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Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades won reelection to second five-year term Sunday, promising to continue economic recovery and the island’s reunification efforts.

The conservative Anastasiades beat his leftist challenger Stavros Malas 56 to 44 percent. The two also faced-off in the 2013 election.

“I will continue to be president for all Cypriots,” Anastasiades told cheering supporters in Nicosia. “Tonight, there are no winners of losers. There is only a Cyprus for all of us.”

Malas told his backers they can be disappointed, but said “the battle” does not begin or end with a single election. He said he telephoned Anastasiades and told him to “take care of our Cyprus.”

Anastasiades is credited with helping the Greek Cypriot economy bounce back from a severe recession that required a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

But there has been little progress in U.N.-sponsored reunification talks with the Turkish Cypriot north.

Anastasiades promises to resist Turkish demands to keep a military presence on a reunified Cyprus and continue oil and gas exploration off the Greek Cypriot coast – an enterprise that also angers Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus has been split between a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded in response to a military coup aimed at unifying the entire island with Greece.

Only Turkey recognizes an independent northern Cyprus while the southern half enjoys international recognition and the economic benefits of EU membership.
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Athens Sunday to protest a potential compromise between Greece and Macedonia over a long-standing name dispute.

Police estimated a crowd size of about 140,000, while organizers of the march claimed 1.5 million people from Greece and the Greek diaspora gathered to urge the government against brokering a deal regarding neighboring Macedonia’s official name.

“The million protesters that the organizers imagined was wishful thinking,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a statement released by his office.

“The crushing majority of Greek people conclude that foreign policy issues should not be dealt with with fanaticism.”

Greece and Macedonia have been feuding over who gets to use the name since Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Many Greeks say allowing the neighboring country to use the name insults Greek history and implies a claim on the Greek territory also known as Macedonia — a key province in Alexander the Great’s ancient empire.

Greece has blocked Macedonian efforts to join the European Union and NATO because of the name dispute. The country of Macedonia is officially known at the U.N. as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

But Tsipras, a leftist, has been open to negotiating a compromise in the 27-year dispute, sparking protests in both nations.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said in recent weeks his country would rename an airport and a major road after Alexander the Great “to demonstrate, in practice, that we are committed to finding a solution.”

 
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After nearly two years in solitary confinement at a maximum security jail, the top surviving suspect of the deadliest terror attack in recent French history goes on trial Monday in Brussels.

The four-day trial of 28-year-old Salah Abdeslam will not deal directly with the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 people around Paris, but rather a shootout with police months later. But it is being closely watched, in hopes it may shed insight into the tangle of alliances and events that link the Paris attacks with the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro.

The trial may turn on whether Abdeslam, who has remained silent for months under round-the clock prison watch, will finally talk or even make a courtroom appearance.

“Will he say anything more than he has said?” asks Rik Coolsaet, a longtime terrorism expert and senior fellow at the Egmont Institute, a Brussels-based research group. “If he doesn’t, I’m afraid the trial will not make things much clearer about his involvement either in the Brussels or in the November attacks in Paris.”

The trial directly deals with a March 2016 shootout with Belgian police that took place days before Abdeslam was arrested, after months on the run. He and accomplice Sofiane Ayari face attempted murder charges.

Much still unknown

Abdeslam’s case comes amid a changing terror landscape in Europe. With the Islamist State group beaten back in Syria and Iraq, the focus is now on returning radicals and those leaving European prisons in the not-too-distant future. The Brussels trial is one of many expected during the coming months and years dealing with recent terrorist attacks across the region.

But while the trials may shed light on the past, “they won’t inform us much about the future threats and challenges,” analyst Coolsaet says. “We are living in a kind of post-ISIS era, in which the threat has been transformed from organized networks of plots and attacks to lone actors.”

A former pot-smoking petty criminal who once ran a bar in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels with his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the Paris attacks, Abdeslam seems an unlikely jihadist. His Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary, once characterized him as a ‘little jerk from Molenbeek’ with the “intelligence of an empty ashtray.”

Yet Abdeslam is believed to have played a key logistical role in preparing the attacks. He allegedly organized safe houses, drove across Europe to pick up other suspects, and dropped off three suicide bombers to the Stade de France soccer stadium outside Paris, where they blew themselves up during a France-Germany game.

The stadium attack was the first in a string of shootings and bombings that took place across Paris on a warm November evening. The terrorists targeted bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall before blowing themselves up or being shot dead by police.

But Abdeslam escaped, sneaking across the French border into Belgium the following day with the help of friends. Recent evidence shows his suicide vest was defective, although it remains unclear whether he intended to trigger it.

After a four-month manhunt, he was finally caught in the Molenbeek neighborhood where he grew up, just days after the shootout with police, who were investigating a suspected safe house they originally thought was unoccupied.

Days later, three bomb attacks on Brussels airport and the Maalbeek metro station killed 32 people. The suspected killers were closely tied to the Paris attackers. Abdeslam, who initially talked during interrogations, and gave misleading information, has kept silent since.

His silence ultimately led both Belgian lawyer Mary and Abdeslam’s French lawyer Franck Berton to give up his defense a few months later. Berton blamed the round-the-clock surveillance for eroding Abdeslam’s mental stability, and warned his former client was “radicalizing in an extreme fashion.” In December, Abdeslam finally tapped Mary to resume his defense for the Brussels trial.

Many questions remain about the Brussels and Paris attacks, among them the whereabouts of onetime Syrian jihadist and suspected coordinator Oussama Atar. An international arrest warrant is still out for Atar who, like Abdeslam, is a Belgian national of Moroccan extraction (although Atar is bi-national). He is also the cousin of two of the Brussels suicide bombers.

The French and Belgian attacks were only the beginning of several killings across Europe that targeted Germany, Britain, Spain and the French Riviera city of Nice. Last month, the first trial relating to the 2015 Paris attacks opened in the French capital. Three suspects are charged with assisting or being aware of the assailants’ whereabouts.

Changing threat

But the geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically in the interim. With IS weakened, terrorists in Europe cannot count on the same kind of extensive backing as the Paris and Brussels assailants once did, analysts say.

European jihadists are also coming home, although in fewer numbers than earlier feared. “Returnees are not coming back here en masse, and that’s for the whole of Europe,” says terrorist expert Coolsaet. “Either they’re fighting to death, or they’re being imprisoned.”

Yet other threats remain. That includes in overcrowded prisons which critics claim have long been breeding grounds for terrorists.

For survivors and victims’ families, the Paris attacks remain painfully present. Jean-Francois Mondeguer lost his daughter Lamia, killed in a hail of gunfire as she was dining with her boyfriend at an outdoor cafe. Mondeguer is part of a survivors’ group called “November 13, Brotherhood and Truth.”

Before leaving for Brussels to attend Abdeslam’s trial, Mondeguer said, “I’m not angry with him, I don’t hate him, but I will never forgive him. What we want to find out is what exactly happened on November 13.”

 
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Over the last decades, growing economic hardships forced people in cities and villages around the world to leave their hometowns to find work in other countries. Dreaming of returning one day and enjoying a better life where they grew up, many invested most of their savings buying houses back home. But often, these houses remain empty, making many communities look like ghost towns. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Turkish guards at the border with Syria are indiscriminately shooting at and summarily returning asylum seekers attempting to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said.

A senior Turkish government official denied the report Saturday, repeating that Turkey had taken in 3.5 million war refugees since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Syrians were now fleeing heightened violence in the northwestern province of Idlib to seek refuge near Turkey’s border, which remains closed to all but critical medical cases.

Syrian armed forces have thrust deeper into the mainly rebel-held province in recent months, and Turkey last month launched military action in the nearby Afrin region, targeting Kurdish YPG militia fighters.

“Syrians fleeing to the Turkish border seeking safety and asylum are being forced back with bullets and abuse,” Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, when asked about the HRW statement, told reporters that Turkish soldiers were there to protect these people and that Ankara has had an “open-door policy” since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

A senior government official later told Reuters: “There has been absolutely no case of civilians being fired upon at the border.”

HRW cited U.N. figures saying 247,000 Syrians were displaced to the border area between December 15 and January 15.

“As fighting in Idlib and Afrin displaces thousands more, the number of Syrians trapped along the border willing to risk their lives to reach Turkey is only likely to increase,” Fakih said.

In the latest fighting in Afrin, five Turkish soldiers were killed Saturday when their tank was hit in an attack carried out by YPG fighters, Turkey’s armed forces said.

Under fire

Of 16 Syrian refugees HRW spoke to, 13 alleged that Turkish border guards had shot toward them or other fleeing asylum seekers as they tried to cross while still in Syria, killing 10 people, including one child, and injuring several more.

Turkey has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other country, granting many temporary protection status and providing them with basic services, including medical care and education.

“However, Turkey’s generous hosting of large numbers of Syrians does not absolve it of its responsibility to help those seeking protection at its borders,” the HRW statement added.

It said Erdogan’s government should issue standard instructions to border guards at all crossing points that lethal force must not be used against asylum seekers and that no asylum seeker is to be mistreated.
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Russian oligarchs suspected of corruption will be forced to explain their wealth in Britain, The Times newspaper reported on February 3, quoting the security minister.
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Greek Cypriots are gearing up for a presidential runoff Sunday, barely seven months after the latest failure to reunify the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

President Nicos Anastasiades is looking to reprise his triumph over left-leaning Stavros Malas in 2013 when the two men faced each other. Earlier polls had shown Anastasiades beating Malas convincingly in Sunday’s runoff, but Malas’ strong showing in last weekend’s first round of voting might make it a closer race.

Voters are skeptical about whether anyone can lead them out of the labyrinth of the decades-old division with Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus was divided into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and keeps more than 35,000 troops in the north.

Anastasiades, 71, who says it will be his last term in office if re-elected, is counting on his track record of turning the economy around after a 2013 financial crisis that saw unemployment soar and salaries slashed. He has also been trumpeting his role in steering peace talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriots further than anyone else since the 1974 split.

By contrast, the 50-year-old Malas is hoping his relative youth will strike a chord with the 550,000 eligible voters, many of whom are disillusioned by the acrimonious breakdown of the latest round of peace talks and years of economic uncertainty that’s shaken the confidence of the middle class.

Anastasiades and Malas secured 35.5 and 35.2 percent of the vote, respectively, in the first round, setting up potentially a tighter than anticipated final vote.
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Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China’s so-called ‘One Belt One Road Initiative’ — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. There are, however, concerns over the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the United States has issued a blunt warning over what it sees as the dangers of being tied to China’s huge investment projects.
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A record-setting Russian spacewalk ended with a critical antenna in the wrong position Friday outside the International Space Station.

NASA’s Mission Control reported that the antenna was still working. Nevertheless, Russian space officials were convening a special team to see whether further action would be necessary. The antenna is used for communications with Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow.

The trouble arose toward the end of the more than 8 hour spacewalk — the longest ever by Russians and the fifth longest overall — after Commander Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov successfully replaced an electronics box to upgrade the antenna.

Antenna misplaced

The pair watched in dismay as the antenna got hung up on the Russian side of the complex and could not be extended properly. The antenna — a long boom with a 4-foot dish at the end — had been folded up before the repair work.

Misurkin and Shkaplerov pushed, as flight controllers tried repeatedly, via remote commanding, to rotate the antenna into the right position. Finally, someone shouted in Russian, “It’s moving. It’s in place.”

NASA Mission Control said from Houston that the antenna wound up in a position 180 degrees farther than anticipated.

The spacewalk dragged on so long — lasting 8 hours and 13 minutes — that Misurkin and Shkaplerov ended up surpassing the previous Russian record of 8 hours and 7 minutes, set in 2013. It was supposed to last 6 hours.

“Are you kidding us?” one of them asked when they heard about the record.

NASA still holds the world record, with a spacewalk just shy of nine hours back in 2001.

Original equipment

Misurkin and Shkaplerov also asked flight controllers whether the antenna was operating “or have we just wasted our time?” The response: It’s being evaluated.

It was the second spacewalk in as many weeks. On Jan. 23, two U.S. astronauts went out to give a new hand to the station’s big robotic arm. NASA had planned another spacewalk this week, but bumped it to mid-February because engineers needed extra time to get the mechanical hand working.

After removing the old, obsolete electronics box from the antenna — an original part, launched in 2000 — Misurkin shoved it away from the space station. The bundle tumbled harmlessly away, 250 miles above the North Atlantic.

The 60-pound box — measuring just a couple of feet, or less than a meter — was hurled in a direction that will not intersect with the space station, according to NASA officials.

Different approach

While the Russians routinely toss old equipment and used towels overboard during spacewalks, NASA prefers to secure no-longer-needed items or, if possible, bring them inside. Except for SpaceX’s cargo ships, empty supply capsules are filled with trash and set loose to burn up in the atmosphere. The discarded electronics box will re-enter and burn up, too; Mission Control said it did not know when that will occur. 

Misurkin will return to Earth at the end of this month with two NASA crewmates.

The space station is home to two Russians, three Americans and one Japanese.
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Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China’s so-called “One Belt One Road” initiative — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. But there are concerns about the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken.

British Prime Minister Theresa May recently visited Beijing, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders in an effort to boost trade after Britain’s European Union exit. The two countries signed deals worth $12.7 billion, and May hailed a “golden era” of Sino-British relations.

Her ambassador to Beijing, Barbara Woodward, earlier outlined Britain’s hopes of cooperating in China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative.

“The first is, we’d like to collaborate on practical projects,” she said. “The second area where we’d like to collaborate with China is bringing some of our city of London financing experience. Because these projects are big projects, particularly infrastructure, they require complex funding mechanisms.”

Too complex, according to some.

Approximately 9,500 kilometers away in Uganda, one of China’s latest “One Belt One Road” projects is nearly complete. Soaring above the muddy swamp between the capital, Kampala, and its airport, the new 51-kilometer (31-mile) four-lane expressway was built by the China Communications Construction Company. Its $580 million cost was met with a loan from Beijing.

Kampala’s mayor, Erias Lukwago, says the price is too high.

“Even these Chinese who are coming here from — even these commercial banks we are borrowing from, Exim Banks and what not, the burden will finally come on our shoulders as Ugandans, our children and grandchildren will have to shoulder this burden which is very, very unfortunate,” Lukwago said.

Through the “One Belt” initiative, China has invested across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and even into eastern Europe.

However, Britain’s decision to get involved should not be taken lightly, warns Barnaby Willitts-King of the Overseas Development Institute.

“Particularly in fragile parts of the world where China’s Belt and Road initiative is going to be running through, there are a lot of potential risks around humanitarian concerns, environmental concerns, that I think focusing on just on a trade deal might overlook,” Willitts-King said. “But it’s also got an advantage. The U.K. has worked and invested in a lot of these countries over the years. And it could actually provide some very practical advice to China.”

Washington has gone further in its criticism of China’s trade and foreign policy.

“China, as it does in emerging markets throughout the world, offers the appearance of an attractive path to development. But in reality, this often involves trading short-term gains for long-term dependency,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday, ahead of his trip to Latin America.

Many emerging economies welcome China’s investments, and the involvement of countries such as Britain. However, there are concerns that mounting debts will cause big problems further down the road. 
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“Put on a thick jacket,” the 18-year-old son of Albanian immigrants instructed the 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy over the Internet on how to carry out a Christmas market attack last year in the Rhineland town of Ludwigshafen.

“Then go behind a hut and light and run,” he advised.

Fortunately, the crude nail-bomb device failed to work and the 12-year-old was arrested by police in December trying for a second time to pull off an attack, this time outside Ludwigshafen’s city hall.

The chilling mentoring by the 18-year-old from his home in neighboring Austria was detailed last month in court papers.

And now the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is lobbying for a repeal of laws restricting security surveillance of minors under the age of 14, arguing that the country is facing grave risks from what the German media dubs “kindergarten jihadists.”

In a media interview midweek, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, warned that the Islamic State and the terror group’s followers are continuing to target children in Germany online. “Islamic State uses headhunters who scour the internet for children who can be approached and tries to radicalize these children, or recruit these children for terrorist attacks,” he warned.

‘Massive danger’

Maassen said he was alarmed also at the risks posed by returning “brainwashed” Islamic State women and their children, who he warned pose a “massive danger” to the country. He described the children of jihadist parents as “ticking time bombs.”

An estimated 1,000 German recruits joined IS.

“There are children who have undergone brainwashing in the ISIS [Islamic State] areas and are radicalized to a great extent,” he said. “We see that children who grew up with Islamic State were brainwashed in the schools and the kindergartens of the Islamic State. They were confronted early with the ISIS ideology … learned to fight, and were in some cases forced to participate in the abuse of prisoners, or even the killing of prisoners.”

Only a handful of the 290 children and toddlers who left Germany with jihadist parents — or who were born in Syria or Iraq — have so far returned to Germany. And some rights activists have warned that Germany should not over-react and be too quick to alter civil liberty protections, questioning whether the danger is being over-stated.

The threat posed by the radicalization of minors has become a major political issue in Germany. Three out of five radical Islamist attacks in the country in 2016 were carried out by minors.

This is the second time Maassen has sounded a public alarm about child recruits — he last did so in October, saying he was worried about a new generation of jihadists being raised in Germany. He urged Germans to “take a very serious look” at the threat, and to call police if they noticed anything suspicious.

Last year, de-radicalization experts warned that Western governments were not giving enough thought about what to do with so-called “cubs of the caliphate” — both the offspring of foreign recruits as well as Syrian and Iraqi children enlisted into the terror ranks.

IS leaders made no secret of their earmarking of the young to be “the generation that will conquer Baghdad, Jerusalem, Mecca and Rome,” grooming youngsters to be the deadly legacy of a murderous caliphate on the brink of military defeat. As the terror group’s territory shrank in the face of offensives on IS strongholds in the Levant, the militants highlighted in a series of gloating videos what they hoped would be in store for their enemies.

Other countries share worries

German intelligence officials aren’t alone in expressing worries about the offspring of IS foreign fighters — or the continuing efforts of jihadist recruiters. On Thursday, the head of London’s police’s counter-terrorism command, Dean Haydon, warned of children trained by Islamic State coming back to Britain to carry out attacks.

“Some terror groups are training children to commit atrocities,” he said as he outlined the risks posed by returnees. “We need to not just understand the risk the mother poses but the risk that any child poses as well. We look at them on a case-by-case basis and they may be arrested,” he told a London newspaper. Last month a 27-year-old British woman returning from Syria was arrested at Heathrow airport under terrorism laws. She had a two-year-old with her.

Haydon revealed that police are DNA-testing children who have been brought to Britain by ‘jihadist’ parents after being born in Syria or Iraq to establish their identity. “If a mother turns up with a stateless child, born in Syria, we need to be satisfied that that child actually belongs to that mother because we have had instances of kids trying to be smuggled back into the UK but not actually belonging to that parent,” he said.

De-radicalization experts say child recruits can be rehabilitated but warn they are battling a prevalent attitude among Western officials that ‘cubs of the caliphate’ are different from child soldiers from other wars.

In an interview with VOA last year, Mia Bloom, a Canadian academic, who’s co-authoring a book on jihadist child soldiers, said: “It would be a terrible mistake to think that because someone was a cub for a year or two, they are lost forever – they can be saved and rehabilitated.” She highlighted a de-radicalization program funded partly by the Pakistani army that has proved highly successful. 

 
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The International Court of Justice has laid down definitive maritime boundaries between Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and a small land boundary in a remote, disputed wetland.

As part of the complex ruling, the United Nations’ highest judicial organ ruled that a Nicaraguan military base on part of the disputed coastline close to the mouth of the San Juan River is on Costa Rican territory and must be removed.

Ruling in two cases filed by Costa Rica, the 16-judge U.N. panel took into account the two countries’ coastlines and some islands in drawing what it called “equitable” maritime borders that carved up the continental shelf underneath the Caribbean and Pacific.

Such rulings can affect issues including fishing rights and exploration for resources like oil.

Earlier, the court ordered Nicaragua to compensate Costa Rica for damage Nicaragua caused with unlawful construction work near the mouth of the San Juan River, the court’s first foray into assessing costs for environmental damage.

The order by the United Nations’ principal judicial organ followed a December 2015 ruling that Nicaragua violated Costa Rica’s sovereignty by establishing a military camp and digging channels near the river, part of a long-running border dispute in the remote region on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.

In total, Nicaragua was ordered to pay just over $378,890 for environmental damage and other costs incurred by Costa Rica.

Decisions by the court based in The Hague, Netherlands, are final and legally binding.
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As fighting in Syria’s Afrin region nears the end of its second week, soldiers say the battle is moving slowly, with both sides heavily armed and civilian casualties occurring in and around the war zone. VOA’s Heather Murdock is with Turkish and Syrian opposition forces in Soran, in northern Syria.
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Turkey’s judiciary is facing growing international condemnation for the ongoing imprisonment of the local head of Amnesty International.

Thursday, an Istanbul court reversed an earlier decision to release Taner Kilic from pre-trial detention, ruling he should remain in jail for the duration of his case.  In a rare move, the prosecutor had turned to a second court to overturn Wednesday’s release order.

The dramatic succession of events has provoked international condemnation.  “A disgrace and an outrageous travesty of justice,” Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty declared in a statement.  In a similar vein, Rebecca Harms, a member of the European Parliament wrote, “We deeply regret this situation and call for an immediate review of the decision.”

Kilic has been held for eight months on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization. Prosecutors claim an encryption software found on his phone linked him to followers of U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed of being behind a 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey. Gulen denies the charge.

Kilic is also accused, along with 10 other human rights activists, including two foreign nationals, of being part of a new conspiracy to overthrow the Turkish government. The 10 other defendants have all been released from pre-trial detention following an international campaign and intense diplomatic pressure.

Kilic’s imprisonment has made him a focal point of growing concern about the treatment of human rights defenders. In a sign of the importance of the case, the Istanbul court Wednesday was packed with European diplomats and international human rights representatives.

Playing the system

“We’re witnessing unusual legal maneuvers which are a reflection of the current dire state of the Turkish judicial system, as well as the erosion of the rule of law,” tweeted Kati Piri the European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur.

But the Kilic case is also putting the spotlight on the EU stance towards Ankara, “It’s totally useless, to send tweets and sorry messages and raise concerns and more concerns about what is happening in Turkey.  They should really think of something, else, for instance Turkey is still a candidate and negotiates its membership with the European Union, it’s a totally weird situation,” points out political scientist Cengiz Aktar, “the tolerance the regime enjoys in the West, this appeasement, is intimately linked to what is happening to the rule of law in Turkey.”

Since Turkey’s declared a state of emergency following the 2016 failed coup, concerns have been growing over the impartiality and functioning of its judiciary. More than 1,000 judges and prosecutors, including two members of the Constitutional Court, are among the 60,000 people arrested in the post-coup crackdown.  Many more members of the judiciary have been fired.  The government claims large parts of the judiciary had been infiltrated by supporters of the coup attempt.

Legal order challenged

The very structure of the judiciary is also in question.  Last month, an Istanbul court ignored the judgment of the Constitutional Court to release journalists Mehmet Altan and Sahin Alpay, who have been in pre-trial detention for more than a year, accused of seeking to overthrow the government.  Prime Minister Binali Yildirim backed the Istanbul court’s stance insisting it knew more about the case.

The move has caused alarm among legal experts, “If this trend continues, any government can use this as a “judicial” basis for not recognizing the decisions of the Constitutional Court.  This means chaos.  This chaos, unfortunately, has been encouraged by the politicians,” warns law professor Osman Can of Istanbul’s Marmara University and member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.  

The European Court of Human Rights, of which Turkey is a member, is set to become embroiled in the ongoing controversy.  The European Court remains the last legal means of redress for Turkish citizens.  “There are so many violations of the European convention of human rights, if the court accepts all these cases, it will be overwhelming, it can virtually stop the work of the court.  This is why the court is very cautious taking these cases,” claims political scientist Aktar.

In a move that has drawn criticism domestically and internationally, the European Court has refused to hear most cases in relation to the post-coup crackdown, arguing the defendants have to exhaust all judicial avenues in Turkey.  That stance is predicted to be increasingly challenged with the power of Turkey’s Constitutional Court in question.  “This can be interpreted as the loss of the effectiveness … of the entire legal order, which in turn can cause very serious consequences for Turkey.  In such a case, the problem becomes, now, one of international relations,” warns professor Can.

 
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A support group for victims of sexual harassment in France said it was forced to shut its helpline after receiving a deluge of calls in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal.

Paris-based AVFT, a national association helping women who have experienced violence at work, said it was “overwhelmed” with a backlog of cases that had piled up over the past two years so could take no more calls.

“For several months we have been submerged by requests, which has forced us to take a break in order to respond,” a voicemail message told people phoning the line on Thursday.

A slew of allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein last year sparked the #MeToo campaign, with women and men using social media to talk about their experiences of harassment at work.

The scandal prompted a rethink of attitudes toward harassment in France, a country that cherishes its image as the land of seduction and romance.

Last month, French actress Catherine Deneuve sparked an outcry by saying the #Metoo campaign had gone too far and amounted to puritanism.

French women have meanwhile been sharing their stories on social media under the name-and-shame hashtag #BalanceTonPorc – or ‘expose your pig.’

AVFT, which has given legal help to victims since 1985, said the heightened focus on how men treat and mistreat women at work had resulted in a higher number of women seeking its services.

More than 220 got in touch in 2017, a two-fold increase on 2015 – leaving its five staff overwhelmed, the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

It called for an increase in government support, saying subsidies had not increased in 13 years.

Clemence Joz, a legal advisor for AVFT, said the group was hoping to re-open its line as soon as possible.

“I cannot say how long it’s going to be,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. In November, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled measures aimed at educating the public and schoolchildren about sexism and violence against women and improving police support for victims. He also proposed criminalizing street harassment.

 
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The Trump administration says it is concerned Poland’s proposed Holocaust law could impact free speech and Polish relations with the United States and Israel.

The law would make it a crime to call the Nazi genocide of Jews a Polish crime, or the Nazi death camps Polish death camps, even though some of the most brutal Nazi atrocities took place on Polish soil.

“We understand that phrases such as ‘Polish death camps’ are inaccurate, misleading, and hurtful,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Wednesday. “We all must be careful not to inhibit discussion and commentary on the Holocaust. We believe open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering inaccurate and hurtful speech.”

Israel, others concerned

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not tolerate “distortion of the truth, rewriting history, and denial of the Holocaust.”

Some experts fear the new Polish law could also mean jail for Holocaust survivors when talking about their ordeals.

President’s remarks

Polish President Andrzej Duda said this week there was no institutional participation by Poland in the Holocaust, but it did recognize criminal actions toward Jews by some individual Poles.

“There were wicked people who sold their neighbors for money. But it was not the Polish nation, it was not an organized action,” Duda said.

He pointed out that some Poles sacrificed their lives to save Jews from the Nazis, and that the Polish underground and government in exile resisted efforts to wipe out European Jewry.

Poland was home to one of the world’s most thriving Jewish populations before Nazi Germany invaded in 1939.

Holocaust survivors who returned to Poland after the war found themselves victims of further anti-Semitism. Some historians say many Poles collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting Jews.

Poland regards itself as having been a victim of Nazi terror. It resents being blamed for crimes carried out by Hitler and his gang of murderers.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday carrying into orbit a Luxembourg-made communications satellite designed in part to expand NATO’s surveillance reach and its capability to deter cyber attacks on alliance members.

The liftoff at 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station followed a technical glitch that prompted a 24-hour flight delay. It marked the second rocket launch this year for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies.

It comes a week before the California-based company is slated to conduct its highly anticipated first test flight of the much larger and more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, which packs three times the thrust of the Falcon 9.

Communications satellite

Wednesday’s payload was a communications satellite built for LuxGovSat S.A., a public-private joint venture between the Luxembourg government and Luxembourg-based telecommunications company SES, in part to fulfill that nation’s growing defense obligations to NATO.

The so-called GovSat-1 satellite will provide, among other things, greater cyber protection for Luxembourg’s European Union partners and NATO allies, including the United States, Luxembourg Defense Minister Etienne Schneider told a news conference Tuesday.

GovSat-1 also will serve civilian telecommunications security functions.

Thirty-four minutes after liftoff, the satellite was successfully released into a highly elliptical “parking” orbit, according to SpaceX. It will eventually settle into a round orbit 22,370 miles (36,000 km) high, where it will circle the Earth for 15 years.

A spokesman for Schneider said the $279 million satellite, which weighs about 4½ tons, is part of a broader policy of doubling the country’s contributions to NATO.

Citing new security threats, a senior NATO official told Reuters in March that the alliance planned to spend more than $3 billion on defense technology, a third of which would go toward satellite communications.

Rocket retrieved

Unlike many recent SpaceX launches, the company had not initially planned on retrieving the rocket’s reusable main-stage because the payload had to be carried to such a high orbit that the booster was left without sufficient fuel to fly back to Earth for a return landing.

However, the booster “amazingly” survived its ocean splashdown intact, Musk said in a Twitter message posted later with a photograph of the vehicle floating at sea. “We will try to tow it back to shore,” he said.

The same Falcon 9 booster was used last year in a mission to launch a top-secret payload into space for the U.S. government.
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France is facing a “new form of anti-Semitism” marked by violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Wednesday, deploring an assault this week in a Paris suburb on an 8-year-old boy wearing a Jewish skullcap.

President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the attack Monday in Sarcelles, a northern suburb with a large Jewish population, as “heinous.”

French media have described the attackers as teenagers who ran away after tripping and kicking the boy to the ground. Police were investigating, but there have been no arrests.

Speaking before lawmakers, Philippe noted the emergence of a new kind of anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Jewish population in western Europe.

To fight something, one must have “the courage to put a name on it … to acknowledge that, yes, there is a new form of anti-Semitism, violent and brutal, emerging more and more openly in our land,” Philippe said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb and Jewish leaders say the number of anti-Semitic acts in France has risen this month after a drop in previous years.

An annual national count of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts — mainly threats — dipped in 2017 compared with the year before. However, the count, released Wednesday by the Interior Ministry, shows that violent racist acts in France increased overall, and notably anti-Semitic acts went from 77 in 2016 to 97 last year.

Collomb told Jewish leaders last week that such acts were “an attack on the principles that unify our nation.”

Macron tweeted: “Each time a citizen is attacked because of his age, appearance or religion, it is the whole nation that is attacked.”
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British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China Wednesday on a visit aimed at boosting economic ties with the Asian giant ahead of her country’s exit from the European Union next year.

May began her three-day trip in the central industrial city of Wuhan, before heading to Beijing for talks with Premier Li Keqiang. She is accompanied by a large delegation of 50 British business leaders eager to expand their business in the world’s second largest economy.

The prime minister will meet with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, before wrapping up her visit Friday in the financial hub of Shanghai.

The British leader says she is eager to use her trip to lay the groundwork for a so-called “golden era” between London and Beijing, a term which first surfaced in 2015 ahead of a state visit to Britain by President Xi. The Chinese leader is hoping Britain will endorse his flagship Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-billion dollar project aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road trade routes between Asia and Europe. 

But Prime Minister May has been cautious in the past about embracing Chinese investment. She angered Beijing in 2016 when she temporarily delayed approval of Chinese-funded nuclear power plant in southwest England.

She has also expressed caution over the Belt and Road Initiative, saying that while the project holds promise, it is important the project meets “international standards.” 

In addition to trade, May is expected to discuss the escalating political tensions in Britain’s former colony, Hong Kong, which it ruled for more than 150 years before giving it back to China in 1997.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, wrote May this week warning that the semi-autonomous territory is facing “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, human rights and autonomy” that China agreed to observe under the handover agreement.
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Protests broke out in the Spanish city of Barcelona Tuesday after Catalonia’s parliament postponed a vote on who should be president of the region. Pro-independence parties, which form a majority in the parliament, had nominated only one candidate – the exiled former leader Carles Puigdemont. The stand-off between Barcelona and Madrid looks set to deepen as parties on all sides of the debate harden their positions, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Nine members of Turkey’s medical association have been detained for voicing opposition to the ongoing Turkish-led military incursion into Syria against a Kurdish militia group. The arrests are part of a widening crackdown on dissent over the operation.

Ankara’s prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants for 11 leading members of the Turkish Medical Association, including its head, Rasit Tukel.

Police raided the homes of the doctors early Tuesday morning. The organization’s offices across the country have also been targeted.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday labeled the association’s members as traitors and “servants of imperialism.” The remarks were in response to the association calling for an end to the ongoing military incursion into Syria, and the doctors raising humanitarian concerns for civilians trapped by fighting.

Nearly two weeks ago, Turkish-led forces entered the Syrian enclave of Afrin to oust the YPG Kurdish militia, which is a key ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State. Ankara accuses the YPG of supporting a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Reaction to detentions

The doctors’ detention has drawn swift political condemnation.

Member of parliament Selin Sayek Boke of the opposition CHP, speaking outside the headquarters of the medical association, criticized the government.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression and on those who call for peace and it is an attack done by those who want to kill the culture of living together in this country,” Boke said.

International human rights groups have also criticized the detentions.

The London-based Amnesty International’s Turkey representative, Andrew Gardner, tweeted the government should be protecting the association, rather than detaining doctors from their beds on false propaganda charges.

​Growing crackdown

The medical association is one of the country’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations, with more than 80,000 members. The arrest of its leading members is part of a growing crackdown on dissent over the ongoing Syrian operation.

The Turkish Interior Ministry announced Monday that more than 300 people, including four journalists, have been detained under the country’s anti-terror laws for social media postings criticizing the operation.

Erdogan said last week all dissent would be crushed.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin says the United States has taken a ‘hostile step” by releasing a list detailing the wealth and political connections of 210 people with close Kremlin connections. But he said there would be no immediate move to retaliate.

The U.S. Treasury Department published the list Monday, as required by a law passed by Congress last August aimed at punishing Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, a charge Russia denies.   

U.S. President Donald Trump reluctantly signed the law, and administration officials said Monday there are no immediate plans to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin.

In a written statement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the measure already was hitting Russian companies.

“Today, we have informed Congress that this legislation and its implementation are deterring Russian defense sales,” Nauert wrote. “Since the enactment of the … legislation, we estimate that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.”

Several Kremlin officials reacted angrily to the U.S. report. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said it would “poison relations for a long time.”

But Putin was more reserved. Speaking at a campaign event Tuesday in Moscow, he said that while he was dismayed at publication of the list, he would hold off on retaliatory actions, apparently in view of the lack of accompanying U.S. sanctions.

“We were waiting for this list to come out, and I’m not going to hide it: we were going to take steps in response, and, mind you, serious steps, that could push our relations to the nadir. But we’re going to refrain from taking these steps for now,” Putin said.

He joked, however that he was disappointed that he was not included on the list.

The report details the finances and political connections of 114 Russian politicians and 96 so-called “oligarchs” who have prospered under Putin. Officials noted that the list of oligarchs appears to be the same as Forbes’ ranking of Russian billionaires.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who is among those on the list, said Russia would study the information in the U.S. report before deciding on a response.

‘Crooks and thieves’

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny hailed the publication of the list, tweeting Tuesday that he was “glad to see these [people] have been officially recognized at the international level as crooks and thieves.”

Trump criticized the congressionally-mandated list when he signed the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” saying it “improperly encroaches on executive power, disadvantages American companies and hurts the interests of our European allies.”

The measure gave the Trump administration 180 days to produce the list, which includes Prime Minister Medvedev, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and top spy agency officials. Among the business figures are aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Sberbank CEO German Gref and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.

The law ordered the Trump administration to impose sanctions on anyone who engages in a “significant transaction” with the defense or intelligence sectors of the Russian government.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer criticized the administration’s decision not to impose new sanctions or “put forth a plan for how it plans to deter further Russian aggression.”

“Sanctions are a deterrent only if countries believe the U.S. will impose them. The anemic announcements today, with no statements from senior administration officials, do not give me confidence that is the case,” Hoyer said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi also criticized the White House decision.

“Congress passed sanctions on Russia overwhelmingly to send a message on Russian interference in our democracy. The president doesn’t appear to want to send that message,” he wrote on Twitter.

 
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Last week British Prime Minister Theresa May basked in praise in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he thought she was doing a good job and pledged to help advance a trade deal to help offset economic losses Britain will likely suffer from leaving the European Union.

But this week, the growing rift in her Cabinet over Brexit, as well as her leadership, has critics within her ruling Conservative party saying she isn’t doing a good job and accusing her of governing more like a tortoise than a lion.

Traditionally, the Conservatives are unsentimental when it comes to ditching their leaders, and far more so than the main opposition party, Labour, which has often retained leaders long after they should have been dumped. And internecine warfare in Britain’s Conservative party can be especially fratricidal: most of the key players tend to have grown up together in college, where they waged youthful ideological battles or competed to run student societies and debating clubs. The bruising rivalries of the past often remain unforgiven.

But few of May’s senior party foes have the political courage to condemn her openly. That is left to lawmaker allies who don’t have government positions or to ideological friends in the country’s top newspapers, mostly Conservative.

Hence this week’s avalanche of headlines in the key Conservative newspapers, The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail: “Theresa May Faces Growing Calls to Quit,” “It Could End for Mrs. May Tomorrow,” “One Well-Aimed Speech Could Topple Mrs. May,” and “Theresa May’s ‘Tortoise’ Leadership Openly Criticized.”

In a column headlined “Will Someone Rid Us of This Appalling PM?” The Times columnist Iain Martin accused May of overseeing “one of the most spineless, depressed and depressing administrations in living memory.” He remarked she appears “temperamentally incapable” of getting things done, “with a zero capacity for initiative.”

Dogged by criticism

May has been dogged by criticism and predictions of doom since she became prime minister in July 2016 after her Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, quit in the wake of the Brexit referendum. But even her friends acknowledge her tenure has been hapless.

She called an early snap parliamentary election in a bid to expand her party’s Commons majority, only to suffer reversal after running what the media described as a desultory and robotic campaign. That left her heading a minority government dependent on the votes of a small Northern Ireland party.

Critics say May has struggled to define exactly what she stands for, and what she has to offer.

She tried to distinguish herself by offering a social mobility agenda, but that effort collapsed when the entire board of a high-powered Social Mobility Commission resigned in protest at the lack of government action, claiming they were being used as window-dressing.

Earlier this month, her attempt to mold a more friendly Cabinet in a reorganization failed calamitously and revealed her weakness when some senior ministers refused to be moved or sacked. One minister told the Spectator magazine’s James Forsyth, “She’s like the Wizard of Ozthere’s nothing there when you pull back the curtain.”

But behind the curtain is a raging battle within the British establishment over Brexit, one seamed with personal rivalries and ambition. And that, according to a Conservative minister who spoke with VOA, is “sucking the oxygen from the government.”

He added, “We are unable to agree on what Brexit should mean, unable to address other pressing matters, including the awful state of the national health service, and that issue alone could lose us the next general election, and when it comes to important foreign issues, we are just missing in action.”

Brexit

Party members clash over whether Britain should crash out of the European Union without a deal, secure a Canada-like trade agreement or follow the Norwegian example and exit the political institutions of the bloc, Britain’s largest trading partner, but retain membership in the Single Market and the customs union.

Britain’s “soft-Brexit” finance minister, Philip Hammond, caused a storm last week when he said in Davos that May’s government would seek only “modest” changes in Britain’s relationship with the European Union in upcoming negotiations, prompting a furious reaction from so-called hard Brexiters, who have also been making speeches, infuriating May’s officials and disclosing the scale of party rifts.

A leaked government analysis Tuesday that projects Britain will be considerably worse off after Brexit, and especially so if it exits without a deal, is fueling the rancor within party circles with hard Brexiters dubbing their opponents “mutineers” and “traitors” and soft-Brexiters describing their foes as “swivel-eyed” and “jihadists.”

Conservative insiders say May has survived because senior members on either side of the party’s Brexit divide fear the consequences of a leadership challenge. Neither side can guarantee one of their champions would replace May.Others worry that trying to topple May now will lead to an early election, one that Labour is in a strong position to win.

“She survives, for now, because anyone who took over from her would face the same challenges and the same disaffection,” says Walter Ellis, a commentator with the news site Reaction.

An earlier version of this story misidentified Iain Martin as a columnist with The Telegraph. He is in fact a columnist with The Times. VOA regrets the error.
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Romania’s parliament overwhelmingly endorsed a new Social Democrat-led government Monday, giving Prime Minister Viorica Dancila a mandate that will be scrutinized closely by the country’s foreign partners and investors.

Dancila was named prime minister earlier this month to replace Mihai Tudose, who quit after a falling out with the powerful leader of the Social Democrats, Liviu Dragnea. Tudose himself became prime minister when Dragnea forced out his predecessor, Sorin Grindeanu, last summer.

Dancila had to be approved in a vote of confidence, which she won easily Monday — 282 legislators backed her, including some junior opposition groups. The new cabinet retains around a third of the former government’s ministers.

“This government, as a whole, does not bode well for the rule of law in Romania and its relations with the West, particularly with the European Union,” said independent political commentator Cristian Patrasconiu.

Dancila has set up a new ministry to handle European Union funds and nominated as its head Social Democrat lawmaker Rovana Plumb, whom anti-corruption prosecutors wanted to investigate. Her appointment has fueled renewed concerns about Romania’s commitment to seriously tackling graft.

Parliament rejected the prosecutors’ attempt to investigate Plumb, who denied any wrongdoing. But then-Prime Minister Tudose sacked her and two other ministers, saying graft allegations were damaging Romania’s relations with the EU.

On Monday, Prime Minister Dancila said her cabinet reflected the 2016 general elections. “Together with my colleagues, I do represent the political will of the ruling coalition,” she said.

“Today, you do not vote for persons but back Romanian citizens’ desire revealed by democracy. We will govern with pride and respect for Romanians, having the government program in front of us,” Dancila told parliament.

The revised governing program includes plans to further increase pensions and the minimum wage, and cut value-added tax by one percentage point to 18 percent from 2019. It also aims to set up a sovereign wealth fund and boost the absorption of EU funds.

But leftist legislators aim to change the criminal code that would decriminalize several graft offenses, their second attempt in a year to fight off a crackdown on corruption.

Last week, Brussels urged parliament to reconsider earlier judicial reforms, which critics say weaken judicial independence.
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Failure by the next German government to fulfill a pledge to boost military spending to two percent of its economic output will weaken the NATO alliance, a senior U.S. military official said on Monday.

Army secretary Mark Esper told reporters during a visit to U.S. troops in Wiesbaden, Germany, that NATO members had recommitted to meeting the NATO 2-percent target in 2017, and he would take the German government at its word that it would stick to that pledge.

“It’s important for all of our NATO allies to live up to their commitments,” Esper said during a teleconference on Monday. “If not, it weakens the alliance, clearly, and Germany is such a critical member of NATO.”

Esper said Germany had a particularly important role in NATO given its economic strength in Europe and its leadership within NATO.

“I take the German government at their word that they’re going to get to the 2 percent and live up to that,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats are locked in negotiations about renewing the coalition government that ruled since 2013.

A negotiating blueprint hammered out by the two political blocs did not mention the NATO target specifically – dodging an issue that continues to divide the parties.

The BDI industry association this month estimated that Germany spent just 1.13 percent of its economic output on the military in 2017, well below NATO’s projection of 1.22 percent due to stronger-than-expected economic growth.

BDI expert Matthias Wachter said the percentage could drop further in coming years if the economy’s expansion outpaced planned increases in military spending.

Esper said NATO’s efforts to reassure Poland and the Baltic States remained a key priority to guard against any Russian “adventurism” given Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine.

“We all wish that Russia was on a different trajectory, but after what we’ve seen in Georgia and Ukraine, we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he said, referring to the Russian military incursion into Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
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Senior European Union officials on Monday urged the eurosceptic but pro-Russian Czech President Milos Zeman to pursue cooperation within the bloc following his re-election.

Zeman won a second term in a presidential election in the Czech Republic last weekend after campaigning on a tough stance against immigration and touting his courtship of Russia and China.

In a message of congratulations, European Council President Donald Tusk wrote: “I trust that your country will continue to play an active and constructive role within the European Union.”

The former Polish prime minister, who has tried to calm mounting frictions between the wealthier governments in the west and the formerly-communist EU states in the east, highlighted his own efforts to get the bloc to “better respond to European citizens’ concerns” — a nod to popular worries over issues such as immigration.

The head of the EU’s executive European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, echoed Tusk’s appeal for cooperation.

“In an increasingly polarized and complex world, we need to build bridges within and between countries,” he wrote.

Later on Monday, Juncker was due to host Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has support from Zeman as he struggles to form a government following a parliamentary election in October.

While Babis is expected to reassure Juncker that Prague remains dedicated to the EU, he will also make clear he would not help other countries in the bloc by agreeing to host any refugees, sources said.

The migration dispute, which has split the eastern members of the bloc from their western and southern peers, has caused bad blood in the EU, weakening member states’ trust in each other.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday Israel will not tolerate “distortion of the truth, rewriting history, and denial of the Holocaust.”

Netanyahu was speaking out against a proposed law in Poland imposing fines and jail time on anyone who refers to the Nazi genocide of Jews as being a Polish crime, or the Nazi death camps as Polish death camps.

Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Polish ambassador Sunday to express its objections.

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial also warned against trying to change history.

“Restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people’s direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion,” it said in a statement.

Some experts fear the new Polish law could also mean jail for Holocaust survivors when talking about their ordeals.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, recognizing the extreme sensitivity of the law, promised Sunday to give it a “careful analysis” before signing it if it passes the Polish senate.

Poland was home to one of the world’s most thriving Jewish populations before Nazi Germany invaded in 1939. It murdered about 3 million Jews in death camps set up in Poland, including such chilling places as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Holocaust survivors who returned to Poland after the war found themselves victims of further anti-Semitism. Some historians say many Poles collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting Jews.

Poland regards itself as having itself been a victim of Nazi terror and resents being blamed for crimes carried out by Hitler and his gang of murderers.

On Sunday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted a metaphor comparing Jews and Poles in pre-war Poland.

“A gang of professional thugs enters a two-family house,” he wrote. “They kill the first family almost entirely. They kill the parents of the second, torturing the kids. They loot and raze the house. Could one in good conscience say that the second family is guilty for the murder of the first?”
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Several thousand people braved sub-zero temperatures in cities across Russia to protest what they say is a lack of competition ahead of March presidential elections all but guaranteed to extend Vladimir Putin’s grip on power through 2024.

The rallies were part of a nationwide “Voters Strike” called by opposition leader and erstwhile presidential candidate Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has been blocked from participating in the elections over legal problems widely seen as manufactured to keep him out of the race.

“We demand a real contest. Even many supporters of Putin say ‘why wouldn’t he participate in a competitive election?’” said Vladimir Milov, a Navalny campaign adviser, in an interview with VOA at the Moscow rally.  

“They believe Putin can beat Navalny, and we believe Navalny can beat Putin,” he added.  

“That’s what elections are all about.”

Yet Sunday’s protests reflected a realization among Navalny’s camp that such a direct contest will not take place. 

Barred from participating by Russia’s courts and state election commission, Navalny’s campaign has shifted to calls to boycott the election — arguing low voter turnout nationwide will take the shine off a Putin victory and high voter approval ratings that, they argue, are inflated by state manipulation. 

“We are not going to take part in this election,” said Vladislav Sovostin, a small business owner, as the crowd shouted “Strike! Strike!” “Boycott!” and “These Aren’t Elections!” 

“We are going to monitor the vote and not allow them to falsify the election for Putin,” he added.

Arrests

Organizers argued that protests took place in over 100 cities across the country — with several approved in advance by authorities.  Notable exceptions were Russia’s two main cities — Moscow and St. Petersburg — where police and interior ministry troop presence were heavy and authorities threatened arrests. 

OVD-Info, a civic police monitoring group, reported 340 people had been detained nationwide.

Many of those included Navalny surrogates and campaign volunteers in cities such as Tomsk, a Siberian university town where the local independent TV-2 channel reported 10 arrests. 

In Moscow, police also stormed Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, where an online video feed of the day’s events was shut down after police broke through office doors with a chainsaw. 

​

Navalny, too, had little opportunity to take part in the event he organized.

Video published online (LINK https://twitter.com/navalny/status/957581631921033216)  showed police roughly dragging him into a police van almost as soon as he arrived on Moscow’s central Tverskaya Street.  

“I’ve been detained. That doesn’t matter,” he posted minutes later on Twitter.  “Come to Tverskaya. You’re not coming out for me, but for yourself and your future.”

Generational shifts

Once again, the faces of younger Russians — many in their teens and early 20s who have grown up under Putin’s rule — were prominent at rallies across the country. 

“The authorities are used to thinking that Russians will just sit quietly and wait for change. Well, our generation won’t wait. We want a better life,” says Ivan Savin, a high school student who attended the rally.

He also admitted to telling his parents he was “out with friends” for the day rather than out protesting the Russian president. 

“Only because they’ll worry and think I’ll get arrested.” 

His classmate, Valerie Koltsov, added that other friends felt the same.

“I know a lot of people who don’t come because it really does scare them. They think they’ll get fined for not doing what the government tells them.”

Turnout tactics

Indeed, turnout was smaller than previous Navalny-led protests from the past year, when tens of thousands of Russians came out to protest alleged corruption at the highest levels of government.

Few doubt that Navalny’s message — fueled by an effective social media campaign — has connected well beyond Moscow and into the regions. 

But Sunday’s smaller numbers, despite temperatures as low as -40C in Siberia, were all but certain to fuel debate in opposition circles over the wisdom of Navalny’s call for a nationwide boycott of the vote.

The tactic, critics point out, demands widespread participation or risks simply increasing Putin’s margin of victory. 

Ksenia Sobchak, a television star-turned-opposition figure whose own presidential bid has been tacitly endorsed by the Kremlin, is among those calling on anti-Putin forces to register their dissatisfaction by supporting her “Against All” candidacy at the ballot box rather than on the streets. 

Navalny’s supporters have largely derided Sobchak’s campaign as a Kremlin ploy to legitimize the vote. 

Yet Ludmilla Sidodova, a pensioner at the Moscow rally who was a veteran of the massive pro-democratic movement of the late-Soviet period, argued it would simply take a wider movement if Russians hoped to evoke real change.

She was among hundreds of thousands who once had demanded change, and suggested a new generation could learn from that history.  

“I wish they’d understand that we did what we could. Maybe it wasn’t always enough. But now it depends on them,” Sidodova said.  “Whatever life they decide they want is the life they’ll have.”
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