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Duterte to Malaysia, Indonesia: Accept Rohingya refugees

Rohingya Muslim men are transported from a court hearing on charges of illegally travelling without proper documents, in Pathein, Ayeyarwady, Myanmar. (Reuters/File)
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Updated 25 December 2019
Ellie Aben
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Duterte to Malaysia, Indonesia: Accept Rohingya refugees

  • Philippines ready to accept migrating Rohingya from Myanmar
Updated 25 December 2019
Ellie Aben

MANILA: President Rodrigo Duterte has urged Malaysia and Indonesia to accept Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma).

Duterte made the call on Monday as he expressed anew his solidarity with the persecuted minority group, reiterating his willingness to accept them in the Philippines.

“I am prepared. I have communicated my desire that if the Rohingya in Burma want to migrate, I will accept them,” the tough-talking president said in a speech Monday evening in Cotabato City where he led the distribution of Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) to Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARB) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). A series of explosions that rocked Cotabato City and neighboring towns on Sunday night did not prevent Duterte from attending the event. “We have big lands. The people there are pitiful, the Muslims,” Duterte said, referring to the Rohingya refugees.

In his speech, Duterte pointed out that the Rohingya people are not accepted in Burma because of their religion.

“They’re from Sri Lanka, then they migrated (to Burma) ... but they are unwanted because the people there are Buddhists ... They (Rohingya people) are Muslims so they’re being executed,” according to Duterte. “So they became boat people and went to Australia. When they got there, Australia pushed them back (to Myanmar),” he continued.

FASTFACT

• The Philippines took in Vietnamese boat people fleeing the Vietnam war between 1975 to 1992.

Duterte then recalled how the Philippines took in Vietnamese boat people fleeing the Vietnam War between 1975 to 1992.  “We accepted Vietnamese in the past, didn’t we? ... there in Palawan,” Duterte said, as he reiterated his openness to also accept the Rohingya people.

“Let’s take them in. Mindanao is big, there are fields where they can farm . . . Let’s teach them how to survive. We will accept the Rohingya refugees,” said the president.

Duterte then called on Malaysia and Indonesia, both Muslim majority countries, to do the same.

“Let’s share among us- Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines,” he said.

In February this year, Duterte also offered Filipino citizenship to the Rohingya refugees.

“Those who really have nowhere else to go, I will accept them. I will make them Filipinos,” he said before a convention of municipal mayors at the Manila Hotel. In April last year, Myanmar criticized Duterte after the Philippine president said in a speech that we was willing to provide sanctuary for Rohingya fleeing what he called “genocide” in the Rakhine State.

Responding to his remarks, Myanmar government Zaw Htay said Duterte “doesn’t know

anything” about their country and that it was the “usual behavior” of the Philippine president “to

speak without restraint.”

Duterte later apologized to his Myanmar counterpart Aung San Suu Kyi for his genocide remark.

Topics: Philippines Rohingya

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Italy’s pragmatic prime minister leads charge for EU far right

Updated 7 sec ago
AFP
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Italy’s pragmatic prime minister leads charge for EU far right

  • Her strong support for Ukraine has won her friends in Washington and Brussels, particularly after she helped persuade Hungary’s Viktor Orban to drop his veto of EU aid to Kyiv
  • Meloni has also worked closely with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, particularly on migration, a priority for the far-right premier
Updated 7 sec ago
AFP

ROME: Having fostered pragmatic relations with Brussels, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is for many the “moderate” face of Europe’s radical right — and is leading the charge for June elections.
The ascent to power of Meloni’s post-fascist, euroskeptic Brothers of Italy in 2022 sent shockwaves through the European Union, sparking fears of a lurch to the right within a founding member of both the bloc and NATO.
But her strong support for Ukraine has won Meloni friends in Washington and Brussels, particularly after she helped persuade Hungary’s Viktor Orban — a long-time ally sympathetic to Moscow — to drop his veto of EU aid to Kyiv.
Meloni has also worked closely with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, particularly on migration, a priority for the far-right premier.
“At a European level, she’s trying to present herself as a sort of moderate conservative and mediator” with the rest of the radical right, noted Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst at Rome’s LUISS University.
At home, Meloni has pursued a nationalist populist agenda focused on traditional family values, law and order, and migration, including a clampdown on rescue ships operating in the central Mediterranean.
It has raised hackles among the Italian left — particularly moves to exert influence over the RAI public state broadcaster — but nothing yet to spark alarm in Brussels, as with judicial reforms in Hungary and Poland.
Fiscal policy meanwhile has been relatively prudent, reflecting the constraints of being part of the EU’s single currency.
“She wants to be in many aspects the acceptable extreme for the rest of the European political establishment,” Castellani told AFP.
“She’s like the last island before the border.”

With her Atlanticism and pragmatic relations with Brussels, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is for many the "moderate" face of Europe's radical right — and is leading the charge for the upcoming European elections. (AFP)

“More credible”

Meloni heads the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament, which includes Spain’s Vox, Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS), and France’s Reconquete!.
Marked by a pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO stance, it is viewed as more credible by the Brussels establishment than the other far-right grouping, the euroskeptic Identity and Democracy group (ID).
ID includes Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in France, Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD and Meloni’s own coalition ally, Matteo Salvini’s far-right League.
Rosa Balfour, director of the Carnegie Europe think tank, says both Rome and Brussels have benefited from a pragmatic working relationship.
“What the Commission has been doing is embrace Meloni and isolate Orban,” who is not part of either grouping, she told AFP.
“And that’s worked very well for Italy because Meloni has managed to extract concessions.”
This has mainly entailed EU support for the premier’s efforts to stop the tens of thousands of migrants who land on Italy’s shores each year on boats from North Africa.
Von der Leyen joined Meloni on the island of Lampedusa last year after a surge in arrivals, and the two women joined EU delegations to Egypt and Tunisia in recent months to agree new deals on energy and migration.

Building bridges

Analysts say the shift to a tougher EU approach on migration was well underway before Meloni arrived — but that has not stopped her claiming credit.
“We want Italy to be central to changing what doesn’t work in Europe,” she said during her election campaign launch last month.
She is standing in the vote — despite an EU rule barring government ministers from taking up their seats — and urged the European right to follow her example.
“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022,” she said.
But Castellani calls this a “bluff.”

With her Atlanticism and pragmatic relations with Brussels, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is for many the "moderate" face of Europe's radical right — and is leading the charge for the upcoming European elections. (AFP)


“The real game she’s playing is trying to enter within the European game of alliances,” he said, notably building bridges between the ECR and Von der Leyen’s conservative European People’s Party (EPP).
The divisions in the European right are echoed within Meloni’s coalition, notably between her and Salvini — they share similar domestic priorities but differ on foreign affairs.
Salvini’s League has a history of warm ties with Moscow, while he never misses an opportunity to criticize Brussels.
But he has been eclipsed. The League came top in 2019 European elections in Italy with 34 percent, but is now polling closer to eight percent, compared to more than 27 percent for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

Fresh face, skilled communicator
Surveys show voters are supportive of Meloni’s foreign policy — and less so of her migration efforts — but Lorenzo Pregliasco, founder of polling company YouTrend, says personality plays a big role.
Meloni is also seen as “more credible” than other Italian leaders, a skilled communicator and a “genuine figure, someone who says what she thinks,” he told AFP.
He notes her 2022 victory was driven by her image as a fresh face, the only party leader who did not join Mario Draghi’s technocratic government.
With the opposition still divided, as they were back then, he predicts she could stay in power for the full five-year term.
But by then the political landscape may be very different, not least if Donald Trump wins the November US presidential election.
Balfour suggests Meloni may have to reposition herself.
If Trump wins, “then you’ve got all the political leaders elbowing each other to lead the right. And Orban has already positioned himself there.”
 

Topics: EU Giorgia Meloni Brothers of Italy Ursula von der Leyen European Conservatives and Reformists

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Chad votes in first Sahel presidential poll since wave of coups

Updated 06 May 2024
Reuters
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Chad votes in first Sahel presidential poll since wave of coups

  • Monday's vote pits military ruler Mahamat Idriss against his prime minister Succes Masra, previously a political opponent who fled into exile in 2022 but was allowed back a year later
Updated 06 May 2024
Reuters

N’DJAMENA: Chadians go to the polls on Monday three years after their military leader seized power, in the first presidential election in Africa’s Sahel region since a wave of coups.

Analysts say Mahamat Idriss Deby, who seized power the day rebels killed his long-ruling father Idriss Deby in April 2021, is most likely to win, although his chief opponent has been drawing larger-than-expected crowds on the campaign trail.
Deby has promised to bolster security, strengthen the rule of law and increase electricity production.
The vote coincides with a temporary withdrawal of US troops from Chad, an important Western ally in a region of West and Central Africa courted by Russia and wracked by jihadism.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 5 p.m., with some 8.5 million people registered to vote.
Soldiers began early voting on Sunday.
Provisional results are expected by May 21 and final results by June 5. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes, a run-off will be held on June 22.
Since replacing his father at the helm of the oil-producing Central African country, Deby has remained close with former colonial power and longtime ally France.
While other junta-ruled Sahel countries including Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have told Paris and other Western powers to withdraw and turned to Moscow for support, Chad remains the last Sahel state with a substantial French military presence.
The US, however, announced a temporary withdrawal of at least some troops last month, saying it would continue with a review of security operations after the election.

Opposition concerns
Monday’s vote pits Deby against his prime minister Succes Masra, previously a political opponent who fled into exile in 2022 but was allowed back a year later. Also running are former prime minister Albert Pahimi Padacke and seven other candidates.
Yaya Dillo, an opposition politician who had been expected to run against Deby despite coming from the same clan, was shot and killed in the capital N’Djamena on Feb. 28, the day the election date was announced.
Padacke has accused Masra of collaborating with Deby. But Masra has attracted large crowds to his own rallies.
Some opposition members and civil society groups have called for a boycott, citing concerns about possible vote-rigging.
That has raised fears of potential violence.
“This presidential election is of capital importance for the country because an entire people aspires for change,” said Baniara Yoyana, a former minister and magistrate.
“The process must be conducted with transparency to avoid any risk of confrontation.”
One Deby supporter, however, said he expected no problems.
“We want the election to go well and peacefully,” said Abdelkhader Sougui, a 28-year-old student.
“My wish is to go out and vote the morning of May 6 to confirm our victory... in the first round.”

Topics: chad

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Exiled Russian historian rallies fellow emigrants in dark times

Updated 06 May 2024
AFP
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Exiled Russian historian rallies fellow emigrants in dark times

  • Tamara Eidelman is part of a group of exiled anti-war Russian public intellectuals and cultural figures who are rebuilding their careers abroad
  • More than 800,000 Russians are estimated to have left the country in just the past two years after Russia invaded Ukraine
Updated 06 May 2024
AFP

WASHINGTON: Russian dissident historian Tamara Eidelman was on vacation in Greece when Moscow’s tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022 and she realized that she would not be going back to her home country.

With her single suitcase, Eidelman, 65, flew to Portugal, where her daughter had been living, and began a new life in exile.
“I am operating under the assumption that I will not return. I am building my life in Portugal,” Eidelman, who has over 1.6 million followers on her history channel on YouTube, told AFP. “I want to come back... but if I sit every day thinking ‘When will it finally happen?’ I will go mad.”
Eidelman, who was declared a “foreign agent” by the government in Moscow, is part of a group of exiled anti-war Russian public intellectuals and cultural figures who are rebuilding their careers abroad.
While they cater to a large diaspora — more than 800,000 Russians are estimated to have left the country in just the past two years — unlike the previous waves of emigration from Russia’s calamities, they are able to continue speaking to those who stayed via social media, despite growing government restrictions.
“I think it’s one of the advantages of today’s emigration, if there can be any advantages, that our ties with our homeland have not been ruptured so drastically,” Eidelman, who wore a pin in the colors of the Ukrainian flag on her black blouse, said before a lecture in a community center outside Washington.
“Today there is an opportunity to exchange ideas. And, despite all the bans, inside Russia you can still access what is being done by those who emigrated. It is extremely valuable, it must be used and cherished.”

Tamara Eidelman, who was declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian government, is part of a group of exiled anti-war Russian public intellectuals and cultural figures who are rebuilding their careers abroad. (AFP)

While exiles are unlikely to have a significant impact on political life inside Russia, “they can be the keepers of ideas, the centers of expertise and civic education,” according to Alexander Morozov, a political analyst and lecturer at Charles University in Prague.
When political change occurs, “Those who have retained trust and their symbolic capital can play a role in Russia’s renewal,” he wrote in a recent paper.

During her first few months in Portugal, Eidelman, who worked as a history teacher at a prestigious Moscow school for more than 30 years before becoming an editor, blogger and public speaker, kept herself busy looking for a place to live, reassembling her YouTube team and signing up for Portuguese lessons.
But she would catch herself thinking she was there on a brief visit and that she needed to buy a bottle of Port wine to bring back to Moscow to her mother and friends. Then it hit her.
“I felt a tremendous weight pressing on me when things had settled down a little and I realized that I am going to be in this wonderful, beautiful country for a long time,” she said. “Of course, (President Vladimir Putin’s) regime will collapse, but I don’t know if I will be around to see it.”
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Eidelman’s YouTube channel has ballooned from some 500,000 followers to 1.63 million and a team of 30 people, with lectures on Russian, Ukrainian and world history — as well as a special presentation on Putin’s assault on democracy, which she delivered in a T-shirt that read “No Putin No War.”
“I want to express my unconditional support for Ukraine in this war and I believe that all its territories, including Crimea, must be returned to it,” Eidelman told AFP, referring to the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.
During her lecture in an auditorium of several hundred Russian speakers titled “The Judgment of History,” Eidelman examined the painful questions of countries’ and societies’ culpability and responsibility for crimes from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany — with the clear undertone of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Prosecuting those who committed direct crimes against Ukraine will not be enough, Eidelman suggested in her interview with AFP.
“I believe that there cannot be collective responsibility, that a whole people cannot be guilty,” she told AFP. “But at the same time, there must be... moral responsibility, responsibility before one’s conscience.”
Alina, a 39-year-old Russia-born quality control manager drove more than eight hours to Washington from the southern US state of Tennessee with her husband and two children to hear Eidelman speak.
To Alina, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “a crime against a neighboring country, but it’s also a crime against my own country because crimes are being committed in the name of people like me, who don’t agree with it.”
In these tragic times, Eidelman’s talk was a breath of fresh air, Alina said.
“When I listen to her lectures, I believe that there is — if not hope, then at least some light ahead for you to follow,” she said. “You get the feeling that you are not alone in all of this, even though physically you live apart from everyone.”
md/bgs/caw

Topics: Russian invasion in Ukraine Ukraine Russia Tamara Eidelman

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Trump says Biden administration uses ‘Gestapo’ tactics: US media

Updated 06 May 2024
AFP
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Trump says Biden administration uses ‘Gestapo’ tactics: US media

  • The “Gestapo” comment came as the campaign has begun heating up, and it follows several other Trump remarks that critics have said are dangerously inflammatory, including calling political rivals “vermin” and comparing immigrants to “animals”
Updated 06 May 2024
AFP

WASHINGTON: Former president Donald Trump has sharpened his allegation that his Democratic successor has weaponized the US justice system against him, comparing Joe Biden’s tactics to those of Hitler’s Gestapo, American media reported Sunday.
The Republican 2024 presidential candidate made the remark during a private meeting Saturday with top party leaders and wealthy donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a recording provided to US media by one donor.
In a 90-minute speech, Trump accused the Democrats of “running a Gestapo administration,” referring to the secret police force in Nazi Germany. “It’s the only way they’re going to win,” he said.
The “Gestapo” comment came as the campaign has begun heating up, and it follows several other Trump remarks that critics have said are dangerously inflammatory, including calling political rivals “vermin” and comparing immigrants to “animals.”
His comments in Mar-a-Lago brought loud applause from the audience, which included a number of potential vice presidential picks, according to Politico.
He again lashed out at the prosecutors who have brought four separate court cases against him, including the hush-money trial now taking place in New York.
Trump denounced what he claimed was a “witch hunt” hatched by the Democratic administration to eliminate his key presidential rival.
The White House, which has denied any involvement in the legal cases, denounced Trump’s comments on Sunday.
“Instead of echoing the appalling rhetoric of fascists, lunching with Neo Nazis, and fanning debunked conspiracy theories that have cost brave police officers their lives, President Biden is bringing the American people together around our shared democratic values and the rule of law,” spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Biden’s campaign also responded, saying the Republican’s angry remarks confirmed “what we already knew: Trump’s campaign is about him. His fury, his revenge, his lies, and his retribution.”

 

Topics: Donald Trump Joe Biden

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Anti-war protesters leave USC after police arrive, while Northeastern ceremony proceeds calmly

Updated 06 May 2024
AP
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Anti-war protesters leave USC after police arrive, while Northeastern ceremony proceeds calmly

  • Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
Updated 06 May 2024
AP

WASHINGTON: Students protesting the war in Gaza abandoned their camp at the University of Southern California early Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest, while Northeastern University’s commencement began peacefully at Boston’s Fenway Park.
Developments in both places were being watched closely following scores of arrests last month — 94 people at USC in Los Angeles and about 100 at Northeastern in Boston.
Dozens of Los Angeles Police Department officers arrived about 4 a.m. at USC to assist campus safety officers. The university had warned of arrests on social media and in person. Video showed some protesters packing up and leaving, while officers formed lines to push others away from the camp as it emptied out. The university said there were no reports of any arrests.
USC President Carol Folt said it was time to draw a line because “the occupation was spiraling in a dangerous direction” with areas of campus blocked and people being harassed.
“The operation was peaceful,” Folt wrote in an update. “Campus is opening, students are returning to prepare for finals, and commencement set-up is in full swing.”
USC earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony while allowing other commencement activities to continue.
At the Northeastern commencement Sunday, some students waved small Palestinian and Israeli flags, but were outnumbered by those waving the flags of India and the US, among others. Undergraduate student speaker Rebecca Bamidele drew brief cheers when she called for peace in Gaza.
The Associated Press has tallied about 2,500 people arrested at about 50 campuses since April 18, based on its reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement.
Arrests continued apace over the weekend. At the University of Virginia, there were 25 arrests Saturday for trespassing after police clashed with protesters who refused to remove tents. At the Art Institute of Chicago campus, police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment hours after it was set up Saturday and arrested 68 people, saying they would be charged with criminal trespass.
ARRESTS IN VIRGINIA
In Charlottesville, Virginia, student demonstrators began their protest on a lawn outside the school chapel Tuesday. Video on Saturday showed police in riot gear and holding shields lined up on campus, while protesters chanted “Free Palestine.”
As police moved in, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by their arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor who has been helping the demonstrators, told The Washington Post. The university said protesters were told that tents were banned under school policy and were asked to remove them.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News on Sunday the police response was justified because students had been warned repeatedly to leave, were violating the school’s conduct code, and that outsiders who were not students provided protesters with supplies like wooden barriers.
“We’ve seen folks that are not students show up in riot gear with bull horns to direct the protesters on how to flank our officers,” Miyares said.
He said some had put bear spray into water bottles and thrown them at officers.
It was the latest clash in weeks of protests and tension at US colleges and universities.
Tent encampments of protesters urging universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools reached agreements with protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disrupting final exams and commencements.
DEMONSTRATIONS AMID COMMENCEMENT
The University of Michigan was among the schools bracing for protests during commencement this weekend, as were Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern. More ceremonies are planned in the coming weeks.
In Ann Arbor, there was a protest at the beginning of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyehs along with their graduation caps, marched up the main aisle toward the stage.
They chanted “Regents, regents, you can’t hide! You are funding genocide!” while holding signs, including one that read: “No universities left in Gaza.”
Overhead, planes pulled banners with competing messages. “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”
Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest didn’t seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, attended by tens of thousands of people, some of them waving Israeli flags.
OTHER PROTESTS CONTINUE
At Indiana University, protesters urged supporters to wear their kaffiyehs and walk out during remarks by school President Pamela Whitten on Saturday evening. The Bloomington campus designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, where the ceremony was held.
At Princeton University in New Jersey, 18 students began a hunger strike to try to push the university to divest from companies tied to Israel. Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes this year before the more recent wave of demonstrations.
The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
 

Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US

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