JAKARTA, Indonesia: A polarizing Christian politician whose campaign comments ignited protests that were the largest in Muslim-majority Indonesia in years was freed Thursday after serving nearly two years in prison for blasphemy.
Basuki “Ahok” TjaHajja Purnama, the former governor of Jakarta, left a paramilitary police prison outside the capital early Thursday with members of his family, said his spokesman Sakti Budiono, avoiding waiting supporters and media.
In 2016, Purnama made campaign-trail comments that hard-liners seized on as blasphemy, triggering protests that brought hundreds of thousands of white-robed Muslims to the center of Jakarta.
He was defeated in an election by a rival aligned with the protesters and sentenced to prison in May 2017 for blaspheming the Qur’an. Rights groups said the sentence highlighted why the easily abused blasphemy law should be repealed.
Days before being freed, Purnama posted online that he didn’t want supporters to make a fuss about his release and apologized to Jakarta civil servants including “even my haters” that he’d offended by being rude and arrogant.
The movement against Purnama, an ally of President Joko Widodo, rattled the government and highlighted the mingling of religion with politics in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy.
Widodo subsequently chose a conservative cleric as his running mate for April’s presidential election, hoping to deflect attacks that he is insufficiently Islamic.
Purnama, part of the tiny ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia, was popular with Jakarta’s middle class for efforts to stamp out corruption and make the teeming capital more livable.
But others were alienated by his brash outspokenness and the demolition of slums that were home to Jakarta’s poorest residents.
“If I was re-elected as the Jakarta governor in the last election, I’ll just be a man who controls City Hall,” Purnama said in a handwritten letter posted on Instagram. “But in here, I’m learning how to control myself, for the rest of my life.”
In an unlikely twist, the 2016 protests also provided opportunists with the impetus for an alleged plot to topple Widodo, the first Indonesian president not from the country’s military and political elite.
Police arrested numerous high-profile Indonesians, including a daughter of Indonesia’s founding president, accusing them of plotting to hijack the protests to cause chaos. Their apparent aim was to provide a pretext for military intervention that would unseat Widodo.
They were later released and have not faced trial.
Governor convicted of blasphemy freed from Indonesian prison
Governor convicted of blasphemy freed from Indonesian prison
UN talks struggle for breakthrough on plastics treaty as deadline looms
- South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee
- Nations which produce petrochemicals, such as Saudi Arabia, oppose efforts to cap plastic production
BUSAN, South Korea: The chairman of talks aiming for an international treaty to rein in pollution from plastics issued a document on Friday outlining measures that could furnish the basis of a pact, in an attempt to spur discussions as a Dec. 1 deadline approaches.
South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to agree globally binding rules on plastics, but this week's talks had moved at glacial pace.
The document, issued by committee chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso and viewed by Reuters, featured ideas such as a global list of plastic products to be managed and a financial mechanism to help fund developing countries act on the treaty.
"The high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution ... represent a serious environmental and human health problem," the document said.
It mentioned, but did not confirm, some of the most divisive tasks, such as whether the treaty will set a global target to cut output of primary plastic polymers or skip it altogether, and left undecided how rich nations would contribute to a fund.
"A global target to reduce plastic production is in (the document)," said Graham Forbes, who led the Greenpeace delegation to the talks.
"Keeping this in the final treaty text must be a redline for any country serious about ending plastic pollution."
The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) representing makers of plastic, backs governments' efforts to finalise the deal, said its spokesperson, Stewart Harris, adding that the body wanted to hasten a circular economy for plastics.
Nations which produce petrochemicals, such as Saudi Arabia, oppose efforts to cap plastic production, despite the protests of low- and middle-income nations that bear the brunt of plastic pollution.
While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has also been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps in favour of efforts to reduce plastic waste, such as recycling.
The chairman's move came after several participants had expressed frustration at the slow pace of the talks, amid disagreements over procedure, multiple proposals and some efforts to return to ground covered in the past.
International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation
- Court to give opinion on legal obligations around climate
- ICJ opinion is non-binding but likely to influence litigation
While the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) are non-binding, they are legally and politically significant. Experts say the ICJ’s eventual opinion on climate change will likely be cited in climate change-driven lawsuits in courts from Europe to Latin America and beyond.
The hearings begin a week after developing nations denounced as woefully inadequate an agreement reached at the COP29 summit for countries to provide $300 billion in annual climate finance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, said it was imperative fossil fuels be phased out and more money provided to poorer nations bearing the brunt of climate change, such as his Pacific island nation.
“We’re not seeing that in the outcome of the COPs,” Regenvanu told Reuters.
“We are hoping (the ICJ) can provide a new avenue to break through the inertia we experience when trying to talk about climate justice,” he added.
Fiji’s Attorney General Graham Leung called the hearings a historic opportunity for small island developing states in their quest for climate change justice.
CLIMATE LITIGATION
Climate litigation is on the rise.
Earlier this year, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. But it also rejected two other cases, pointing to the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation.
Vanuatu, one of the small developing nations that pushed for an ICJ advisory opinion, says it disproportionately suffers the effects of climate change as a result of increasingly intense storms and rising sea levels.
Vanuatu will be the first of 98 countries and twelve international organizations to present arguments to the ICJ, also known as the World Court. It is the United Nations’ highest court for resolving international disputes between states and can be tasked by the UN General Assembly to give advisory opinions.
In 2023, the assembly asked it for a formal opinion on questions including the legal obligations of states to protect the climate system and whether large states that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions may be liable for damages, in particular to small island nations.
“As COP29 failed to provide a clear direction for climate justice and ambition, any developments from the ICJ will now only become more weighty,” said Lea Main-Klingst, a lawyer with ClientEarth.
Aside from small island states and numerous Western and developing countries, the court will also hear from the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, the United States and China. Oil producer group OPEC will also give its views.
The hearings will start at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) local time on Monday and run until Dec. 13. The court’s opinion will be delivered in 2025.
Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week
- Representatives from more than 100 countries, organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice
- Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change
THE HAGUE: The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?“
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers.”
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organizations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.
Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra
- The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven
- Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas
JAKARTA: Indonesian rescuers on Friday searched for survivors buried in three cars and bus at the base of a cliff after flash floods and landslides in North Sumatra province killed at least 29 people.
Torrential rain for the past week in the province has triggered flash floods and landslides in four different districts, Indonesia’s disaster agency has said.
The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven, Hadi Wahyudi, the spokesperson of North Sumatra police told Reuters on Friday.
At least five cars, one bus, and one truck were trapped at the base of a cliff following the landslide. On Friday, police and rescuers focused their search for missing people on three cars and one bus buried in mud.
“We still don’t know how many people who were still trapped,” Hadi said.
In other districts, landslides over the weekend killed 20 people and rescuers will keep searching for two missing people until Saturday.
Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas, said Sariman Sitorus, spokesperson for the local search agency.
The floods forced a delay in votes for regional elections in some areas in Medan on Wednesday.
Extreme weather is expected in Indonesia toward the end of 2024, as the La Nina phenomenon increases rainfalls across the tropical archipelago, the country’s weather agency has warned.
UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case
- The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud
- After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police
LONDON: British Transport Minister Louise Haigh resigned on Friday over a decade-old fraud conviction for claiming her cellphone had been stolen.
In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Haigh said “I remain totally committed to our political project, but I now believe it will be best served by my supporting you from outside government.”
“I appreciate that whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are both committed,” she wrote.
The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud after she reported that a work cellphone had been stolen after she was mugged in 2013. She later said she had mistakenly listed it among the stolen items.
After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police. Haigh pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation and was given a conditional discharge.
In a statement before her resignation, Haigh said that “under the advice of my solicitor I pleaded guilty -– despite the fact this was a genuine mistake from which I did not make any gain. The magistrates accepted all of these arguments and gave me the lowest possible outcome (a discharge) available.”
Haigh, 37, has represented a district in Sheffield, northern England, in Parliament since 2015 and was named to the key transport post after Starmer’s center-left Labour party was elected in July.
