UK king criticized for staying silent

UK king criticized for staying silent
Short Url
Updated 09 August 2024
Follow

UK king criticized for staying silent

UK king criticized for staying silent
  • “I am surprised that the king as head of state hasn’t come out more forcefully, given that it’s a perilous moment for the United Kingdom,” said historian and royal commentator Ed Owens
  • According to constitutional law expert Craig Prescott “the monarchy does not comment on current political events“

LONDON: Britain’s King Charles III has faced criticism for remaining silent on the near-daily riots seen since early last week following a deadly knife attack that killed three children.
While the monarch and his wife Camilla conveyed their condolences to the families of the three girls killed in the mass stabbing on July 29, Buckingham Palace has not commented on the riots which ensued.
“I am surprised that the king as head of state hasn’t come out more forcefully, given that it’s a perilous moment for the United Kingdom,” said historian and royal commentator Ed Owens.
However, according to constitutional law expert Craig Prescott “the monarchy does not comment on current political events.”
“Once the riots have subsided, you might expect members of the royal family to visit places affected and perhaps to see them more in multicultural settings,” Prescott said in a post on X.
“If the king speaks out about this, then what about the next big issue, and the one after that.”
Charles’s silence is in keeping with his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, who remained similarly quiet during the last wave of riots which shook England in 2011.
It is typically explained by the expectation that British monarchs avoid commenting on anything deemed political.
Owens argued Charles, who has gradually resumed public duties after a cancer diagnosis earlier this year, may not have publicly reacted due to two main reasons.
On the one hand, he may have been “advised by his government that it would be unwise at this stage of intervene directly.”
On the other, the monarch might himself have deemed the issue too “combustible.”
“To court controversy can lead to the alienation of certain sections of the British public,” Owens told AFP.
Officials have blamed the riots, which have seen mosques and immigration-linked sites targeted, on far-right elements and “thugs.”
They are accused of trying to use the stabbing tragedy and growing mainstream right-wing concern over immigration levels to further their extreme cause.
Owens noted the monarch has previously celebrated the benefits of legal migration as well as multiculturalism.
But his current silence is also “characteristic of a deeper silence on this very specific topic of illegal migration,” which remains politically divisive, he added.
Another complicating factor is that many involved in the riots are “people that pretend that they wrap themselves in the (British) flags and call themselves patriots,” Owens said.
“Some of these individuals would be the natural supporters of the (royal) institution.”
However, that could merit the monarch “taking a stand and saying, ‘not in our name, this isn’t the kind of behavior we expect of anybody in this country,’” Owens argued.
Part of the surprise in some quarters at Charles’s silence could stem from the sovereign having been vocal on social issues and topics like climate change over the years.
Since becoming king he is seen as having presented himself as more accessible than his predecessors, including by opening up about his health.
As heir, he visited areas affected by riots in north London in 2011.
Meanwhile, Charles reportedly expressed private concerns in June 2022 over the then-government’s plan to send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda, calling the proposals “appalling.”
But for Graham Smith, head of Republic, a pressure group which campaigns for an elected UK head of state to replace the monarch, the lack of a response to the riots “goes further than Charles.”
“It is about the institution being a failure because it provides for someone who isn’t able to speak really,” he told AFP.
Charles, who is currently on the monarch’s annual summer holiday in Scotland, has like his mother in 2011 requested daily updates about the situation, according to royal sources reported by British media.
“The fact that that has been made public is important, because what the monarchy is trying to show is that he’s not an uninterested party, that he is taking an active interest in this,” Owens said.
However, Smith is unimpressed by that argument.
“We’re told that the monarchy unites the country, and I don’t think that’s the case. They can’t even speak up when the country is facing far-right riots,” he said.
“There’s no value in a billionaire sitting in his holiday home being updated about what’s happening. I mean, it’s easy to be updated — switch the TV on.”

Britain’s King Charles III has faced criticism for remaining silent on the near-daily riots seen since early last week following a deadly knife attack that killed three children. (Reuters/File)


37 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in past 24 hours, health ministry says

37 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in past 24 hours, health ministry says
Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

37 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in past 24 hours, health ministry says

37 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in past 24 hours, health ministry says
  • Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah started swapping fire as the Gaza war worsened

BEIRUT: Thirty seven people were killed and 151 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in the past 24 hours, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement early on Friday

Among the dead were nine residents of an apartment in the Lebanese capital, according to ministry.

Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of Beirut.

There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit the building close to the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed.
Israel is also conducting a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah, while also conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. The Israeli military said nine soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage.

Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

 

 

 


Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot
Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

BERLIN: A teenager suspected of plotting an attack against Jews was arrested in September in western Germany, a court source and local media reports said Thursday.
The 15-year-old boy has been placed in pre-trial detention over plans to “commit a crime,” Dusseldorf prosecutors told AFP, without providing further details.
Police had previously detained the suspect in August following intelligence it had received, according to the Bild and Spiegel newspapers.
The teenager was released but arrested again after investigators discovered conversations on his phone with a suspected foreign extremist believed to have tried to talk him into perpetrating a knife attack.
The two allegedly discussed potential targets, including festivals and Jewish communities, and the teenager also reportedly posted videos on TikTok featuring Daesh flags, according to Bild and Spiegel.
The arrest came as Germany has tightened security measures after a knife attack in the western city of Solingen on August 30 that was claimed by the Daesh group.
Three people were killed and several others were injured in the Solingen attack.
A 26-year-old Syrian suspect, who had been slated for deportation but evaded law enforcement, turned himself in after a day on the run and confessed to the attack.
And in June, a German court sentenced a 15-year-old boy to four years in jail for planning an Islamist attack on a Christmas market in the western city of Leverkusen.


Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support
Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

BERLIN: Thousands of people in Berlin on Thursday demonstrated against Germany’s military support for Ukraine as it battles to hold back invading Russian troops.
Participants answered a call by a radical left-wing collective to gather in the German capital and brandished placards reading “Negotiations! No weapons!,” “No to war” and “Pacifism is not naive.” Some also held anti-American signs.
One of their main demands was for Germany to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, which Kyiv desperately needs to defend itself from Russian aggression.
The protest came one week ahead of the first state visit by a US president to the European country since Ronald Reagan in 1985.
Joe Biden is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s allies to discuss military support to the war-torn nation, at the US army base in Ramstein, western Germany.
Far-left populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended the Berlin protest, has long called for an end to weapon deliveries to Kyiv and opposes a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany.
Germany has been the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, but plans to halve its budget for that aid next year.
Wagenknecht’s pro-Russia, anti-NATO stance has contributed to her party’s positive results in three eastern state elections, securing 12 percent of the vote in Brandenburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in September stunned the political establishment by winning its first-ever parliamentary vote — in the eastern state of Thuringia — and coming a close second in neighboring Saxony.
The AfD’s platform relied on its usual discourse against asylum-seekers, multiculturalism and Islam, but also on critiques of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy of unconditional support for Ukraine.
The state leaders of Saxony and Brandenburg, where AfD came in second, as well as the head of the conservatives in Thuringia, have called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, in an article expected to be published on Friday in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Germany and the European Union’s dioplomatic efforts so far have been “too indecisive,” they said, urging Berlin to bring Russia to the negotiating table.


Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right
Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right

VIENNA: Thousands of people protested in Austria’s capital Vienna on Thursday against a possible return to power for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped national elections on Sunday.
The FPOe won almost 29 percent of the vote in Sunday’s general election, ahead of the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) with just over 26 percent.
“The Austrian Freedom Party is a danger because it has already said that it wants to govern in the image of Hungary’s Viktor Orban,” said Rihab Toumi, a 26-year-old student, referring to the nationalist leader of Austria’s neighboring country.
Although the FPOe topped the polls, there is no guarantee that their radical leader Herbert Kickl will be given a chance to form a government since no other party is willing to work with him.
“This result was a shock and we cannot let a party that drifts so far to the right garner so much support without saying anything,” said social worker Marianne, 53, who declined to share her surname.
Organizers claimed there were 15,000 to 17,000 protesters in central Vienna, who marched toward parliament.
Demonstrators held up placards saying “Let’s defend democracy,” “No alliances with Putin’s friends” and other anti-FPOe slogans.
Kickl has criticized European Union sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Demonstrators intend to march every Thursday, having similarly done so after the far right formed part of short-lived coalition governments in 2000 and 2017.


US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials
Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

More than 200 people are confirmed dead after Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through several southeastern US states, officials said Thursday, making it the second deadliest storm to hit the US mainland in more than half a century.
A compilation of official figures by AFP confirms 201 fatalities across North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia. More than half of the deaths were in flood-ravaged North Carolina.
Helene is the deadliest on the US mainland since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,392 people.
Despite hundreds of rescues across six states and an enormous response including more than 10,000 federal personnel assisting local responders, the death toll from the sprawling storm is expected to rise, with many residents still unaccounted for in a mountainous region known for its pockets of isolation.
“We are continuing to find survivors,” North Carolina’s Buncombe County, the epicenter of the tragedy where more than 60 people are confirmed dead, said in its latest update, adding there are residents still cut off from the outside world due to landslides and destroyed bridges.
“Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the families of those that had just experienced this heartbreak and this tragedy,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told a briefing n his state, where he said the number of confirmed dead has risen to 33.
US President Joe Biden was undertaking a second straight day of visits to affected states, traveling Thursday to Florida, where Helene blew into the state’s northern Gulf shore last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour.
Biden took an aerial tour of the coast to survey the devastation, then walked past rows of destroyed homes and buildings in Keaton Beach, near where the storm made landfall.
He next heads to neighboring Georgia.