Turkey has been mediating between Ethiopia and Somalia, which are locked in a dispute, mainly over sea access for Ethiopia. At issue is a deal that Ethiopia signed earlier this year with the self-proclaimed, breakaway region of Somaliland. Ankara’s mediation efforts are seen as underlying its growing influence in the strategic Horn of Africa region. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Month: August 2024
Atomic agency unable to name cause of fire at Ukraine nuclear plant
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on August 12 that its representatives inspected a damaged cooling tower at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in Ukraine. But the question remains: Who did the damage? Mariia Prus has the story.
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Ukrainians skeptical about allegations Ukraine was behind Nord Stream sabotage
Ukrainians are reacting with skepticism to the latest claims that Ukraine may be linked to the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. The allegations are also raising concerns about Ukraine’s relations with Western allies. Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. Videographers: Serhii Rozov, Vladyslav Smilianets
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New EU deforestation regulations a challenge for Namibian farmers
Windhoek, Namibia — Namibia’s minister of agriculture has urged farmers in the Southern African country to look at alternative markets for its charcoal and beef products since the European Union, one of its largest trading partners, has implemented nontariff barriers that came into force in 2023.
A unilateral decision by the European Union to impose regulations on agricultural products from Namibia that come from areas that have been deforested has raised concerns regarding market access for products such as beef and charcoal.
These products will no longer have access to the European market unless they comply with the new rules that Namibian Minister of Agriculture Calle Schlettwein describes as stringent and prohibitive.
“When you want to conduct agriculture, you have to clear lands. We have [the] charcoal industry. We have a number of industries in the agricultural sector where we do have an impact on deforestation. And I said that farmers must be careful that if they do that, they must be in compliance with these regulations.”
The chairperson of the Namibia Biomass Industry Group, which represents over 150 members in the sector, Colin Lindeque, says the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will not negatively impact exports to the EU.
He said the EU is only asking for additional information. It wants geographic location tags that show that the charcoal they are exporting does not come from areas that have been deforested, but rather areas that are regarded as savannah, an argument with which Schlettwein disagrees.
Lindeque told VOA the regulations are fair, and the members of the Bio-mass Industry Group are compliant and meet the new EU requirements.
“There was a consultant here recently from the EU looking at EUDR, and they specifically said Namibia’s bush encroachment is definitely not a forest in their opinion. But one of the challenges is our government hasn’t made the distinction, and that is actually the bigger point of interest, because we in the current Forest Act of 2001 do not even define what a forest is.”
Director of Forestry at Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Johnson Ndokosho, says the ambiguities in the country’s law regarding what is considered a forest, woodlands and savannah are being dealt with in the new Forestry Act, which is being revised.
He cautioned that Namibia is at the mercy of the EU when it comes to whether Namibia’s beef and charcoal will still be able to enter their market.
“If they found that maybe this beef is coming out of an area where deforestation is occurring, then that may affect our exports.”
Last year, Namibia exported 270,000 tons of charcoal worth $72 billion (1.3 billon NAD) mainly to South Africa, which then exports it to other markets, including Europe. Europe is the top destination for Namibia’s beef, with the union consuming about 80 percent of the country’s total exports valued at roughly $23.5 million (420 million NAD).
Namibia is not the only country affected by the new EU regulations. Other countries include Brazil, Cameroon and Nigeria.
Products that are affected by the new EU regulations include cocoa, soy, palm oil and coffee.
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Botswana uncovers a huge 2,492-carat diamond, one of the biggest ever
Gaborone, Botswana — Botswana says one of the largest diamonds ever found has been unearthed at one of its mines and has put on show on Thursday.
The Botswana government believes the huge 2,492-carat stone is the second-biggest ever brought out of a mine.
Canadian mining company Lucara Diamond Corp. said in a statement Wednesday that it recovered the “exceptional” rough diamond from its Karowe Mine in Botswana. Lucara said it was a “high-quality” stone and was found intact. It was located using X-ray technology.
“We are ecstatic about the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492-carat diamond,” Lucara president and CEO William Lamb said in a statement.
The weight makes it the largest diamond found in more than 100 years and the second-largest ever dug out of a mine after the Cullinan Diamond, discovered in South Africa in 1905. The Cullinan was 3,106 carats and was cut into gems, some of which form part of the British Crown Jewels.
A bigger black diamond was discovered in Brazil in the late 1800s, but it was found above ground and was believed to have been part of a meteorite.
The newly discovered diamond was presented to the world at the office of Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
The government said it was the largest diamond found in the southern African country, which is the second-biggest producer of diamonds and has unearthed all of the world’s biggest stones in recent years. The Karowe Mine has previously produced four diamonds over 1,000 carats.
Before this discovery, the Sewelo diamond, which was found at the Karowe Mine in 2019, was recognized as the second-biggest mined diamond in the world at 1,758 carats. It was bought by French fashion house Louis Vuitton for an undisclosed amount.
The 1,111-carat Lesedi La Rona diamond, also from Botswana’s Karowe Mine, was bought by a British jeweler for $53 million in 2017.
Scientists say natural diamonds are at least a billion years old and some of them more than 3 billion years old.
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Gunmen in Pakistan kill two children in attack on school van
Aid trucks trickle into Darfur as army pauses delivery ban
Bangladesh floods maroon nearly three million people, kill two
Ukrainian drone hits Russian military site in Volgograd
UN: Sri Lanka threats on basic freedoms ‘concerning’
India’s Modi holds security and trade talks with Poland’s leaders en route to war-torn Ukraine
Death toll in India factory explosion rises to 17
Report: Nicaragua, China, India among 55 countries that restrict freedom of movement
Washington — At least 55 governments in the past decade have restricted the freedom of movement for people they deem as threats, including journalists, according to a Freedom House report published Thursday.
Governments control freedom of movement via travel bans, revoking citizenship, document control and denial of consular services, the report found. All the tactics are designed to coerce and punish government critics, according to Jessica White, the report’s London-based co-author.
“This is a type of tactic that really shows the vindictive and punitive nature of some countries,” White said. This form of repression “is an attempt to really stifle peoples’ ability to speak out freely from wherever they are.”
Belarus, China, India, Nicaragua, Russia, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that engage in this form of repression, the report found. Freedom House based its findings in part on interviews with more than 30 people affected by mobility controls.
Travel bans are the most common tactic, according to White, with Freedom House identifying at least 40 governments who prevent citizens leaving or returning to the country.
Revoking citizenship is another strategy, despite being prohibited by international law. The Nicaraguan government in 2023 stripped more than 200 political prisoners of their citizenship shortly after deporting them to the United States.
Among them were Juan Lorenzo Holmann, head of Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper, La Prensa.
“It is as if I do not exist anymore. It is another attack on my human rights,” he told VOA after being freed. “But you cannot do away with the person’s personality. In the Nicaraguan constitution, it says that you cannot wipe out a person’s personal records or take away their nationality. I feel Nicaraguan, and they cannot take that away from me.”
Before being expelled from his own country, Lorenzo had spent 545 days in prison, in what was widely viewed as a politically motivated case.
Blocking access to passports and other travel documents is another tactic. In one example, Hong Kong in June canceled the passports of six pro-democracy activists who were living in exile in Britain.
In some cases, governments refuse to issue people passports to trap them in the country. And in cases where the individual is already abroad, embassies deny passport renewals to block the individual from traveling anywhere, including back home.
Myanmar’s embassy in Berlin, for instance, has refused to renew the passport of Ma Thida, a Burmese writer in exile in Germany. Ma Thida told VOA earlier this year she believes the refusal is in retaliation for her writing.
White said Ma Thida’s case was a classic example of mobility restrictions. For now, the German government has issued a passport reserved for people who are unable to obtain a passport from their home country — which White applauded but said is still rare.
“Our ability to freely leave and return to our home country is something that in democratic societies, people often take for granted. It’s one of our fundamental human rights, but it’s one that is being undermined and violated across many parts of the world,” White said.
Mobility restrictions can have devastating consequences, including making it difficult to work, travel and visit family. What makes matters even worse is the emotional toll, according to White.
“There is a huge psychological impact,” White said. “A lot of our interviewees mention especially the pain of being separated from family members and not being able to return to their country.”
In the report, Freedom House called on democratic governments to impose sanctions on actors that engage in mobility controls.
White said that democratic governments should do more to help dissidents, including by providing them with alternative travel documents if they can’t obtain them from their home countries.
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy considers ban on Russia-linked religious groups
WASHINGTON — A new Ukrainian law aimed at removing the influence of the pro-Moscow Russian Orthodox Church enjoys broad popular support in Ukraine but is being viewed with reservations by international advocates for religious freedom.
Passed on Tuesday by Ukraine’s parliament, the law banning religious organizations that maintain ties to Moscow follows years of controversy over ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The law empowers a government office, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, to scrutinize religious organizations for possible connections with Russia. If connections are found, the SSU will first issue a prescription to eliminate the violations. If the ties remain, the office will go to court to stop the religious organization’s activities.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to sign the law. He congratulated lawmakers for passing the legislation “regarding our spiritual independence,” saying that they will “continue strengthening Ukraine and our society.”
The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which represents more than 90% of Ukrainian religious communities, welcomed the law’s adoption.
“We categorically condemn activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become an accomplice to the Russian invaders’ bloody crimes against humanity, which sanctifies weapons of mass destruction and openly declares the need to destroy Ukrainian statehood, culture, identity, and, more recently, Ukrainians themselves,” it said in a statement.
The Russian Orthodox Church operates only in Russia-occupied parts of Ukraine and in some monasteries directly subordinated to it. So, the ban will mostly apply to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which, according to the Ukrainian authorities, still maintains its ties to the ROC. After the Russian invasion in 2022, the UOC claimed that it broke those ties.
According to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted in May, 83% of Ukrainian citizens believe that the state should intervene in the activities of the UOC; 63% of respondents want it to be banned.
Religious freedom critics
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent agency responsible for reviewing possible violations of religious freedom abroad and making policy recommendations to the U.S. administration and Congress, has expressed concern about the law’s impact on Ukraine’s regular faithful.
“The most recent version of the law does not fully address prior concerns about the law’s potential to impose collective punishments on entire religious communities. It also introduced new problematic aspects that could compromise the protection of freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression,” says a statement that USCIRF Chair Stephen Schneck sent to VOA.
The commission said it will monitor the law’s implementation after it goes into effect and urged Ukrainian authorities “to ensure that the legislation complies with Ukraine’s commitments under international law.”
Mónika Palotai, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute, called the legislation “divisive.”
“It divides people. It divides the international community. There will be questions about what will happen to those people who belong to this church. What choices do they have?”
Viktor Yelensky, head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, told VOA that Ukraine will adhere to its laws and international obligations.
“Ukraine is not North Korea,” Yelensky said. “The procedure established by this law is quite democratic. The organization in question can challenge our demands in court at various stages. Only the court can stop the activities of the structures of the UOC if it does not want to sever ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.”
Most Ukrainian Orthodox Christians belong to parishes with no affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.
After centuries in which the Russian Orthodox Church was the predominant Christian denomination in Ukraine, represented by the Ukrainian Exarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church established itself as a separate entity in 1990 while maintaining relations with the Russian church.
In May 2022, its leaders announced their complete independence from the Moscow-based church, which has been a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy of conquering Ukraine.
According to a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, only 4% of Ukraine’s population identifies with the UOC. UOC claims that the true number is higher.
There is another Orthodox Christian church in the country — the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was granted independence by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2019. Since then, many parishes and individuals have switched their affiliation from UOC to OCU, and the process continues.
The UOC spokesperson, Metropolitan Kliment, insisted that the new law will deny Ukrainian citizens and UOC believers the freedom of conscience and religious beliefs. He said that lawmakers ignored appeals from Ukrainian soldiers faithful to this church and targeted the UOC for ties with Moscow that do not exist.
“There are no Moscow churches in Ukraine. Our Church has been operating in Ukraine since time immemorial, and its priests and millions of believers are conscious citizens of Ukraine, not imported from abroad. We did not elect this Verkhovna Rada [parliament] so that it would take away our churches during the war, as the Russians do in the occupied territories,” he wrote to VOA.
In March 2024, the Moscow Patriarchate officially declared the war in Ukraine “holy.” The “World Russian People’s Council” issued a decree which said that “the entire territory of modern Ukraine should fall under the exclusive influence of Russia.”
The UOC, in its statement published the next day categorically rejected and condemned that declaration: “Instead of providing ideological support and justification for Russia’s military aggression and intervention in Ukraine, we believe that the Orthodox Church in Russia should have raised her voice against this war of aggression.”
However, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian authorities have opened criminal cases against more than 100 clergy members of the UOC for such crimes as treason, collaborationism, aiding and abetting the aggressor country and the sale of firearms.
Ukrainian MP Mykyta Poturaiev, the chairman of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, which worked on this legislation, told VOA that the law doesn’t ban the UOC. Its latest version, adopted this week, established an extended grace period of nine months for Ukrainian organizations that still have ties with Russia to sever them and decide on their future.
“They can establish a dialogue with Istanbul, with the Patriarch of Constantinople, or they can establish a dialogue with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” he said.
He insisted that the law doesn’t target religious customs or beliefs but only collaboration with the enemy. “It would be strange if we allowed the FSB or another Russian state body to operate in Ukraine now because they are enemies,” he said.
Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian theologian and professor at University College Stockholm, says the challenge posed by the Russian Orthodox Church is not unique to Ukraine but is more urgent there than elsewhere.
“All European countries with a sizeable presence of the Moscow Patriarchate face the same dilemma: how to neutralize its influence without violating human rights.”
He said no single country, including Ukraine, has come up with an ideal solution.
“Nevertheless, the adopted law features mechanisms that help contain the damaging Russian influence without damaging the freedom of religion in the country,” he told VOA.
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WFP trucks enter Sudan’s Darfur region
Ukraine says it hit pontoon bridges in Russia with US-made weapons
kyiv, ukraine — Ukraine said Wednesday that it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with U.S.-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and had gained ground in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has announced a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into the Kursk region on August 6. Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by 2½ years of fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military was responding to the Russian push by strengthening its forces around Pokrovsk, the focus of Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking in one of his regular televised addresses, he also urged Kyiv’s allies to honor commitments to send munitions for use by the Ukrainian armed forces.
“This is fundamental for defense,” he said.
Ukraine has closely guarded its overarching aims in the Kursk region but said it had carved out a buffer zone from an area Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes.
A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in the Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym River as it seeks to hold the captured land.
“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? Operators … accurately destroy them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on the Telegram messenger.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said Kyiv has made bigger territorial gains in the Kursk region than Moscow has made in Ukraine this year. Russia has called the incursion an escalation.
Ukraine smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on August 6 in an attempt to force Moscow to divert troops from the rest of the front, though Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days.
Russia took the settlement of Zhelanne, which lies less than 20 km to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defense ministry.
Both sides reported being targeted by major drone attacks. Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia; Moscow said its air defenses destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region.
Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defense ministry’s military-political department, said Russia had stalled the Ukrainian incursion.
“We halted them and started pushing them back,” Alaudinov told Rossiya state television. He said Ukrainian forces were regrouping and could soon launch a new attack, though he gave no further details.
Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has been halted. Ukraine has kept touting gains, saying it has captured 92 settlements over an area of more than 1,250 square km.
The Ukrainian military, which has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022, has gotten a much needed morale boost from the incursion.
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s national defense committee, said Russia’s priority remained to capture the Donetsk region despite the incursion and that it was not pulling forces from near Pokrovsk to act as reinforcements.
Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in Kyiv, said attacks on bridges and pontoons would help Ukraine build a defensive line along the river.
“This is an opportunity to make it more stable, systemic, ready to repel Russian attacks,” he said in remarks on national television.
Reuters confirmed that all of the strike locations of pontoon bridges shown in the video were on or near the Seym River in the Kursk region.
The video also showed drone strikes on military trucks and other locations described as a Russian munitions warehouse and an electronic warfare complex in the region. Other locations or the date when the video was filmed could not be independently verified.
Separately, Reuters was able to verify that at least one pontoon crossing was apparently destroyed.
The Ukrainian statement said U.S.-manufactured HIMARS rocket systems had been used as part of operations to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, Kyiv’s first official statement acknowledging its use of the weapon during its incursion.
Washington has not commented directly on the use of U.S.-made weapons in the Kursk region, while saying U.S. policies have not changed and Ukraine was defending itself from Russia’s ongoing all-out invasion.
While allies have barred Ukraine from conducting long-range strikes with Western weapons inside Russia, they have allowed Kyiv to use them to hit border areas since Russia’s new offensive on Kharkiv region this spring.
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