The bodies of 14 people have washed up on a beach in Myanmar, police said on Monday, with the UN Refugee Agency citing reports that the deceased include Rohingya children. At least 17 people are feared dead after their boat capsized, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A rescue organization said that the group had been attempting to reach Malaysia. “Fourteen dead bodies were found, and 35 people, including the boat owners, were rescued alive,” said Lieutenant Colonel Tun Shwe, a police spokesman in Pathein District, about 200km west of Yangon. Although the full details remain unclear, the UNHCR said the boat reportedly left Sittwe in western Myanmar on Thursday and encountered rough waters, capsizing two days later. A member of Myanmar Rescue Organization Pathein said on condition of anonymity that eight bodies were found on Sunday on a beach about three hours from the district capital. A Rohingya advocate said that 12 women and two boys died. The boat was carrying people from the western Myanmar towns of Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Sittwe, the advocate added, also requesting anonymity. Survivors told the rescue group that 61 people had been on board the vessel, leaving 12 still missing. Those who were saved were being held by the Pathein police, spokesman Tun Shwe said, without adding whether any would be charged — as sometimes happens to Rohingya caught trying to flee. “The latest tragedy shows once again the sense of desperation being felt by Rohingya in Myanmar and in the region,” said Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR’s director for Asia and the Pacific.
South Korean movies are making a strong showing at the Cannes Film Festival, riding on a wave of enthusiasm for entertainment such as Squid Game and Parasite, and catering to a taste for sophisticated intrigue and polished action. “It feels like a golden age for South Korean productions,” said Lee Jung-jae, the superstar actor in Netflix’s Squid Game, whose debut as a director, Hunt, has screened out of competition at Cannes. “And that’s just the beginning,” Lee added. The Hollywood Reporter called Hunt, which tells the story of two South Korean secret agents who compete with each other to unmask a North Korean mole, a “twisty espionage thriller,” while The Wrap noted an abundance of “double agents, buried secrets and lots of broken arms.” In the running for the Palme d’Or, is Decision to Leave by director Park Chan-wook, who said that his country’s turbulent postwar history had shaped the collective personality of South Koreans, and made for interesting film production. “We went through extreme situations and that has changed our character,” he said. “That goes for both the film-going public and film-makers. We don’t have a tranquil or Zen character, we’re temperamental and that’s reflected in our films and series.” Decision to Leave tells the story of a detective who, investigating a man’s fatal fall from a mountain, comes under the spell of the victim’s wife whom he suspects of having caused her husband’s death. Park said the film drew inspiration from the methodical police work contained in the Swedish Martin Beck crime thriller books. “That’s what I wanted to represent in a movie,” he said. The detective story increasingly meshes with the mutual attraction engulfing the main characters, and the resulting erotic tension that is heightened by the constant proximity of death. “I’m not a romantic, but I’m very interested in the expression of emotions,” Park said. The movie’s
The Chinese foreign minister is to make a “milestone” visit this week, the Solomon Islands government said in a statement on Monday. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) trip comes at a time of heightened US and Australian concern over China’s intentions in the South Pacific. The statement was issued on the day that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was sworn into office. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said Wang’s one-day visit at the head of a nearly 20-strong delegation would be a “milestone” in the countries’ ties. Sogavare said he looked forward to a “productive engagement with Beijing, “an important development partner at a very critical time in our history.” Wang would sign “a number” of agreements with the Solomon Islands, the statement said, without mentioning the security pact. Washington and Canberra fear that the security deal — details of which have not been released — could lead to China gaining a military foothold in the South Pacific. An earlier, leaked draft of the security deal between China and the Solomon Islands included measures that would allow Chinese naval deployments to the Pacific island nation, which lies less than 2,000km from Australia. The Chinese minister would spend one day in Honiara visiting Sogavare and holding a joint news conference with Solomon Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeremiah Manele. No date was given for Wang’s trip, scheduled for “later this week.”
‘ASHAMED’: Boris Bondarev, a counselor at Moscow’s mission to the UN in Geneva, quit his job after 20 years, calling the war a crime against Ukrainians and Russians
Russian forces yesterday stepped up their offensive on the last pocket of resistance around Lugansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, as the war entered its fourth month. Since Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24, Western support has helped Ukraine hold off its neighbor’s advances in many areas, including the capital, Kyiv, but Russia is now focused on securing and expanding its gains in Donbas and the southern coast. “The coming weeks of the war will be difficult, and we must be aware of that,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday in his nightly address after regional leaders and residents reported heavy bombardments. “The most difficult fighting situation today is in Donbas,” Zelenskiy said, singling out the worst-hit towns of Bakhmut, Popasna and Severodonetsk. The Ukrainian armed forces said on Facebook on Tuesday that Russian forces were conducting non-stop “offensive operations” in the region, adding that “the enemy is exerting intense fire along the entire line of contact.” Lugansk Governor Sergiy Gaidai said Russia had sent thousands of troops to capture his entire region and that Severodonetsk was under massive attack, warning residents that it was too late to evacuate. “At this point I will not say: Get out, evacuate. Now I will say: Stay in a shelter, because such a density of shelling will not allow us to calmly gather people and come for them,” Gaidai said on Telegram. Residents of Bakhmut, a crucial junction that serves as a command center for much of the Ukrainian war effort, spoke of the aerial onslaught they had suffered. “I looked up from my prayers and heard a frightening sound,” 82-year-old Maria Mayashlapak said next to the splintered remains of her home. “Every day I pray to God asking to avoid injuries. God heard me. God is watching over me.” Zelenskiy said in his address that Russia had carried out nearly 1,500
US President Joe Biden yesterday said the crisis in Ukraine was a global issue that heightened the importance of maintaining international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty. Biden’s comments delivered at the opening of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with Indo-Pacific leaders in Tokyo come a day after he broke with convention and volunteered US military support for Taiwan. “This is more than just a European issue. It’s a global issue,” Biden said of the Ukraine situation at the Quad meeting of the US, Japan, India and Australia. “International law, human rights must always be defended regardless of where they’re violated in the world,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told global business leaders in Davos on Monday that the world must increase sanctions against Russia to deter other countries from using “brute force” to achieve their aims. The EU is likely to agree on an embargo on Russian oil imports “within days,” its biggest member Germany has said, as Moscow said its economic ties with China would grow amid its isolation by the West over the Ukraine conflict. Many of the EU’s 27 member states are heavily reliant on Russian energy, prompting criticism from Kyiv that the bloc has not moved quickly enough to halt supplies. Hungary is demanding energy investment before it agrees to an embargo, clashing with EU states pushing for swift approval. The EU has offered up to 2 billion euros (US$2.14 billion) to central and eastern nations lacking non-Russian supply. “We will reach a breakthrough within days,” German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck told broadcaster ZDF. Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would focus on developing ties with China as economic links with the US and Europe were cut. Lavrov, in a question-and-answer session at an event in Moscow, said that Western countries had espoused “russophobia” since Russia launched its incursion into Ukraine. Russia
TAKING SIDES: Former vice president Mike Pence rallied with incumbent Georgian Governor Brian Kemp, who did not accept Trump’s claims of voter fraud in his state
Former US president Donald Trump was hoping to avoid a stinging defeat in the Georgia governor’s race yesterday as Republican primary voters decided the fate of the former president’s hand-picked candidate to lead one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the US. In all, five states were voting, including Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Minnesota, but none has been more consumed by Trump and his lie that the 2020 election was stolen than Georgia. After incumbent Georgian Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, refused to accept Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in his state, he sought retribution by personally recruiting former Republican US Senator David Perdue to mount a primary challenge. However, that might prove to be a bad bet, as Kemp has emerged as a powerful fundraiser who has tapped into the benefits of incumbency. In the final days of the campaign, he unveiled a US$5.5 billion, 8,100-job Hyundai Motor plant near Savannah. On the eve of the election, Perdue’s allies were bracing for a lopsided defeat, the only question being whether Kemp would win the 50 percent majority he would need to avoid a runoff election next month. “We’re not going to have a runoff,” said Matha Zoller, a longtime Republican advocate and northeast Georgia talk show host with ties to both Trump and Perdue. “It’s going to be embarrassing.” The results could raise questions about where power resides within the Republican Party. While Trump remains deeply popular among the party’s most loyal voters, the opening stage of the midterm primary season has shown they do not always side with his picks. Meanwhile, other prominent Republicans are growing more assertive. In an illustration of the divide among top Republicans, Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, rallied with Kemp in the suburbs of Atlanta on Monday evening. “Elections are about the
It was about 6am when Venique Moise flung open the door of her house and saw dozens of people running — their children in one hand and scant belongings in the other — as gunfire intensified. Minutes later, she joined the crowd with her own three children and fled as fires burned nearby, collapsing homes. Over the following hours and days, the bodies of nearly 200 men, women and children — shot, burned or mutilated with machetes by warring gangs — were found in that part of Haiti’s capital. “That Sunday, when the war started, I felt that I was going to die,” Moise said. Gangs are fighting each other and seizing territory in the capital, Port-au-Prince, with a new intensity and brutality. The violence has horrified many who feel the country is swiftly unraveling as it tries to recover from the July 7 assassination of former Haitian president Jovenel Moise and the UN prepares to debate the future of its longtime presence in Haiti. Experts say that he scale and duration of gang clashes, the power criminals wield and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before. Gangs have forced schools, businesses and hospitals to close as they raid new neighborhoods, seize control of the main roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country and kidnap victims daily, including eight Turkish citizens still held captive, authorities say. Gangs also are recruiting more children than before, arming them with heavy weapons and forming temporary alliances with other gangs in attempts to take over more territory for economic and political gain ahead of the country’s general elections, said Jaime Vigil Recinos, the UN’s police commissioner in Haiti. “It’s astonishing,” he said, adding that gang clashes are becoming protracted, ruthless affairs. “We are talking about something that Haiti hasn’t experienced before,”
JAPAN Biden tells PM napping OK Wishing a newly elected fellow world leader good luck is one thing, but US President Joe Biden also wants Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to have a good night. Meeting yesterday at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in Tokyo, Biden expressed admiration that Albanese made the long flight right after winning his election. “I welcome you to your first Quad meeting,” Biden said. “Like I said, you got on a plane — you were sworn in and got on a plane,” Biden said. So “if you fall asleep while you’re here, it’s OK, because I don’t know how you’re doing it. It’s really quite extraordinary — just getting off the campaign trail as well.” PHILLIPPINES Duterte slams Putin Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for the killings of innocent civilians in Ukraine, saying that while the two of them have been tagged as killers, “I kill criminals, I don’t kill children and the elderly.” Duterte, who openly calls Putin an idol and a friend, voiced criticism for the first time over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in remarks aired yesterday in which he blamed the war for the spike in global oil prices. IRAQ Sandstorm halts movement The country on Monday closed public buildings and temporarily shut airports as another sandstorm — the ninth since the middle of April — hit the country. More than 1,000 people were hospitalized across the nation with respiratory problems, Ministry of Health spokesman Seif al-Badr said. Flights were also grounded in neighboring Kuwait for a second time this month, as the region grapples with the increasingly frequent weather phenomenon. Later the same day, the second heavy sandstorm in less than a week descended on Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, obscuring iconic buildings such as the Kingdom Center in a gray haze. Baghdad was
COUNTING CONTINUES: The new Australian prime minister was assured of minority party or independent backing in the event his Labor Party does not form a majority
Australia’s new prime minister was sworn in yesterday and flew to Tokyo for a summit with US President Joe Biden, as vote counting continued to determine whether he will control a majority in a parliament that is demanding tougher action on climate change. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party ousted predecessor Scott Morrison’s conservative coalition in Saturday’s election. The coalition had been in power under three prime ministers for nine years. “I want to lead a government that has the same sentiment of optimism and hope that I think defines the Australian people,” Albanese said in his hometown of Sydney before flying to the national capital Canberra to be sworn in. Albanese, who described himself as the first candidate for prime minister with a “non-Anglo Celtic name,” and Malaysian-born Penny Wong (黃英賢), Australia’s first minister of foreign affairs to be born overseas, were sworn into office by Australian Governor-General David Hurley before the pair flew to Tokyo for a security summit today with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “We will return [from Japan] on Wednesday and set about implementing our agenda, our agenda that received the endorsement of the Australian people,” Albanese said, highlighting items such as climate change, affordable child care and strengthening Medicare. Biden telephoned Albanese to congratulate him on his election win and express his wish to make the countries’ alliance stronger, the White House said. Albanese described the conversation as “very fruitful and positive.” Morrison’s decision to resign as prime minister during the early vote counting enabled Hurley, who represents Australia’s head of state, British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, to appoint his replacement before it is determined whether Albanese will control a majority of seats in parliament’s lower chamber, where governments are formed. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles was also sworn in and is acting
At least seven people were killed and scores plucked to safety in the Philippines yesterday after a fire ripped through a ferry and forced passengers to jump overboard, the coast guard and witnesses said. The blaze broke out on the Mercraft 2 at about 6:30am as it carried 134 passengers and crew from Polillo Island to Real in Quezon province on the main island of Luzon. Seven people died and 127 were rescued, Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Armando Balilo said after the last of the missing were found. The fiberglass fast craft boat, which had a 186-person capacity, was about 1km from Real when it caught fire. “We heard an explosion,” said Kycel Pineda, 18, who was traveling on another ferry. “When we saw the boat, it was already engulfed by fire and passengers were already floating in the sea,” the high-school student said. Thick black smoke billowed from the Mercraft 2 as flames tore through the entire vessel, photographs shared by the coast guard showed. People with life rings and life vests were in the water. Some were rescued by other ferries or clambered into inflatable boats. The fire appears to have started in the engine room, Balilo said. A team of investigators was preparing to look into the cause. “We were able to rescue 40 survivors,” said Captain Brunette Azagra, whose passenger vessel was 500m from the Mercraft 2 when the fire started. Two bodies were also pulled from the water, he added. “They were lucky, because we also came from Polillo. They overtook us, but we were just nearby,” Azagra told a local radio station, describing sea conditions as “quite good.” Twenty-four people were injured, including the captain of the ferry, the coast guard said. Speaking from the hospital where the injured were being treated, Real town disaster officer Ricky Poblete said the seven dead had
Indonesia resumed exports of palm oil yesterday after a ban of more than three weeks, but industry traders and companies were awaiting details on accompanying rules to secure domestic supplies to control cooking oil prices. The Southeast Asian country, the world’s largest palm oil producer, halted exports of the oil on April 28 in an attempt to lower soaring local prices of cooking oil, rattling global edible oil markets already struggling with sunflower oil shortages due to the war in Ukraine. Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced the lifting of the ban on exports of crude palm oil and some derivative products last week, expressing confidence that bulk cooking oil prices were heading toward a target level of 14,000 rupiah (US$0.96) per liter, although they are currently higher in some areas. Palm oil, used in everything from margarine to shampoo, comprises a third of the world’s vegetable oil market, with Indonesia accounting for about 60 percent of the supply. To ensure supply security, Indonesia said it would impose a so-called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO) policy, whereby producers are required to sell a portion of their products locally at a certain price level. Indonesia plans to retain 10 million tonnes of cooking oil supplies at home under the DMO rules, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said, adding that the implementation is to be regulated by the Indonesian Ministry of Trade. Traders yesterday were waiting for details on the DMO and other rules to be made public. “Sellers are first trying to clear pending quantity that was stuck because of the ban. They are accepting new orders as well, but demand is not great,” a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading house said. “They are also not to keen to sell a lot before understanding DMO rules.” Partially reflecting the policy uncertainty, palm oil futures in Malaysia, a
NO MASKS: North Korea has reported a fatality rate of 0.002 percent from what it calls a ‘fever,’ far below South Korea’s COVID-19 fatality rate of 0.13 percent
A huge number of North Koreans, including leader Kim Jong-un, attended a funeral for a top official, state media reported yesterday, as the country maintained the much-disputed claim that its suspected coronavirus outbreak is subsiding. Since admitting earlier this month to an outbreak of the highly contagious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, North Korea has only stated how many people have fevers daily and identified just a fraction of the cases as COVID-19. Its state media yesterday said that 2.8 million people have fallen ill due to an unidentified fever, but only 68 of them died since late last month, an extremely low fatality rate if the illness is COVID-19 as suspected. North Korea has limited testing capability for that many sick people, but some experts say it is also likely underreporting mortalities to protect Kim from political damage. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim on Sunday attended the funeral of Hyon Chol-hae, a Korean People’s Army marshal who played a key role in grooming him as the country’s next leader before Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, died in late 2011. In what was one of the country’s biggest state funerals since his father’s death, a bare-faced Kim Jong-un carried Hyon’s coffin with other top officials who wore masks before he threw earth to his grave with his hands at the national cemetery. Kim Jong-un and hundreds of masked soldiers and officials also deeply bowed before Hyon’s grave, state TV footage showed. State TV earlier showed thousands of other masked soldiers clad in olive-green uniforms gathered at a Pyongyang plaza taking off their hats and paying a silent tribute before a funeral limousine carrying Hyon’s body left for the cemetery. The KCNA said “a great many” soldiers and citizens also turned out along streets to express their condolences. Kim Jong-un often arranges big funerals for late
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shaken off the effects of COVID-19 and yesterday announced details of an altered trade mission to the US. The trip, which is to take in five cities, was placed in doubt when Ardern contracted the virus a week ago, midway through a two-week isolation period which began when her partner, Clarke Gayford, tested positive. Her departure late yesterday would come two days after completing isolation and is delayed because of US COVID-19 travel regulations. Ardern is scheduled to meet senior members of the US Senate when she visits Washington, but a hoped-for meeting with US President Joe Biden might now not happen because of health protocols. “In these times you roll with the COVID curveballs you’re thrown,” she told journalists. “That’s just part and parcel of the world we live in.” “The issue we have at play here is simply COVID protocols, it does not diminish our relationships at all,” she added. The trip would have a trade and tourism focus, but Ardern also wants to address Pacific security issues. “I can’t imagine a more important time for political engagement with the US,” she said. “With the Pacific we’ve called for a return. The US has been a present force for a number of years, but what we’ve seen in recent years was a focus to other domestic matters or other regions, slightly less than ours. So we’ve asked for that return,” she said. Other engagements include a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York and delivery of the high-profile Harvard University commencement speech. The US is New Zealand’s third-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at NZ$18.5 billion (US$11.8 billion), and also accounted for the country’s third-largest pre-COVID-19 tourist market.
Recently ousted Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan asked his supporters to march on Islamabad, the nation’s capital, for a sit-in tomorrow as a way to press the government to quit and call new elections. Khan’s move is likely to fuel further political instability in a country already facing an economic crisis from rising inflation. At a Sunday news conference in Peshawar, the former cricket star urged his backers to protest for as long as needed. Khan recently has held a series of rallies — aimed at channeling anger against the government of new Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — drawing massive crowds across the country. “We will not accept this government,” Khan said. “We will sit-in in Islamabad until they dissolve the assemblies and announce a date for elections that are transparent and without any foreign interference.” Khan, 69, was ousted last month after a no-confidence vote in parliament. He blamed the US for “conspiring” to engineer his downfall, a claim the administration of US President Joe Biden has rejected. The former leader’s plan puts the new government on the defensive as it attempts to deal with mounting public anger from Asia’s second-fastest rate of inflation, currently behind only Sri Lanka. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves of US$10.2 billion are enough to cover less than two months of imports, stocks have tumbled 6 percent in a month, and its currency is trading at a record low of 200 rupees to the US dollar. Pakistan’s international bonds due in 2031 fell to a record low on Thursday amid investor concerns that the government’s hesitation to take unpopular steps like raising fuel prices would delay an IMF bailout. Khan’s call to his followers comes as Pakistan is working to negotiate the remainder of a suspended US$6 billion loan program with the IMF that is needed to help shore
‘STAGGERING MILESTONE’: The figure amounts to more than 1 percent of the global population, while only 13 nations have a bigger population than 100 million
Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed the number of forcibly displaced people around the world above 100 million for the first time ever, the UN said yesterday. “The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution has now crossed the staggering milestone of 100 million for the first time on record, propelled by the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. The “alarming” figure must shake the world into ending the conflicts forcing record numbers to flee their own homes, the UNHCR said in a statement. UNHCR said the numbers of forcibly displaced people rose toward 90 million by the end of last year, spurred by violence in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and since then, more than 8 million people have been displaced within the nation, while more than 6 million refugees have fled across its borders. “One hundred million is a stark figure — sobering and alarming in equal measure. It’s a record that should never have been set,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said. “This must serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution, and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes.” The 100 million figure amounts to more than 1 percent of the global population, while only 13 nations have a bigger population than the number of forcibly displaced people in the world. The figures combine refugees and asylum seekers, as well as more than 50 million people displaced inside their own nations. “The international response to people fleeing war in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly positive,” Grandi said. “Compassion is alive and we need a similar mobilization for all crises around the world, but ultimately,
Ukrainians yesterday were digging in to defend the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk as it endured heavy bombardment from Russian forces trying to take the industrial area known as the Donbas. Shelling increased in ferocity as Russian and Ukrainian forces battled along a 551km wedge of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, driving residents to flee. “We haven’t been able to see the sun for three months. We are almost blind because we were in darkness for three months,” said Rayisa Rybalko, who fled to Ukrainian-controlled Kiurakhove from the village of Novomykhailivka near the front line in Donetsk. “The world should have seen that.” She and her family moved to a bomb shelter at a school a day before their house was destroyed in a bombardment. They were awaiting an evacuation bus after a fellow villager drove them to Kiurakhove. Her son-in-law, Dmytro Khaliapin, said heavy artillery was pounding the village. “Houses are being ruined,” he said. “It’s a horror.” Polish President Andrzej Duda traveled to Kyiv on Sunday to support Ukraine’s EU aspirations and addressed Ukraine’s parliament, receiving a standing ovation when he thanked the lawmakers for letting him speak where “the heart of a free, independent and democratic Ukraine beats.” Ukraine does not have to yield to pressure from Russia and from elsewhere in Europe, Duda said. “I want to say clearly: Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future. Only Ukraine has the right to decide for itself,” he said. Duda, a right-wing populist leader who clearly preferred former US president Donald Trump over US President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, nonetheless said that “Kyiv is the place from which one clearly sees that we need more America in Europe, both in the military and in this economic dimension.” Poland has become an important ally of Ukraine, welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees, and becoming a gateway for
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has removed photographs of a teenage rape survivor from its Web site after criticism that the images were unethical and racist. MSF took down two photographs of a 16-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) who was gang-raped by three armed men after photographers, human rights advocates and lawyers condemned the images on Twitter. A spokesperson said the medical non-governmental organization (NGO) accepted that it had been “a misjudgement ... to publish identifiable pictures of a minor who had been through this experience.” He said the orphaned girl, who had been raped two months before the photoshoot, consented to being photographed, but that MSF had decided that was insufficient justification to publish the pictures “considering her age and the kind of trauma she had gone through.” The photographs, which show the girl lying on a bench after receiving treatment at an MSF hospital, were taken in Drodro, a refugee camp in DR Congo’s Ituri Province. They came under fire after Benjamin Chesterton, director of UK film production company Duckrabbit, criticized their portrayal of black African women and girls who had survived sexual assault as racist and dehumanizing. MSF initially defended the project, but after continued condemnation from Chesterton, who has previously worked for MSF in DR Congo, it removed five photographs, including two of the girl, from an article on its Web site that also mentions her first name. Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian, who took the photographs, said MSF had removed the images without informing her. Tavakolian said that MSF had selected the photographs for publication. “They also refrained from publicly explaining the reasons for making this decision, nor did they highlight the fact that I was never told not to take images of minors. It simply was never discussed,” she said. She defended the project — Ituri, a Glimmer through the
PIONEER: Miss.Tic’s work often included clever wordplays — almost always lost in translation — and featured a heroine with black hair who resembled the artist herself
Miss.Tic, whose provocative work began cropping up in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris in the mid-1980s and made her a pioneer of French street art, died on Sunday aged 66, her family said. Radhia Novat grew up in the narrow streets in the shadow of Sacre-Coeur basilica, the daughter of a Tunisian father and a mother from Normandy in western France, where she began stenciling sly and emancipatory slogans. Her family said she had died of an unspecified illness. Other French street artists paid tribute to her work. Street artist Christian Guemy, alias C215, hailed “one of the founders of stencil art” on Twitter. The walls of the 13th arrondissement of Paris — where her images are a common sight — “will never be the same again,” he wrote. Another colleague, “Jef Aerosol,” said she had fought her final illness with courage, in a tribute posted on Instagram. French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak saluted her “iconic, resolutely feminist” work. Miss.Tic’s work often included clever wordplays — almost always lost in translation — and a heroine with flowing black hair who resembled the artist herself. The images became fixtures on walls across the capital. “I had a background in street theater and I liked this idea of street art,” Miss.Tic said in a 2011 interview. “At first I thought: ‘I’m going to write poems,’ and then: ‘We need images’ with these poems. I started with self-portraits and then turned toward other women,” she said. Miss.Tic also drew the attention of law enforcement over complaints of defacing public property, leading to an arrest in 1997, but her works came to be shown in galleries in France and abroad, with some acquired by the Paris modern art fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, according to her Web site. Cinema buffs will recognize her work on the poster for Claude Chabrol’s
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel on Sunday was shot dead outside his Tehran home, the Guards said, blaming his “assassination” on assailants linked to the US and its allies. The killing of Colonel Sayyad Khodai is the most high-profile murder inside Iran since the November 2020 killing of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Iran had accused Israel of masterminding the attack on Fakhrizadeh’s convoy near Tehran, and later identified him as a deputy defense minister. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Sunday said that “elements linked to global arrogance” — a reference to the US and its allies, including Israel — were responsible for the “terrorist act” that claimed Khodai’s life. In a statement posted on its Web site, the Guards said Khodai “was assassinated in an armed attack carried out by two motorcyclists on Mojahedin-e Eslam street in Tehran,” outside his home. The Guards — the ideological arm of Iran’s military — described Khodai as a “defender of the sanctuary,” a term used for anyone who works on behalf of the Islamic republic in Syria or Iraq. Iran wields considerable influence in Iraq, home to key Shiite holy shrines, where it says it has “military advisers” tasked with training foreign “volunteers.” Revered general Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards, was killed in a US drone attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in January 2020. The Islamic republic is also a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has backed his government in that nation’s 11-year civil war. Tehran says it has deployed forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus, but only as advisers. State television said that Khodai was “well-known” in Syria, without elaborating. The official news agency IRNA said that Khodai was killed by five bullets as he returned home at about 4pm. The agency published pictures showing
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