Britain and Vietnam signed a free trade agreement on Tuesday, Vietnam’s trade ministry said, days before Britain completes its transition out of the European Union.The deal, which will for Britain replace the existing EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), will take effect on Dec. 31, the ministry said in a statement.Trade between Vietnam and Britain has risen by an average of 12% a year over the past decade to reach $6.6 billion last year, and the deal will help boost Vietnam’s exports of garments, footwear products, rice, seafood and wooden furniture, it said.Since leaving the EU in January, Britain has been striking out alone and negotiating new trade deals with countries to replace those the bloc had negotiated.Tuesday’s deal will ensure Britain does not lose access to preferential tariffs in one of the fastest growing and most open economies in Asia.The free trade agreement with Britain has the same provisions as those of EVFTA, the ministry said. EVFTA came into effect in August and was due to cut or eliminate 99% of tariffs on goods traded between Vietnam and the EU.”The agreement will create a framework for comprehensive, long-term and sustainable economic cooperation between the two countries,” the ministry said.
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Month: December 2020
South Sudan Concert Draws Tens of Thousands in Defiance of COVID-19 Protocols
Health experts in South Sudan are criticizing organizers of a weekend concert in Juba where tens of thousands of people gathered in clear violation of the health ministry’s COVID-19 protocols.Tanzanian music star Diamond Platnumz attracted all kinds of fans to the outdoor event at the Doctor John Garang Mausoleum, including President Salva Kiir.The vast majority of concert goers ignored health ministry and World Health Organization directives to social distance or wear masks, although President Kiir wore a face covering.Dr. Angelo Guop Kouch, director of South Sudan’s Public Health Emergency Operation Center, which manages COVID-19 cases in the country, said the gathering was not advisable, saying “health authorities should be involved when there are such activities in the country because of the crowd.”A World Health Organization epidemiologist in South Sudan, Dr. Joseph Wamala, said new strains of COVID-19 have emerged that can spread more easily in South Sudan.“The identification of this new strain is really a reason for countries to reinforce measures to limit spread through the recommended measures; using the mask, observing respiratory etiquette,” Dr. Wamala told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.To date, COVID-19 has had a relatively light impact on South Sudan, with just 3,511 confirmed cases and only 63 deaths.But that situation could quickly change, says Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Thuou Loi Cingoth. “People are dying of COVID-19 and right now we have people who are in critical condition in our facility affected by COVID-19. Now, whether we are going to go to the stage of asking the law enforcement agencies to ensure that measures against COVID-19 are adhered to by the public, I still don’t know. But it is our appeal that the public listen,” Dr. Loi told South Sudan in Focus.Saturday’s concert was an “absolute violation of our declared and official position as the Ministry of health,” Dr. Loi added.One of the concert organizers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the concert was organized by the K2 company belonging to the brother of South Sudanese businesswoman Achai Wiir, and that it was difficult to maintain protective measures because turnout was far more than organizers had anticipated.
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Prison Terms Double in Malawi Rape, Sexual Abuses Cases, Say Local Media
Courts in Malawi have started imposing stiffer penalties on perpetrators of rape and sexual abuse. The move is seen as a response to calls from various rights campaigners who have been lamenting lenient sentences given to offenders. Though excited, rights campaigners say more needs to be done.Statistics from the Malawi Police Service show that recorded cases of rape in the country have more than doubled since 2018.Figures from the National Statistics Office show that for the last three months of this year alone, sexual abuse cases have been 35 percent higher than the same period last year.Rights campaigners blame the rise on lenient penalties given to the perpetrators.Now, local media are noting a sudden trend toward longer prison terms for those convicted of rape and sexual abuse. They say the average sentence has jumped from 10 years to 20, with some perpetrators getting life imprisonment.For example, a high court in Lilongwe last week sentenced a 30-year-old man to life imprisonment for raping a 10-year-old girl and infecting her with HIV. This came a week after a court in Blantyre sentenced 42-year old man to 20 years in jail for raping his stepdaughter. She too was infected with HIV. Barbara Banda is head of the Gender Coordination Network, an NGO which has been holding protests against rising cases of gender-based violence.“We are happy that we have gotten into this level where we can see the biggest punishment that can be given by the courts. But what is worrying is that we continue to see the cases surface every day which means that these sentences are not a complete deterrent to addressing increased GBV and defilement,” she said.Banda said the focus on should be changing mindsets that can cause sexual abuses. Some Malawians falsely believe that having sex with a minor can cure HIV or will somehow bring great wealth.Justice Zione Ntaba is a judge at the High Court of Malawi and the national program coordinator for the Women Judges Association of Malawi or WOJAM.WOJAM has partnered with other organizations to sponsor traveling courts, so people can see justice being carried out with their own eyes.She believes this is important to deterring sexual crimes.“Apart from stiffer sentences, the biggest issue for us in terms of crime reduction is ensuring that justice is seen when the crime is done, because that is what actually changes people’s mindset. It is the aspect of seeing a person who has committed a crime go through the system and get convicted, and that will bring mindset change,” she said.Justice Ntaba said she also thinks rising cases of sexual abuse can also be reduced by investing in crime prevention measures.Malawi’s Ministry of Gender said it has partnered with various organizations including Malawi Police Service in a national awareness campaign against sexual abuse and gender based violence.
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India Conducts Trial Run of Coronavirus Vaccination Drive
India has conducted a two-day trial run for a mass coronavirus vaccination drive expected to begin in January. As the world’s second worst-hit country witnesses a huge decline in daily new infections, there are hopes that immunizations will protect it from a second wave.In the drive that took place in the states of Punjab, Assam, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, in four corners of the vast country, authorities tested everything from the cold chain infrastructure and delivery systems to storage platforms on Monday and Tuesday.Vaccination booths connected to cold chain points were set up in hospitals and health centers in the four states. Vaccinators were instructed on how to store and administer the shots while health workers acted as dummy beneficiaries during what was dubbed a “mock run.”India’s immunization drive is expected to begin shortly after it grants authorization for a vaccine. The drug regulator is considering three vaccines – AstraZeneca’s, Pfizer/BioNTech’s and one developed by a domestic company, Bharat Biotech, for emergency approval.The AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to get the green light, according to Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India. The company began manufacturing the vaccine in India months ago in expectation that it will be successful in preventing COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.“The emergency use authorization by the U.K. drug regulator for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 is expected by December end or first week of January. In India too, we are hoping for regulatory approval for the vaccine in a few days,” Poonawalla told reporters Monday.The expectation of an early rollout is bringing a glimmer of hope in a country where an inadequate health system has struggled to cope with the pandemic.“We can see the nightmare dissipating. Any reliable vaccine is good enough; they will help life limp back to normalcy,” says prominent virologist T. Jacob John. “It is especially important for senior citizens, who are most at risk of suffering from severe complications if they get COVID-19.”Health workers collect personal data during a door-to-door survey for the first shot of COVID-19 vaccine for people above 50 years of age and those with comorbidities, in a village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, Dec. 14, 2020.Poonawalla has said most of the supply of the 50 million doses that his company has stockpiled in recent months will be distributed within the country. The company, which is the world’s largest vaccine producer, says it expects to ramp up manufacturing to 100 million doses a month by March.India has set a target of vaccinating 300 million people over the next eight months, targeting front-line health care workers and senior citizens.Health authorities have said they will focus on vaccinating a “critical mass” of people to break the chain of transmission of COVID-19 that has infected more than 10.2 million people in the country and claimed 148,000 lives. On Tuesday, the country reported nearly 16,500 new infections — the lowest tally in more than six months.“India saw one gigantic wave unlike other countries that have witnessed second and third waves,” says virologist John. “The pandemic here is like a mountain; it was a slow, six-month climb to the peak that came in September. Now we are witnessing a slow decline to the valley which we will reach in March,” says John. “Hopefully, we will not see another wave.”A government-appointed committee of experts had said in October that the pandemic will have run its course by February.
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‘Many Injured’ as Strong Earthquake Strikes Croatia
An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 struck a town in Croatia on Tuesday, with the emergency services saying many people had been injured and video footage showing people being rescued from rubble near the epicenter.The GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences said the quake hit at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).The N1 news channel reported that the epicenter was in the town of Petrinja, 50 km from Croatia’s capital Zagreb.N1 quoted a Petrinja town official as saying that a 12-year old child in Petrinja had been killed, but gave no details.It showed footage of rescuers there pulling out a man and a child from the debris. Both were alive.Other footage showed a house with a roof caved in. The reporter said she did not know if anyone was inside.Tomislav Fabijanic, head of emergency medical service in Sisak near Petrinja, said there were many injured in Petrinja and in Sisak.”There are fractures, there are concussions and some had to be operated on,” he said,Slovenia’s STA news agency said that the country’s sole nuclear power plant which is 100 km from the epicenter was shut down as a precaution.There was no further information available on casualties.The quake could be felt in the capital Zagreb, where people rushed onto the streets, some strewn with broken roof tiles and other debris. It was also felt in neighboring Bosnia and Serbia.On Monday a magnitude 5.2 earthquake hit central Croatia, also near Petrinja. In March, an earthquake of magnitude 5.3 hit Zagreb causing one death and injuring 27 people.
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French Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Dies at 98
French couturier Pierre Cardin, who made his name by selling designer clothes to the masses, and his fortune by being the first to exploit that name as a brand for selling everything from cars to perfume, died on Tuesday aged 98. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Cardin drew scorn and admiration from fellow fashion designers for his brash business sense, and influenced catwalks with his space-age, futuristic bubble dresses and geometrical cuts and patterns. Cardin, who was a mentor to designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, was active in fashion circles until the last, still taking young designers under his wing, attending parties and events and regularly visiting his Paris office by Jaguar. FILE – French fashion designer Pierre Cardin poses in front of his 1954-1956-1957 fashion creations in his museum called “Past-Present-Future” in Paris, Nov. 12, 2014.Cardin was the first designer to sell clothes collections in department stores in the late 1950s, and the first to enter the licensing business for perfumes, accessories and even food – which later drove profits for many other fashion houses. “It’s all the same to me whether I am doing sleeves for dresses or table legs,” a telling quote on his website once read. Hard as it may be to imagine decades later, Armani chocolates, Bulgari hotels and Gucci sunglasses are all based on Cardin’s realization that a fashion brand’s glamour had endless merchandising potential. Over the years his name has been stamped on razor blades, household goods, and tacky accessories – even cheap boxer shorts. He once said it would not bother him to have his initials, PC, etched into rolls of toilet paper, and he was also the inspiration for a phallus-like perfume flask. His detractors accused him of destroying the value of his brand and the notion of luxury in general. But he seemed largely unaffected by criticism. “I had a sense for marketing my name,” Cardin told Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in 2007. “Does money spoil one’s ideas? I don’t dream of money after all, but while I’m dreaming, I’m making money. It’s never been about the money.” He maintained that he built his business empire without ever asking a bank for a loan. Born near Venice on July 2, 1922, to French parents of Italian descent, Cardin was educated in the not-so-glamorous French city of Saint Etienne. He went to work for a tailor in nearby Vichy at age 17 and dreamt for a time of becoming an actor, doing some work on the stage as well as modeling and dancing professionally. ‘Beauty and the beast’ When he came to Paris in 1945, he made theatrical masks and costumes for Jean Cocteau’s film, “Beauty and the Beast,” and a year later joined the then-unknown Christian Dior. His first big commercial venture, when he teamed up with the Printemps department store in the late 1950s, led to him being briefly expelled from the rarified guild of French fashion designers, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. Couturiers in that club were forbidden at that time to show outside their Paris salons, let alone in department stores. He also blazed a trail outside France long before other fashion multinationals in search of new markets. He presented a collection in Communist China in 1979 when it was still largely closed to the outside world. And just two years after the Berlin Wall came down, in 1991, a Cardin fashion show on Moscow’s Red Square attracted a crowd of 200,000. Cardin also expanded into new businesses, buying fabled Paris restaurant Maxim’s in the 1980s and opening replica outlets around the world. He leveraged the investment further by launching Minim’s, a chain of fancy fast-food joints that reproduced the Belle Epoque decor of the original exclusive Paris eatery. His empire embraces perfumes, foods, industrial design, real estate, entertainment and even fresh flowers. True to his taste for futuristic designs, Cardin also owns the Palais des Bulles, or Bubble Palace, a residence-cum-events-venue woven into the cliffs on one of the most exclusive strips of the French riviera. Not too far away, there is also a chateau in the village of Lacoste that once belonged to the Marquis de Sade. In February this year he teamed up with a designer seven decades his junior. Pierre Courtial, 27, unveiled a collection at Cardin’s studio on Paris’s chic Rue Saint-Honore, with pieces that echoed some of the veteran designer’s geometrical esthetics. Cardin said he still rated originality above anything else. “I’ve always tried to be different, to be myself,” he told Reuters. “Whether people like it or not, that’s not what matters.”
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Each Year, 1,000 Pakistani Girls Forcibly Converted to Islam
Neha loved the hymns that filled her church with music. But she lost the chance to sing them last year when, at the age of 14, she was forcibly converted from Christianity to Islam and married to a 45-year-old man with children twice her age.She tells her story in a voice so low it occasionally fades away. She all but disappears as she wraps a blue scarf tightly around her face and head. Neha’s husband is in jail now facing charges of rape for the underage marriage, but she is in hiding, afraid after security guards confiscated a pistol from his brother in court.”He brought the gun to shoot me,” said Neha, whose last name The Associated Press is not using for her safety.Force to convertNeha is one of nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan each year, largely to pave the way for marriages that are under the legal age and non-consensual. Human rights activists say the practice has accelerated during lockdowns against the coronavirus, when girls are out of school and more visible, bride traffickers are more active on the internet and families are more in debt.The U.S. State Department this month declared Pakistan “a country of particular concern” for violations of religious freedoms — a designation the Pakistani government rejects. The declaration was based in part on an appraisal by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that underage girls in the minority Hindu, Christian and Sikh communities were “kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam … forcibly married and subjected to rape.”While most of the converted girls are impoverished Hindus from southern Sindh province, two new cases involving Christians, including Neha’s, have roiled the country in recent months.The girls generally are kidnapped by complicit acquaintances and relatives or men looking for brides. Sometimes they are taken by powerful landlords as payment for outstanding debts by their farmhand parents, and police often look the other way. Once converted, the girls are quickly married off, often to older men or to their abductors, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.Pakistani Christians protest against child marriage and forced conversion, in Karachi, Pakistan, Nov. 8, 2020. Rights groups say each year in Pakistan, as many as 1,000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam, often after being abducted or tricked.A money-making webForced conversions thrive unchecked on a money-making web that involves Islamic clerics who solemnize the marriages, magistrates who legalize the unions and corrupt local police who aid the culprits by refusing to investigate or sabotaging investigations, say child protection activists.One activist, Jibran Nasir, called the network a mafia that preys on non-Muslim girls because they are the most vulnerable and the easiest targets “for older men with pedophilia urges.”The goal is to secure virginal brides rather than to seek new converts to Islam. Minorities make up 3.6% of Pakistan’s 220 million people and often are the target of discrimination. Those who report forced conversions, for example, can be targeted with charges of blasphemy.In the feudal Kashmore region of southern Sindh province, 13-year-old Sonia Kumari was kidnapped, and a day later police told her parents she had converted from Hinduism to Islam. Her mother pleaded for her return in a video widely viewed on the internet: “For the sake of God, the Quran, whatever you believe, please return my daughter, she was forcibly taken from our home.”But a Hindu activist, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of repercussions from powerful landlords, said she received a letter that the family was forced to write. The letter claimed the 13-year-old had willingly converted and wed a 36-year-old who was already married with two children.The parents have given up.Disappeared at age 13Arzoo Raja was 13 when she disappeared from her home in central Karachi. The Christian girl’s parents reported her missing and pleaded with police to find her. Two days later, officers reported back that she had been converted to Islam and was married to their 40-year-old Muslim neighbor.In Sindh province, the age of consent for marriage is 18 years old. Arzoo’s marriage certificate said she was 19.The cleric who performed Arzoo’s marriage, Qasi Ahmed Mufti Jaan Raheemi, was later implicated in at least three other underage marriages. Despite facing an outstanding arrest warrant for solemnizing Arzoo’s marriage, he continued his practice in his ramshackle office above a wholesale rice market in downtown Karachi.Jailed for marrying childrenWhen an Associated Press reporter arrived at his office, Raheemi fled down a side stair, according to a fellow cleric, Mullah Kaifat Ullah, one of a half-dozen clerics who also performs marriages in the complex. He said another cleric is already in jail for marrying children.While Ullah said he only marries girls 18 and above, he argued that “under Islamic law a girl’s wedding at the age of 14 or 15 is fine.”Arzoo’s mother, Rita Raja, said police ignored the family’s appeals until one day she was videotaped outside the court sobbing and pleading for her daughter to be returned. The video went viral, creating a social media storm in Pakistan and prompting the authorities to step in.”For 10 days, the parents were languishing between the police station and government authorities and different political parties,” Nasir, the activist, said. “They were not being given any time … until it went viral. That is the real unfortunate thing over here.”Authorities have stepped in and arrested Arzoo’s husband, but her mother said her daughter refuses to come home. Raja said she is afraid of her husband’s family.Tricked into marriageThe girl who loved hymns, Neha, said she was tricked into the marriage by a favorite aunt, who told Neha to accompany her to the hospital to see her sick son. Her aunt, Sandas Baloch, had converted to Islam years before and lived with her husband in the same apartment building as Neha’s family.”All Mama asked when we left was ‘when will you be back?'” remembered Neha.Instead of going to the hospital, she was taken to the home of her aunt’s in-laws and told she would marry her aunt’s 45-year-old brother-in-law.”I told her I can’t, I am too young and I don’t want to. He is old,” Neha said. “She slapped me and locked me up in a room.”Neha told of being taken before two men, one who was to be her husband and the other who recorded her marriage. They said she was 19. She said she was too frightened to speak because her aunt threatened to harm her 2-year-old brother if she refused to marry.She learned of her conversion only when she was told to sign the marriage certificate with her new name — Fatima.For a week she was locked in one room. Her new husband came to her on the first night. Tears stained her blue scarf as she remembered it:”I screamed and cried all night. I have images in my mind I can’t scratch out,” she said. “I hate him.”His elder daughter brought her food each day, and Neha begged for help to escape. Although the woman was frightened of her father, she relented a week after the marriage, bringing the underage bride a burqa — the all-covering garment worn by some Muslim women — and 500 rupees (about $3). Neha fled.But when she arrived home, Neha found her family had turned against her.”I went home and I cried to my Mama about my aunt, what she said and the threats. But she didn’t want me anymore,” Neha said.Some girls seen as burden Her parents feared what her new husband might do to them, Neha said. Further, the prospects of marriage for a girl in conservative Pakistan who has been raped or married before are slim, and human rights activists say they often are seen as a burden.Neha’s family, including her aunt, all refused to talk to the AP. Her husband’s lawyer, Mohammad Saleem, insisted that she married and converted voluntarily.Neha found protection at a Christian church in Karachi, living on the compound with the pastor’s family, who say the girl still wakes screaming in the night. She hopes to go back to school one day but is still distraught.”At the beginning my nightmares were every night, but now it is just sometimes when I remember and inside I am shaking,” she said. “Before I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I don’t know what I will do. Even my mama doesn’t want me now.”
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South African President Reinstates Restrictions to Control Resurgence of COVID Cases
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he is reinstating a ban on alcohol sales and ordered the closure of all bars as a necessary step to control a resurgence of the coronavirus, including a new variant of the virus.During a televised address Monday night, Ramaphosa also announced residents will remain under a nighttime curfew, meaning residents must be inside their home from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. Medical and security workers are excluded from the curfew.Following an emergency meeting with his Cabinet and the National Coronavirus Command Council, Ramaphosa said all indoor and outdoor gatherings will be prohibited for 14 days from midnight Monday, except for funerals and restaurants, museums, gyms, casinos.Ramaphosa also said anyone caught not wearing a mask in a public place would face a fine and possible jail sentence.So far, South Africa has recorded 1,004,413 coronavirus cases and 26,735 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Study: Britain Must Vaccinate 2 Million a Week to Prevent Third COVID-19 Wave
Britain must vaccinate 2 million people a week to avoid a third wave of the coronavirus outbreak, a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has concluded. Britain has had more than 71,000 deaths from the coronavirus and has recorded more than 2.3 million cases of COVID-19 infections as of late Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University data. “The most stringent intervention scenario, with tier 4 [restrictions] England-wide and schools closed during January and 2 million individuals vaccinated per week, is the only scenario we considered which reduces peak ICU burden below the levels seen during the first wave,” the study said. “In the absence of substantial vaccine roll-out, cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths in 2021 may exceed those in 2020,” it said. FILE – Staff members deliver injections of the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to patients in their cars at a drive-in vaccination center in Hyde, Greater Manchester, northwest England, Dec. 17, 2020.An accelerated uptake of 2 million vaccinated per week “is predicted to have a much more substantial impact,” it added. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his scientific advisers have said a variant of the coronavirus, which could be up to 70% more transmissible, was spreading rapidly in Britain, although it is not thought to be more deadly or to cause more serious illness. That prompted tight social mixing restriction measures for London and southeast England, while plans to ease curbs over Christmas across the nation were dramatically scaled back or scrapped altogether. Media reports over the weekend said that the United Kingdom will roll out the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine starting January 4, with its approval by the country’s medical regulator expected within days. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to roll out the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech. The British government said Thursday that 600,000 people in the United Kingdom have received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine since inoculations began.
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Three French Soldiers Killed in Mali
A roadside bomb killed three French soldiers Monday, according to the French government, which said their armored vehicle struck the explosive device in the Hombori region of Mali. The soldiers were part of France’s Operation Barkhane mission, which is fighting an Islamist extremist insurgency in Africa’s Sahel region. They were working as part of a 5,000-troop mission “in an area where terrorist groups are attacking civilians and threatening the regional stability,” according to Florence Parly, France’s defense minister. The French Defense Ministry has identified the soldiers as Brig. Chief Tanerii Mauri, 28, Fighters 1st Class Dorian Issakhanian, 23, and Quentin Pauchet, 21. French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated in a press statement “France’s determination to continue the fight against terrorism” and praised the efforts of the soldiers in restoring peace and stability in the troubled region. Forty-four other French soldiers have died since January 2013 when French troops began their mission in the Sahel. In September, three soldiers in an armored vehicle hit an explosive device in Tessalit, also in northern Mali. Two of them died and the third was injured. Jihadists have killed thousands of civilians and soldiers in recent years as they expanded their activities to other parts of the region, such as Burkina Faso and Niger.
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Aid Groups Aim to Bring Health Care to Migrants on Way to US
Aurora Leticia Cruz has tried to keep up with her blood pressure medication since fleeing Guatemala more than a year ago, but the limbo she finds herself in — stuck in a sprawling camp at the Texas border after traversing Mexico — has made that hard. When Cruz felt woozy on a recent day as her blood pressure skyrocketed, it could have ended in tragedy, leaving her 17-year-old granddaughter and two toddler great-grandchildren alone in the camp in Matamoros. But instead, a nurse practitioner from Oregon and a Cuban doctor, who like Cruz is awaiting U.S. asylum proceedings, were able to pull up her medical record and prescribe the correct dosage. The health care workers who helped Cruz are with Global Response Management, a nonprofit that is attempting to go beyond crisis response and build a system to make it easier to track the health of migrants along their journey from Central America to the U.S. border. Cruz’s medical record was created in June by the group, which has been collecting patient information. FILE – Dairon Elisondo Rojas, a doctor from Cuba who is seeking asylum in the U.S., checks a woman at a clinic set up for asylum-seekers hoping to enter the U.S. and living and waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, Nov. 19, 2020.”I envision this as a relay race in which we are passing the medical baton to other providers as people work their way north,” said Blake Davis, a paramedic from Maine who volunteers for the organization. The efforts are part of a growing trend in humanitarian aid that has accelerated amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted the difficulties in getting basic health care to migrants. With public hospitals overwhelmed by virus cases, migrants with heart conditions or problematic pregnancies have nowhere to go. Others have been prescribed ineffective medications because a changing array of doctors are forced to treat them without any medical history. Led by U.S. military veterans, Global Response Management is staffed by volunteers primarily from the U.S. and paid asylum-seekers who were medical professionals in their homelands. The group has treated thousands of migrants over the past year at two clinics in Matamoros, including one inside the camp. Medics with the group have innovated to bring care to the austere environment, building on what they learned from the organization’s work with displaced people in countries such as Bangladesh and Iraq. They have used telemedicine to consult specialists in the United States and connected a portable device to an iPhone to perform a sonogram. They have also worked with local leaders in the camp to control the spread of the coronavirus by encouraging mask wearing, increasing the number of hand-washing stations and setting up an isolation area. Only one person from the camp has been hospitalized with the virus, even as medical facilities in the area struggled to keep up with infected patients this summer. Treatment in transitBut the group’s goal is not just to care for migrants once they reach the border. It wants to offer health care along the routes migrants take. “Humanitarian aid has to be thought of in a different light,” said executive director Helen Perry, an Army Reserve nurse. FILE – Volunteer Mark McDonald enters data at a clinic set up for asylum-seekers waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, Nov. 19, 2020.It’s uncertain how long the camp will exist since U.S. President-elect Joe Biden pledged to undo the Trump administration policy known as Remain in Mexico, which has forced tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait across the border while their cases are considered by U.S. courts. Regardless, there will continue to be people fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, and aid agencies are trying to figure out how to protect them. Davis, the paramedic from Maine, plans to set up a clinic next year in Tapachula, on Mexico’s southern border. He recently flew over the isolated terrain migrants traverse in Guatemala to view the challenge medical teams would face in treating people in transit. “There is nothing out there for them to get help,” Davis said. “We want to be able to fill that void.” The group is working to connect migrants to health care and other resources by asking them what they need via WhatsApp. The idea is to make contact as early as possible with migrants, treat their health problems before they worsen, and create a system where their records can be accessed by doctors along the way.Challenges It is a daunting task that will require finding the migrants, many of whom are trying to avoid detection, and winning their trust. The group’s members also must get government officials on board. And they must tread carefully, so the health data cannot be used against the migrants. As they do in Matamoros, the group will label each record with a number, rather than a name. Other aid groups are also tackling the challenge. The International Rescue Committee next month is launching InfoDigna, an interactive map in Mexico that connects migrants to shelters, health care providers and other services wherever they are. It will offer live chats to answer migrants’ questions about everything from the latest COVID-19 restrictions to the status of immigration court operations. InfoDigna is part of the group’s global digital information service, which informs asylum-seekers from Italy to Colombia via smart phones. “It meets people where they’re at,” said Edith Tapia, who coordinates the effort in Mexico. The organizations are stepping into a gap that the World Health Organization has urged governments of host countries to fill, but few have. The issue of how to care for vulnerable people on the move is only likely to grow: A record 80 million people are fleeing poverty, conflict and environmental disasters, according to the WHO. FILE – Maria de Jesus Ruiz Carrasco, center, from Cuba and seeking asylum in the U.S., uses crutches as she arrives at a clinic in Matamoros, Mexico, to have her broken leg bandages changed.Maria de Jesus Ruiz Carrasco says she would have lost her foot if Global Response Management hadn’t stepped in. The 31-year-old Cuban woman was rescued by Border Patrol agents who found her along the Rio Grande with a broken leg in October after she crossed from Matamoros. She underwent two surgeries at a hospital in Brownsville, Texas. But two weeks later, Carrasco was sent back to Matamoros with an oozing wound and 14 pins in her leg. U.S. Customs and Border Protection guidelines recommend asylum-seekers with medical problems not be returned to Mexico. The agency said that because of privacy laws it could not discuss Carrasco’s case, but generally if a patient is “cleared for travel” upon release from a medical facility, then the asylum-seeker may be returned to Mexico. Decisions are made case by case. A Mexican official at the border directed Carrasco, who was on crutches and in need of help, to the Global Response Management clinic, where she met Mileydis Tamayo, a nurse from Cuba who is also seeking asylum. Tamayo has been treating Carrasco’s wound for 10 weeks. “If this group wasn’t here,” Tamayo said later, “many people would be in very bad shape.”
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EU Unanimously Endorses Post-Brexit Trade Deal With UK
The European Union has endorsed the post-Brexit trade deal with Britain set to go into effect on January 1.“Green light. EU ambassadors have unanimously approved the provisional application of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement,” said spokesman Sebastian Fischer of Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency.The deal, announced last Thursday, still must be retrospectively ratified by the European Parliament, which is expected in late February.The approval provisionally allows tariff-free trade with Britain to continue after the country officially leaves the EU single market on New Year’s Day.Ambassadors from the 27 EU member states met in Brussels on Monday to approve the accord.Britain’s parliament is expected to approve it on Wednesday.
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Doha Confirmed as Venue for Second Round of Afghan Peace Talks
Afghan officials say the government has decided to hold the second round of peace negotiations with the Taliban in Doha, the same place where the first round was held.Faridoon Khawzoon, a spokesman for the Afghanistan High Council for National Reconciliation, the body responsible for overseeing the negotiations, said the decision was taken due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions.Several countries had been in the running to host the peace negotiations, including Norway and Germany.Doha was also the venue for negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that led to the signing of a deal between the two countries in February 2020. The Taliban have maintained an unofficial political office in Doha for years.Khawzoon said the leadership committee of the AHCNR has authorized the Afghan government’s team to negotiate the agenda of the talks with the Taliban.In the first round, the two sides agreed on the code of conduct to guide the negotiations. Before taking a three-week break, the two sides shared agenda items. Talks are expected to resume on January 5, 2021.The office of President Ashraf Ghani also confirmed Doha as the venue for the second round to allow the negotiations to restart on time. Ghani had suggested that the second round and subsequent negotiations be held in Afghanistan.The Taliban do not recognize Ghani’s government as legitimate and rejected that suggestion.Najia Anwari, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Peace Affairs, said the Afghan team was continuing its consultations with different segments of the Afghan society, including politicians and civil society activists.The second round of talks will start at a time when calls for a cease-fire or a significant reduction in violence have gained momentum.Taliban-driven violence against Afghan security forces has increased to a 10-year high after the militant group signed its deal with the United States.The increase in violence has been an obstacle in negotiations with the Afghan government. The international community and regional countries alike have been calling for a reduction in violence.Michael Kugelman, Asia program deputy director at the Wilson Center, said the Taliban want to use violence as a negotiation tactic.”In this sense, the Taliban want to hold out and get more concessions from the other side before it agrees to focus on the violence issue,” he told VOA.Some analysts believe the Taliban would be reluctant to give up violence, which is the most potent negotiation tool they command.”The only leverage they have is the use of violence,” Rick Olson, former U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told VOA. “They are dreadfully unpopular politically.”The Taliban’s reluctance to give up violence is also linked to their organizational structure, said Andrew Watkins, senior analyst for Afghanistan, at the International Crisis Group.”The Taliban are an insurgency, a machine that runs on fighting. Once fighting stops, it might be hard to start up the machine again,” he said to VOA.
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Russia Pushes Ahead with Vaccine Rollout, Ready or Not
Earlier this year, Russia claimed victory in the global race for a vaccine against the coronavirus. But as Charles Maynes reports from Moscow, the Kremlin’s new challenge is the vaccine’s rollout, and convincing Russians the drug is both safe and effective.
Camera: Ricardo Marquina
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Ethiopian Police Arrest Reuters Cameraman
A Reuters cameraman, Kumerra Gemechu, was arrested in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Thursday and will be kept in custody for at least two weeks, his family said. He has not been charged.
No reason was provided to the family for Thursday’s arrest, and police did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Kumerra, 38, has worked for Reuters as a freelance cameraman for a decade.
At a brief court hearing on Friday, where no lawyer was present, a judge ordered Kumerra’s detention for a further 14 days to give police time to investigate, the family said.
In a statement on Monday, Reuters news agency strongly condemned Kumerra’s detention. The arrest followed the beating of a Reuters photographer, Tiksa Negeri, by two Ethiopian federal police officers on Dec. 16.
“Kumerra is part of a Reuters team that reports from Ethiopia in a fair, independent and unbiased way. Kumerra’s work demonstrates his professionalism and impartiality, and we are aware of no basis for his detention,” Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in the statement.
“Journalists must be allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We will not rest until Kumerra is freed,” Adler said.
Around 10 armed federal police officers arrived at Kumerra’s home in Addis Ababa on Thursday evening and took him away in handcuffs in front of his wife and three children, his wife Hawi Desalegn said. She added that his eldest daughter, who is 10, clung to him screaming as he was led away.
Police also confiscated Kumerra’s phone, a computer, flash drives and papers, according to the family.
Journalists Arrested
Kumerra’s arrest follows government pressure on journalists for some international news outlets which have been covering the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where government forces have been battling the former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Kumerra covered the Tigray conflict, but Reuters was unable to determine whether his arrest was connected to his work. Government officials did not respond to questions from Reuters about whether his coverage was at issue.
Ethiopia’s media authority, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority, accused Reuters and other international media outlets in a Nov. 23 statement on its Facebook page of “false” and “unbalanced” coverage of the fighting in Tigray.
“We stand by our reporting on the conflict in the Tigray region and will continue to report on Ethiopia with integrity, independence, and freedom from bias, as we do all around the world,” Reuters said in a separate statement.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Kumerra’s detention was “the latest example of how press freedom is fast eroding under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after a short-lived hope of reform.”
When CPJ carried out its annual census of jailed journalists on Dec. 1, there were at least seven journalists in custody in Ethiopia for their work, CPJ said in a statement on Monday.
Five of those arrests took place after the Tigray fighting broke out on Nov. 4, according to CPJ.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed and around 950,000 displaced in the month-long conflict. The government says it is now in control of the restive region, but it tightly controls access, and some areas still do not have cell phone coverage.
Ethiopia’s government, which the TPLF dominated for nearly three decades, frequently jailed critics, including politicians and journalists.
When Abiy came to power in 2018 after protests against the government, he speeded up democratic reforms and oversaw the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners.
However, local and international rights groups have expressed concern about the arrests of thousands of other people following outbreaks of deadly violence around the country.
The government has said those arrested were suspected of fomenting the bloodshed.
“One of the government’s primary roles and responsibilities is ensuring security and stability and that the rule of law prevails,” Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for the prime minister, told Reuters in August after more than 9,000 people were arrested following deadly clashes in the capital and surrounding Oromiya region.
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Ugandan Journalists Protest Security Brutality
Journalists in Kampala Monday walked out of a news conference after a top military officer refused to apologize for injuries meted on journalists covering the campaign trail Sunday. Instead, the police deployed heavily with officers saying they were scared journalists were going to harm them.
On Sunday night, journalists received a text message inviting them to a press conference to be addressed by the chief of defense forces, General David Muhoozi, on Monday morning at Kampala’s Media Center. However, upon arrival, journalists who had come in large numbers were addressed instead by the political commissar for the Uganda People’s Defense Forces, Brigadier General Henry Matsiko. After speaking about the upcoming 40th anniversary of the UPDF, Matsiko was asked why journalists are being targeted. Three journalists, including Ali Mivule of NTV Uganda and Ashraf Kasirye of Ghetto TV were hit with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets by security forces on Sunday in the Masaka district. FILE – Ugandan pop star and presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, campaigns near Kampala, Uganda, Nov. 30, 2020.The journalists were covering a campaign appearance by Bobi Wine, presidential candidate of the opposition National Unity Platform party. Matsiko lectured the journalists, accusing them of being unprofessional and taking sides in the presidential campaign. “Even listening to some of you, the way you are presenting yourself, I get an impression that you are moving into a different terrain of activism. And activism has its own dynamics. So, once you’re a journalist, prove to us, that you are exercising professionalism. I have already regretted and I’m saying let us all… please, please,” he said. The comments caused an uproar and journalists walked out of the news conference. A Ugandan journalist reports live from a scene where journalist walked out in protest of security brutality with. police and army officers stand behind him. (Halima Athumani/VOA)Abubaker Lubowa, a photojournalist with the Daily Monitor newspaper, says their actions are in solidarity with their hospitalized colleagues. ‘What hurts us, some of us have been covering state functions. But the moment you cover the opposition, then you become a bad journalist. The moment you cover the ruling government, then you’re a very good journalist. So, what should we do in this country? We love our country, but we can’t work under such conditions,” he said. Michael Kakumiro, another photojournalist, told VOA he has never gotten an apology for a beating he received in 2001 while covering opposition leader Kizza Besigye. “I have even scars, you can see. Look at my forehead. How about here? I wasn’t born like this. I was covering Besigye. And, it was a combination of police and army that beat me up,” he said. After walking out of the Media Center, journalists were surrounded by security forces that included 15 police motorcycles, a police pickup truck, local defense unit officers armed with AK-47 rifles and a police holding van. Security officers leave the Media Center where journalists walked out of a security presser in protest of security brutality in Kampala, Dec. 28, 2010. (Halima Athumani/VOA)When asked why they had asked for reinforcement, Brigadier General Flavia Byekwaso, the UPDF spokesperson, characterized the deployment as a mistake. Journalists insist they will only resume covering security functions once they get an apology from the proper officials. Uganda votes for a new president on January 14.
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