NEW YORK: In the United States, David Hogg is a leading campaigner for gun control, while in Europe, Greta Thunberg fights to defend the climate.
They may only be teenagers, but both have drawn worldwide followings for their clear messages and fierce commitment — symbols of a generation of surprising militancy.
Hogg, who is 18, is a leader of the March for Our Lives movement, launched by students from his high school in Parkland, Florida, where a heavily armed gunman massacred 17 people on February 14, 2018.
The movement, pushing for stricter gun control legislation, has mobilized hundreds of thousands of young Americans.
Thunberg, a pig-tailed Swedish student who looks younger even than her 16 years, has become the European face of the fight against global warming, inspiring huge crowds of young protesters to take to the streets, including in Germany, which had not seen such massive turnouts since the heady days of reunification.
Thunberg has come far from the days when she mounted a brave but lonely protest standing on the steps of the Swedish parliament. She is now mentioned as a possible Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2019.
Were she to win that lofty award, Thunberg would be the youngest laureate ever, younger even than Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who at 17 won the 2014 Nobel for her fight — even after being shot by a Taliban gunman — for education rights for girls and women.
Some members of this new generation are even more precocious. Consider American schoolgirl Alice Paul Tapper, who was only 10 in 2017 when she started her “Raise Your Hand” campaign to encourage girls not to let themselves be intimidated. The movement caught fire on social media, boosted by help from her Girl Scout troop and also by the celebrity of her father, CNN newsman Jake Tapper.
Her new book “Raise Your Hand,” published this week, briefly ranked 12th on Amazon’s list of “hot new releases.”
According to several experts, these examples illustrate a rise in youthful involvement not seen in years — akin, some say, to the activism seen during the US civil rights protests of the 1960s.
If youth has always been synonymous with protests, the trend seemed to have gone latent for years. “We went through a generation or almost two when we were not seeing a lot of activism,” said Elizabeth Matto, a Rutgers University specialist in youthful political participation.
“The teenagers we are calling Generation Z now,” she said, are showing a “real inclination to engage in expressing their political voice.”
“They are starting to recognize what a force they are to be reckoned with... a generation that wants to make things better and who does not really see their age as a barrier.”
As proof she cited the involvement of Americans aged 18 to 29 in last November’s US congressional election: some 31 percent of them voted, the highest rate in 25 years, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).
More educated than older Americans, and having grown up with — and become completely fluent in — the ways of social media, this generation knows how to organize and draw attention, said Sam Abrams, a political science professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
These young militants can quickly assemble videos that are “almost movie-quality stuff,” said Abrams, who is 39. “This generation knows how to do that and convey these stories really effectively.”
Without social media, says Hogg — who has 950,000 Twitter followers — the Parkland students could still have organized their protests “but not nearly to the scale that we did.”
But even if social media make it far easier to attract attention or draw followers, they offer no guarantee that this young generation can effect real change, Abrams emphasized.
“The big question always is: can they sustain a movement?“
“Social change,” he added, “it is slow, it takes years.”
With college students coming and going — and graduating — Abrams says he has seen many student movements burst onto the scene, and then lose steam and fade away.
Nineteen-year-old Zanagee Artis, who last year co-founded the Zero Hour coalition for climate and environmental justice, admits that after months of intensive activism, he shed most of his leadership responsibilities after starting his studies in political science and the environment at Brown University.
“Older youths like me,” he told AFP, “we are going to be more busy and will have less time” for activism.
“But I don’t have any doubt that Zero Hour will be able to continue,” he said. “With the rise of social media, we are able to connect with a lot more youths than before.”
David Hogg said that after taking a “gap year” to travel across the country, he is ready to ease off on the gas as he heads to Harvard University.
“I’ll be less involved, but we’ll be just as effective,” he said. “There are many other people involved, and we have a movement that’s growing stronger every day.”
Hogg said he is quite aware that change on a subject as sensitive as US gun control could take years.
“It might take a while,” he said. “It might take kids running for Congress who are not old enough yet.”
Gun control, climate: a new US generation takes to the barricades
Gun control, climate: a new US generation takes to the barricades
- The March for Our Lives movement is pushing for stricter gun control legislation in the US
- The European face in the fight against global warming is a 16-year-old girl
South Korean protesters brave cold to demand Yoon Suk Yeol’s ouster as detention deadline looms
- Dozens of anti-corruption agency investigators and police attempted to execute a detainment warrant against Yoon on Friday
- But there was tense standoff with the presidential security service that lasted more than five hours
SEOUL: Hundreds of South Koreans, bundled up against freezing temperatures and snow, rallied overnight into Sunday near the residence of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, calling for his ouster and arrest, as authorities prepared to renew their efforts to detain him over his short-lived martial law decree.
Dozens of anti-corruption agency investigators and police attempted to execute a detainment warrant against Yoon on Friday but retreated from his residence in Seoul after a tense standoff with the presidential security service that lasted more than five hours.
The one-week warrant for his detention is valid through Monday. There were no immediate indications that anti-corruption authorities were ready to send investigators back to the residence as of Sunday afternoon. Staff from the presidential security service were seen installing barbed wire near the gate and along the hills leading up to Yoon’s residence over the weekend, possibly in preparation for another detention attempt.
A Seoul court last Tuesday issued a warrant to detain Yoon and a separate warrant to search his residence after the embattled president repeatedly defied authorities by refusing to appear for questioning and obstructing searches of his office. But enforcing them is complicated as long as Yoon remains in his official residence.
Investigators from the country’s anti-corruption agency are weighing charges of rebellion after the conservative president, apparently frustrated that his policies were blocked by a legislature dominated by the liberal opposition, declared martial law on Dec. 3 and dispatched troops to surround the National Assembly.
The Assembly overturned the declaration within hours in a unanimous vote and impeached Yoon on Dec. 14, accusing him of rebellion, while South Korean anti-corruption authorities and public prosecutors opened separate investigations into the events.
If the anti-corruption agency manages to detain Yoon, it will likely ask a court for permission to make a formal arrest. Otherwise, Yoon will be released after 48 hours.
The Corruption Investigation for High-Ranking Officials, which is leading a joint investigation with police and military investigators, says detaining Yoon would be “virtually impossible” as long as he is protected by the presidential security service. The agency has urged the country’s acting leader, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, to instruct the service to comply with their execution of the detainment warrant, but Choi has yet to publicly comment on the issue.
The chiefs and deputy chiefs of the presidential security service defied summonses on Saturday from police, who planned to question them over the suspected obstruction of official duty following Friday’s events.
Hundreds of anti-Yoon protesters rallied for hours near the gates of the presidential residence from Saturday evening to Sunday, voicing frustration over the failed detention attempt and demanding stronger efforts to bring Yoon into custody. Separated by police barricades and buses, pro-Yoon protesters were gathering in nearby streets, denouncing his impeachment and vowing to block any efforts to detain him.
Yoon’s lawyers have challenged the detention and search warrants against the president, saying they cannot be enforced at his residence due to a law that protects locations potentially linked to military secrets from search without the consent of the person in charge — which would be Yoon. They also argue the anti-corruption office lacks the legal authority to investigate rebellion charges and that police officers don’t have the legal authority to assist in detaining Yoon.
While the presidential security act mandates protection for Yoon, it does not authorize the presidential security service to block court-ordered detainments. The service’s attempts to block the execution of the warrant may amount to an obstruction of official duty, according to Park Sung-bae, an attorney specializing in criminal law. While the president mostly has immunity from prosecution while in office, the protection does not extend to allegations of rebellion or treason.
The agency said its outnumbered investigators had several scuffles with presidential security forces that threatened their safety and expressed “serious regret” that Yoon was not complying with the legal process.
After getting around a military unit guarding the residence’s grounds, the agency’s investigators and police were able to approach within 200 meters (yards) of Yoon’s residential building but were stopped by a barricade comprising around 10 vehicles and approximately 200 members of the presidential security forces and troops. The agency said it wasn’t able to visually confirm whether Yoon was inside the residence.
The Defense Ministry says the troops at Yoon’s official residence are under the control of the presidential security service. Kim Seon-ho, the acting defense minister, conveyed his concern to the presidential security service, saying that deploying military personnel to block the execution of the detention warrant would be “inappropriate” and requesting that the troops aren’t placed in a position where they might confront police, according to the ministry.
Yoon’s defense minister, police chief and several top military commanders have already been arrested over their roles in the period of martial law.
Yoon’s presidential powers have been suspended since the National Assembly voted to impeach him on Dec. 14. Yoon’s fate now lies with the Constitutional Court, which has begun deliberations on whether to uphold the impeachment and formally remove Yoon from office or reinstate him.
More records found linking Credit Suisse, Nazi accounts: US panel
- US Senate Budget Committee says Credit Suisse concealed information during previous inquiries into Nazi-controlled bank accounts during World War II
- Credit Suisse, now a subsidiary of investment bank UBS, agreed in 1998 to take part in a $1.25 billion settlement of lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors
WASHINGTON: An investigation by a US Senate panel has found that troubled investment bank Credit Suisse concealed information during previous inquiries into Nazi-controlled bank accounts during World War II.
Tens of thousands of documents discovered during an ongoing examination have provided new proof of the existence of account holders linked to the Nazis, the Senate Budget Committee said in a statement released Saturday.
The bank did not reveal the existence of these accounts during previous investigations, notably in the 1990s, the committee said.
Credit Suisse, now a subsidiary of investment bank UBS, agreed in 1998 to take part in a $1.25 billion settlement of lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors, but it has been accused of not being completely open about its past dealings with Nazis.
The Senate committee said Saturday that one set of newly discovered files, including 3,600 physical documents and 40,000 microfilms, was found to have a “high relevance rate” of Nazi connections.
It said the revelations stem from an interim report by former prosecutor Neil Barofsky, who was fired as an “independent ombudsperson” by the bank in 2022 after being pressed to limit his investigative work.
Barofsky was reinstated in the role in 2023 “as a result of the Committee’s investigation,” and after UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse.
In a letter to the panel released Saturday, Barofsky noted the “extraordinary level of cooperation that Credit Suisse, under the leadership of UBS, has provided” since he rejoined the company.
But he said Credit Suisse had yet to share all the information it held.
The Barofsky team has discovered, among other things, accounts controlled by high-ranking SS officers, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In his letter, Barofsky highlighted “especially noteworthy” discoveries from a Credit Suisse research department.
“Numerous client files in the sample are marked with a stamp stating ‘Amerikanische schwarze Liste’ — meaning ‘American Black List’ — a list maintained by the Allies of individuals and companies that were directly financed by, or were known to regularly trade with, Axis powers,” he wrote.
“One file bearing this stamp relates to an entity that was involved in selling looted Jewish assets.”
Contacted by AFP, UBS said it was committed to providing a complete record of the former Nazi-linked accounts in Credit Suisse’s predecessor banks.
It said it would provide Barofsky with all necessary assistance in his work to shed light “on this tragic period.”
The Senate panel’s investigation is continuing.
End of Ukraine gas transit deal plunges Moldova’s pro-Russian region into crisis
- Kyiv refuses to renew the deal, leaving the breakaway region of Transdniestria without gas
- With longer rolling blackouts, residents are left without heating, hot water
KYIV: The pro-Russian breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, left without Russian gas supplies no longer transiting through neighboring Ukraine, faced longer periods of rolling power cuts on Saturday, local authorities said.
Flows of Russian gas via Ukraine to central and eastern Europe stopped on New Year’s Day after a transit deal expired between the warring countries and Kyiv refused to extend it.
Transdniestria, a mainly Russian-speaking enclave which has lived side-by-side with Moldova since breaking away from it in the last days of Soviet rule, received gas from Russian giant Gazprom through the pipeline crossing Ukraine.
The gas was used to operate a thermal plant which provided electricity locally and for much of Moldova under the control of the pro-European central government.
The region’s self-styled president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said rolling power cuts in various districts would be extended to four hours on Sunday.
Hour-long cuts were first imposed on Friday evening after heating and hot water supplies were curtailed. The cuts were then extended to three hours on Saturday.
“Yesterday’s introduction of rolling cuts was a test. And it confirmed that an hour-long break to keep the electrical supply system operating was insufficient,” Krasnoselsky wrote. “The power generated is not covering sharply rising demand.”
All industries except those producing food have been shut down. The official Telegram news channel of the region’s separatist authorities announced the official closure on Saturday of a steel mill and bakery in the town of Rybnitsa.
Regional officials announced new measures to help residents, especially the elderly, and warned that overnight temperatures would fall to -10 Celsius (+14 Fahrenheit). Residents were told not to put strain on the region’s mobile phone network.
Using firewood
The news channel warned against using heaters in disrepair after two residents died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a stove. Online pictures showed servicemen loading up trucks with firewood for distribution.
“Don’t put off gathering in firewood,” Krasnoselsky told residents. “It is better to ensure your supply in advance, especially since the weather is favorable so far.”
Moldova’s government blames Russia for the crisis and has called on Gazprom to ship gas through the Turkstream pipeline and then through Bulgaria and Romania.
Russia denies using gas as a weapon to coerce Moldova, and blames Kyiv for refusing to renew the gas transit deal.
The Transdniestria power cuts are a problem for Moldova particularly because the enclave is home to a power plant which provides most of the power for government-controlled areas of Moldova at a fixed and low price.
Prime Minister Dorin Recean said on Friday his country faced a security crisis after Transdniestria imposed the rolling blackouts, but he also said the Chisinau government had prepared alternative arrangements, with a mixture of domestic production and electricity imports from Romania.
Even before the halt of supplies via Ukraine, Gazprom had said it would suspend exports to Moldova on Jan. 1 because of what Russia says are unpaid Moldovan debts of $709 million. Moldova disputes that and put the figure at $8.6 million.
Mali’s army claims arrest of Daesh group leader
BAMAKO: Mali’s army said Saturday its forces had arrested two men, one of them a leading figure in the Sahel branch of the Daesh group.
The army announced they had also killed several of the group’s fighters during an operation in the north of the country.
A statement from the army said they had arrested “Mahamad Ould Erkehile alias Abu Rakia,” as well as “Abu Hash,” who they said was a leading figure in the group.
They blamed him for coordinating atrocities against people in the Menaka and Gao regions in the northeast of the country, as well as attacks against the army.
Mali has faced profound unrest since 2012 linked both to militants associated with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, and to local criminal gangs.
The country’s military rulers have broken ties with former colonial power France and turned, militarily and politically, to Russia.
Iran protests Afghan dam project in new water dispute
- The dam in Herat province will store approximately 54 million cubic meters of water, irrigate 13,000 hectares of agricultural land and generate two megawatts of electricity
TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry said on Friday that an upstream dam being built by neighboring Afghanistan on the Harirud River restricts water flow and could be in violation of bilateral treaties.
Water rights have long been a source of friction in ties between the two countries, which share a more than 900-kilometer (560-mile) border.
Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesman for Tehran’s foreign ministry, voiced on Friday “strong protest and concern over the disproportionate restriction of water entering Iran” due to the Pashdan Dam project.
He said in a statement that the Iranian concerns had been communicated “in contact with relevant Afghan authorities.”
“Exploitation of water resources and basins cannot be carried out without respecting Iran’s rights in accordance with bilateral treaties or applicable customary principles and rules, as well as the important principle of good neighborliness and environmental considerations,” Baqaei added.
Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said in a video statement last month that the Pashdan project was “nearing completion and water storage has commenced.”
According to the video, the dam in Herat province will store approximately 54 million cubic meters of water, irrigate 13,000 hectares of agricultural land and generate two megawatts of electricity.
In April, Baradar said the dam was a “vital and strategic project” for Herat province.
The foreign ministry statement on Friday follows remarks by an Iranian water official, similarly criticizing the dam construction.
“The situation has led to social and environmental issues, particularly affecting the drinking water supply for the holy city of Mashhad,” Iran’s second-largest and home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine near the Afghan border, national water industry spokesman Issa Bozorgzadeh was quoted as saying on Monday by official news agency IRNA.
Harirud River, also known as Hari and Tejen, flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, passing along Iran’s borders with both countries.
In his statement, Baqaei said Iran expects “Afghanistan... to cooperate in continuing the flow of water from border rivers” and to “remove the obstacles created” along their path.
In May 2023, Iran issued a stern warning to Afghan officials over another dam project, on the Helmand River, saying that it violates the water rights of residents of Sistan-Baluchistan, a drought-hit province in southeastern Iran.
