Month: March 2017

Russian lender Sberbank said Monday it was deeply concerned by protests against its Ukrainian subsidiary, which included a nationalist group walling up the entrance to one of its branches in Kyiv with masonry and cement.

Periodic protests have been held against Kremlin-owned banks operating in Ukraine since bilateral ties broke down in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea and gave its support to the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Sberbank’s announcement last Tuesday that it would heed a call from President Vladimir Putin to recognize passports issued by separatists in eastern Ukraine has fueled greater discontent.

On Monday, a few dozen members of a new activist group called National Corp blocked off the entrance to Sberbank’s main branch in central Kyiv. The branch temporarily suspended operations and appealed to the police.

“Sberbank is highly concerned about the situation in Ukraine linked to the actions of representatives of nationalist groups,” the bank said in a statement. “Our subsidiary has already appealed to law enforcement bodies and we hope that all necessary steps will be swiftly taken to ensure the safety of our workers and clients and protect property.”

It said over the past week it had recorded over 26 acts of vandalism against Sberbank Ukraine’s branches and bank machines.

Last week, the central bank said it could recommend the introduction of sanctions on Sberbank’s subsidiary for its recognition of separatists’ identity documents.

Five Russian state-owned banks are present in Ukraine, including three in the top 20, and they hold a combined market share of 8.6 percent.

The central bank has been seeking to cut that following the souring of relations between the one-time allies.

It is not yet clear how the other Kremlin-owned banks operating in Ukraine are handling Putin’s order to recognize separatist documents.
…

Scotland’s first minister took a step closer Monday to breaking up the United Kingdom by announcing she intends to begin the legal process of holding a new independence referendum for Scots.

At a news conference in Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon said it is the “right thing” to give Scots an opportunity to express their opinion following Brexit, last year’s vote by Britain to leave the European Union. In her speech, Sturgeon, whose Scottish National Party is the largest party north of the English border, said she wasn’t prepared to “do nothing” while Brexit threatened Scotland’s economy and its links with Europe.

Coming in the wake of last week’s electoral surge by Sinn Fein nationalists in Northern Ireland assembly elections, Sturgeon’s announcement, although not a surprise, adds to the ramifications of the Brexit vote, which Britain’s Conservative government is struggling to contain.

Moments after Sturgeon’s speech, Faisal Islam, political editor of Britain’s Sky News, spoke for many British political reporters when he said, “Who knows where all of this will end.”

“Thus Brexit, which was meant to protect Britain, begins the destruction of Britain,” tweeted political commentator Nick Cohen.

Vote within 2 years

Scotland’s first minister, who heads a minority government, said she wants the vote to take place between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, arguing the British parliament in Westminster had become more assertive since the Brexit vote. She said Britain’s Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, had failed to consult Scotland before deciding on a hard break with the EU, which will see Britain not only end its political membership in the European bloc but will also see it exit Europe’s single market with major economic consequences.

In last year’s Brexit vote, Scots voted by a 62-38 percent margin to remain in the EU. After the vote, Sturgeon said Brexit constituted a “significant and a material change of the circumstances,” thereby justifying a second independence referendum. Scotland elected to remain a part of the United Kingdom in a September 2014 referendum, which was then billed by Sturgeon as a “once in a lifetime vote.”

Sturgeon will seek the authority for the independence referendum next week from Scotland’s parliament, but, the final say has to come from the Westminster parliament. It is unclear whether Prime Minister May will agree to another independence vote, or attempt to block it. That sets the stage for a confrontation between the two strong-willed leaders.

May has made it clear she will fight to preserve the United Kingdom. Politically, however, she could be placed in an untenable position if she tries to deny the Scots another referendum. A majority in Scotland’s devolved parliament at Holyrood backs breaking up the United Kingdom.

A spokesman for May denounced Surgeon’s announcement, arguing evidence “clearly showed a majority of people in Scotland do not want a second independence referendum.”

Government: new vote ‘divisive’

He added, “Only a little over two years ago, people in Scotland voted decisively to remain part of our United Kingdom in a referendum which the Scottish government defined as a ‘once in a generation’ vote. Another referendum would be divisive and cause huge economic uncertainty at the worst possible time.”

An opinion poll released last week put support for Scottish independence at its highest level since the weeks immediately following the Brexit vote. An Ipsos MORI poll put the two sides of the Scottish independence debate level at 50/50, after a previous series of polls had the unionists marginally ahead.

Britain’s main opposition parties also have responded critically to Sturgeon, but said they would not seek to stop a vote, if the Scottish parliament authorizes another referendum, which seems likely. “If the Scottish parliament votes for one, Labor will not block that democratic decision at Westminster,” said Jeremy Corbyn, the Labor Party’s leader.

According to a British official, May will likely allow a second referendum, but only if it takes place after Brexit negotiations have been concluded with the EU, likely by April 2019. Sturgeon is adamant the vote must be held before then, maximizing Scotland’s chances of being able to rejoin the EU quickly — or even being allowed to retain membership.

“If Scotland is to have a real choice – when the terms of Brexit are known, but before it is too late to choose our own course – then that choice should be offered between the autumn of next year, 2018, and the spring of 2019,” Sturgeon said.

The main battle, then, between May and Sturgeon is not likely to end with whether there is a referendum, but when it is held.

 
…

Defense spending by European NATO states inched up for the first time in seven years in 2016, the military alliance said on Monday, but still remained below the threshold the new U.S. President Donald Trump said was crucial to achieve.

Trump made NATO states in Europe nervous when he criticized the alliance as “obsolete” during election campaign and then went on to suggest he could make U.S. commitment to their security conditional on them meeting the alliance’s target of defense spending at two percent of their economic output.

Trump has since reaffirmed support for NATO but insisted Europeans must “pay their fair share.” His aides have said Trump wants to see progress on that by the end of this year and that Washington could otherwise “moderate” its support.

NATO said the U.S. defense spending last year stood at 3.61 percent of its Gross Domestic Product, compared to 3.58 percent in 2015. That compares to 1.47 percent for NATO’s European allies last year and 1.44 percent the year before.

NATO’s overall figure for 2016 stood at 2.43 percent versus 2.40 percent in 2015.

“There has been progress but the job is far from done, we still have no fair burden-sharing within our alliance,” NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “It is realistic that all allies reach the goal of two percent.”

“This is not just about a call from the Unites States and President Trump… It is in Europe’s best interest to spend more on defense. We have a long way to go but at least after years of decline, we are now starting to see an increase.”

US demands

Europe’s low expenditure has long been a sore point for the United States, which provides the lion’s share of the alliance funds. In 2016, the U.S. economy represented just below a half of the alliance’s combined economic output, but nearly 70 percent of its defense expenditure, NATO’s annual report showed.

Defense spending by NATO’s European allies has been on steady decline since the Cold War ended. But Europe has sought to reverse the falling numbers since its neighbor Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Combined with the growing worry over the spread of Islamic militancy and more failing states on their borders, this has given NATO members last year the first annual growth in defense spending relative to the size of their economies since 2009.

“When you are reducing spending at times of easing tensions, we have to be able to increase spending when tensions are increasing,” Stoltenberg added.

The decision by Britain, a leading military power on the continent, to leave the European Union has also galvanized the Europeans to do more on defense on their own. Of 28 EU states, 22 are also in NATO. Europe was last at two percent in 2000.

Only four European NATO members — Estonia, Greece, Poland and Britain – met the two-percent standard last year.

France came in at 1.79 percent, a tad below 2015, while Germany stood a 1.2 percent, just up from 1.18 in 2015. 

 
…

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Monday there was a real possibility that nationalist, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders could win the parliamentary election on Wednesday.

“There is a real risk that on March 16 we can wake up in this country and Geert Wilders is leading the biggest party and that will send a signal to the rest of the world,” he told journalists in Rotterdam.

He called on Dutch voters to stop “the wrong populism” at the polls.

 
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the Netherlands Sunday it would “pay a price” for refusing to allow Ankara’s foreign minister into the country and expelling another minister Saturday to keep them from holding rallies with Turkish immigrants.

Erdogan accused the Dutch government, a NATO ally, of “nazism and fascism,” saying only a repressive regime would block Ankara’s officials from traveling to the Netherlands.

Both of the Ankara officials were trying to rally Turkish immigrants with Turkish voting rights to support Erdogan’s bid to win a referendum next month to give him sweeping new powers.

The Dutch government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, facing a tough re-election contest on Wednesday against the anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders, barred Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from flying to Rotterdam. It then blocked Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya from entering the Turkish embassy in the port city before escorting her out of the country to Germany.

An angry Erdogan told a ceremony in Istanbul, “Hey Holland! If you are sacrificing Turkish-Dutch relations for the sake of the elections on Wednesday, you will pay a price.”

Retaliation threats

Earlier Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a statement that Turkey would retaliate against Amsterdam in the “harshest ways” and “respond in kind to this unacceptable behavior.”

Ankara barred the Dutch ambassador from returning to Turkey, with Cavusoglu saying, “We have other steps in mind. We’ve already begun planning them. We will certainly take those steps and more.” Turkish officials sealed off the Dutch embassy in Ankara.

Dutch leader Rutte called Erdogan’s Nazi claim “a crazy remark.”

“Turkey is a proud nation; the Netherlands is a proud nation,” Rutte said. “We can never do business under those sorts of threats and blackmail.”

But Rutte said his government “will keep working to de-escalate where we can. If the Turks choose to escalate, we will have to react, but we will do everything we can to de-escalate.”

Protesters arrested

Police in Rotterdam arrested 12 protesters outside the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam after Dutch-Turkish demonstrators early Sunday pelted police on horseback with rocks and bottles. Police responded with batons and a water cannon. The clash erupted after protesters learned that Dutch police were escorting Kaya to Germany.

Before clashes broke out, about 2,000 protesters had gathered outside the consulate in Rotterdam, the country’s second largest city, to show their support for Erdogan’s government.

Cavusoglu was barred from landing in the Netherlands because of growing opposition to Turkey’s referendum campaigning throughout the European Union.

After Cavusoglu was turned away, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Kaya had entered the Netherlands from Germany, even though events at which she intended to speak already had been canceled.

Hours later, after arriving back in Istanbul, where she was welcomed by a flag-waving crowd Sunday, Kaya told reporters, “We were subjected to rude and tough treatment … Treating a female minister this way is very ugly.”

Protesters have taken down the Dutch flag at the Istanbul consulate and replaced it with a Turkish flag.

After being denied entry to the Netherlands, Cavusoglu spoke to more than a hundred Turkish emigres in the northern French city of Metz. French officials had said Saturday they had no plans to prevent his appearance.

Many European Union member states object to visits by Turkish ministers calling for Turkish nationals to vote for the upcoming referendum to change Turkey’s constitution, because of domestic tensions the campaigning has caused. Ankara wants to drum up support among millions of Turks who live and work in Europe to give Erdogan more powers, which could see him remain in office until 2029.

Dutch far-right leader Wilders waded into the debate this week ahead of a planned rally in The Hague, where the Dutch parliament is located.

“We are in Holland here, not in Turkey, and a Turkish minister has no room here to lobby for somebody like Erdogan, who is a mere dictator,” Wilders said.

On Saturday, Wilders said in a tweet: “To all Turks in the Netherlands who agree with Erdogan: Go to Turkey and NEVER come back!!”

 
…

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, is due to go on trial Monday for a deadly attack in a Paris’ shopping mall decades ago, the oldest one blamed on the former public enemy of France and probably the last one to come to court.

The Venezuelan-born Ramirez Sanchez, one of the most notorious political terrorists of the 1970s and `80s, is serving a life sentence in France for a series of murders and attacks he perpetrated or organized in the country on behalf of the Palestinian cause or communist revolution.

He first was convicted by a French court 20 years ago, and again in 2011 and 2013. If convicted on first-degree murder charges in the latest trial, he could get a third life sentence.

Ramirez Sanchez, 67, is scheduled to appear in a Paris court for allegedly throwing a hand grenade from a mezzanine restaurant onto a shopping arcade in the French capital’s Latin Quarter in September 1974. Two people were killed and dozens injured.

At the time of the attack, Ramirez Sanchez had not yet been dubbed “Carlos the Jackal” or become one of the world’s most wanted fugitives. He was 24 years old and already had joined the organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

When police arrived, they found a devastated mall with all the windows shattered, multiple bloodstains and a hole in the marble slab of the ground floor where the grenade fell. The two men who died were hit by metal chips that perforated vital organs and caused large internal bleeding, according to court documents.

Carlos has pleaded innocent and denied involvement in the case. His long-time lawyer and fiancé, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, claims that none of the witnesses from the trendy Drugstore Publicis restaurant had described a man resembling her client, and that the whole case was trumped-up.

Yet an Arab language news magazine in France, Al-Watan Al-Arabi, published a long interview with a man it identified as Ramirez Sanchez five years after the attack. He allegedly claimed he had personally thrown the grenade into the restaurant, described the full details of the operation and explained why it was carried out. Carlos later disputed he had given the interview.

In the 1979 article, the man said to be Carlos said he attacked the Drugstore Publicis to pressure for the release of a Japanese activist arrested in France two months earlier. The attack, he said, came as a backup operation for a hostage-taking that was then ongoing at the French Embassy in the Netherlands.

It was in the name of the Palestinian cause that he subsequently became the military chief of the PFLP in Europe, claiming the “operational and political responsibility” for all the operations of the group on the continent and also for “all the wounded and all the dead,” according to court documents.

“I am a hero of the Palestinian resistance, and I am the only survivor of [the group’s] professional executives in Europe because I used to shoot first,” he told investigators.

Carlos was arrested in Sudan by the French intelligence services in 1994, 20 years after the first attack blamed on him in France.

The case took so long to go to trial because it was first dismissed for lack of evidence before being reopened when Carlos was arrested and imprisoned in France. His lawyers introduced challenges at every stage of the proceedings.

The case will be heard by a special court made up of professional judges and with no jurors, as is the custom with terrorism trials in France.

During one interrogation, Carlos allegedly told investigators that “in 1974 it was obviously an attack. A grenade was thrown.” He added: “I don’t think the person who did this wanted to hurt the poor people who were present.”

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to quiz German Chancellor Angela Merkel about her experience dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the chancellor visits the White House Tuesday. A senior administration official said Friday Trump would be “very interested to get German Chancellor Merkel’s insights” as he prepares to engage the Kremlin leader.

Critics on both sides of the Atlantic have been suspicious of what they see as Trump’s naivete when it comes to Putin, particularly with regard to the Kremlin’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election.

But four officials briefing reporters in advance of the March 14 meeting suggested the president wants to look past his highly publicized differences with the German leader and form strong common positions on issues ranging from trade to Kremlin cyberwarfare to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine sanctions

During his campaign for the presidency, Trump accused Merkel of “ruining Germany” with policies that welcomed large numbers of refugees.

The chancellor, who was known to have had a strong bond with former President Barack Obama, has faulted Trump’s temporary travel ban, saying “there is no justification for placing people from a certain origin or belief under general suspicion.”

Stephen Szabo, executive director of the Transatlantic Academy and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, says Merkel is coming to the White House concerned that Trump “might get too soft with Russia and will undermine the sanctions regime she put together after the invasion of Ukraine.”

In a VOA interview, he said “the worst thing for Western solidarity would be for the major player in the West, the United States, to loosen sanctions without any progress in Ukraine.”

White House spokesman Sean Spicer attempted Friday to ease those concerns, telling reporters “any attempt to undermine sanctions that exist because of the annexation of Crimea” would not be allowed until the issue is resolved. But when asked what the president’s strategy might be, he hedged.

“The president has made clear,” Spicer said, “his philosophy is not one that says ‘I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do.’ He holds his cards close to his vest to maximize his negotiating strategy.”

Szabo said if Trump wants to get a clear understanding of Vladimir Putin, he could hardly find a better source than Merkel.

“She certainly knows Putin better than anybody,” he said. “They have met or spoken by phone more than 100 times.”

Trade with Europe

The senior administration officials who briefed reporters Friday said the White House has “not formulated a final position” on whether to pursue the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal with the European Union. Merkel has been a strong advocate of the trade treaty known as T-TIP, and had issued a joint appeal with Obama to save it shortly before he left office.

Candidate Trump, however, had pledged to pursue only bilateral trade pacts, leading to speculation the transatlantic deal was dead. But in a hint at a possible compromise, one senior administration official Friday said T-TIP could be considered a one-on-one trade deal, given how the EU structure interconnects European economies.

Merkel signaled her top priority for the trip to the U.S. by announcing she would be accompanied by the heads of two of Germany’s biggest businesses, Siemens and BMW.

“The Germans are worried,” Szabo said. “Trump’s trade negotiator (Peter) Navarro has been singling out Germany as the biggest U.S. trade problem, bigger even than China.” Navarro heads the newly formed White House National Trade Council.

Szabo says Merkel is going to make the point that “German firms are big investors in the U.S., creating more than 600,000 American jobs in American-German companies. So she’s going to make the case that if you go after us, you’re going to be hurting jobs in the U.S.”

White House spokesman Spicer indicated the Merkel visit is likely to be one of the biggest events of the Trump presidency so far.

“There’s a lot of excitement on both sides of the ocean for this trip. We are looking forward to meeting the chancellor and her team,” he said.
…

Several hundred people have staged a protest in the southwestern Belarusian city of Pinsk, calling for the scrapping of a law imposing a tax on jobless people.

The protest Saturday was the latest in series of demonstrations against the law, despite authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka announcing that he was suspending its application for one year in order to “correct” it and carry it out next year.

Lukashenka said the law, which is reminiscent of Soviet-era legislation, was needed to fight what he has called “social parasitism.” The legislation has sparked protests across the nation of 10 million. It imposes a special tax on Belarusians who work less than half of a calendar year and do not register at the country’s labor bureaus.

WATCH: Protesters speak out

The law, however, exempts registered job-seekers, homemakers, subsistence farmers and Belarusians working in Russia.

The Pinsk protest, dubbed “The March of the Non-Parasites,” brought together people of various ages, including pensioners, who gathered in the main square of Pinsk.

Some participants were carrying both the current red-green flag of Belarus and the historical white-red-white banner used by the short-lived Belarusian Republic in 1918, before Belarus became a Soviet Republic.

‘Time to take up pitchforks’

Some demonstrators chanted slogans calling for the replacement of the current government and for fair elections.

“It’s time to take up our pitchforks,” one old man told RFE/RL.

“This is a terrible thing that’s happening in Belarus. We have reached the limit. Even under [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev, we lived a hundred times better,” he said.

RFE/RL correspondents reported that three men in civilian clothes attempted to detain popular video-blogger Maksim Povich, but gave up and ran away when demonstrators shouted at them to leave Povich alone.

Similar rallies are scheduled for Sunday in three more cities — Babruysk, Vorsha and Rahachou. Activists in the capital, Minsk, told RFE/RL that city authorities had given them permission to stage a demonstration as well.

Although Lukashenka announced a suspension of the tax, he also instructed his interior minister to ensure that “perfect order” is established in the country, the BelaPAN news agency reported.

Lukashenka, who the United States has dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” has ruled Belarus for more than two decades, quashing political opposition, civil society groups, independent media, and other forms of dissent.
…

Russia has hinted at involving the United States in a newly-launched regional dialogue Moscow says is aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. The move comes as Afghanistan’s national security adviser is due to visit Moscow to discuss the prospects for promoting reconciliation with armed opposition in his country.

Moscow’s stepped up Afghan diplomacy stems from its concerns that a protracted conflict is encouraging Islamic State militants to establish a foothold in the war-torn country and export terrorism to neighboring Central Asian states that ultimately could threaten Russian security.

In December, the Russian government hosted senior foreign ministry officials from China and Pakistan for the first time to discuss ways to encourage direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The participants also exchanged views on how to collectively work to contain “spillover” effects of terrorism.

Kabul strongly objected being left out of the trilateral meeting, however, while U.S. officials also questioned Russia’s intentions for organizing the talks.

The criticism and skepticism prompted Moscow to expand the format of the dialogue to include Afghanistan, along with Iran and India, in the next meeting it hosted last month.

Involving more partners

“At its next stage we think it will be important to, in a timely fashion, involve in that same process our Central Asian partners as well as the United States,” said Vladimir Safronkov, the Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations, on Friday. He was addressing a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Afghanistan.

Safronkov reiterated that the consultations are working out “a single regional approach” to “reinvigorate” the Afghan reconciliation process.

He made the remarks on a day when the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Afghan National Security Adviser Haneef Atmar will visit Moscow March 17 for talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“The officials will discuss the security situation and prospects for promoting national reconciliation in Afghanistan, as well as ways to develop multilateral cooperation within the Moscow format of regional consultations on Afghanistan,” the ministry said.

Russia-Taliban contacts not welcome

While Afghan officials and the U.S. military welcome Russian peace efforts, they are critical of Moscow’s overt contacts with the Taliban.

Russia maintains that “the limited contacts” with the Taliban are meant to encourage the group to join Kabul-led peace efforts and to ensure security of Russian citizens in the country.

But General John Nicholson, U.S. commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, told a congressional hearing last month that Russian attempts to overtly legitimize the Taliban are based on arguments that the insurgents, and not Afghan forces, are effectively fighting IS militants. He dismissed those assertions as misleading and said Moscow is only trying to undermine U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts in the region.

Speaking in India earlier this week, National Security Adviser Atmar said his government continues to warn Moscow that any assistance to the Taliban will not be seen as “a gesture of friendship” toward Afghanistan.  

“They [Russia] are assuring us that this is not the case. All they want to do is to facilitate peace in Afghanistan and second a counter-response to Daesh. There we disagree. We say the best response to Daesh is state-to-state relations and cooperation, you cannot get it from non-state actors. Don’t expect a terrorist to be taking on another terrorist,” explained Atmar, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Afghan officials in the country’s northern border provinces have also lately alleged that Russia is helping the Taliban establish training camps in their areas.

Russia says allegations ‘absurd’

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday responded to what it dismissed as baseless allegations and U.S. criticism.

“The distribution of such absurd inventions revealed a staged campaign to discredit our country, during which the Afghan and world community is thrown the thesis of Russia ‘undermining’ international anti-terrorist efforts in Afghanistan,” according to a statement published on the ministry’s website.

It went on to assert that the campaign is to “divert attention from accountability for the numerous mistakes in more than 16 years of foreign military presence in Afghanistan.”

Moscow blames the U.S.-led international efforts for the worsening Afghan security conditions that it says allowed IS to find space in the country.

Afghan security forces backed by American airpower have conducted successful major operations against IS over the last year and confined the terrorist group to less than three districts in the eastern Nangarhar province, according to a latest U.S. military assessment. It says the number of IS fighters also has been reduced to about 700 from an estimated 3,000 a year ago.

Speaking on Friday at the U.N. Security Council meeting, though, Russia’s Safronkov challenged those assessments.

“We think that there are some three-and-a-half-thousand active members of [Islamic State] operating in the country. The realistic figure given all the cells operating could be much higher,” he said. The Russian ambassador contradicted U.S. assessments and asserted that IS is active in more than one Afghan province.

“Their main regions of action are Helmand, Kandahar, Faryab, Bagram, Kunduz. So we would call everyone to devote to that problem heightened attention and not to try and somehow gloss it over to ignore it,” Safronkov said..

IS has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan and took credit for Wednesday’s suicide attack on the country’s largest military hospital in Kabul. The assault left more than 50 people dead and scores of others wounded.

Russian envoy Safronkov asserted that the Kabul attack is more proof of the expanding and strengthening structure of IS in Afghanistan.
…

The Netherlands barred Turkey’s foreign minister from landing in Rotterdam on Saturday in a row over Ankara’s political campaigning among Turkish emigres, leading President Tayyip Erdogan to brand its fellow NATO member a “Nazi remnant.”

The dispute escalated in the evening as Turkey’s family minister was prevented by police from entering the Turkish consulate in the Rotterdam while hundreds of protesters waving Turkish flags gathered outside demanding to see the minister. Turkey’s foreign ministry said it did not want the Dutch ambassador to Ankara to return from leave “for some time.’

Turkish authorities sealed off the Dutch embassy in Ankara and consulate in Istanbul in apparent retaliation and hundreds gathered there for protests at the Dutch action.

President Erdogan is looking to the large number of emigre Turks living in Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, to help clinch victory next month in a referendum that would give the presidency sweeping new powers.

​

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will do everything possible to prevent Turkish political tensions spilling onto German soil and four rallies in Austria and one in Switzerland have been canceled due to the growing dispute.

Erdogan has cited domestic threats from Kurdish and Islamist militants and a July coup bid as cause to vote “yes” to his new powers. But he has also drawn on the emotionally charged row  with Europe to portray Turkey as betrayed by allies while facing wars on its southern borders.

The Dutch government had banned Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from attending a rally on Saturday in Rotterdam but he said he would fly there anyway, saying Europe must be rid of its “boss-like attitude.”

Cavusoglu, who was barred from a similar meeting in Hamburg last week but spoke instead from the Turkish consulate, accused the Dutch of treating the many Turkish citizens in the country like hostages, cutting them off from Ankara.

“If my going will increase tensions, let it be … I am a foreign minister and I can go wherever I want,” he added hours before his planned flight to Rotterdam was banned.

Sanctions threat

Cavusoglu threatened harsh economic and political sanctions if the Dutch refused him entry, and those threats proved decisive for the Netherlands government.

It cited public order and security concerns in withdrawing landing rights for Cavusoglu’s flight and said the threat of sanctions made the search for a reasonable solution impossible.

​”This decision is a scandal and unacceptable in every way. It does not abide by diplomatic practices,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Istanbul on Saturday evening.

Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, polling second ahead of Wednesday’s elections, said in a tweet on Saturday: “To all Turks in the Netherlands who agree with Erdogan: Go to Turkey and NEVER come back!!”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: “This morning on TV (the Turkish minister) made clear he was threatening the Netherlands with sanctions and we can never negotiate with the Turks under such threats. So we decided … in a conference call it was better for him not to come.”

Once the foreign minister had been prevented from landing in Rotterdam, Turkey’s family minister decided to travel to the city by road from neighbouring Germany instead but was stopped by police in the Dutch city.

“We have been stopped 30 metres from our Rotterdam consulate and we are not allowed to enter,” Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya wrote on Twitter.

“Nazi remnants, fascists”

Addressing a rally of supporters, Erdogan retaliated to the decision to prevent the Turkish foreign minister from visiting Rotterdam.

“Listen Netherlands, you’ll jump once, you’ll jump twice, but my people will thwart your game,” he said. “You can cancel our foreign minister’s flight as much as you want, but let’s see how your flights will come to Turkey now.”

“They don’t know diplomacy or politics. They are Nazi remnants. They are fascists,” he said.

Rutte called Erdogan’s reference to Nazis and Fascists “a crazy remark”. “I understand they’re angry but this is of course way out of line,” he said.

Erdogan chafes at Western criticism of his mass arrests and dismissals of people authorities believe were linked to a failed July attempt by the military to topple him.

He maintains it is clear the West begrudges him new powers and seeks to engineer a “no” vote in the referendum.

Barred from the Netherlands Cavusoglu arrived in France on Saturday ahead of a planned speech to Turkish emigres in the northeastern city of Metz on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.

Earlier, an official at the Moselle regional prefecture told Reuters there were currently no plans to prevent the meeting from going ahead.

A member of the Union of European Turkish Democrats also said on Saturday via a Facebook post that the Turkish foreign minister would no longer come to Switzerland for a planned event on Sunday after failing to find a suitable venue.

Zurich’s security department, which had unsuccessfully lobbied the federal government in Bern to ban Cavusoglu’s appearance, said in a statement on Saturday evening it was relieved the event had been canceled.
…

President Donald Trump has asked former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. It’s a job likely to come with heavy scrutiny amid questions about the Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia. Huntsman would bring extensive diplomatic and bipartisan experience to the high-profile ambassador post. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff reports.
…

Relations between Turkey and Europe took a nosedive this week after many EU countries objected to visits by Turkish ministers campaigning ahead of a Turkish referendum on constitutional change. Ankara wants to drum up support among the millions of Turks living in Europe to give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more powers, which could see him remain in office until 2029. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
…

Iraq is assessing what help it might need to collect and preserve evidence of Islamic State crimes, but has not yet decided whether it needs United Nations assistance, the country’s U.N. Ambassador, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, said Friday.

Britain is drafting a U.N. Security Council resolution to establish a U.N. investigation to collect and preserve evidence for future prosecution, but would like Iraq to approve such a move by sending a letter formally requesting council action.

International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi woman who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, pushed Iraq Thursday to allow a U.N. inquiry.

‘We will tell them what we need’

“We don’t want people to tell us what we need, we will tell them what we need and that’s really the bottom line,” Alhakim told reporters, acknowledging that Iraq does need technical forensic support.

“Let’s get it from the EU [European Union], let’s get it from the UK, let’s get it from the U.S.,” he said. “Technical assistance you can get from anywhere, you don’t need a Security Council resolution to get technical assistance.”

Alhakim said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi would decide whether to ask for United Nations help.

“We want the government of Iraq to send [the letter] as soon as possible,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said Friday. “The best route would be with the full consent and at the request of the government of Iraq.

“There are other ways of doing this if that route does not prove to be possible,” he added.

The Security Council could establish an inquiry without Iraq’s consent. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly could establish a special team to preserve evidence and prepare cases, as it did for Syria in December, or the Security Council could refer the case to the International Criminal Court.

Yazidi victims

Murad and Clooney, who represents Murad and other Yazidi victims of Islamic State, on Friday met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Islamic State is committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the minority religious community through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes, U.N. experts said last June.

“Nadia knows where her mother is buried. There are mass graves whose locations are known and for all of this time, they’re just laying there unprotected and evidence is being damaged,” Clooney told Reuters on Thursday.

“If we don’t act now, we may lose the opportunity to have trials anywhere, ever,” she said.
…

Donald Trump’s surprising victory in last year’s U.S. presidential election signaled a turn to the right. Now Europe is facing three critical elections of its own: next week in the Netherlands; next month in France; and later this summer in Germany. Just as anti-establishment fervor in Europe proved to be a harbinger of the U.S. election, will there now be a “Trump effect” in Europe that puts populist candidates into power? VOA’s Jane Bojadzievski has more.
…

Air pollution takes the lives of more than half a million young children every year, according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in London has come up pollution-busting face masks to protect kids from toxic air.
…

Israel’s prime minister was in Moscow Thursday to talk with Russia’s president about the Syrian crisis, the latest sign of Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East as well as Israel’s concerns over Moscow’s regional allies.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin made no joint statement following the talks, but Netanyahu later issued a statement indicating he had “made it clear” to Putin that Israel wants to prevent any Syrian settlement from leaving “Iran and its proxies with a military presence” in Syria.

Russia has come to assume a larger role in Israel’s foreign policy calculations since the Kremlin’s intervention in the Syrian conflict in September 2015.

While Putin at the time justified Russia’s actions as taking the fight to global terrorists and the Islamic State, Western critics argue the intervention was also aimed at salvaging the government of besieged Moscow’s ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Russia’s wider role

It’s that later mission that many in the West, begrudgingly, agree has succeeded — for now.

Russia’s role in helping Assad’s forces take the rebel city of Aleppo in December 2016, in particular, signaled a key turning point in the war.

Independent human rights groups say the victory was accomplished with a ruthless Russian-Syrian air campaign targeting civilians. Russia denies those charges.

Israel has largely stayed out of the Syrian conflict, save for working with Russia to avoid potential clashes with Israel’s military operations along the Syrian border.

Israel eyes Iran

Yet it is Russia’s wider military alliance in Syria, alongside traditional Israeli foes Iran and Hezbollah, that is causing alarm among Israeli officials.

In particular, Israel is nervous about the prospect of Iranian military forces gaining a permanent foothold in the Israeli-held border region of the Golan Heights.

“Russia has made a very important contribution,” said Netanyahu in a statement acknowledging Russia’s efforts against Islamic State targets in Syria.

He added that he told the Russian leader “naturally, we do not want this terrorism to be replaced by the radical Shiite Islamic terrorism led by Iran.”

Russian influence

Russian experts on the Middle East suggested Putin’s influence on Iran was questionable, arguing the countries’ alliance was based more on circumstance than tradition.

“Russia and Iran … they’re both dependent on one another,” said Middle East specialist Karina Gevorkyan in an interview with VOA.

In addition to their support of the Assad regime, she points to economic and Russian weapons sales to Iran as fueling the current partnership.

But it’s a relationship, Gevorkyan said, built on pragmatism above all else.

“Can Putin promise Netanyahu to raise the issue with the Iranians? Yes, he can. And the Iranians might well agree, if they see it in their interests,” she said.

Gevorkyan adds that Iran is pursuing its long-term influence in the region, with Israel cast in the role of bogeyman in case plans go astray.

The Russian-Israeli meeting came one day before a visit to Moscow by another Middle East powerbroker and U.S.-NATO ally, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

That relationship, too, has seen its ups and downs surrounding the Syrian war.

Late last year, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was gunned down in public by a Turkish assassin. Before being shot by police, the gunman said he was avenging Russia’s role in the Aleppo siege.

The murder underscored the complexity of Moscow’s current political pivot from its role as backer of the Syrian regime to the primary mediator in the Syrian conflict.

Talks in Kazakhstan

In February, Moscow sponsored talks between Damascus and the Syrian opposition in neighboring Astana, Kazakhstan. 

While results have thus far proved minimal, few doubt Russia is eager to show it can deliver what Western powers could not: a resolution to the vexing six-year conflict. 

The next phase of talks in Astana is to resume next week.

Yet largely missing from the equation has been Washington. 

The Obama administration had what critics saw as an on-again, off-again engagement on the Syrian issue.

Efforts by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to make headway with Russia on the Syrian issue in the final year of the Obama presidency failed to produce results.

By contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated his desire to recruit Moscow in a grand coalition against Islamic State, a position welcomed broadly in the Kremlin.

Yet the American president has pulled back on cooperating with Russia amid multiple investigations into Russian interference in the American election, allegedly on Trump’s behalf.

In Moscow, the scandal has fed a sense that, whatever Trump’s wishes, the American leader may prove unable to pursue an alliance he claims to want in the interests of his own political survival.
…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw her weight behind Donald Tusk to retain one of the European Union’s top jobs Thursday, despite staunch opposition from his home country of Poland.

The 28 EU leaders are due to decide during the opening session of their summit in Brussels who will be president of the EU Council for the next two and a half years. It is one of the bloc’s most prestigious jobs, and involves chairing summits and coordinating the work of the member countries and make sure the 28 nations speak as much as possible with one voice on the international stage.

Warsaw argued that the decision should be delayed. But Malta’s prime minister, who will preside over the vote, indicated that there’s little appetite for a delay.

“There is an overwhelming support for President Tusk’s re-election,” Joseph Muscat told reporters.

Poland’s nationalist government has proposed little-known Polish EU lawmaker Jacek Saryusz-Wolski to replace Tusk, whose current term ends May 31.

Tusk is a former prime minister who has a long and bitter rivalry with the leader of Poland’s current governing party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The government argues that Tusk supports the domestic opposition in Poland and has failed to protect the country’s interests in the EU.

Diplomats from several member nations say Warsaw has little or no support, while Tusk has strong backing. Merkel offered Tusk public support in a pre-summit speech to lawmakers in Berlin.

“I see the re-election of Donald Tusk as a sign of stability for the entire EU,” she said.

Malta, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, will be looking right up to the beginning of the summit for a way to preserve the consensus and have everyone back one candidate. However, it appears likely that the matter will go to a vote, with Tusk being re-elected by an overwhelming majority.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said Thursday that Poland will do everything it can to block Tusk’s re-election.

“There is no need for hurry, no need to make the decision today,” Waszczykowski said on Poland’s TVN24 television.

But Muscat indicated that he remains convinced the decision will be made Thursday.

“The item is on the agenda, so I think that usually when an item is on the agenda one has to decide on that item,” Muscat said.

 
…

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is seen well ahead in the  first round of the presidential election but losing the second round by a wide margin to independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.

The monthly Cevipof survey for Le Monde newspaper has a much larger sample than most French election polls, with over 15,000 people surveyed.

It shows Le Pen with 27 percent of votes in the first round, up one percentage point from last month, with Macron stable at 23 percent and conservative Francois Fillon actually gaining one point to 19.5 percent despite the financial scandal he is embroiled in.

Macron is seen beating Le Pen in the runoff by 62 percent versus 38 percent. Were he to qualify for the second round instead of Macron, Fillon would still beat Le Pen but by a smaller margin of 55 percent versus 45 percent.

Most of the survey was carried out March 1 to 5, with an update with a sample of 1,000 people on March 6 and 7 to take into account that Fillon faced down a rebellion in his camp to be confirmed as candidate.
…

Scotland’s pro-independence leader says the country could make a second bid for independence within 18 months to avoid being dragged out of the European Union with the rest of the United Kingdom.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said in comments broadcast Thursday that fall 2018 is “the common sense time” to hold a referendum, “if that is the road we choose to go down.”

She insisted that no decision has been made about whether to ask Scottish voters for a mandate for independence.

Sturgeon, who leads the pro-independence Scottish National Party, has complained bitterly about Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union. Overall, Britain voted by a margin of 52 to 48 percent last year to quit the 28-nation bloc — but voters in Scotland voted by 62 percent to 38 percent to stay in.

Scottish voters rejected independence in a 2014 referendum, with 55 percent voting to stay in the U.K. Sturgeon says the Brexit vote changed the situation dramatically.

She has warned repeatedly that she will not allow Scotland to be taken out of the EU against its will.

In an interview with the BBC broadcast Thursday, she said she was not bluffing about holding another vote and was looking for ways to maintain Scotland’s ties with the EU.

British Prime Minister Theresa May plans to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s key treaty — the trigger for two years of exit negotiations — by March 31, putting the U.K. on course to leave the EU by early 2019.

Sturgeon said the second half of 2018 could be when “the outline of a U.K. deal becomes clear.”

Last week May accused Sturgeon and her party of “tunnel-vision nationalism which focuses only on independence at any cost” and said that preserving the unity of the U.K. is a key objective of her government.

 
…

NATO and the United States warned Wednesday they could scale back cooperation with Kosovo’s security services if the government goes ahead with plans to transform its lightly-armed security force into an army without the required constitutional changes.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he told Kosovo’s leaders by telephone “that unilateral steps such as these are unhelpful.” He warned that if Kosovo goes ahead as planned “NATO will have to review its level of commitment, particularly in terms of capacity-building.”

A U.S. embassy statement said “adoption of the current proposed law would force us to re-evaluate our bilateral cooperation with and longstanding assistance to Kosovo’s security forces.”

The move must be carried out through an “inclusive and representative political process,” the statement added.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci on Tuesday sent a draft law to parliament asking approval to form a regular army. The move was immediately denounced by Serbian leaders, who refuse to recognize Kosovo’s independence and said they will use all political means available to prevent the formation of an army.

“There is no turning back. The KSF (Kosovo Security Force) will be transformed into Kosovo’s army,” Thaci told Radio Free Europe Wednesday. “Western Balkans is endangered from the Russian military bases in Serbia, from Russia’s MIG jets in Serbia and from the Russian military exercises in Serbia.”

Constitutional amendments would require voting approval from the ethnic minorities at Kosovo’s parliament. Serbia in effect holds a key say through Kosovo Serbs on whether the required constitutional changes can happen.

Thaci said Kosovo cannot “coordinate with Serbia” on its own affairs and that “Belgrade cannot decide for Kosovo.”

Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday said he expects “help and support” from the European Union, the United States and Russia over Kosovo’s plan. Vucic said the move was against the U.N. resolution that ended the war in Kosovo in 1999, and even against Kosovo’s own constitution, which Serbia does not recognize.

Both the U.S. and NATO are key Kosovo allies and have been helping to build up Kosovo’s security force.

Relations between Kosovo and Serbia have been tense recently and the move is likely to make things worse. Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The move has been recognized by 114 countries but not Belgrade.
…

Germany’s chief federal prosecutor will carefully examine a trove of new documents released by anti-secrecy group Wikileaks related to the CIA, and will launch an investigation if it sees concrete indications of wrongdoing, a spokesman said.

“We will initiate an investigation if we see evidence of concrete criminal acts or specific perpetrators,” a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office told Reuters. “We’re looking at it very carefully.”

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said Berlin was in close touch with Washington about the documents, which Wikileaks said showed that the CIA used the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a major remote hacking base.

He said Germany needed to verify the authenticity of the documents.
…

The world needs an international treaty to protect people’s privacy from unfettered cybersurveillance, which is being pushed by populist politicians preying on fear of terrorism, according to a U.N. report debated on Wednesday.

The report, submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council by the U.N. independent expert on privacy, Joe Cannataci, said traditional privacy safeguards such as rules on phone tapping were outdated in the digital age.

“It’s time to start reclaiming cyberspace from the menace of over-surveillance,” Cannataci told the Council.

With governments worldwide demanding data from firms such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter, it did not make sense to rely entirely on U.S. legal safeguards, and creating an “international warrant” for data access or surveillance would unify global standards, he said.

“What the world needs is not more state-sponsored shenanigans on the Internet but rational, civilized agreement about appropriate state behavior in cyberspace,” the report said. “This is not utopia. This is cold, stark reality.”

Cannataci was appointed as the first “Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy” in 2015, following the uproar caused by revelations by Edward Snowden, a former U.S. security contractor who once worked at the U.S. mission in Geneva.

His report was submitted last week, before the latest publication by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks of what it said were thousands of pages of internal CIA discussions of hacking techniques of smartphones and other gadgets.

The United States did not react to Cannataci’s report, but many countries welcomed it and agreed that online privacy standards should be as strong as offline standards.

China’s diplomat at the Council said rapid technological advances and the “drastic increase worldwide in the violation of privacy” made it urgent to enhance protection, while Russia’s representative said Cannataci’s report was “extremely topical”.

Venezuela, Iran and Cuba all welcomed Cannataci’s work and criticized international surveillance.

A draft legal text was being debated by activists and “some of the larger international corporations” and was expected to be published within a year, Cannataci said.

In his report, he criticized populist laws that intruded on privacy in the name of fighting terrorism.

He said such sweeping but unproven powers were based on fear alone, and compared them to U.S. President Donald Trump’s order restricting travel from six Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

“The level of the fear prevents the electorate from objectively assessing the effectiveness of the privacy-intrusive measures proposed,” he wrote.

“Trying to appear tough on security by legitimizing largely useless, hugely expensive and totally disproportionate measures which are intrusive on so many people’s privacy – and other rights – is patently not the way governments should go.”
…

A German court rejected a temporary injunction against Facebook on Tuesday in a case brought by a Syrian refugee who sued the social networking site for failing to remove faked posts linking him to crimes and militant attacks.

The Wuerzburg district court said in a preliminary ruling that Facebook is neither a “perpetrator nor a participant” in what it said was “undisputable defamation” by Facebook users, but simply acting as a hosting provider that is not responsible for preemptively blocking offensive content under European law.

The posts in dispute featured a picture showing Anas Modamani, a 19-year-old from Damascus, taking a selfie with Chancellor Angela Merkel in September 2015 at a refugee shelter in the Berlin district of Spandau.

Modamani’s image was subsequently shared on Facebook on anonymous accounts, alongside posts falsely claiming he was responsible for the Brussels airport bombing of March 2016 and setting on fire a homeless man in December last year by six migrants at an underground station in Berlin.

The court rejected the need for a temporary injunction sought by Modamani to require Facebook to go beyond measures the company had taken to block defamatory images of him for Facebook users in Germany using geo-blocking technology.

In a statement following the decision, Facebook expressed concern for Modamani’s predicament but said the court’s ruling showed the company acted quickly to block access to defamatory postings, once they had been reported by Modamani’s lawyer.

The case has been closely watched as Germany, a frequent critic of Facebook, is preparing legislation to force the social networking website to remove “hate speech” from its web pages within 24 hours or face fines.

After the ruling, Modamani’s lawyer in the case, Chan-jo Jun, told a news conference he was disappointed such imagery continued to circulate online and more must be done to force Facebook to delete hate-filled content on its own accord.

“We have to decide whether we want to accept that Facebook can basically do whatever it wants or whether German law, and above all the removal of illegal contents in Germany, will be enforced. If we want that we need new laws,” Jun said.

Modamani’s complaint maintained that defamatory images based on the selfie posted to Facebook were still viewable online outside of Germany, or by users within Germany using a sophisticated Tor browser.

But the court found that the risk of average German users seeing the illegal content was not sufficiently credible and therefore a temporary injunction was unnecessary at this stage.

The ruling said there remained a legitimate issue over whether it was technically feasible for Facebook to do more to block such images, but this would require testimony by experts.

Tuesday’s decision is subject to appeal within one month of the yet-to-be-published written judgment, a court statement said. Jun declined to say whether an appeal was planned, saying the decision remained up to his client.
…

Members of the Danish parliament’s foreign policy committee have been asked to leave smartphones, tablets and computers at home during a visit to Russia at a time of increased security concerns.

“Goodbye smartphone,” former Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard of the Social Liberal Party said in a post on Facebook.

“On the way to Russia with the Foreign Policy Committee, where we have been advised not to bring gadgets for the sake of safety,” Lidegaard wrote.

During his time as foreign minister, Lidegaard said the European Union should prepare for more hybrid warfare from Russia.

Nick Haekkerup of the Social Democrats, Denmark’s main opposition party, said on Facebook he would have to manage without internet, mails and social media for a week

“I’m traveling with the Foreign Policy Committee and have for security reasons been asked to leave everything like iPhone, iPad or similar at home,” Haekkerup said.

Danish ministries have been attacked several times in 2015 and 2016 by a foreign, state-sponsored hacking group, a cyber security unit within the defense ministry said in a February report.

The unit declined to specify which country had sponsored the hacking group but said in the report that Russia and China have extensive capabilities to carry out cyber espionage.

The threat from cyber crime against Danish authorities and companies continues to be “very high”, according to the report.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russia hacked and leaked Democrat emails during the 2016 presidential election campaign as part of an effort to tilt the vote in Republican Donald Trump’s favor. Russia has denied the allegations.

Danish authorities did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for further information.
…

A growing majority of French voters see Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front as a threat to democracy even though a third approve of its ideas, a Kantar Sofres-Onepoint poll showed on Tuesday.

Le Pen, who most polls see coming on top in the first round of France’s presidential election, has sought to make the anti-EU, anti-immigrant National Front less of a fringe party since she took its reins from her father in 2011.

However, 58 percent of those surveyed in the poll for Le Monde and franceinfo radio said the party was a threat to democracy. After shrinking for a decade, that number has been rising since 2013, when it stood at 47 percent.

Only 19 percent of those surveyed said they wanted Le Pen to win the May 7 presidential runoff. Most polls put her ahead of other candidates in the April 23 first round but those same surveys consistently see her losing the runoff.

A third said they totally agreed with the National Front’s ideas, a proportion that has changed little since Le Pen took over the party’s leadership.

The Kantar poll found key planks of Le Pen’s platform gaining little traction with voters.

Only 22 percent of those polled were in favor of dropping the euro as France’s currency, down from 34 percent in 2011 when pollsters started asking the question.

Likewise, only 21 percent were in favor of giving employment priority to French citizens over foreigners residing legally in France, a level that has changed little in recent years.
…

The trauma of a perilous boat journey to Greece still fresh in her mind, Tolay performed a ritual she’d felt too unsafe to undertake for the previous three months.

“When I put on my makeup, I was crying,” Tolay, said a transgender woman from Iraq in one of her first acts on European soil to reclaim her identity.

“It was like I was dreaming.”

For the 26-year-old, as for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex refugees and migrants who have found themselves in Greece, the promise of Europe is not just of safety, but acceptance, amid the challenges of having to adapt to a new way of life.

Now, efforts are gathering pace to build support systems and a sense of community for those unable to move on from a country that has been home to around 62,000 refugees since border closures early last year.

Fighting for a decent life

Tolay’s story includes a period of happiness in Damascus, Syria, where she found a sense of peace.

It was a peace that did not last, however, and she eventually fled the Middle East after her abduction and gang rape at the hands of a militia in Iraq.

Having made it to Greece, Tolay recently attended her first “LGBTQI+Refugees Greece” fundraiser and party, a chance for people to have fun and be themselves. Tolay, a former dancer, said it was “like oxygen coming back into my body.”

The group meets regularly on a more formal basis to discuss everything from theatrical projects to allocating funds to members. It was set up last June by Suma, a transgender woman.

In 2015, Suma fled a Middle Eastern country she doesn’t want to identify when a trans friend died after being tortured in police custody. But she found little assistance or sympathy in Turkey, where she lived for a year.

Fleeing to Greece by boat, she escaped a refugee camp there, fearing for her safety. She went to Athens but found little in the way of support from refugee-focused organizations.

So she decided to create a group that now has around 25 members and places an emphasis on involving all in decision-making.

“No one seemed to consider us as vulnerable cases,” said Suma. “No one will give us safety and a decent life, so we should ask, and sometimes even fight, for it.”

More getting involved

It appears the work by such grassroots networks is resonating more widely as more aid organizations become involved.

The U.N. refugee agency already seeks to identify LGBTQ refugees and migrants. It has backed a new campaign by Greek NGO “Solidarity Now” that offers LGBTQ-specific assistance, including psychological support and housing.

Identifying members of a community that has learned the hard way it can be better to pass unnoticed, remains one of the biggest challenges.

“How can we help them if we don’t know they exist?” asked Solidarity Now’s Margarita Kontomixali, who is coordinating efforts.

Kontomixali was also quick to point out discrimination is not limited to communities from which refugees and migrants have fled.

“We are not Germany, or the Scandinavian countries, we are far behind,” she said, referring to acceptance of the LGBTQ community in Greece.”Things are changing here, but only very gradually.”

A new start?

In the case of Suma, this has proven all too true. Having set up the group and facing continuing discrimination, she smuggled herself to Sweden in November.

Those remaining in Greece face the discrimination that comes with their LGBTQ status, along with the daily stress of life in a country they never intended to make their home; but, for some, there is now the sense that a new start may be possible.

Eliot is a part of the group Suma founded. Syria’s war turned his life upside down.

Images were found on his phone at a checkpoint in Damascus revealing his homosexuality, and Eliot told VOA he was repeatedly raped by some of those guarding the checkpoint.

The 30-year-old said he is dismayed by UNHCR efforts to relocate him to Romania, where he fears he will face more discrimination than in Greece.

As he appeals the decision, Eliot lives with Tolay in a house provided by Praksis, one of the few NGO’s to offer LGBTQ assistance last year.

“Here, I can feel free, I don’t have to be shy, or worry about someone killing me while I sleep,” he said.

He also has a steady boyfriend, “He’s lovely, and he respects me,” said Eliot.

“Maybe I won’t find my dreams,” he added, “but I am happy to find something small. I just want a normal life.”

Tolay and Suma’s full names have not been used in order to protect their identities.
…

Albania’s opposition boycott of parliament has delayed the launch of justice reform despite warnings from the European Union that such a move would hamper the country from launching full membership negotiations with the bloc.

The Democratic Party on Monday boycotted an extraordinary parliamentary session intended to be the first step before creating the vetting bodies to evaluate the personal and professional backgrounds of some 800 judges and prosecutors.

The opposition would have three out of six committee members.

The parliament postponed the session, asking the people’s advocate, who collected the applications for the vetting bodies, for a week to reconsider applicants.

The justice system reform that was approved unanimously last year, is intended to ensure that judges and prosecutors are independent from politics, and to root out bribery. Judicial corruption has plagued post-communist Albania, hampering its democratic processes.

EU and U.S. experts were involved in drafting the judicial reform.

For more than two weeks, opposition Democrats have blocked the main boulevard in the capital, Tirana, calling for a caretaker government to take the country to the June 18 parliamentary elections.

It is not clear when the parliament will convene again on this issue, as the opposition has made it clear its boycott is definite.

Last week EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told the opposition that its boycott was hampering the country’s ability to integrate with the bloc and therefore join the EU.

Mogherini said that reforming the justice system and holding free elections were two steps needed to convince EU members to launch full membership negotiations with the country.
…

On March 8, 100 years ago, a revolution erupted in Saint Petersburg that ended the monarchy in Russia and set up a provisional government that was overthrown by the Bolsheviks just months later.  That led to the rise of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism globally.  

But there are still Russians today who defend the monarchy as sacred, and a few who even hope for its return.

Once loyal subjects of the Tsar, factory workers revolted over corruption as World War I took a toll on living standards.  

Some 30,000 workers from the Putilov Plant, now called the Kirov Factory, joined the uprising.  

“The workers of the Putilov Plant, like all other Petrograd [Saint Petersburg] workers, took part in the strikes and riots caused by their dissatisfaction at the economic situation in the country,” says Kirov Factory Museum director Igor Savrasov.

“It was the third year of the war.  There was not a big difference among the workers.  There was a shortage of bread for everyone.”

Russia’s “February Revolution”, which took place in March according to the Gregorian calendar, saw Tsar Nicholas the Second abdicate in the face of a popular uprising.  

When the Bolsheviks seized power from a provisional government, aristocratic and wealthy families fled.

But some returned to join the new regime. 

“My parents did not become truly Soviet, but my sister and I were more assimilated,” says Ivan Artsishevskiy, whose father was from a line of military nobles.  “I served in the Soviet army, so I fully went through the system.  In my family, we all believed in being with Russia whether it’s for good [times] or for bad.”

Respect for monarchy remains

Artsishevskiy helped in the reburial protocol for Russia’s last royal family, the Romanovs, who were executed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution and canonized in 2000.

A descendant of nobility, he teaches etiquette to Russia’s next generation.  

“As the result of the Soviet achievements, a huge part of our genetic pool was destroyed, and the selection was of negative character.  So now, we must correct it,” says Artsishevskiy.

A century after the Russian monarchy fell the Russian Imperial House, keepers of the Romanov legacy, wants legal recognition.  

“We continue to stick to our monarchical convictions.  And we continue to believe that monarchy for Russia is a historically natural mode of existence,” says director of the Russian Imperial House Alexander Zakatov.  “Russia was a monarchy for more than a thousand years before the revolution, which brought us a lot of misfortunes.”

Zakatov acknowledges there is no present condition for the monarchy’s restoration in Russia – a grand understatement for most Russians.  

Defend Saint Nicholas

But underscoring the sensitivity about the monarchy, a Russian film titled “Matilda,” about the last Tsar’s affair with a ballerina, is being criticized even before its release later this year.

“Judging by the images that I have seen in the trailer, we may say that it doesn’t correspond to real history,” says Zakatov.  “It gives a twisted image of Tsar Nicholas the Second, and in many aspects it is blasphemous, because he is a saint ascribed to sainthood.”

Monarchist and Orthodox groups have deemed the film insulting.  Natalya Poklonskaya, the former Kremlin-appointed Crimean prosecutor-general and current State Duma deputy, argues the film will upset religious feelings and in November called for a criminal investigation.  

A group called “Orthodox State-Holy Russia” called for a ban and allegedly threatened to set fire to cinemas that show the film, earning a rare rebuke from the Kremlin.

“This organization is not registered with the Justice Ministry.  So, in fact, this concerns the threats by anonymous extremists,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the TASS news agency.  “Such actions are absolutely inadmissible,” he added.  “The president said that the state will respond harshly to these manifestations.”  

As Russia marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, few will mourn the loss of the Russian monarchy.

But many will remember the Bolsheviks who seized power, the destructive civil war that followed, and the Soviet empire they established. 
…