PARIS: Cyclone Chido killed at least 14 people on the French Indian Ocean island territory of Mayotte, a security source told AFP Sunday in an updated provisional toll.
The storm headed for the coast of Mozambique after sweeping through Mayotte's shantytowns, with French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau warning the final toll was feared to be heavy.
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Cyclone kills 14 people in France's Mayotte: security source
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Cyclone kills 14 people in France's Mayotte: security source
Bangladesh inquiry recommends feared police unit shut over rights abuses
- The police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was slow
- But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting ec-PM Hasina’s political ambitions
DHAKA: A Bangladesh commission probing abuses during the rule of toppled leader Sheikh Hasina has recommended a much-feared armed police unit be disbanded, a senior inquiry member said Sunday.
Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighboring India on August 5 as a student-led uprising stormed the prime minister’s palace in Dhaka.
Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.
The Commission of Inquiry into Enforced Disappearances, set up by the caretaker government, said it found initial evidence that Hasina and other ex-senior officials were involved in the enforced disappearances alleged to have been carried out by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
The RAB paramilitary police force was sanctioned by the United States in 2021, alongside seven of its senior officers, in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina’s 15-year-long rule.
“RAB has never abided by the law and was seldom held accountable for its atrocities, which include enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and abductions,” Nur Khan Liton, a member of the commission, told AFP.
The commission handed its preliminary report to the leader of the interim government Muhammad Yunus late Saturday.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of the country’s largest political parties, also called for RAB’s abolition.
Senior BNP leader M. Hafizuddin Ahmed told reporters that the force was too rotten to be reformed.
“When a patient suffers from gangrene, according to medical studies, the only solution is to amputate the affected organ,” he said.
The elite police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was notoriously slow.
But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting Hasina’s political ambitions by suppressing dissent through abductions and murders.
German far-right leader questions NATO membership
- ‘Europe has been forced to implement America’s interests. We reject that’
BERLIN: The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Sunday said Germany should reconsider its membership of NATO if the US-led military alliance did not consider the interests of all European countries, including Russia.
“Europe has been forced to implement America’s interests. We reject that,” the AfD’s Tino Chrupalla told German daily Welt.
“NATO is currently not a defense alliance. A defense community must accept and respect the interests of all European countries — including Russia’s interests,” Chrupalla said.
“If NATO cannot ensure that, Germany must consider to what extent this alliance is still useful for us,” he added.
The far-right AfD is polling at around 18-19 percent ahead of snap elections on February 23, following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government last month.
The score puts the party ahead of Scholz’s Social Democrats on 16-17 percent and behind only the conservative CDU-CSU bloc, which is polling around 31-32 percent.
The AfD has little chance of forming a government because other parties have ruled out cooperation with the far-right group.
But it could continue a streak of strong electoral showings, after a landmark win in Thuringia, one of the regions in Germany’s formerly communist east.
The far-right party has been a vocal critic of Germany’s military support for Ukraine and has argued for a swift end to the war prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
“The German government must finally get to the point of wanting to end the war,” said Chrupalla, whose colleague Alice Weidel will lead the AfD into the election as the party’s candidate for chancellor.
“Russia has won this war. Reality has caught up with those who claim to want to enable Ukraine to win the war,” he said.
The conflict in Ukraine is set to be one of the major themes of the campaign, which will culminate on the eve of the third anniversary of the invasion.
Scholz has pledged sustained support for Ukraine but has counselled prudence, as he hopes to tap into pacifist currents among voters, which are particularly strong in the east.
The chancellor has resisted calls to send long-range missiles that Kyiv could use to strike Russian territory for fear of being drawn into the conflict, and recently reinitiated direct contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
DR Congo, Rwanda peace talks canceled
- Since 2021 a Rwanda-backed rebel militia has seized swathes of the eastern the Democratic Republic of Congo
- The Congolese government says that the M23 rebels only exist because of Rwandan military support
LUANDA: Talks due Sunday between the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end conflict in the eastern DRC were called off after negotiations deadlocked, officials said.
Since 2021 a Rwanda-backed rebel militia has seized swathes of the eastern DRC, displacing thousands and triggering a humanitarian crisis.
There had been high hopes that the summit hosted by Angola’s President Joao Lourenco – the African Union mediator to end the conflict – would end with a deal to end the conflict.
But around midday Sunday the head of the Angolan presidency’s media office said it would not go ahead.
“Contrary to what we expected, the summit will no longer be held today,” media officer Mario Jorge told journalists.
Lourenco was meeting with DRC leader Felix Tshisekedi and without Rwandan President Paul Kagame, he said.
The Congolese presidency said that negotiations had hit deadlock over a Rwandan demand that the DRC hold direct dialogue with the Kigali-backed and largely ethnic Tutsi M23 rebels who have since 2021 seized swathes of the eastern DRC.
“There is a stalemate because the Rwandans have set as a precondition for the signing of an agreement that the DRC hold a direct dialogue with the M23,” Giscard Kusema, the Congolese presidency spokesman present in Luanda, said.
Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said Friday that his country wanted “a firm commitment from the DRC to resume direct talks with the M23 within a well-defined framework and timeframe.”
The Congolese government says, however, that the M23 only exists because of Rwandan military support.
“If Kigali is in good faith in the negotiations and on its promise to withdraw... its troops from Congolese soil, the conflict will end with the M23, and at the same time it will stop with Rwanda,” a Congolese government source said.
Kagame and Tshisekedi last saw each other in October in Paris but did not speak, though they have maintained dialogue through the mediation of Luanda.
In early August, Angola mediated a fragile truce that stabilized the situation at the front line, but both sides continued to exchange fire and clashes have intensified since late October.
Home to a string of rival armed groups, the mineral-rich eastern DRC has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for the past three decades.
“Our country continues to face persistent rebellions, including the aggression by the Rwandan army and the M23 terrorists,” Tshisekedi said in parliament Wednesday, calling the militants and Rwanda “enemies of the Republic.”
The capital of DRC’s North Kivu province Goma, home to about one million people and another million displaced by war, is now nearly surrounded by M23 rebels and the Rwandan army.
Early in November, the two central African neighbors launched a committee to monitor ceasefire violations, led by Angola and including representatives from both the DRC and Rwanda.
Kinshasa and Kigali a few weeks later approved a document setting out the terms by which Rwandan troops will disengage from Congolese territory.
A previous draft dated in August listed the dismantling of the FDLR militia, created by ethnic Hutus involved in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, as a precondition for Rwanda’s withdrawal.
Often portrayed by Kigali as a threat to its security, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) is one of various disparate militias fighting alongside the Congolese army against the M23.
The August draft was rejected by the DRC, which demanded that the withdrawal occur at the same time as the FDLR’s dismantling.
The final strategic document, seen by AFP, planned for a period of 90 days to “conclude the neutralization of the FDLR and the lifting of Rwanda’s defensive measures.”
Germany warns Assad supporters involved in atrocities in Syria against trying to flee there
- Germany has been a major destination for Syrian refugees over the past decade, and several hundred thousand Syrian nationals live there
BERLIN: Germany’s foreign minister is warning anyone involved in atrocities for the ousted Syrian government against seeking refuge in her country, saying they would face “the full force of the law.”
Germany has been a major destination for Syrian refugees over the past decade, and several hundred thousand Syrian nationals live there. In rulings since 2021, former Syrian secret police officers already have been convicted in Germany for overseeing or facilitating the abuse of detainees.
“To any of (former President Bashar) Assad’s torturers who might be considering fleeing to Germany now, I can only say clearly: We will bring all the regime’s henchmen to account for their terrible crimes with the full force of the law,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told Sunday’s edition of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Baerbock called for international security authorities and intelligence services to work closely together.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany is “extremely vigilant” and pointed to border checks that the country already has put in place on its frontiers as it tries to reduce irregular migration.
She told Bild am Sonntag that “no one who participated in atrocities is safe from prosecution here.” She said the convictions already handed down show that Germany pursues such crimes rigorously and should act as a deterrent against people involved in them going there.
More broadly, German officials have stressed that many well-integrated arrivals of recent years will be welcome to stay after the removal of Assad. That was followed by some talk of Syrians going home, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged in a video released Friday “deeply unsettled” them.
“Anyone who is working here, who is well integrated, is and remains welcome in Germany,” he said. “That goes without saying.”
“Some of the refugees hope they can soon return to their homeland. We will support that as soon as the situation allows,” he added. But “only the coming days, weeks and months will show what direction Syria takes after Assad.”
Francis makes first visit by a pope to Corsica
- Tens of thousands of people are expected to welcome Pope Francis in Ajaccio
- Around 90 percent of Corsica’s 350,000 inhabitants are Catholic
AJACCIO, France: Pope Francis arrived in Corsica, a stronghold of the Catholic faith, on Sunday, with locals hotly anticipating the first-ever trip by a pontiff to the French Mediterranean island.
Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing his white vestments and skullcap, a smiling Francis was greeted on the tarmac by French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau and a military band as he emerged from the papal plane.
Television images showed him handing local children small gifts after they brought him flowers.
In a packed timetable for the 87-year-old pope, Francis will speak at a congress on religion in the Mediterranean, hold an Angelus prayer and celebrate an open-air mass during the one-day visit.
He will also meet President Emmanuel Macron before his departure around 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).
Tens of thousands of people are expected to welcome Francis in Ajaccio, capital of what is popularly known as the “Ile de Beaute” (Island of Beauty).
The city was decked out in decorations in the papal colors, yellow and white, while cars had been banished from central streets with parking bans.
Around 2,000 police reinforcements were sent to Ajaccio to beef up security.
Francis’s short trip, based around a congress on faith in the Mediterranean region, comes just a week after he snubbed the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris five years after a devastating fire.
The relaunch was attended by a long list of bigwigs, royalty and world leaders, including US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Francis declined the French government’s invitation to attend.
But he agreed to the Corsica trip hosted by the island’s popular, media-savvy cardinal, 56-year-old Francois-Xavier Bustillo.
“Corsica has been preparing to host (Francis) for a long time,” Bustillo told AFP this week.
Although “it’s a poor diocese... we’ll manage a welcome worthy of the pope” thanks to donations from businesses and individual churchgoers, he added.
Corsica’s prefect Jerome Filippini said that the visit would also cost the French state “several million euros” over its few hours.
Workers have repainted the facade of Ajaccio’s Notre-Dame de l’Assomption cathedral and built a wheelchair ramp for Francis, who has limited mobility, to enter by its main door.
New pews have been delivered and yellow-and-white flags hung behind the altar.
Near the cathedral, a colorful street-art style fresco by Ajaccio artists shows Francis in front of stained-glass windows and a map of Corsica.
Francis, who will turn 88 two days after his trip, will make two speeches and celebrate mass at an open-air theater.
He is also expected to greet the crowds from his popemobile in Ajaccio’s streets.
“We’re proud, it’s a privilege for (the pope) to come here rather than Paris,” said Paule Negroni, a 52-year-old bookshop owner.
Around 90 percent of Corsica’s 350,000 inhabitants are Catholic, according to the local Church.
Francis “comes to see poor people and children, he’s very popular,” said Helene Politi, who will be one of 250 people singing for Francis at mass.
The pope has made several visits around the Mediterranean, from the Greek island of Lesbos to Malta and Sicily.
But this is the first visit by a pope to Corsica, a French region with a distinctive identity, fierce independence movement and a special constitutional status currently under discussion between Paris and local elected officials.
It is Francis’s third visit to France as pope, after eastern city Strasbourg in 2014 and Mediterranean port Marseille last year — although none has been an official state visit to the country.
Some have seen that as a sign of his disapproval of French policy changes away from Church doctrine during his papacy, including on gay marriage and an ongoing public debate about assisted dying.
Some French Catholics have expressed disappointment that the pope stayed away from Notre Dame’s grand reopening.
Francis’s defenders highlight that the pontiff, concerned with the world’s marginalized people, largely shuns capital cities and sumptuous receptions.
Born in Argentina, he has never visited Spain, Britain or Germany as pope.
Even in the Vatican, he prefers closed-door audiences with pilgrims, homeless people or migrants to meetings with the powerful.
Recent health problems have not kept the pope from looking in good form in recent months.
The Corsica visit will be his 47th overseas visit since his 2013 election and the third in 2024.
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