Month: January 2024

BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz reminded Germans of their Nazi past on Wednesday as he called on citizens to reject the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which is second in most national polls.

Hundreds of thousands of people have joined demonstrations across Germany against the AfD after a report that two senior party members had discussed plans for the mass deportation of citizens with foreign backgrounds — a term called remigration.

Addressing the Bundestag lower house of parliament after a special session marking the Holocaust and dressed in a black suit and tie, Scholz said democrats must stand together and stop the shift to the right.

“The word ‘remigration’ is reminiscent of the darkest times in German history,” Scholz said.

“Those who remain silent are complicit,” he said, adding he wanted voters to see the AfD for what it was.

Support for the AfD dipped slightly in a poll published this week following the protests but the party, which has a strong focus on migration, is still second in most polls before this year’s European elections.

Scholz also said that “Dexit”, the idea of Germany leaving the European Union, which AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has talked about, would lead to “the greatest destruction of prosperity that could happen to Germany and Europe.”

In an unusually combative speech during which he waved his clenched fists in the air, Scholz argued for a stronger EU.

“If the world becomes even more difficult, for example if you look at what is possible in the U.S. election, then the European Union must become all the stronger,” he said, adding the bloc must complete a banking and capital market union.

Support for Social Democrat Scholz and his awkward three-way coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) is hovering around record lows.
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HALLE, Belgium — Farmers blocked more traffic arteries across Belgium, France and Italy on Wednesday, as they sought to disrupt trade at major ports and other economic lifelines. They also moved closer to Brussels on the eve of a major European Union summit, in a continued push for better prices for their produce and less bureaucracy in their work.

The protests had an immediate impact on Wednesday — the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, announced plans to shield farmers from cheap exports from Ukraine during wartime and allow farmers to use some land that had been forced to lie fallow for environmental reasons.

The plans still need to be approved by the bloc’s 27 member states and European Parliament, but they amounted to a sudden and symbolic concession.

“I just would like to reassure them that we do our utmost to listen to their concerns. I think we are addressing two very important (concerns) of them right now,” European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said.

The rallies are part of farming protests across the EU and have shown how only a few hundred tractors can snarl traffic in capitals from Berlin to Paris, Brussels and Rome. Millions across the bloc have been facing disruptions and struggling to get to work, or seen their doctor’s appointments canceled because protests blocked their way.

“It obviously has a major economic impact. Not only for our company, but for many companies in Flanders and Belgium,” said Sven Pieters of the ECS transport company in Belgium’s Zeebrugge North Sea port.

In France, the prosecutor in Creteil, south of Paris, said that 15 people have been placed in police custody Wednesday after they have been arrested near the entrance of the Rungis international market, where they headed with tractors.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has warned farmers encircling Paris that any attempt to block the Rungis market and airports, and to enter into the capital would be considered “red lines.” The Rungis market supplies Paris and the surrounding regions with fresh food.

Protesters put a big banner on the A6 highway, south of the French capital, writing: “Paris, let our farmers get through” as police armored vehicles were blocking the road. No major incidents between police and farmers have been reported so far.

A climax in Belgium is set for Thursday, when farmers plan to protest outside EU headquarters during a summit of government leaders. They will seek to get their issues on the summit agenda and win some concessions on the financial burdens they face and the increased competition from nations as far away as Chile and New Zealand.

“It is important that we listen to them,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said. “They face gigantic challenges,” from adapting to climate change to countering environmental pollution, he said.

Belgium currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, and De Croo said that he would address the issue during the summit as a late addition to an agenda centered on providing aid to Ukraine, after Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to hold off on a free trade deal with South American nations because of the vehement opposition of EU farmers and will discuss the issue at the summit.

Despite the widespread inconveniences, governments in the EU are treating protests, which have been mostly peaceful, with extreme caution.

Spanish farmers were also set to add their weight to the protests. Three main Spanish farming associations agreed to begin protests in the coming weeks to demand changes in what they describe as overly restrictive EU policies. 
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Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Container shipping through the Red Sea has dropped by nearly one-third this year as attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels continue, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

“Container shipping … has declined by almost 30%,” said Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, adding that “the drop in trade accelerated in the beginning of this year.”

The Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 30 attacks on commercial shipping and naval vessels since November 19, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The rebels say the attacks are in solidarity with the Palestinians and in protest of the Israel-Hamas war that has been raging in the Gaza Strip since October.

The IMF’s PortWatch platform indicates that the total transit volume through the Suez Canal was down 37% this year through January 16 compared with the same period a year earlier.

The canal connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

Houthi attacks have prompted some shipping companies to detour around southern Africa to avoid the Red Sea, a vital route that normally carries about 12% of global trade, according to the International Chamber of Shipping.

“The level of uncertainty is extremely high, and the developments will determine the extent of change and shift in trade patterns in terms of volume but also in terms of sustainability,” Azour told reporters in an online briefing.

“Are we on the verge of major change in trade routes,” he said, “or is it temporary because of the increase in costs and the deterioration of the security costs?”

Revised regional outlook

The United States heads a coalition to protect Red Sea shipping and is seeking to apply diplomatic and financial pressure by redesignating the Houthis as a “terrorist” group.

The Red Sea is particularly vital for European trade.

Last week the European Union’s trade commissioner said maritime traffic through the Red Sea shipping route had fallen by 22% in a month because of the rebel attacks.

The European Union is pushing to launch its own naval mission in the Red Sea to help protect international shipping.

EU countries have given initial backing to the plan and are aiming to finalize it by a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers on February 19.

The United States and Britain have launched repeated strikes against Houthi capabilities in Yemen, but the Iran-backed movement is still able to hit vessels.

Wednesday’s IMF briefing came as the Washington-based fund released a revised economic outlook for countries in the Middle East and North Africa due to the Israel-Hamas war.

The IMF now sees the economies of the region expanding 2.9% this year, a decrease of half a percentage point from its October forecast.

The economic downturn in the occupied West Bank and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip was “immense,” said Azour.

In 2023, real GDP growth in Gaza and the West Bank was estimated to have dropped to about minus 6%, the IMF said, adding that it reflected a 9-percentage point downgrade from its October outlook.

“We project that the economy will keep on contracting in 2024 if there is no fast and quick cessation of hostilities and reconstruction,” Azour said.

For emerging market and middle-income economies in the region, total funding requirements over 2024 were projected to $186 billion, the IMF said, up from $156 billion in 2023.
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LONDON — Beijing’s revelation that it sentenced an elderly and well-connected British businessman who has lived in China for decades to five years in prison for espionage will further discourage business and trade, say analysts and a friend of the man.

Last week, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that in August 2022 a Beijing court found Ian J. Stones, a 70-year-old consultant, guilty of “buying and unlawfully providing intelligence for an organization or individual outside China.”

Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was responding to a question about Stones at a regular press briefing the day after The Wall Street Journal broke the story on his case, which had not previously been made public by the Chinese or British.

Wang said that Stone’s appeal of the verdict was rejected last September but did not provide any more details about the case. He did say the Chinese courts held the trial “strictly in accordance with the law, guaranteed Stones’ procedural rights, and allowed the UK [side] to visit him and sit in on the sentencing.”

Stones’ daughter, Laura Stones, told The Wall Street Journal the Chinese authorities refused them access to legal documents and did not allow them to attend the trial.

“There has been no confession to the alleged crime; however, my father has stoically accepted and respects that under Chinese law he must serve out the remainder of his sentence,” she told the Journal.

Stones has worked in China since the 1970s for prominent companies, including Pfizer and General Motors. He started his own consultancy, Navisino Partners, which he was working for when he disappeared from public view in 2018, the Journal reported Thursday. Stones also built close relations with Chinese government agencies and officials, including some with whom he studied who went on to achieve high ranks.

‘He thought he could manage’

Peter Humphrey, a former fraud investigator for Western firms in China, has known Stones for 45 years.

He told VOA, “Three years before he was taken, I saw him in London. He had realized that an agency was tracking him, and they even invited him for a tea chat. So he was worried, but he thought he could handle it. Then, when he was detained, he also thought he could manage. So, he did not speak out to the outside world.”

Governments and rights groups have accused China of arresting foreigners to use as bargaining chips. China in 2018 arrested two Canadians, a consultant and an analyst, on spying charges after Canadian authorities arrested Chinese technology company Huawei’s chief financial officer on a U.S. warrant for violating sanctions on Iran. Beijing released the Canadians in 2021 after a deal was made to release the Huawei officer.

Romanian university professor Marius Balo worked in China before being charged with contract fraud and sentenced to eight years in prison in 2014.

He told VOA, “In my own experience, these espionage cases are bogus. They use it as an excuse to capture people and then use them as bargaining chips. I’ve met several of these people, and it’s a common tactic for them.”

Another possible explanation

Humphrey says it’s also possible Stones was hired by a company linked to an intelligence agency.

“If you are a consultant, you want to see as much information as possible so that you can analyze and interpret it and write a report for your client about the condition of the Chinese economy and predictions for what will happen in the next few months, and so on. But the problem might be: Who is the client?” Humphrey said.

“Among his clients, are there any that the Chinese authorities do not want him to provide information to? Sometimes intelligence services try to use consultancies to gather information for them unwittingly,” he said. “I don’t know if Ian Stones fell afoul of this or not.”

VOA sent requests for comment via email to the Chinese Embassy in London and the British Foreign Office. No response has been received yet.

China last year expanded its counterespionage law to include more options for prosecuting alleged spying.

China’s Ministry of State Security earlier this month announced it arrested a man it identified as a third party national named “Huang” for spying for Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service. The arrest was seen by some analysts as retaliation for Britain’s arrest last year of a parliamentary researcher on suspicion of spying for China.

Benedict Rogers, chief executive of the Britain-based human rights organization Hong Kong Watch, said China’s espionage allegations not only worsen Sino-British relations but also significantly affect foreign nationals and businesses operating in China.

“Whether the Chinese allegations are true, or whether this is a tit-for-tat retaliation for allegations of Chinese espionage at Westminster, remains to be seen,” he said. “But either way, this incident will make it a much more dangerous environment for British citizens doing business in or traveling to China.”

China under President Xi Jinping has been tightening controls on information, raiding foreign companies and jailing journalists.

China jailed Humphrey himself in 2013, the year Xi first became president, for two years for his consultancy’s collecting and selling of private information, revoked his risk consultancy’s business license, and had him deported.

It’s not clear if the Chinese court will count any of Stones’ time served in detention toward his five-year sentence. If it does, he could be released as early as this year.

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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PARIS — French cereal grower Jerome Regnault has spent years explaining his profession, as co-founder of a nonprofit to educate consumers about agriculture, and as a local lawmaker for the Ile-de-France region surrounding Paris. 

But last week, he chose to communicate another way — firing up his tractor to join a spreading farmers’ protest in France and across the European Union. 

“It’s been several years since government announcements haven’t been followed,” Regnault said, as he drove to a roadblock set up by farmers Monday in the Yvelines department west of the French capital. “In farming, we like to weigh, measure, count. So, it’s over with announcements.” 

Simmering discontent among European growers has exploded into protests and blockages of ports and roads in recent months, hopscotching from Germany and Poland to touch the Netherlands, Romania, Greece, Spain and Belgium — and now agricultural heavyweight France.

The grievances are varied, but many touch on complicated bureaucracy, soaring costs of inputs like fertilizer and fuel, competition from overseas and European environmental regulations that many say threaten their business. 

Speaking to parliament on Tuesday, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal vowed to resolve the standoff, and promised fresh financial support to farmers. From Sweden, French President Emmanuel Macron added more concessions, calling for ending select food imports from Ukraine and an end to talks on a trade deal with countries in a Latin American trade bloc known as Mercosur. 

Yet there is no sign of the protest movement fading. Farmers in Brittany dumped 700 tons of soil on a highway Tuesday, in a bid, they said, to “sow a prairie.” Around the southern city of Toulouse, others tried to block access to a local airport. Meanwhile, Paris-area protesters promised to slowly tighten a blockade on eight main arteries around the capital, with some aiming to block the wholesale market Rungis that supplies the city’s food. 

The discontent clashes with national values that have long embraced farming and rural life. Every year, French presidents and political candidates make an obligatory stop at the Paris agricultural fair to pat cows, chat with growers and snack on sausages.

Yet many of France’s small- and medium-sized farmers are becoming poorer by the year. Over half a century, the number of farms has plummeted, from 1.5 million to about 456,000 today. Roughly one-quarter of growers lives under the poverty line, and suicide rates are high, according to French statistical agency INSEE. 

Heading toward a wall 

Regnault, whose farm is located on the outskirts of Paris and who took over the business from his father, pointed to a raft of red tape and expenses, and faulted both French and EU bureaucracy. 

Among other demands, he wants more subsidies to farmers and an end to diesel taxes along with international trade agreements that he said penalize French agriculture. Regnault said he uses pesticides judiciously and tries to follow green farming practices as long as they don’t undermine his business. 

“The Green Deal and the Farm to Fork seem wonderful, but they harm agricultural productivity,” said Regnault, referring to two major EU measures aimed at promoting healthy and environmentally friendly food production and slashing carbon emissions.

Polls show a large majority of French support the protest movement. And a recent CSA survey found more respondents believe French farmers do a better job of protecting nature than environmentalists. 

Nadine Lauverjat, coordinator for French environmental group Generations Futures, sided with the farmers on ending major international trade deals like with Mercosur, but rejected efforts to soften environmental regulations that she argued ultimately helped farmers as well. 

“We’re heading towards a wall,” she said of the standoff, “and so are the farmers.” 

Marco Contiero, who heads agricultural policy for environmental group Greenpeace in Brussels, outlined a range of changes that he said are needed, and would benefit both the bloc’s farmers and environment. Among them: ensuring EU farm subsidies target small- and medium-sized growers rather than large ones, incorporating costs like pollution in the price of food, and cutting profits earned by fertilizer companies, retailers and others. 

Rather than being too stringent, Contiero said, many of the EU’s Green Deal environmental regulations have not been enforced or are not binding. 

“The science is unequivocal — we have to do things differently,” Contiero said of the growing environmental problems facing Europe, from degraded land to polluted water and climate change. “The problem for farmers is that we cannot ask them to do things better if the current subsidy system keeps benefitting the biggest ones.” 

Here and elsewhere, right-wing parties have capitalized on the farmers’ anger and the mounting anti-EU and anti-globalization sentiments.

“What we’re paying today is the punitive ecology by the crazy environmentalists from Brussels,” Laurent Jacobelli, spokesman for France’s far-right National Rally party, told France-Info radio Tuesday. 

“There is a large chunk of French farmers who don’t believe in the government anymore,” said farmer Regnault.

Nor, he added, do they believe in the mainstream right and left parties. 

“They’ll be tempted to vote for the far right,” he said, “Which would be unfortunate.”  
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Russia is facing the biggest demographic crisis in its recent history, a drastic drop in births that reflects the fear that many Russians have about starting a family in an uncertain economic and political landscape. Jonathan Spier narrates this report from the VOA Moscow Bureau.
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Stockholm — French President Emmanuel Macron was welcomed Tuesday with pomp and ceremony at the start of a two-day state visit to Sweden during which he will meet Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and the Scandinavian country’s monarch, King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Macron and his wife, Brigitte, were greeted by the king in the inner courtyard of the downtown Stockholm royal castle that is the official residence of the Swedish royals. There, Macron and Carl Gustaf reviewed members of the Grenadier Guards that had lined up.

Macron noted that it had been too long since a French president visited Sweden — the last time was in 2000, when Jacques Chirac traveled to the Scandinavian country.

“My visit is therefore first and foremost to renew our friendship, our partnership in the European Union, and as Sweden prepares to join NATO, our alliance,” Macron said.

Later Tuesday, Macron is to discuss the future of European security at a military academy in Stockholm, together with Kristersson and the king. Russia’s war on Ukraine and Sweden’s NATO application are likely to be on the table.

After more than a year of delays, Turkey earlier this month completed its ratification of Sweden’s bid to join NATO, meaning Hungary is now the last member of the military alliance not to have given its approval. All NATO countries must agree before a new member can join the alliance.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and neighboring Finland abandoned their traditional positions of military nonalignment to seek protection under NATO’s security umbrella. Finland joined the alliance last year.

On Wednesday, Macron and his wife are to travel to Malmo, the third-largest city, in southern Sweden, where they will visit a European multidisciplinary research facility under construction and visit a company to discuss green technologies.

At home, Macron’s government faces angry farmers who have camped out around Paris. They demand better pay, fewer constraints and lower costs. On Monday, they encircled Paris with traffic-snarling barricades, using hundreds of tractors and hay bales to block highways leading to the capital.

The French president initially was to travel to Sweden in late October, but the visit was postponed due to the Gaza war that began with Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
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Brussels — European Union nations have decided to approve an outline deal that would keep in reserve the profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central bank assets that have been frozen in retaliation for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, an EU official said.

The tentative agreement, reached late Monday, still needs formal approval but is seen as a first step toward using some of the 200 billion euros ($216 billion) in Russian central bank assets in the EU to help Ukraine rebuild from Russian destruction.

The official, who asked not to be identified since the agreement was not yet legally ratified, said the bloc “would allow to start collecting the extraordinary revenues generated from the frozen assets … to support the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

How the proceeds will be used will be decided later, as the issue remains mired in legal and practical considerations.

There is urgency since Ukraine is struggling to make ends meet, and aid plans in the EU and the United States are being held back over political considerations including whether allies will continue helping Ukraine at the same pace as they did in the first two years of the war.

EU leaders will meet on Thursday hoping to approve a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) support package for Ukraine over the solitary opposition of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Even if using the unfrozen assets, which now go untapped, seems like a practical step to take, many fear that financial weaponization could harm the standing of the EU in global financial markets.

Early this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a “strong” decision this year for the frozen assets in Western banks to “be directed towards defense against the Russian war and for reconstruction” of Ukraine.

The EU step late Monday paves the way if EU nations ever want to impose such measures. Group of Seven allies of Ukraine are still looking for an adequate legal framework to pursue the plan.

The U.S. announced at the start of Russia’s invasion that America and its allies had blocked access to more than $600 billion that Russia held outside its borders — including roughly $300 billion in funds belonging to Russia’s central bank. Since then, the U.S and its allies have continued to impose rounds of targeted sanctions against companies and wealthy elites with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The World Bank’s latest damage assessment of Ukraine, released in March 2023, estimates that costs for the nation’s reconstruction and recovery will be $411 billion over the next 10 years, which includes needs for public and private funds.

Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union for the next six months, is now leading the talks on whether to seize Russia’s assets. Belgium is also the country where most frozen Russian assets under sanctions are being held.

The country is collecting taxes on the assets. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in October that 1.7 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in tax collections were already available and that the money would be used to pay for military equipment, humanitarian aid and helping rebuild the war-torn country.
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The Voronkov family lives in Donbas, some 20 kilometers from the front lines. In May 2023, a Russian missile destroyed their home, almost killing their teenage son who was hiding in the basement. But despite it all, the couple did not give up – instead, they started a business by opening a cafe. Anna Kosstutschenko met with them. VOA footage and video editing by Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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BALLYNAHINCH, Northern Ireland — The leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said it had reached a deal with the British government on the operation of post-Brexit trade rules that would allow it to return to the region’s power-sharing government. 

Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for almost two years after the DUP walked out in protest over the trade rules, which it said created barriers with the rest of the United Kingdom and undermined Northern Ireland’s place in it.

A return to government by the region’s largest pro-British party offers a way out of a crisis that posed an existential threat to the political settlement underpinning Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace deal, and also puts an end to one of the most difficult aspects of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

“I am pleased to report that the party executive has now endorsed the proposals that I have put to them,” Jeffrey Donaldson told a news conference in the early hours of Tuesday morning after an hours-long briefing to DUP lawmakers and party members.

“Subject to the binding commitments between the Democratic Unionist Party and the UK government being fully and faithfully delivered as agreed… the package of measures in totality does provide a basis for our party to nominate members to the Northern Ireland executive,” he added.

Any deal risked a split in the DUP while also providing ammunition to rivals including the much smaller Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party, who oppose any compromise, ahead of a UK general election due by late January next year. 

Earlier around 50 protesters, some holding Union Jack flags and signs saying “Stop DUP sellout,” gathered outside the hotel where Donaldson briefed party members after months of closely guarded talks.

The DUP leader said the party made a decisive decision and that the result of a vote was “very clear.”

Sinn Fein Leader

Donaldson said the measures, which will be underpinned by new UK laws, will remove checks for goods moving within the UK and remaining in Northern Ireland, guarantee unfettered access for Northern Ireland businesses to the UK market and safeguard the region’s place in the UK.

He said London would publish details “in due course” and could move quickly to enable the DUP to take its place back in Belfast’s Stormont Assembly.

Irish nationalists and pro-British unionist politicians are obliged to share power under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord that ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister, Chris Heaton-Harris, said on social media platform X that the parties entitled to form an executive would meet later Tuesday and that he hoped the assembly would return “as soon as possible.”

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, whose Irish nationalist party became the largest in the British-run region for the first time at elections shortly after the DUP walkout, said she was optimistic that the assembly would be restored by Feb. 8.

That will allow Sinn Fein to assume the role of Northern Ireland first minister, the latest political milestone for the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who want to leave the United Kingdom and form a united Ireland.

 
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The debate over funding Ukraine in its war with Russia has wide-reaching implications, even far away from the front lines. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on the impact to refugee resettlement in Chicago, the second-largest home in the U.S. to Ukrainians who have fled the war.
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