is one of the few countries that has not restored UNRWA funding,” said Petillo.

Despite Lammy’s pronouncements, “I think Starmer is being advised internally to delay this as much as possible, keeping the UK in line with the US, which has blocked it until March 2025. This type of deflection is probably a tactic they will use to address some of the domestic tensions they are under.”

Because of this and other issues, UK policy in the Middle East “will continue to be dictated to a certain extent by US politics and the US line; you could argue that we won’t see a huge change from foreign policy in this area under the Conservatives.

“On the other hand, one can anticipate change just because the bar set by the Conservative government was so low, partly because of all the distractions they have faced, but also because of the narrow lens through which they have looked at Middle East policy, focused mostly on migration and countering extremism and, of course, through a reduction in aid budgets, which has affected countries like Yemen and Syria massively.”




Smoke billows during Israeli bombardment on the village of Khiam in south Lebanon near the border with Israel. (AFP)

Lammy has already made plain that Labour intends to reengage with the Middle East through a new policy of what he called “progressive realism,” and has also spoken of the need for the UK to mend relations with the Arab Gulf states.

This would be timely and highly welcome in the region, said Petillo.

“The UK has definitely shifted its attention a bit away from the region,” she said. “It was a big part of the international support for Ukraine and lately has been looking at the Gulf states solely through the narrow lens of energy.

FASTFACTS

• SR83.31bn Total Saudi-UK trade in goods and services in 2023.

• SR116.54bn Total UK-UAE trade in goods and services in 2023.

•SR37.56bn Total UK-Qatar trade in goods and services in 2023.

“This has really frustrated the Gulf countries, but Lammy has been traveling to the region, even before the war in Gaza, to address this grievance, and since then has been using the war as an opportunity to widen the conversation.

“There is a conversation right now among the Gulf states about building a regional security architecture, into which the process of Arab-Israeli normalization fits, and the new UK government is very keen to enter this conversation in a way that the Conservatives were not.”




Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party lost power in an election landslide to Labour. (Reuters)

The new UK government, Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and associate Fellow of the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Program, told Arab News, “has the mandate to implement the needed foreign policy resets that the Labour party had prioritized ahead of the general election. Repairing relations with Arab countries in the Gulf and taking action toward a ceasefire in Gaza and resurrecting the Israel-Palestine peace process are two such priorities.”

According to Khatib, Labour has “rightly framed the Gulf as an important partner for security and economic growth.

“However, the UK government must pursue a more comprehensive strategy toward the Gulf which also takes into consideration the region’s geopolitical interests,” she said.

“This includes adopting a bold approach in addressing the destabilizing role of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, which the previous UK government had merely skirted around.”




Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled, analyst Kelly Petillo indicated.

The UK “must also strengthen its diplomatic, cultural, and business engagement with the Middle East and North Africa. This will help nurture areas of growth across those sectors in the region and bolster the UK’s own standing.”The Labour Middle East Council, established in January this year by British politicians and former ambassadors to the region, with “the fundamental goal of cultivating understanding and fostering enduring relationships between UK parliamentarians and the Middle East & North Africa,” was “one avenue for facilitating such engagement.”

Two perspectives on a historic relationship


MIRAN HASSAN, Founder and director, Labour Middle East Council

It’s about treating the UK-Gulf relationship with more respect and giving it the attention that it deserves. For example, if you look at the GCC-UK Free Trade Agreement, those negotiations have been going on for years with no meaningful progress. That’s a very good example of where the relationship needs to be enhanced and given the attention that it deserves, considering the bloc is one of our largest trading partners.

Not enough attention was paid by the Conservatives to the GCC as a priority trading partner, and I’m hopeful and quite confident that’s going to change under this government.

This is no longer a world where the UK and the US are the only partners available. Now you can just go over to China, Russia is making strategic alliances, and so on. It’s now a world where the UK needs to actually fight to be a partner and for opportunities. It isn’t that the region wants to turn its back on the UK, but one that commands respect. And if they don't have the right level of engagement, then naturally they will look elsewhere.

What’s important for us at Labour Middle East Council is to have the region viewed through the lens of how interconnected our foreign policy is. So, when we look at the issue with the Houthis and their attacks, for example, how has that impacted global trade as a whole and our interests in other parts of the world?

Domestically, migration is a huge priority for the UK government, and we need to be engaged with the region that is the source of a lot of that migration, especially as climate change plays a bigger role and has a huge impact on many countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Libya.

BURCU OZCELIK, Senior Research Fellow (Middle East Security), RUSI

The Labour government has inherited status quo-altering challenges on multiple fronts in the Middle East. With the epicenter in Gaza, conflict vectors reach across Yemen and the Red Sea, Iraq, Syria, and notably with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, where the threat of an escalated war looms large.

While voting results show that Labour gained the trust of a sizeable portion of the British Jewish electorate, largely thanks to rejecting the Corbyn era’s polarizing policies to a more centrist approach, how Labour behaves both in its domestic response to voter expectations, and in its foreign-policy posture in the Middle East, will be scrutinized closely by Jewish and Muslim voters alike, who look to the new government to reduce the devastating human cost of the conflict.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is set to emphasize the pledge enshrined in the Labour manifesto to recognize a Palestinian state as part of a peace process toward a two-state solution “with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” The issue is the extent to which Britain will play a proactive role in being pro-peace above all.

With the electoral campaign now behind us, voters will look to see tangible evidence that policies will match promises. This requires foregrounding a human-rights based approach equally all those civilians impacted, continuing to call for the immediate release of Israeli hostages held since Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas, alongside pressure for a ceasefire, and urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Unresolved issues will demand urgent attention, such as reviewing future means of funding that will permit the Palestinian Authority to govern effectively, legal concerns around UK arms sales, and the ICC’s ruling on Israel.

The Gulf states are poised — with the appropriate diplomatic assurances — to contribute to a necessary regional effort to support the rehabilitation, reconstruction and rebuilding of Gaza. Despite lulls and lags in the relationship, Labour now has an opportunity to engage with Gulf states (and societies) to facilitate a regional and sustained response to support Gaza, reassure Israel, and work toward the objective of Palestinian statehood.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies will seek to buy more time. Britain can apply pressure to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis and support mechanisms — with strong buy-in from the Arab states — to begin planning for the day after.

 


Australia moves to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders

Australia moves to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders
Updated 19 min 40 sec ago
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Australia moves to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders

Australia moves to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders

SYDNEY: Australia on Thursday moved to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders whose units were involved in alleged war crimes and “unlawful conduct.”
Defense Minister Richard Marles said the decision — related to specific unit commanders who were in charge between 2005 and 2016 — was needed to “address the wrongs of the past.”
Fewer than ten commanders will be stripped of their awards, but their names will not be released for privacy reasons.
An official inquiry has found that during an 11-year period, Australia’s elite special forces “unlawfully killed” 39 civilians and prisoners in Afghanistan, including by summary execution as part of initiation rituals.
A damning report into the matter found a “sub-culture of elitism and deviation from acceptable standards,” Marles said, which “warranted the most serious, considered and thorough response.”
The report made 143 recommendations — including a medal review — and suggested 19 individuals be referred to Australian Federal Police.
It also suggested compensation be paid to the families of victims and that the military carry out a slew of reforms.
Marles said the commanders involved in Thursday’s decision may not have been aware of the war crimes their unit carried out, but there was an expectation for them to know what was happening.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, more than 26,000 Australian uniformed personnel were sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside US and allied forces against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups.
Australian combat troops officially left the country in late 2013, but since then a series of often-brutal accounts have emerged about the conduct of elite special forces units
 


Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86

Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86
Updated 12 September 2024
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Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86

Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86
  • First elected president in 1990, the son of Japanese immigrants stabilized Peru's economy and dealt a death blow to a Maoist rebellion
  • But he later turned into an autocrat and a slew of corruption scandals during his rule later turned public opinion against him

LIMA: Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who steered economic growth during the 1990s but was later jailed for human rights abuses stemming from a bloody war against Maoist rebels, died on Wednesday. He was aged 86.
Close colleagues visited him earlier in the day, reporting that he was in a critical condition.
“After a long battle with cancer, our father... has just departed to meet the Lord,” his daughter Keiko Fujimori wrote in a message on X, also signed by the former leader’s other children.
Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was the little-known chancellor of a farming university when elected to office in 1990. He quickly established himself as a cunning politician whose hands-on style produced results even as he angered critics for concentrating power.
He slayed hyperinflation that had thrown millions of Peruvians out of work, privatized dozens of state-run companies, and slashed trade tariffs, setting the foundations for Peru to become, for a while, one of Latin America’s most stable economies.
Under his watch, the feared leader of the Maoist Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, was captured — dealing a crucial blow to a movement that in the 1980s seemed close to toppling the Peruvian state. Guzman died in prison in September 2021.
But many Peruvians saw Fujimori as an autocrat after he used military tanks to shut down Congress in 1992, redrafting the constitution to his liking to push free-market reforms and tough anti-terrorism laws.
A slew of corruption scandals during his 10-year administration also turned public opinion against him.
Shortly after he won a third election in 2000 — amending the constitution to run — videos emerged of his top adviser and spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos doling out cash to bribe politicians. Fujimori fled to exile in Japan.
He resigned via fax from Tokyo and then unsuccessfully campaigned for a Japanese senatorial seat.
Montesinos was later captured in Venezuela and jailed, convicted by the hundreds of videos he recorded of himself handing out cash bribes to politicians and business and media executives.
The cases against Fujimori piled up — including accusations that he had ordered the use of death squads in his battle against Shining Path militants.
Fujimori was safe in Japan — he was a dual citizen and Japan does not extradite its citizens. So many were shocked when in 2005 he decided to head back to Peru, apparently in hopes of forgiveness and a return to politics.
Instead, he was detained during a layover in Chile, extradited to Peru in 2007, and in 2009 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

’FUJI-SHOCK’
Once jailed, Fujimori’s public appearances were limited to hospital visits where he often appeared disheveled and unwell.
While detractors dismissed his health complaints as a ploy to get out of prison, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski briefly pardoned Fujimori in 2017.
Months later Kuczynski was impeached and the pardon overturned by Peru’s top constitutional court, sending Fujimori back to the special prison that held him and no other inmates.
The court restored the pardon in December 2023, releasing the ailing Fujimori, who had suffered from stomach ulcers, hypertension and tongue cancer. In May 2024, Fujimori announced he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor.
Fujimori’s legacy has been most passionately defended by his daughter Keiko, who has been close to clinching the presidency herself three times on a platform that has included pardoning her father and defending his constitution.
The late Fujimori was born in Lima on Peruvian Independence Day, July 28, 1938.
A mathematician and agricultural engineer, Fujimori was a political nobody when he decided to run for the presidency, driving a tractor to his campaign rallies. He surprised the world by defeating renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election, with heavy support from the left.
He touted himself as an alternative to the country’s white elite and gained crucial support from Peru’s large Indigenous and mixed race populations.
As Peru battled what was among the world’s worst hyperinflation, Fujimori promised not to carry out drastic measures to tame it.
But on his second week in office he suddenly lifted the subsidies that kept food essentials affordable, in what became known as the ‘Fuji-shock.’
“May God help us,” Fujimori’s finance minister said on TV after announcing the measure. Inflation worsened in the short-term but the bet paid off, eventually stabilizing the economy after over a decade of crisis.
Even as support for him started to wane, Fujimori pulled off audacious stunts in his second term.
In 1997, he devised a plan to dig tunnels under the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima to end a four-month hostage crisis after another insurgency, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, took 500 people captive for 126 days.
In a surprise attack, Fujimori sent in more than 100 commandos in a raid that killed all 14 insurgents.
Only two commandos and one of the remaining 72 hostages died. Television footage showed Fujimori calmly stepping over the corpses of the insurgents after the raid.
Fujimori was married twice. A public falling-out with his first wife Susana Higuchi while he was president led him to name daughter Keiko as the first lady. The couple had three other children, including Kenjo Fujimori, also a politician.


While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it

While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it
Updated 12 September 2024
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While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it

While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it
  • “I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program
  • “My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana
  • Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, says the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record

Some Republican officials, donors and advisers said Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, had botched his debate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, although Trump himself praised his performance.
“I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program on Wednesday, adding that he was not sure whether to do another one. “I’d be less inclined ... because we had a great night.”
Harris, 59, put Trump, 78, president from 2017-2021, on the defensive in a combative presidential debate on Tuesday with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office and his myriad legal woes. The election takes place on Nov. 5.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, was one of the few party leaders to publicly say Trump’s performance was poor.
“A missed opportunity,” Graham told reporters of Trump’s debate performance, adding that the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, center, and other Trump allies line up to speak to FOX News host Sean Hannity in the spin room after Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. (AP)

Chris Christie, a former Trump ally-turned-critic who ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Harris was “exquisitely” prepared whereas Trump was not.
“Whoever did debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie, who helped Trump with debate preparation in the 2016 election cycle, said on ABC News.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether there would be a shake-up of Trump’s debate team.
With eight weeks to go before the election, and days until early voting starts in some states, the debate offered a rare head-to-head opportunity to face tens of millions of TV viewers.
Their ABC News debate attracted 67.1 million television viewers, according to Nielsen data, topping the roughly 51 million people who watched Trump debate then-candidate President Joe Biden in June.

The number does not capture the full extent of online viewing, which has grown in popularity as traditional TV audiences decline.
Six Republican donors and three Trump advisers, all but one asking to remain anonymous to speak freely, also told Reuters they thought Harris had won the debate largely because Trump was unable to stay on message.
Several brought up, with dismay, Trump’s amplification of a false online claim that numerous Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
Two of Trump’s advisers said they doubted the debate would move the needle in opinion polling.
In Reuters interviews with 10 undecided voters, six said after the debate they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
Still, in a sign of confidence in the debate’s outcome, Harris’ campaign challenged Trump to a second round in October.
Two of the six donors said they were not sure whether Trump should debate her again, with one saying it would hinge on whether his handlers were confident he could be more focused in a second round. Two other donors, however, said they thought Trump needed a second debate in order to regain momentum.
“My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. On the prospect of a second debate, Bean said: “I’d like to see one.”


An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight
Updated 12 September 2024
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An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight
  • Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets
  • The falsehoods were spread online by Republican VP candidate JD Vance, and Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate
  • It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio: Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.
At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants that arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

In this image taken from video, Rose-Thamar Joseph, from the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, speaks to The AP, on Sept. 11, 2024, in Springfield, Ohio. (AP)

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life. It’s tough for us,” Joseph said.
A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line the main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” which the city describes as an annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.
Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county that holds Springfield, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”
“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.
Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at times in recent days at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.
“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.
The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.
“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and his running mate J.D. Vance have recently placed Springfield, Ohio, in the national spotlight by spreading false rumors that Haitian immigrants in the city are eating their neighbors’ pets. (Getty Images photo/AFP)

Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges the city faces.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.
Many Haitians have come to the US to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.
The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the US could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.
Springfield, about 45 miles from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15 percent of the population.

- Mike DeWine speaks, Jan. 14, 2019, in Cedarville, Ohio. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, Pool, File)
 

The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Wednesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.
On Sept. 6, a post surfaced on the social media platform X that shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post talked about the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” seeing a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, claiming without evidence that Haitians lived at the house. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.
On Monday, Vance posted on X “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” The next day, he posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office had received inquiries from residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of US population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the US Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.
“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the US.
She said Haitian clients in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are now considering leaving the city.


France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’
Updated 12 September 2024
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France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

REIMS: France will have a new government next week, recently installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier said on Wednesday, as he sounded out candidates to run ministries faced with an unpredictable hung parliament.

“We’re going to do things methodically and seriously,” Barnier told reporters in the eastern city of Reims.

He was “listening to everybody” in a political scene split into three broad camps since July’s inconclusive snap parliamentary elections.

“We’re going to name a government next week,” he said.

Later on Wednesday, his own right-wing Republicans (LR) party announced that they were ready to join his government. The party was reduced to just 47 deputies in the 577-seat National Assembly in July’s elections.

Barnier, who has previously served as the environment, foreign and agriculture ministers and was the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, was named last week by President Emmanuel Macron as his compromise pick for head of government.

With no longer even a working majority in parliament following his decision to dissolve the National Assembly, Macron delayed picking a PM for weeks over the summer as he tried to find someone who would not suffer an immediate no-confidence vote.

The chamber is fairly equally divided between Macron’s centrist supporters — now loosely allied with Barnier’s rump conservative party — the left-wing NFP alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).

NFP leaders have vowed to vote no confidence in any government not headed by them after they secured the most seats in the July vote, but fell well short of a majority.

Macron appears to have taken care to find a candidate in Barnier who does not immediately raise the hackles of the RN.

Rumours are swirling in Paris about who might claim key ministries after Barnier said he was open to working with people on the left or right.

“For now, the names in circulation seem to be just wish lists of people wanting to receive a ministerial portfolio,” Politico’s French edition wrote on Wednesday.

One prominent Socialist, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, said he had turned down an invitation to serve.

“We have a right-wing prime minister approved of by the RN, a prime minister under supervision,” Bouamrane told Franceinfo radio.

An October 1 deadline to file a draft government budget for 2025 puts Barnier under pressure to get moving and sets him and his new team up for a fierce battle over taxes and spending.

In particular, both the NFP and RN promised ahead of the July elections to overturn last year’s unpopular pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64 from 62.