LONDON: Jeremy Hunt, one of the two candidates vying to replace British Prime Minister Theresa May, said on Monday that rival Boris Johnson was a coward for avoiding public head-to-head debates on what to do about Brexit.
“On the question of debates, he is being a coward,” Foreign Secretary Hunt said. “It is cowardice not to appear in head-to-head debates.”
Hunt, 52, said it was disrespectful for Johnson to have turned down the opportunity for a head-to-head debate on Sky television.
“People need to know what you’re going to do and you need to answer those questions,” Hunt said. “I promise Boris Johnson the fight of his life and he’s going to have that and he’s going to lose.”
Johnson, 55, is the favorite to win a vote of 160,000 Conservative Party members who will decide who will be the next prime minister. Betting markets give him a 79 percent implied probability of winning the top job, down from 92 percent last week.
He has cast himself as the only candidate who can deliver Brexit on October 31 — with or without a deal — while fighting off the electoral threats of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and socialist Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
Early on Friday, police were called to Johnson’s home after neighbors heard a loud altercation between him and his girlfriend. Police said there was no cause for police action.
The Guardian newspaper, which first reported the story, said an unidentified neighbor had heard Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, screaming followed by “slamming and banging.” At one point, Symonds could be heard telling Johnson to “get off me” and “get out of my flat.”
Johnson declined to answer questions about the incident at a hustings event in Birmingham on Saturday.
Hunt said the personal life of Johnson was irrelevant but that the candidates should explain their Brexit positions — and specifically what would a new leader do if lawmakers tried to sink a new government heading toward a no-deal Brexit.
“If parliament takes no-deal off the table before Oct. 31, will Boris call a general election?” Hunt said. “I think a general election would be catastrophic.”
Hunt said he would seek a better deal from the EU to leave on Oct. 31 and would, if absolutely necessary, leave without a deal. If parliament took a no-deal Brexit off the table, he intimated there would have to be delay.
“In that situation, you would have to carry on negotiating,” Hunt said. “I want to leave by Oct. 31 but if parliament stops it the prime minister has to obey the law.”
Johnson repeated on Monday that he would lead the United Kingdom out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal.
“We are going to come out of the EU on October 31,” he wrote in The Daily Telegraph. “This time we are not going to bottle it.”
Like Hunt, Johnson promised lower taxes if he wins the top job.
When asked the naughtiest thing he had ever done, Hunt said: “When I was backpacking through India, I once had a Bhang Lassi — which is a kind of cannabis lassi — that’s the naughtiest thing I am prepared to confess to on this program.”
UK PM candidate Hunt: Boris Johnson is a ‘coward’ for avoiding debates on Brexit
UK PM candidate Hunt: Boris Johnson is a ‘coward’ for avoiding debates on Brexit
- Jeremy Hunt: It was disrespectful for Boris Johnson to turn down the opportunity for a head-to-head debate
- Hunt says candidates should explain their Brexit positions
Top UN court to hear Rohingya genocide case against Myanmar
THE HAGUE: Did Myanmar commit genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority? That’s what judges at the International Court of Justice will weigh during three weeks of hearings starting Monday.
The Gambia brought the case accusing Myanmar of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention during a crackdown in 2017.
Legal experts are watching closely as it could give clues for how the court will handle similar accusations against Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, a case brought to the ICJ by South Africa.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled violence by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias, escaping to neighboring Bangladesh and bringing harrowing accounts of mass rape, arson and murder.
Today, 1.17 million Rohingya live crammed into dilapidated camps spread over 8,000 acres in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
From there, mother-of-two Janifa Begum told AFP: “I want to see whether the suffering we endured is reflected during the hearing.”
“We want justice and peace,” said the 37-year-old.
’Senseless killings’
The Gambia, a Muslim-majority country in West Africa, brought the case in 2019 to the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states.
Under the Genocide Convention, any country can file a case at the ICJ against any other it believes is in breach of the treaty.
In December 2019, lawyers for the African nation presented evidence of what they said were “senseless killings... acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience.”
In a landmark moment at the Peace Palace courthouse in The Hague, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appeared herself to defend her country.
She dismissed Banjul’s argument as a “misleading and incomplete factual picture” of what she said was an “internal armed conflict.”
The former democracy icon warned that the genocide case at the ICJ risked reigniting the crisis, which she said was a response to attacks by Rohingya militants.
Myanmar has always maintained the crackdown by its armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents after a series of attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.
‘Physical destruction’
The ICJ initially sided with The Gambia, which had asked judges for “provisional measures” to halt the violence while the case was being considered.
The court in 2020 said Myanmar must take “all measures within its power” to halt any acts prohibited in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
These acts included “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The United States officially declared that the violence amounted to genocide in 2022, three years after a UN team said Myanmar harbored “genocidal intent” toward the Rohingya.
The hearings, which wrap up on January 30, represent the heart of the case.
The court had already thrown out a 2022 Myanmar challenge to its jurisdiction, so judges believe they have the power to rule on the genocide issue.
A final decision could take months or even years and while the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions, a ruling in favor of The Gambia would heap more political pressure on Myanmar.
Suu Kyi will not be revisiting the Peace Palace. She has been detained since a 2021 coup, on charges rights groups say were politically motivated.
The ICJ is not the only court looking into possible genocide against the Rohingya.
The International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, is investigating military chief Min Aung Hlaing for suspected crimes against humanity.
Another case is being heard in Argentina under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the idea that some crimes are so heinous they can be heard in any court.
