18 February 2016
Week in Brief: International
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: The second election in two months was held. Last December’s election was annulled after more than 400 irregularities were alleged.
CZECH REPUBLIC: The prime ministers of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic met to draw up plans to close the migrant route through the Balkans from Turkey. These ‘Visegard Four’ countries are members of the EU, but say that EU impotence has forced them to take independent action. The leaders of Macedonia and Bulgaria also took part in the meetings.
FRANCE: David Cameron claimed that Brexit could lead to the UK frontier against migrants being pushed back from Calais to Dover. Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, said that this might happen even if the UK stayed in the EU.
Judges placed Nicolas Sarkozy under formal investigation over allegations that he illegally overspent on funding during his 2012 election campaign. He is currently hoping for a political comeback in the 2017 presidential elections.
GERMANY: A former member of the SS, Reinhold Hanning, has gone on trial in Detmold, accused of aiding and abetting the murder of Jews at Auschwitz.
GREECE: EU formally served notice on Greece to control its land and sea borders with Turkey or be kicked out of Schengen in three months. Greece is supposed to have five refugee reception centres open by this week. Police fired tear gas on protestors demonstrating against the registration centre planned on the island of Kos.
The Greek economy is officially in recession.
IRAN: Saint Valentine’s Day celebrations were discouraged as ‘decadent western culture’.
The government tried to close down a popular phone app which helps young Iranians to avoid morality-police patrols.
ISRAEL: Police shot dead five Palestinians. According to police reports, two of them were gunmen armed with automatic weapons who opened fire on officers at a gate into old Jerusalem, two were stone-throwing youths who fired at police in the West Bank, and the fifth was trying stab a policeman in the neck at a checkpoint near Jerusalem.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert began a 19 month jail sentence for bribery and corruption.
LIBYA: The internationally-recognised parliament in Tobruk is to vote this week on approving the UN-backed national unity government representing both itself and its main rival, the Islamist authority in Tripoli.
MALI: A rocket attack on a UN mission killed five UN peacekeepers and injured 30 others, four seriously. The peacekeepers were Guinean, and the attackers were thought to be Islamist militants.
MEXICO: Forty-nine people died and twelve were wounded during rioting at Topo Chico prison. The prison was largely run by its inmates, and the rioting was the result of a feud between rivals within the dominant organised crime gang.
NATO: Turkey and Germany have requested NATO naval help against migrants and people smugglers in the eastern Mediterranean.
NEW ZEALAND: An earthquake magnitude 5.7 hit Christchurch, South Island, with more than 40 aftershocks. No one was hurt. It occurred five years almost to the day after the 6.3 earthquake which killed 185 people in Christchurch.
NIGERIA: More than 60 people were killed by two female suicide bombers in an attack on a camp for people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.
NORTH KOREA: Reports from South Korea suggest that the chief of the general staff of the Korean People’s Army, General Ri Yong Gil, has been accused of corruption and executed.
South Korea is suspending the Kaesong industrial park (a co-operative venture between the two countries, consisting of 124 factories) it manages in North Korea. South Korea’s President Park promised ‘powerful and effective measures’ against the North’s recent weapons tests, and warned of regime change if it continued with its nuclear programme.
POLAND: The government of Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party are proposing a law to make it illegal for anyone to suggest that Poland had any responsibility for the Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek death camps which the Nazis established in Poland during World War II.
RUSSIA: Nikita Kamayev, who resigned two months ago as head of Russia’s anti-doping agency after it was found to have concealed cases of doping in Russian athletics, died suddenly at the age of 52. Vyacheslav Sinev, the previous head of the agency, died two weeks ago of unknown causes. They were expected to give evidence to international anti-doping enquiries, and Kamayev was reportedly writing a book about the scandal.
SYRIA: 17 countries (including the USA, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia) met in Munich last weekend to discuss the stalled Syrian peace process, and agreed on a “cessation of hostilities” to come into effect within a week. This is unlikely to succeed, however, as it does not include conflict against ‘terrorists’, and the Assad regime brands all opposition groups as terrorists.
The Assad regime and its ally Russia have increased their attacks this week on opposition forces holding Anadan and Azaz, keys to the northern route into Aleppo. This has brought the conflict to within three miles of the Turkish border. The YPG (Syrian Kurds), backed by Russian airstrikes, are also fighting opposition forces there, in an attempt to seize a 40 mile stretch of Aleppo province along the Turkish border to form a continuous band of Kurdish-held territory along the frontier. Turkish artillery has been firing on these YPG forces from north of the border; the YPG is associated with the PKK, the Kurdish separatists behind an insurgency within Turkey.
The UN reported that two schools and five hospitals were hit by Russian rockets and bombs in a single day, with at least 50 civilians killed. The Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused Russia of behaving like a ‘terrorist organisation’, and threatened to ‘deliver an extremely decisive response’ if Assad and the Russians continue to deliberately target civilians. See feature ‘War and Peace’.
Saudi Arabia pledged ground forces to fight against Isis in Syria, and has moved fighter planes and ground troops to a Turkish military base near the Syrian border. Russia, wary that such forces might be intended against the Assad regime, warned against ground troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states taking part in US-led initiatives against Isis; the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia and NATO were entering “a new cold war”. See comment ‘Maskirovka’.
70,000 refugees are heading for Israel and Jordan, following regime advances in the south east.
TURKEY: President Erdogan urged the international community to do more to help Turkey cope with the Syrian refugee crisis, and threatened to let more migrants pass through to Europe.
UGANDA: Elections are being held this week. President Museveni is expected to win a fifth term. He has been president for 30 years. International commentators say opposition has been stifled. Kizza Besigye, Museveni’s main rival, was arrested this week and police fired tear gas at his supporters during a rally; one person was killed and 19 injured. Another opposition leader, General David Sejusa, is in prison.
UKRAINE: The deputy prosecutor-general Vitaliy Kasko resigned, accusing the government of failing to reform the country or to tackle corruption. The government narrowly survived a vote of no confidence.
USA: The death of Justice Antonin Scalia means that this year will see a political contest for control of the Supreme Court as well as the party leadership contest leading up to the presidential elections.
VENEZUELA: The supreme court has given President Maduro emergency powers to appropriate resources of private companies, impose currency controls and any “other social, economic or political measures deemed fit”. The supreme court judges are appointed by the president.
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