A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza
A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza/node/2504566/world
A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza
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British-Palestinian plastic surgeon specializing in conflict injuries Ghassan Abu Sitta speaks to the press during a demonstration in support to Palestinian people at University College London (UCL) main entrance, on May 3, 2024, in London. (AFP)
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Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a Palestinian-British surgeon specializing in conflict medicine, said he was denied entry to France on May 4, 2024, to speak at a French Senate meeting about the Israel-Hamas war. (AP/File)
A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge
Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe
Updated 04 May 2024
AP
PARIS: A well-known British-Palestinian surgeon who volunteered in Gaza hospitals said he was denied entry to France on Saturday to speak at a French Senate meeting about the Israel-Hamas war. Authorities wouldn’t give a reason for the decision.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge, who had invited him to speak at the Senate.
‘’It’s a disgrace,’’ she posted on X.
Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe. Germany denied him entry last month, and France and Germany are part of Europe’s border-free Schengen zone. He posted Saturday that he was being sent back to London.
The French Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, local police and the Paris airport authority would not comment on what happened or give an explanation.
Abu Sitta had been invited by France’s left-wing Ecologists group in the Senate to speak at a colloquium Saturday about the situation in Gaza, according to the Senate press service. The gathering included testimony from medics, journalists and international legal experts with Gaza-related experience.
Last month Abu Sitta was denied entry to Germany to take part in a pro-Palestinian conference. He said he was stopped at passport control, held for several hours and then told he had to return to the UK He said airport police told him he was refused entry due to “the safety of the people at the conference and public order.”
Abu Sitta, who recently volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, has worked during multiple conflicts in the Palestinian territories, beginning in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising. He has also worked in other conflict zones, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
France has seen tensions related to the Mideast conflict almost daily since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas incursion into Israel. In recent days and weeks police have cleared out students at French campuses holding demonstrations and sit-ins similar to those in the United States.
Australia moves to strip medals from Afghanistan war commanders
Updated 22 sec ago
AFP
SYDNEY: Australia on Thursday moved to strip medals from war commanders whose units were involved in alleged war crimes and “unlawful conduct” in Afghanistan.
Defense Minister Richard Marles said the decision was related to specific unit commanders who were in charge between 2005 and 2016 and was a measure to “address the wrongs of the past.”
Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86
First elected president in 1990, the son of Japanese immigrants stabilized Peru's economy and dealt a death blow to a Maoist rebellion
But he later turned into an autocrat and a slew of corruption scandals during his rule later turned public opinion against him
Updated 16 min 15 sec ago
Reuters
LIMA: Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who steered economic growth during the 1990s but was later jailed for human rights abuses stemming from a bloody war against Maoist rebels, died on Wednesday. He was aged 86.
Close colleagues visited him earlier in the day, reporting that he was in a critical condition.
“After a long battle with cancer, our father... has just departed to meet the Lord,” his daughter Keiko Fujimori wrote in a message on X, also signed by the former leader’s other children.
Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was the little-known chancellor of a farming university when elected to office in 1990. He quickly established himself as a cunning politician whose hands-on style produced results even as he angered critics for concentrating power.
He slayed hyperinflation that had thrown millions of Peruvians out of work, privatized dozens of state-run companies, and slashed trade tariffs, setting the foundations for Peru to become, for a while, one of Latin America’s most stable economies.
Under his watch, the feared leader of the Maoist Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, was captured — dealing a crucial blow to a movement that in the 1980s seemed close to toppling the Peruvian state. Guzman died in prison in September 2021.
But many Peruvians saw Fujimori as an autocrat after he used military tanks to shut down Congress in 1992, redrafting the constitution to his liking to push free-market reforms and tough anti-terrorism laws.
A slew of corruption scandals during his 10-year administration also turned public opinion against him.
Shortly after he won a third election in 2000 — amending the constitution to run — videos emerged of his top adviser and spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos doling out cash to bribe politicians. Fujimori fled to exile in Japan.
He resigned via fax from Tokyo and then unsuccessfully campaigned for a Japanese senatorial seat.
Montesinos was later captured in Venezuela and jailed, convicted by the hundreds of videos he recorded of himself handing out cash bribes to politicians and business and media executives.
The cases against Fujimori piled up — including accusations that he had ordered the use of death squads in his battle against Shining Path militants.
Fujimori was safe in Japan — he was a dual citizen and Japan does not extradite its citizens. So many were shocked when in 2005 he decided to head back to Peru, apparently in hopes of forgiveness and a return to politics.
Instead, he was detained during a layover in Chile, extradited to Peru in 2007, and in 2009 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
’FUJI-SHOCK’
Once jailed, Fujimori’s public appearances were limited to hospital visits where he often appeared disheveled and unwell.
While detractors dismissed his health complaints as a ploy to get out of prison, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski briefly pardoned Fujimori in 2017.
Months later Kuczynski was impeached and the pardon overturned by Peru’s top constitutional court, sending Fujimori back to the special prison that held him and no other inmates.
The court restored the pardon in December 2023, releasing the ailing Fujimori, who had suffered from stomach ulcers, hypertension and tongue cancer. In May 2024, Fujimori announced he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor.
Fujimori’s legacy has been most passionately defended by his daughter Keiko, who has been close to clinching the presidency herself three times on a platform that has included pardoning her father and defending his constitution.
The late Fujimori was born in Lima on Peruvian Independence Day, July 28, 1938.
A mathematician and agricultural engineer, Fujimori was a political nobody when he decided to run for the presidency, driving a tractor to his campaign rallies. He surprised the world by defeating renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election, with heavy support from the left.
He touted himself as an alternative to the country’s white elite and gained crucial support from Peru’s large Indigenous and mixed race populations.
As Peru battled what was among the world’s worst hyperinflation, Fujimori promised not to carry out drastic measures to tame it.
But on his second week in office he suddenly lifted the subsidies that kept food essentials affordable, in what became known as the ‘Fuji-shock.’
“May God help us,” Fujimori’s finance minister said on TV after announcing the measure. Inflation worsened in the short-term but the bet paid off, eventually stabilizing the economy after over a decade of crisis.
Even as support for him started to wane, Fujimori pulled off audacious stunts in his second term.
In 1997, he devised a plan to dig tunnels under the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima to end a four-month hostage crisis after another insurgency, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, took 500 people captive for 126 days.
In a surprise attack, Fujimori sent in more than 100 commandos in a raid that killed all 14 insurgents.
Only two commandos and one of the remaining 72 hostages died. Television footage showed Fujimori calmly stepping over the corpses of the insurgents after the raid.
Fujimori was married twice. A public falling-out with his first wife Susana Higuchi while he was president led him to name daughter Keiko as the first lady. The couple had three other children, including Kenjo Fujimori, also a politician.
While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it
“I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program
“My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, says the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record
Updated 12 September 2024
Reuters
Some Republican officials, donors and advisers said Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, had botched his debate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, although Trump himself praised his performance.
“I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program on Wednesday, adding that he was not sure whether to do another one. “I’d be less inclined ... because we had a great night.”
Harris, 59, put Trump, 78, president from 2017-2021, on the defensive in a combative presidential debate on Tuesday with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office and his myriad legal woes. The election takes place on Nov. 5.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, was one of the few party leaders to publicly say Trump’s performance was poor.
“A missed opportunity,” Graham told reporters of Trump’s debate performance, adding that the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, center, and other Trump allies line up to speak to FOX News host Sean Hannity in the spin room after Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. (AP)
Chris Christie, a former Trump ally-turned-critic who ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Harris was “exquisitely” prepared whereas Trump was not.
“Whoever did debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie, who helped Trump with debate preparation in the 2016 election cycle, said on ABC News.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether there would be a shake-up of Trump’s debate team.
With eight weeks to go before the election, and days until early voting starts in some states, the debate offered a rare head-to-head opportunity to face tens of millions of TV viewers.
Their ABC News debate attracted 67.1 million television viewers, according to Nielsen data, topping the roughly 51 million people who watched Trump debate then-candidate President Joe Biden in June.
The number does not capture the full extent of online viewing, which has grown in popularity as traditional TV audiences decline.
Six Republican donors and three Trump advisers, all but one asking to remain anonymous to speak freely, also told Reuters they thought Harris had won the debate largely because Trump was unable to stay on message.
Several brought up, with dismay, Trump’s amplification of a false online claim that numerous Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
Two of Trump’s advisers said they doubted the debate would move the needle in opinion polling.
In Reuters interviews with 10 undecided voters, six said after the debate they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
Still, in a sign of confidence in the debate’s outcome, Harris’ campaign challenged Trump to a second round in October.
Two of the six donors said they were not sure whether Trump should debate her again, with one saying it would hinge on whether his handlers were confident he could be more focused in a second round. Two other donors, however, said they thought Trump needed a second debate in order to regain momentum.
“My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. On the prospect of a second debate, Bean said: “I’d like to see one.”
An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets
The falsehoods were spread online by Republican VP candidate JD Vance, and Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate
It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders
Updated 12 September 2024
AP
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio: Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.
At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants that arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.
In this image taken from video, Rose-Thamar Joseph, from the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, speaks to The AP, on Sept. 11, 2024, in Springfield, Ohio. (AP)
“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life. It’s tough for us,” Joseph said.
A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line the main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” which the city describes as an annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.
Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county that holds Springfield, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”
“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.
Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at times in recent days at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.
“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.
The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.
“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and his running mate J.D. Vance have recently placed Springfield, Ohio, in the national spotlight by spreading false rumors that Haitian immigrants in the city are eating their neighbors’ pets. (Getty Images photo/AFP)
Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges the city faces.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.
Many Haitians have come to the US to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.
The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the US could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.
Springfield, about 45 miles from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15 percent of the population.
- Mike DeWine speaks, Jan. 14, 2019, in Cedarville, Ohio. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, Pool, File)
The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Wednesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.
On Sept. 6, a post surfaced on the social media platform X that shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post talked about the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” seeing a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, claiming without evidence that Haitians lived at the house. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.
On Monday, Vance posted on X “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” The next day, he posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office had received inquiries from residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of US population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the US Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.
“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the US.
She said Haitian clients in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are now considering leaving the city.
France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’
Updated 12 September 2024
AFP
REIMS: France will have a new government next week, recently installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier said on Wednesday, as he sounded out candidates to run ministries faced with an unpredictable hung parliament.
“We’re going to do things methodically and seriously,” Barnier told reporters in the eastern city of Reims.
He was “listening to everybody” in a political scene split into three broad camps since July’s inconclusive snap parliamentary elections.
“We’re going to name a government next week,” he said.
Later on Wednesday, his own right-wing Republicans (LR) party announced that they were ready to join his government. The party was reduced to just 47 deputies in the 577-seat National Assembly in July’s elections.
Barnier, who has previously served as the environment, foreign and agriculture ministers and was the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, was named last week by President Emmanuel Macron as his compromise pick for head of government.
With no longer even a working majority in parliament following his decision to dissolve the National Assembly, Macron delayed picking a PM for weeks over the summer as he tried to find someone who would not suffer an immediate no-confidence vote.
The chamber is fairly equally divided between Macron’s centrist supporters — now loosely allied with Barnier’s rump conservative party — the left-wing NFP alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).
NFP leaders have vowed to vote no confidence in any government not headed by them after they secured the most seats in the July vote, but fell well short of a majority.
Macron appears to have taken care to find a candidate in Barnier who does not immediately raise the hackles of the RN.
Rumours are swirling in Paris about who might claim key ministries after Barnier said he was open to working with people on the left or right.
“For now, the names in circulation seem to be just wish lists of people wanting to receive a ministerial portfolio,” Politico’s French edition wrote on Wednesday.
One prominent Socialist, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, said he had turned down an invitation to serve.
“We have a right-wing prime minister approved of by the RN, a prime minister under supervision,” Bouamrane told Franceinfo radio.
An October 1 deadline to file a draft government budget for 2025 puts Barnier under pressure to get moving and sets him and his new team up for a fierce battle over taxes and spending.
In particular, both the NFP and RN promised ahead of the July elections to overturn last year’s unpopular pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64 from 62.