SEOUL, South Korea: Russian President Vladimir Putin has gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a Russian-made luxury limousine for his personal use, both countries announced Tuesday, in another sign of their expanding cooperation.
Observers said the shipment violates a UN resolution that bans supplying luxury items to North Korea, in an attempt to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and another senior North Korean official accepted the gift Sunday and she conveyed her brother’s thanks to Putin, the Korean Central News Agency said. Kim Yo Jong said the gift showed the special personal relationship between the leaders, the report said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin gave Kim Jong Un a high-end Aurus Senat limousine that he showed to the North Korean leader when they met for a summit in Russia in September. Kim was shown the Anrus limousine at Russia’s main spaceport.
Kim “liked the car, and so the decision was made” to present it to him as a gift, Peskov said, according to Russia’s state-run Tass news agency. “North Korea is our neighbor, our close neighbor.”
Tass earlier reported that Aurus was the first Russian luxury car brand, and it’s been used in motorcades of top officials since Putin first used an Anrus limousine during his inauguration ceremony in 2018.
Kim, 40, is known to possess many foreign-made luxury cars believed to have been smuggled into his country in breach of the UN resolution.
During his Russia visit, he traveled between meeting sites in a Maybach limousine that was brought with him on one of his special train carriages.
During an earlier Russia trip in 2019, Kim had two limos waiting for him at Vladivostok station — a Mercedes-Maybach S600 Pullman Guard and a Maybach S62. He also reportedly used the S600 Pullman Guard for his two summits with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Vietnam in 2019. In 2018, Kim used a black Mercedes limousine to return home after a meeting with South Korea’s then-President Moon Jae-in at a shared Korean border village.
Kim’s possession of expensive foreign limousines shows the porousness of international sanctions on the North. Russia, a permanent Security Council member, voted for the ban on supplying luxury goods to North Korea, along with other international sanctions adopted in response to the North’s nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea and Russia have boosted their cooperation significantly as they are locked in separate confrontations with the United States and its allies — North Korea for its nuclear program and Russia for its war with Ukraine. Russia, along with China — another UN Security Council member — has repeatedly stymied the US and others’ bids to toughen UN sanctions on North Korea over its prohibited missile tests in recent years.
The US, South Korea and their partners accuse North Korea of sending conventional arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine, in return for high-tech Russian weapons technologies and other support. Such arms transfers would violate multiple UN resolutions banning any weapons trade involving North Korea.
After its foreign minister returned home following a Russia visit in January, the North’s state media reported Putin expressed his willingness to visit the North at an early date.
Putin gives Kim Jong Un a luxury limousine, in a violation of UN sanctions on North Korea
https://arab.news/2np72
Putin gives Kim Jong Un a luxury limousine, in a violation of UN sanctions on North Korea
- Observers said the shipment violates a UN resolution that bans supplying luxury items to North Korea
- Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and another senior North Korean official accepted the gift Sunday and she conveyed her brother’s thanks to Putin
‘A den of bandits’: Rwanda closes thousands of evangelical churches
- A 2018 law introduced new rules on health, safety, and financial disclosures, and requires all preachers to have theological training
- Observers say the real reason for the closures comes down to control, noting that even those who complied with the law had been shut down
- President Kagame has described the church as a relic of the colonial period, a chapter of its history with which the country is still grappling
KIGALI: Grace Room Ministries once filled giant stadiums in Rwanda three times a week before the evangelical organization was shut down in May.
It is one of the 10,000 churches reportedly closed by the government for failing to comply with a 2018 law designed to regulate places of worship.
The law introduced new rules on health, safety, and financial disclosures, and requires all preachers to have theological training.
President Paul Kagame has been vocal in his criticisms of the evangelical churches that have sprouted across the small country in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t even reopen a single church,” Kagame told a news briefing last month.
“In all the development challenges we are dealing with, the wars... our country’s survival — what is the role of these churches? Are they also providing jobs? Many are just thieving... some churches are just a den of bandits,” he said.
The vast majority of Rwandans are Christian according to a 2024 census, with many now traveling long and costly distances to find places to pray.
Observers say the real reason for the closures comes down to control.
Kagame’s government is saying “there’s no rival in terms of influence,” Louis Gitinywa, a lawyer and political analyst based in Kigali, told AFP.
The ruling party “bristles when an organization or individual gains influence,” he said, a view also expressed to AFP by an anonymous government official.
‘Deceived’
The 2018 law requires churches to submit annual action plans stating how they align with “national values.” All donations must be channelled through registered accounts.
Pastor Sam Rugira, whose two church branches were shut down last year for failing to meet fire safety regulations, said the rules mostly affected new evangelical churches that have “mushroomed” in recent years.
But Kagame has described the church as a relic of the colonial period, a chapter of its history with which the country is still grappling.
“You have been deceived by the colonizers and you let yourself be deceived,” he said in November.
The closure of Grace Room Ministries came as a shock to many across the country.
Pastor Julienne Kabanda, had been drawing massive crowds to the shiny new BK Arena in Kigali when the church’s license was revoked.
The government had cited unauthorized evangelical activities and a failure to submit “annual activity and financial reports.”
AFP was unable to reach Kabanda for comment.
‘Open disdain, disgust’
A church leader in Kigali, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the president’s “open disdain and disgust” for churches “spells tough times ahead.”
“It is unfair that even those that fulfilled all requirements are still closed,” he added.
But some say the clampdown on places of worship is linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which around 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered.
Ismael Buchanan a political science lecturer at the National University of Rwanda, told AFP the church could sometimes act as “a conduit of recruitment” for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Hutu militia formed in exile in DR Congo by those who committed the genocide.
“I agree religion and faith have played a key role in healing Rwandans from the emotional and psychological wounds after the genocide, but it also makes no sense to have a church every two kilometers instead of hospitals and schools,” he said.
Pastor Rugira meanwhile suggested the government is “regulating what it doesn’t understand.”
It should instead work with churches to weed out “bad apples” and help them meet requirements, especially when it comes to the donations they rely on to survive, he said.
