In Belgian town, monuments expose a troubled colonial legacy

In this Wednesday, June 10, 2020 file photo, a statue of Belgium's King Leopold II is smeared with red paint and graffiti in Brussels. Five mixed-race women born in Congo when the country was under Belgian rule who were taken away from their Black mothers have filed a lawsuit for crimes against humanity targeting the Belgian state. (AP)
Updated 27 June 2020
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In Belgian town, monuments expose a troubled colonial legacy

  • Protests sweeping the world that followed the death of George Floyd are focusing attention on Europe’s colonial past and racism of the present

HALLE, Belgium: For a long time, few people in the small Belgian town of Halle paid much attention to the monuments. They were just fixtures in a local park, tributes to great men of the past.
But these are very different times, and yesterday’s heroes can be today’s racist villains.
And so it was that three weeks ago, a bust of Leopold II, the Belgian king who has been held responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese, was spattered in red paint, labeled “Murderer,” and later knocked off its pedestal.
Nearby, a pale sandstone statue formally known as the “Monument to the Colonial Pioneers” has stood for 93 years. It depicts a naked Congolese boy offering a bowl of fruit in gratitude to Lt. Gen. Baron Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude, a Belgian soldier accused of atrocities in Africa.
These monuments, and others across Europe, are coming under scrutiny as never before, no longer a collective blind spot on the moral conscience of the public. Protests sweeping the world that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed last month by Minneapolis police, are focusing attention on Europe’s colonial past and racism of the present.
Eric Baranyanka, a 60-year-old musician who came to Halle as a refugee from Belgium’s African colony of Burundi when was 3, said he has always found the statue of Jacques “humiliating.”
“I had this pride being who I was. It was in complete contradiction with that statue,” he said.
But Halle Mayor Marc Snoeck appears to be more representative of his citizenry. He said he “never really noticed” the monuments until an anti-colonial group raised awareness of them a dozen years ago in the town of 40,000 people about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Brussels.
“I’m part of an older generation and I heard precious little during my studies about colonialism, the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo,” said the 66-year-old Snoeck, noting he was taught about how Europeans brought civilization, not exploitation and death, to the heart of Africa.
Statues of Leopold, who reigned from 1865 to 1909, have been defaced in a half-dozen cities, including Antwerp, where one was burned and had to be removed for repairs. It’s unclear if it will ever come back.
But Leopold is hardly the only focus. Snoeck found it remarkable that protesters have not targeted the statue of Jacques, which he called “possibly even worse.”
The mayor said the statue is known locally as “The White Negro,” because of the hue of the sandstone depicting the Congolese youth offering the fruit to the colonial-era Belgian who condoned or was responsible for murders, rapes and maiming workers in the Congo Free State.
Baranyanka was lovingly raised by a white foster family in Halle and said he never experienced prejudice until after he had been in Belgium for about a decade.
His 98-year-old foster mother Emma Monsaert recalls others in town asking her if she was really going to take in a Black youth in the 1960s: “I said, ‘Why not, it is a child after all.’”
But at school, Baranyanka found out how others felt about race.
One teacher poured salt on his head, he recalled, saying it would make it whiter. When he wanted a part in a school play of the 17th century fairy tale “Puss in Boots,” he was denied a role, with a teacher telling him: “Mr. Baranyanka, in those days there were no Blacks in Europe.”
He counts himself lucky to have had a close circle of friends that survives to this day. As a teenager, he often talked to them about the monuments, his African roots and Leopold’s legacy.
“They understood, and they were grateful I explained it,” he said.
On Tuesday, Congo celebrates 60 years of independence from Belgium. The city of Ghent will remove a statue of Leopold to mark the anniversary and perhaps take a healing step forward.
Eunice Yahuma, a local leader of a group called Belgian Youth Against Racism and the youth division of the Christian Democrats, knows about Belgium’s troubled history.
“Many people don’t know the story, because it is not being told. Somehow they know, ‘Let’s not discuss this, because it is grim history,’” said Yahuma, who has Congolese roots. “It is only now that we have this debate that people start looking into this.”
The spirit of the times is different, she said.
“Black people used to be less vocal. They felt the pain, but they didn’t discuss it. Now, youth is very outspoken and we give our opinion,” Yahuma added.
History teachers like 24-year-old Andries Devogel are trying to infuse their lessons with the context of colonialism.
“Within the next decade, they will be expecting us to stress the impact of colonialism on current-day society, that colonialism and racism are inextricably linked,” Devogel said. “Is contemporary racism not the consequence of a colonial vision? How can you exploit a people if you are not convinced of their second-class status?”
The colonial era brought riches to Belgium, and the city of Halle benefited, building a rail yard that brought jobs. Native son Franz Colruyt started a business that grew into the supermarket giant Colruyt Group with 30,000 employees — one of them Baranyanka’s foster father.
Halle has escaped the violence seen in other cities from the protests, and officials would rather focus attention on its Gothic church, the Basilica of St. Martin, as well as its famous fields of bluebells and Geuze beer.
Baranyanka, who will soon stage a musical show of his life called “De Zwette,” — ”The Black One,” returned recently to the park and the monuments.
Despite the hostility and humiliation he felt as a youngster, he didn’t consider their destruction as the way to go.
“Vandalism produces nothing, perhaps only the opposite effect. And you see that suddenly such racism surges again,” he said. “It breeds polarization again. This thing of ‘us against them.’”
Devogel, the teacher, says it is the task of education “to let kids get in touch with history.”
“Otherwise, it will remain a copper bust without meaning,” he said of the Leopold II monument. “And you will never realize why, for all these people, it is so deeply insulting.”


India evacuates students from Tehran as Israel hits civilian sites

Smoke billows from an explosion in southwest Tehran on June 16, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 4 sec ago
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India evacuates students from Tehran as Israel hits civilian sites

  • About 6,000 Indian students are enrolled in Iranian universities
  • So far 110 studying in Urmia have left the country through Armenia

NEW DELHI: India’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was moving Indian students out of Tehran, as many sought safety after their universities were shut down amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes.

Israeli attacks on Iran started on Friday, when Tel Aviv hit more than a dozen sites — including key nuclear facilities, residences of military leaders, and of scientists — claiming they were aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Daily attacks have been ongoing for the past five days after Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against Israel.

As the Israeli military intensified its bombing of civilian targets, hitting Iran’s state broadcaster on Monday, stranded foreigners — including 6,000 Indian students — have been struggling to leave.

“Most of the students here were living in apartments, including me and my friend. The first blast in Tehran happened in Sa’adat Abad district, where me and my friend were living,” Hafsa Yaseen, a medical student at Shahid Beheshti University, told Arab News.

“One of our university’s nuclear scientists was martyred in these blasts. Situation is really bad.”

According to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at least 224 people have been killed and 1,481 wounded in Israeli attacks since Friday. Most of the casualties have been reported in Tehran.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed in a statement that it was moving those studying at universities in the Iranian capital “out of the city for reasons of safety.”

Yaseen was among a group of a few hundred students moved on Monday to Qom, 140 km south of the capital city.

“Me and my friend were frightened, and we just thought it’s our turn now to die. We were literally calling our parents and telling them goodbye,” she said.

“We are not even safe here, because we are still in Iran (and) anything can happen ... We are in constant fear that we might die and our families are more stressed than us. I just want to request the government of India to evacuate us from here as soon as possible.”

A group of 110 Indian students from Urmia University of Medical Sciences in northwestern Iran has already been assisted by the Indian authorities to leave through the land border with Armenia.

“All the Indian students who had crossed the Iran-Armenia border have now safely reached the capital city, Yerevan. This includes around 90 students from Kashmir Valley, along with others from various Indian states,” said Nasir Khuehami, national convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Union.

“Their flight from Armenia to Delhi is scheduled for tomorrow, with all necessary arrangements being facilitated in coordination with the Indian authorities. This comes as an immense relief to the families.”

The families of those remaining in Iran have been pleading with Indian authorities to also bring them home.

“Please save my daughters. My two daughters study (at) Shahid Beheshti University. They are in great panic — the situation in Tehran is so bad that students are in great panic,” one of the mothers, Mubeena Ali, told Arab News through tears.

“They have been shifted to Qom but they feel afraid ... They are greatly distressed. They want to be evacuated.”


Trump mulls extending travel ban to 36 more nations: source

Updated 28 sec ago
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Trump mulls extending travel ban to 36 more nations: source

  • The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries
  • The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does

WASHINGTON: The United States is considering extending its travel ban to 36 more countries, a person who has seen the memo said Monday, marking a dramatic potential expansion of entry restrictions to nearly 1.5 billion people.

The State Department early this month announced it was barring entry to citizens of 12 nations including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran and imposing a partial ban on travelers from seven other countries, reviving a divisive measure from President Donald Trump’s first term.

But expanding the travel ban to three dozen more nations, including US partners like Egypt along with other countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, appears to escalate the president’s crackdown on immigration.

The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries.

A person who has seen the document confirmed its accuracy to AFP.

It reportedly gives the governments of the listed nations 60 days to meet new requirements established by the State Department.

The countries include the most populous in Africa — Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania — as well as Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Saint Lucia, South Sudan, Syria and Vanuatu.

Should the ban expand to include all countries cited in the memo, nearly one in five people worldwide would live in a country targeted by US travel restrictions.

The 19 countries facing full or partial entry bans to the United States, combined with the 36 cited in the latest memo, account for 1.47 billion people, or roughly 18 percent of the global population.

The State Department declined to confirm the memo, saying it does not comment on internal deliberations.

But it said in a statement that “we are constantly reevaluating policies to ensure the safety of Americans and that foreign nationals follow our laws.”

When the initial ban was announced this month, Trump warned it could be expanded to other countries “as threats emerge around the world.”

The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does.

Trump said the initial measure was spurred by a recent “terrorist attack” on Jews in Colorado.

US officials said that the attack’s suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national according to court documents, was in the country illegally having overstayed a tourist visa, but that he had applied for asylum in September 2022.


Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

Updated 12 min 56 sec ago
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Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

  • At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours
  • Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said

KYIV: An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year.

At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said, destroying dozens of apartments.

Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, calling the Kyiv attack “one of the most terrifying strikes” on the capital.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said 139 people were injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko announced that Wednesday would be an official day of mourning.

The attack came after two rounds of direct peace talks failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.

Russia steps up aerial attacks

Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine with missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. Russia says it strikes only military targets.

Russia has in recent months stepped up its aerial attacks. It launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Russia also pounded Kyiv on April 24, killing at least 12 people.

The intensified long-range strikes have coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine is short-handed and needs more military support from its Western partners.

Uncertainty about US policy on the war has fueled doubts about how much help Kyiv can count on. Zelensky had been set to meet with US President Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday to press him for more help. But Trump returned early to Washington on Monday night because of tensions in the Middle East.

Ukraine tries to keep the world’s attention

Zelensky is seeking to prevent Ukraine from being sidelined in international diplomacy. Trump said earlier this month it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, but European leaders have urged him to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting a ceasefire.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it is unclear when another round of talks might take place.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s attacks during the G7 summit showed Putin’s “total disrespect” for the US and other countries.

“Russia not only rejects a ceasefire or a leaders’ meeting to find solutions and end the war. It cynically strikes Ukraine’s capital while pretending to seek diplomatic solutions,” Sybiha wrote on social media.

Ukrainian forces have hit back against Russia with their own domestically produced long-range
drones.

The Russian military said it downed 203 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia reported briefly halting flights overnight in and out of all four Moscow airports, as well as those in the cities of Kaluga, Tambov and Nizhny Novgorod as a precaution.

Overnight Russian drone strikes also struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing one person and injuring 17 others, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional administration.

Putin “is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelensky said.

Russian attack demolishes apartment building

The Russian attack delivered “direct hits on residential buildings,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement. “Rockets — from the upper floors to the basement,” it said.

A US citizen died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters.

Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block after it was struck by a ballistic missile, Klymenko said.

“We have 27 locations that were attacked by the enemy. We currently have over 2,000 people working there, rescuers, police, municipal services and doctors,” he told reporters at the scene of one attack.

Olena Lapyshniak, 49, was shaken from the strike that nearly leveled her apartment building. She heard a whistling sound and then two explosions that blew out her windows and doors.

“It’s horrible, it’s scary, in one moment there is no life,” she said. “There’s no military infrastructure here, nothing here, nothing. It’s horrible when people just die at night.”

People were wounded in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Fires broke out in two other city districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the mayor said.

Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine’s Security Service agency staged an audacious operation targeting warplanes in air bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1.


Spain says April power outage caused by ‘overvoltage’

Updated 19 min 26 sec ago
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Spain says April power outage caused by ‘overvoltage’

  • Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day
  • Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage

MADRID: A major power outage that struck the Iberian Peninsula in April was caused by “overvoltage” on the grid that led to “a chain reaction,” according to a government report released Tuesday.

The blackout had “multiple” causes, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen told reporters following a cabinet meeting, adding the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day.

Overvoltage is when there is too much electrical voltage in a network, overloading equipment. It can be caused by surges in networks due to oversupply or lightning strikes, or when protective equipment is insufficient or fails.

When faced with overvoltage on networks protective systems shut down parts of the grid, potentially leading to widespread power outages.

Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage cut Internet and telephone connections, halted trains, shut businesses and plunged cities into darkness across Spain and Portugal as well as briefly affecting southwestern France.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the formation of an inquiry commission led by the Ecological Transition Ministry shortly after the blackout, urging residents not to speculate until detailed results were available.

He had warned that the probe’s conclusions could take several months, given the complexity of the incident.

Aagesen singled out the role of the Spanish grid operator REE and certain energy companies she did not name which disconnected their plants “inappropriately... to protect their installations.”

She also pointed to “insufficient voltage control capacity” on the system that day, due in part to a programming flaw, stressing that Spain’s grid is theoretically robust enough to handle such situations.

Due to these misjudgments “we reached a point of no return with an uncontrollable chain reaction” that could only have been controlled if steps had been taken beforehand to absorb the overvoltage problems, she added.


UK slaps new sanctions on Russia shadow fleet

Updated 33 min 37 sec ago
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UK slaps new sanctions on Russia shadow fleet

  • Security analysts say the fleet of aging vessels is used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions that ban it from selling oil
  • Hundreds of vessels have now been sanctioned by the European Union and the UK

LONDON: The UK on Tuesday tightened its sanctions on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, slapping bans on 20 more ships and blacklisting 10 other people or bodies involved in energy and shipping.

Security analysts say the fleet of aging vessels is used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions that ban it from selling oil.

Hundreds of vessels have now been sanctioned by the European Union and the UK since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The UK’s new additions to its assets freeze list include the Orion Star group and Rosneft Marine (UK), both said to be significant to Russia’s energy sector, as well as the deep-sea research unit at the Russian defense ministry.

Although Russia’s economy has not collapsed under the sanctions, officials insist they are having an impact.

“Russia’s economy is slowing and the Kremlin has been forced to make increasingly painful trade-offs to support its war effort,” Downing Street said in a statement.

It claimed the sanctions imposed in the last three years “have deprived Russia of at least $450 billion.”

“By one estimate, that’s equivalent to around two more years of funding for the invasion,” it added.

The UK alone has sanctioned over 2,300 individuals, entities and ships since the start of the
invasion.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he wanted to hone the new sanctions with Britain’s other G7 partners meeting this week in Canada.

“We should take this moment to increase economic pressure and show President Putin it is in his — and Russia’s interests — to demonstrate he is serious about peace.”

With peace talks stalling, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to press US counterpart Donald Trump to step up sanctions on Russia at the G7 summit.

But as the conflict between Iran and Israel escalated, Trump left the summit early without meeting Zelensky, saying he had “big stuff” to do in Washington. And he has proved reluctant about new sanctions.

The EU has imposed 18 rounds of sanctions on Russia.

Downing Street said “new information” showed Western were creating “significant challenges” for Russian state enterprises, including funding shortfalls, delays in major projects, and growing debt due to high interest rates.