MOSCOW: Russian diplomats expelled from the United States arrived in Moscow on Sunday, with post-Cold War tensions peaking in the wake of a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain.
A deepening crisis in ties between Russia and the West has over the past weeks seen the biggest wave of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions in recent memory.
In further signs of tension, Russia warned its nationals on Saturday to think twice before traveling to Britain, where it said they could be singled out for harassment by local authorities.
By expelling 60 Russian diplomats, the US joined a score of Britain’s allies in responding to the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.
Two planes arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Sunday, bringing home a total of 171 people — the 60 diplomats and their families — from Washington and New York.
Russian television showed passengers disembarking from a government plane while several buses waited to pick them up.
More than 150 Russian diplomats have now been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations.
Britain has said it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the Skripal attack using the Soviet-designed Novichok nerve agent. Russia has angrily denied any involvement.
The US alleged the 60 diplomats were “spies” and sent them home from posts around the country and at the Russian mission to the United Nations, as well as closing Russia’s consulate in Seattle.
However Washington has since said that Russia is free to apply to accredit more diplomats to replace those expelled.
Moscow responded by expelling 60 US diplomats and closing Washington’s consulate in Saint Petersburg on Saturday.
US President Donald Trump has often appeared reluctant to criticize Russian leader Vladimir Putin and has said the two could meet for a summit in the near future.
“Now the consulate is closed but our work to improve Russian-US ties is continuing,” the US embassy in Moscow said on Twitter.
Moscow also issued further retaliatory measures against Britain on Saturday, demanding that London further slash its diplomatic presence.
“Russia suggested parity. The British side has more than 50 more people,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told AFP.
The call came after 23 British diplomats were expelled from Russia last month.
Moscow also closed a British consulate in Saint Petersburg and suspended all projects of the British Council for the first time in nearly 60 years.
The Russian embassy in London urged Russians to think carefully before traveling to the UK or sending children to summer school there.
The embassy warned that British authorities including police could single out Russians for additional checks, citing “the anti-Russian policies and an escalation of the British side’s threatening rhetoric.”
Britain acknowledged Saturday that border officials had searched an incoming Aeroflot flight from Moscow in what Russia blasted as an act of “blatant provocation.”
Britain said it conducts routine checks on aircraft to protect the UK from organized crime and people attempting to bring harmful substances into the country.
Earlier this week Moscow summoned British ambassador Laurie Bristow, giving London a month to cut the number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain.
He was handed a protest note over the “provocative and unfounded actions of the British side which instigated the unwarranted expulsion of Russian diplomats from a variety of states,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
Bristow was summoned along with the heads of missions from 23 other countries — most of them EU member states — who were told that some of their diplomats had to leave.
France, Germany, Canada and Poland each said that Russia was expelling four of their diplomats.
Other countries including Australia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania and Norway were also told to pull their envoys.
Expelled Russians arrive home as Moscow warns against travel to UK
Expelled Russians arrive home as Moscow warns against travel to UK
Muslim schools caught up in France’s fight against Islamism
PARIS: Last year, Sihame Denguir enrolled her teenage son and daughter in France’s largest Muslim private school, in the northern city of Lille some 200 kilometers (125 miles) from their middle-class suburban Parisian home.
The move meant financial sacrifices. Denguir, 41, now pays fees at the partially state-subsidised Averroes school and rents a flat in Lille for her children and their grandmother, who moved to care for them.
But Averroes’ academic record, among the best in France, was a powerful draw.
So she was dumbstruck in December when the school lost government funding worth around two million euros a year on grounds it failed to comply with secular principles enshrined in France’s national education guidelines.
“The high school has done so well,” Denguir told Reuters in a park near her home in Cergy, calling Averroes open-minded. “It should be valued. It should be held up as an example.”
President Emmanuel Macron has undertaken a crackdown on what he calls Islamist separatism and radical Islam in France following deadly jihadist attacks in recent years by foreign and homegrown militants. Macron is under pressure from the far right Rassemblement National (RN), which holds a wide lead over his party ahead of European elections this week.
The crackdown seeks to limit foreign influence over Muslim institutions in France and tackle what Macron has said is a long-term Islamist plan to take control of the French Republic.
Macron denies stigmatizing Muslims and says Islam has a place in French society. However, rights and Muslim groups say that by targeting schools like Averroes, the government is impinging on religious freedom, making it harder for Muslims to express their identity.
Four parents and three academics Reuters spoke to for this story said the campaign risks being counterproductive, alienating Muslims who want their children to succeed within the French system, including at high-performing mainstream schools such as Averroes.
Thomas Misita, 42, father of three daughters attending Averroes, said he was taught at school that France’s principles included equality, fraternity and freedom of religion.
“I feel betrayed. I feel singled out, smeared, slandered,” Misita said. “I feel 100 percent French, but it creates a divide. A small divide with your own country.”
The school’s long-term survival is now in question.
Despite raising about 1 million euros in donations from individuals, enrolment for next year has dropped to about 500 students, from 800, headmaster Eric Dufour told Reuters in May.
Macron’s office referred a request for comment to the interior ministry, which did not respond. The education ministry said it did not differentiate between schools of different faiths in applying the law. The ministry said despite academic success, Averroes had failings, citing “administrative and budgetary management” and a lack of transparency.
The school is in a legal battle to overturn the decision.
Headmaster Eric Dufour told Reuters the school had given the state “all the guarantees” to show that it respected funding terms and French values.
“We are the most inspected school in France,” he said.
SCHOOLS CLOSED
Local offices of the national government have closed at least five Muslim schools since Macron came to power in 2017, according to a Reuters tally. Reuters was only able to find one Muslim school closed under his predecessors.
In the first year of Macron’s presidency, one other school lost public funding, pledged in May 2017 by the government of former president Francois Hollande.
Since 2017, only one Muslim school has been awarded state funding, compared to nine in total under Macron’s two predecessors, Education Ministry data shows. The National Federation for Muslim Education (FNEM) told Reuters it made about 70 applications on behalf of Muslim schools in that period.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen current and former headmasters and teachers in ten Muslim schools, who said the establishments were being targeted, including being censured on flimsy grounds, and that perceived discrimination was preventing them integrating more closely with the state system.
“It’s really a double standard of who has to conform to secular Republican values in a certain way, and who doesn’t,” said American anthropologist Carol Ferrera, who studies French faith schools and says Catholic and Jewish schools are treated more leniently.
Prominent Parisian Catholic school Stanislas has kept its funding despite inspectors last year finding issues including sexist or homophobic ideas and mandatory religious classes, French media has reported.
The education ministry said the government had increased supervision of private schools under Macron, leading to more closures, including of some non-denominational schools. It cited budget restraints as a reason for the low number of schools offered public funding.
While some of the five closed Muslim schools taught conservative versions of Islam, according to the education ministry statements and closure orders, the headmasters and teachers Reuters spoke to emphasized their schools’ efforts to create a mainstream and tolerant teaching environment.
“There was never a desire for separatism,” said Mahmoud Awad, board member at Education & Savoir, the school that lost state funding soon after Macron took office.
“At some point they have to accept that a Muslim school is like a Catholic school or a Jewish school,” he said.
Idir Arap, headmaster of the Avicenne middle school in Nice, told Reuters he has unsuccessfully sought public funding since 2020, as he wants the school brought into the state fold. The latest request was rejected in February, according to a document reviewed by Reuters.
“We’re the opposite of radicalism,” Arap said.
In February, Education Minister Nicole Belloubet said she wanted to close Avicenne, citing ‘opaque funding’ found by a local representative of the government. In April, an administrative court provisionally ruled any irregularities were minor, suspending the closure order. The next hearing is set for June 25.
In a reply to Reuters, the ministry reiterated that financial opacity was widespread at Avicenne, saying it awaited the court’s final ruling. It said the school could appeal the funding refusal.
FAITH SCHOOL TRADITION
France has a tradition of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish schools that allow religious expression within the constraints of lay principles broadly excluding religion from public life.
A prohibition on hijab headscarves in public schools in 2004 created demand for schools where Muslim students, and in particular girls, could express religious identity.
State funding was extended to Averroes in 2008, in return for oversight, in a push by former president Nicolas Sarkozy to better integrate Muslim institutions.
An estimated 6.8 million Muslims live in France, data from France’s statistics agency shows, around 10 percent of the population. Islam is the country’s second-largest religion after Catholicism.
There are 127 Muslim schools, according to FNEM. Only ten benefit from state funding, a report from the public audit office said last year.
In contrast, 7,045 Catholic schools are funded, the report said. France’s Catholic Church says there are 7,220 such schools.
Macron’s government introduced laws granting powers to local authorities to strip institutions, including private schools, of funding for failing to respect “liberty, equality, fraternity,” among other things.
In a 2020 speech, Macron described a need to reverse what he saw as radicalization in Muslim communities, including practices such as the separation of sexes.
“The problem is an ideology which claims its own laws should be superior to those of the Republic,” he said.
In 2020, Elysee advisers told reporters monitoring of Muslim schools and associations involved with children was key to fight separatism. Officials said they feared religious indoctrination was taking place in some of them.
Rights group Amnesty International has warned the government’s approach is potentially discriminatory and risks reinforcing stereotypes that conflate all Muslims with terrorism or radical views.
CULTURAL BRIDGE
The first Muslim high school in mainland France, Averroes was named after a 12th century Muslim scholar from Spain who helped reintroduce Aristotle’s thought to Europe and is seen as a symbol of cooperation between Islam and the West.
It was voted France’s best high school in 2013.
Reuters spoke to seven parents and pupils who spoke of a nurturing space that took constitutional commitments seriously.
On a visit in March, Reuters reporters observed girls and boys studying together. Teachers included non-Muslims. Some girls wore the hijab while others chose not to.
Religious studies are optional, as is prayer.
In 2019, French journalists and local politicians drew attention to Averroes over a 850,000 euro grant from aid organization Qatar Charity, which works with the United Nations. They also questioned links between members of the school’s board and proponents of political Islam in France.
An education ministry inspection of the school in 2020 found the grant to be legal. But officials and politicians in the Lille region continued a campaign to restrain the school’s state income.
In February, a Lille administrative court upheld the decision of the local representative of the government to halt funding, largely on the grounds that a 1980s Syrian book on the curriculum of an optional Muslim ethics class contained ideas about the separation of genders and the death sentence for apostasy, according to the ruling, reviewed by Reuters.
The Lille office of the government declined a request for comment.
Headmaster Dufour told Reuters the book should not have been on the curriculum and was removed earlier in 2023. He said it was not present in the school and had never been taught. The Muslim ethics class helped pupils practice faith in compliance with French law, he said.
Nine pupils, former pupils, parents and teachers said the class advocated for democratic, tolerant values.
On a March afternoon, Denguir’s son Abderahim, 14, attended the class during Ramadan alongside other boys and girls from the middle school.
Abderahim said he wanted to become an architect and make his parents proud.
“They want me to excel at school,” he said, “to have a good job, a good salary, to take care of our family later.”
New Caledonia separatists urge Paris to drop voting reform
- Kanaks fear their ambitions for independence will be crushed by leaving them in a permanent minority in the territory of 270,000 people
NOUMEA: Separatists in French Pacific territory New Caledonia pressed Paris Monday to drop a planned voting reform that triggered weeks of deadly unrest.
The Socialist Kanak National Liberation Front (FLNKS) — named for the indigenous people who fear being marginalized by the changes — said President Emmanuel Macron should “be clear in his words by stating clearly he will... abandon the constitutional reform,” which has yet to be approved by both houses of parliament.
“Such an announcement would permit... the calming of the current tensions so as to resume discussions on the future of New Caledonia,” the FLNKS’ political committee told Macron in a letter seen by AFP.
The government plans to open up the archipelago’s electoral roll — frozen since 1998 — to more recent arrivals who have lived there for at least 10 years.
Kanaks fear the change will crush their ambitions for independence by leaving them in a permanent minority in the territory of 270,000 people.
Anger over the plans spilled into two weeks of riots and erection of barricades that cut off many neighborhoods and blocked major roads.
Clashes cost the lives of seven people and left hundreds more injured, as well as causing around one billion euros ($1.1 billion) in damage.
Macron said during a brief visit to New Caledonia on May 23 that he did not want to “pass the reform by force” — while vowing he would not “turn back.”
“On the ground, these remarks regrettably continue not to be understood,” the FLNKS said.
“This incomprehension poses a real difficulty and prevents our activists from hearing the call for calm and easing tensions,” it added.
French authorities insist capital Noumea is back under their control, although barricades endure and pro-independence demonstrators are determined to stay in the streets.
Noumea’s international airport remains closed, while an overnight curfew is in force across New Caledonia until at least June 10.
South Korea to suspend military pact with North over trash balloons
- Suspending the agreement will pave the way for the South to conduct training near the military border
- The pact had been all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year it was no longer bound by it
SEOUL: South Korea plans to suspend a military agreement signed with North Korea in 2018 aimed at easing tensions, the presidential office said on Monday, after Seoul warned of a strong response to balloons launched by Pyongyang carrying trash to the South.
North Korea has launched hundreds balloons carried by wind across the border that dropped trash throughout South Korea, which called it a provocation and rejected Pyongyang’s claim it was done to inconvenience its neighbor.
The National Security Council said it would raise the plan to suspend the entirety of the military agreement for approval by the cabinet at a meeting on Tuesday.
Suspending the agreement will pave the way for the South to conduct training near the military border and take “sufficient and immediate measures” in response to North Korea’s provocation, the Council said in a statement.
It did not elaborate what those measures may be.
The pact, which was the most substantive deal to come out months of historic summit meetings between the two Koreas in 2018, had been all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year it was no longer bound by it.
Since then, the North deployed troops and weapons at guard posts near the military border.
By continuing to comply with the pact, “there have been considerable problems in our military’s readiness posture,” the Council said.
South Korea has previously said it would take “unendurable” measures against North Korea for sending the trash balloons over the border, which could include blaring propaganda from loudspeakers positioned at the border directed at the North.
North Korea has said the balloons were in retaliation for a propaganda campaign by North Korean defectors and activists in the South, who regularly send inflatables containing anti-Pyongyang leaflets with food, medicine, money and USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and dramas across the border.
North Korea has reacted angrily to the campaign because it is worried about the potential impact of the materials on the psychology of the people who read or listen to them and on the state’s control of the public, experts said.
Tens of thousands of children in Afghanistan are affected by ongoing flash floods, UNICEF says
- Afghanistan ranks 15th out of 163 nations in the Children’s Climate Risk Index
ISLAMABAD: Tens of thousands of children in Afghanistan remain affected by ongoing flash floods, especially in the north and west, the UN children’s agency said Monday.
Unusually heavy seasonal rains have been wreaking havoc on multiple parts of the country, killing hundreds of people and destroying property and crops. The UN food agency has warned that many survivors are unable to make a living.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said the extreme weather has all of the hallmarks of an intensifying climate crisis, with some of the affected areas having experienced drought last year.
The World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses in May, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan. Survivors have been left with no homes, no land, and no source of livelihood, WFP said.
UNICEF said in a statement Monday that tens of thousands of children remain affected by ongoing floods.
“The international community must redouble efforts and investments to support communities to alleviate and adapt to the impact of climate change on children,” said Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan.
At the same time, “UNICEF and the humanitarian community must prepare ourselves for a new reality of climate-related disasters,” Oyewale said.
Afghanistan ranks 15th out of 163 nations in the Children’s Climate Risk Index. This means that not only are climate and environmental shocks and stresses prominent in the country, but children are particularly vulnerable to their effects compared with elsewhere in the world.
Last week, the private group Save the Children said about 6.5 million children in Afghanistan are forecast to experience crisis levels of hunger in 2024.
Nearly three out of 10 Afghan children will face crisis or emergency levels of hunger this year as the country feels the immediate impact of floods, the long-term effects of drought, and the return of Afghans from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, the group said in a report.
More than 557,000 Afghans have returned from Pakistan since September 2023, after Pakistan began cracking down on foreigners it alleges are in the country illegally, including 1.7 million Afghans.
Sheinbaum elected Mexico’s first woman president by landslide
MEXICO: Claudia Sheinbaum was elected Mexico’s first woman president by a landslide Sunday, preliminary official results showed, making history in a country long plagued by gender-based violence.
The ruling party candidate won around 58-60 percent of votes, more than 30 percentage points ahead of her main opposition rival Xochitl Galvez, the National Electoral Institute announced after a quick count.
