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GENEVA: The United Kingdom faced a barrage of questions and criticism of its migration and poverty policies in a United Nations review of its human rights record on Thursday amid allegations that it is backsliding on freedoms.
While criticism is part of the normal UN process that takes place every few years, analysts said the level of scrutiny of one of the world’s most prominent democracies from such a broad range of countries, including allies, was notable.
Among the issues raised at the UN meeting in Geneva was London’s plan to send asylum seekers who arrive in Britain to Rwanda to counter an influx of refugees and migrants on its southern coast.
Luxembourg’s ambassador, Marc Bichler, called the agreement a violation of international law that “risks causing irreparable harm to those seeking international protection.”
Close ally the United States also questioned the policy in written remarks, asking how it could ensure the individuals sent to other countries were protected.
“The fact that so many states made recommendations addressing the UK’s backsliding on human rights at home and abroad, its treatment of people seeking asylum, and its undermining of international standards shows their grave concern,” Emilie McDonnell from Human Rights Watch told Reuters.
“We can only hope this global spotlight leads the UK to change course.”
Mike Freer, a junior minister in Britain’s Justice Department, said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government was “absolutely committed” to protecting and respecting human rights at home and abroad.
Freer also said Rwanda was a safe and secure country with a track record of supporting refugees.
As yet, no deportations have taken place after a last-minute injunction from the European Court of Human Rights stopped the first planned flight in June. The policy is also facing a judicial review at the High Court in London.
All 193 UN member states are subject to scrutiny as part of the review process established in 2008. A three-person UN “troika” will submit recommendations to the British government next week.
LÜETZERATH Germany: After the last farmer packed up and left in October, climate activists are the only people left in the village of Luetzerath, Germany, which sits above a rich vein of coal.
In huts perched six meters (19 feet) above ground in the trees, the young campaigners say they can hold out against the authorities if they try to clear them out.
They are there in an effort to stop the village being bulldozed to allow the extension of a neighboring open-air coal mine.
They do not know when the police might come to force them out, but with Germany in need of more coal, most think it will be soon.
Europe’s largest economy has restarted part of its mothballed inventory of coal power plants to relieve the pressure on gas-powered facilities, following a cut to supplies from Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
Several thousand protesters are expected to descend Saturday on Luetzerath, now a symbol of the resistance to fossil fuels, to urge more action from participants in the COP27 conference in Egypt.
“We do not know when the evacuation is planned,” says Alma, a French activist who uses a pseudonym.
“It’s a question of responsibility, one that is difficult to take for the authorities because it’s a huge operation, for which thousands of police officers need to be mobilized over several weeks,” she says.
After studying, Alma decided to go full time as an activist and was one of the first to set up the activist camp in Luetzerath two years ago.
One by one, the residents of Luetzerath have left as their homes were expropriated and they were compensated and rehoused.
She and the dozens of others who have joined her in the occupied village felt betrayed earlier this year when the government, led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, announced a compromise with the energy giant RWE to allow the extension of the nearby mine.
Under the agreement, five nearby villages will be spared, but Luetzerath is set to disappear.
Even though RWE, long one of Europe’s biggest emitters, said it would stop producing electricity with carbon in 2030, the activists are not persuaded.
“If RWE extracts all the coal under Luetzerath, Germany will certainly violate the Paris (climate) accord because of the emissions from the mine. The village is therefore not just a symbol, it’s a critical point in the fight against climate change,” says Alma.
On the other side of the road, sits the coal pit, where excavators move across golden-black dunes of sand.
The lignite still in the ground here will be needed “from 2024” to supply power plants as other mines close, RWE says.
According to a 2021 report by the DIW economic think-tank, the energy company could extract a further 100 million tons of coal without having to demolish Luetzerath and the other five villages.
Despite resorting to more coal power in the current energy crisis, Germany says it is not wavering from its aim of exiting coal power in 2030.
Though the climate activists want action accelerated to bring down emissions.
In recent months, some activists have turned to more extreme means to get their voices heard — including by sticking themselves on main roads and halting traffic.
Recently, some activists also flung mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in a Potsdam museum.
In Luezerath, climate activists have set up an intricate camp in the trees to avoid being quickly evicted by the police.
Using a network of cables, they have connected their encampment. The militants think they can hold out for several weeks, six meters (12 feet) above the ground.
On the ground in the middle of the camp, around twenty militants try to raise a pole made of a giant tree trunk with a system of pulleys.
“The poles are tied to the trees in a way that ought to make it impossible to cut the ropes without putting someone’s life in danger,” Alma says.
Underlining their commitment, an anonymous activist said facing death is the activists’ “entire strategy.”
Actor Alec Baldwin filed a lawsuit on Friday against the armorer and three other crew members over the deadly shooting on the set of the Western movie “Rust,” in which a gun that Baldwin was using during rehearsal killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Baldwin’s suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court as a cross complaint stemming from a previous suit in which a different member of the crew named Baldwin and the others as defendants.
It is one of many pieces of litigation stemming from the tragedy of Oct. 21, 2021, which is also under criminal investigation and could result in New Mexico state charges.
Baldwin’s cross complaint names armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, first assistant director Dave Halls, prop supplier Seth Kenney and prop master Sarah Zachry. Attorneys for Gutierrez-Reed, Halls and Kenney did not immediately respond to requests for statements in their clients’ defense. Reuters could not locate an attorney for Zachry.
All four were also named as defendants along with Baldwin in the original lawsuit filed by a script supervisor who claimed the shooting caused her severe emotional distress.
Baldwin’s cross complaint alleges negligence and seeks damages to be determined at trial for the “immense grief” he endures.
“This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun, Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her,” Baldwin’s cross complaint said.
The suit was written by Luke Nikas, an attorney for Baldwin who is with the firm Quinn Emanuel.
Hutchins was killed when a revolver Baldwin was rehearsing with during filming in New Mexico fired a live round that hit her and movie director Joel Souza, who survived.
In a television interview, the actor said he did not pull the trigger of the Colt .45 revolver and it fired after he cocked it.
An FBI forensic test of the single-action revolver found it “functioned normally” and would not fire without the trigger being pulled.
WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump is suing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol in an attempt to block a subpoena requiring him to testify.
The suit contends that, while former presidents have voluntarily agreed to provide testimony or documents in response to congressional subpoenas in the past, “no president or former president has ever been compelled to do so.”
“Long-held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a President to testify before it,” Trump attorney David A. Warrington said in a statement announcing Trump’s intentions.
He said Trump had “engaged with the Committee in a good faith effort to resolve these concerns consistent with Executive Branch prerogatives and separation of powers,” but said the panel “insists on pursuing a political path, leaving President Trump with no choice but to involve the third branch, the judicial branch, in this dispute between the executive and legislative branches.”
The suit likely dooms the prospect of Trump ever having to testify, given that the committee is expected to disband at the end of the legislative session in January. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.
The committee voted to subpoena Trump during its final televised hearing before the midterm elections and formally did so last month, demanding testimony from the former president. Committee members allege Trump “personally orchestrated” a multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
They said Trump had to testify, either at the Capitol or by videoconference, “beginning on or about” Nov. 14 and continuing for multiple days if necessary.
The letter also outlined a sweeping request for documents, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups.
In his suit, Trump’s attorneys attack the subpoena as overly broad and frame it as an infringement of his First Amendment rights. They also argue other sources besides Trump could provide the same information they want from him.
The lawsuit comes as Trump is expected to launch a third campaign for president next week.
It was filed in the Southern District of Florida, where other Trump lawyers successfully sued to secure a special master who has been tasked with conducting an independent review of records seized by the FBI during an Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia: Riot police used tear gas to quell violent street protests in Bolivia’s largest city on Friday, the latest disturbances in three weeks of unrest over demands that a new census be conducted.
Vendors and public transit workers set tires afire in streets and threw rocks at opponents of leftist President Luis Arce in the center of Santa Cruz, a key hub of the energy industry in Bolivia’s tropical lowlands.
TV images showed that a peasant federation office was looted and burned.
Authorities offered no official count of arrests or injuries sustained in the violence on Friday.
Santa Cruz is a stronghold of center right political forces opposed to the Arce government. Some residents there, claiming that the region pays more in taxes than it receives in services, demand a new census to tally the influx of migrants to the lowlands. The last census was in 2012. The next census is not scheduled until 2024.
If a new census were to measure that the region’s population had grown, it would receive greater federal funds and more seats in Congress.
The Arce government said that four people have been killed and 178 injured in unrest over the past three weeks in Santa Cruz.
The right wing governor of Santa Cruz province, Luis Fernando Camacho, said the protesters Friday were “set upon by the police and by MAS,” the ruling Movement To Socialism party of Arce.
JAKARTA: Indonesia has introduced tight security arrangements in Bali, as it prepares to welcome world leaders and thousands of international delegates for the G20 Summit next week.
The world’s largest Muslim-majority nation this year holds the rotating presidency of the Group of 20 largest economies, which will culminate in a meeting of the heads of state and government on Nov. 15 and 16.
The summit will take place on the island of Bali, one of the planet’s most popular holiday destinations, where Indonesia has previously hosted other major international events, including the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in 2018.
Security measures for the G20 Summit are being led by the Indonesian military and police, which together are set to deploy over 24,000 personnel, who have been trained to anticipate situations ranging from terrorist threats to natural disasters, as well as the possibility of violent demonstrations.
“The Indonesian National Police have tried to identify different threats that may occur,” National Police spokesperson Dedi Prasetyo told Arab News.
“The police have formed task forces to handle the possibility of these different threats and we are ready to secure all events surrounding the G20 Summit in Bali.”
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo earlier this week confirmed the attendance of at least 17 G20 leaders, including US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping.
But the G20 leaders are not the only top-level officials attending.
“(We) prepared VVIP task forces not only for the 20 heads of state for G20 members but also 42 other heads of state that are expected to attend (the summit) in Bali,” the Indonesian military said in a statement.
A special Air Force fleet dedicated to G20 security will comprise 13 helicopters and fighter aircraft.
The provincial government of Bali will impose restrictions on parts of the island from this Saturday to Nov. 17. Community activities, classes at schools, office work, and traditional and religious ceremonies will be suspended for five days.
Despite rumors of security threats looming over the G20 Summit, security and terrorism analyst Stanislaus Riyanta from the University of Indonesia told Arab News that “it will be very difficult to penetrate G20 venues” in Bali.
“I see that the (Indonesian) government is very ready, because it’s not just one institution that’s working here, there are several especially when it comes to security,” he said.
“From the military, police, to the intelligence agency and even the provincial government — they are all very ready for G20.”