PARIS: Two key parties in France’s left-wing alliance were facing crises Wednesday after senior figures were accused of violence against women.
Meanwhile, a Greens party chief stepping back from his role days after a fellow lawmaker from the hard-left France Unbowed.
The mounting tempest has shown up their parties’ struggle to respond to allegations of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the #Metoo movement, as outraged activists often demand quicker, more forceful responses than the justice system can provide.
On Tuesday, Julien Bayou was “suspended from his role” as co-president of the Greens’ bloc in the lower-house National Assembly, the party said, after he was accused of psychologically abusing a former partner.
“We are a feminist party, and so we place ourselves at the service of women’s testimony... we acknowledged that the only way to show we weren’t pretending and weren’t hiding was a temporary suspension,” Sandra Regol, vice president of the Green MPs group, told broadcaster Franceinfo.
On Sunday one of the most prominent MPs of France Unbowed (LFI), Adrien Quatennens, admitted to slapping his wife after her legal complaint was revealed by the investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine.
He stepped down from a senior role as party coordinator.
“Our political ethics can’t be the same as the criminal law,” said Laurence Rossignol, deputy president of the Senate, Parliament’s upper house, and a member of the Socialist Party, which is allied with the Greens and LFI in a broad coalition against President Emmanuel Macron.
“The facts are there, they’ve been identified, and this is a political representative, in a political group that has committed itself to fighting violence against women... their group must be the first to deal with them,” Rossignol told Europe 1 radio.
Among the older generation of the left, the instinct can still be to close ranks.
LFI leader and three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon leapt to Quatennens’ defense on Twitter, blasting “police ill-will, media voyeurism and the social networks” while hailing his protege’s “dignity” and “courage.”
He had made a similar response earlier this year when another ally, MP Eric Coquerel, was accused of groping a female activist — but who went on to receive the party’s support to lead parliament’s powerful Finance Committee.
“Protection of the party, protecting the leader, often come before consistency” with the movement’s stated values, Rossignol said Wednesday.
It was not until hours later that Melenchon posted another message gesturing toward Quatennens’ wife — too late for many critics.
Macron’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Tuesday that it was “extremely shocking to have someone playing down domestic violence.”
And some 550 feminist activists co-signed an editorial in left-wing daily Liberation on Wednesday calling for Quatennens to resign his seat in parliament.
“When a political group supports a feminist program, we have a right to expect that it stops protecting assaulters,” the activists wrote, listing a string of other left-wing figures who have been accused of assault and even rape.
“It’s not up to the assaulter’s friends to judge how serious the crime is and call for their private life to be respected. Private life is political,” they added.
The Greens, LFI and Macron’s Renaissance party have all set up internal panels to investigate allegations of sexual harassment and assault, with mixed results.
A report about Bayou had already been submitted to the ecologists’ panel in July, prompting allegations the probe had moved too slowly.
“These are volunteers working on cases that are sensitive by definition. Calm and time are needed to gather testimony and take the necessary decisions,” said Marine Tondelier, expected to stand soon for the Greens’ leadership.
“We acknowledge that we’re feeling our way forward, that this is a difficult question,” LFI lawmaker Daniele Obono said.
Allegations that sexual harassment and even assault are rife in French politics stretch well beyond the left.
In July, Damien Abad, a right-winger who was named minister in Macron’s freshly installed centrist government, was forced to step down over rape allegations.
He denies the claims and has since returned to his seat in parliament.
French left reels after violence against women claims
https://arab.news/6j8b6
French left reels after violence against women claims
- On Tuesday, Julien Bayou was "suspended from his role" as co-president of the Greens' bloc in the lower-house National Assembly
- On Sunday one of the most prominent MPs of France Unbowed (LFI), Adrien Quatennens, admitted to slapping his wife
Death toll rises to 17 in Indonesia quarry collapse as search continues
By Saturday afternoon, rescuers had retrieved 16 bodies
CIREBON, Indonesia: The death toll from the collapse of a stone quarry in Indonesia’s West Java province has risen to at least 17, with eight people still missing, officials said Saturday.
The victims were trapped in the rubble when the Gunung Kuda quarry in Cirebon district collapsed on Friday. A dozen survivors were found by rescuers.
By Saturday afternoon, rescuers had retrieved 16 bodies, while one of the survivors died in the hospital, said local police chief Sumarni. She said rescuers are searching for eight people still believed to be trapped
“The search operation has been hampered by bad weather, unstable soil and rugged terrain,” said Sumarni who goes by a single name like many Indonesians.
She said the cause of the collapse is still under investigation, and police have been questioning six people, including the owner of the quarry.
Local television reports showed emergency personnel, along with police, soldiers and volunteers, digging desperately in the quarry in a steep limestone cliff, supported by five excavators, early Saturday.
West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi said in a video statement on Instagram that he visited the quarry before he was elected in February and considered it dangerous.
“It did not meet the safety standard elements for its workers,” Mulyadi said, adding that at that time, “I didn’t have any capacity to stop it.”
On Friday, Mulyadi said that he had ordered the quarry shut, as well as four other similar sites in West Java.
Illegal or informal resource extraction operations are common in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to those who labor in conditions with a high risk of injury or death.
Landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses are just some of the hazards associated with them. Much of the processing of sand, rocks or gold ore also involves the use of highly toxic mercury and cyanide by workers using little or no protection.
Last year, a landslide triggered by torrential rains struck an unauthorized gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, killing at least 15 people.
Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza
- No health facility operational in northern Gaza as of Friday
- Palestinians receiving inadequate aid after prolonged blockade
JAKARTA: Indonesian civil society organizations are urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza, as Tel Aviv’s latest military onslaught on the besieged enclave pushed the territory’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
All hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service as of Friday, according to Jakarta-based NGO Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which funds the Indonesia Hospital located in the Gazan city of Beit Lahiya.
Al-Awda Hospital — the only remaining facility providing health services in north Gaza — evacuated its patients on Thursday following orders from the Israeli military, which launched a wave of new attacks earlier this month across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people and forcing most public facilities in the area to close.
“Even after various condemnations and warnings, Israel the colonizer continues to commit crimes across the Gaza Strip,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of MER-C’s executive committee.
“MER-C’s stance is in line with the Indonesian constitution, in which we do not recognize colonization in any shape or form … Israel’s colonization and crimes against humanity (in Gaza) must be held accountable at the international level.”
Indonesia is a staunch supporter of Palestine, and sees Palestinian statehood as being mandated by its own constitution, which calls for the abolition of colonialism.
The Indonesia Hospital was one of the first targets hit when Israel began its assault on Gaza, in which it regularly targets medical facilities.
Attacks on health centers, medical personnel and patients constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
Israel’s latest offensive comes after a two-month blockade on the enclave after Tel Aviv unilaterally broke a ceasefire with the Palestinian group Hamas in March.
It is a continuation of Israel’s onslaught of Gaza that began in October 2023 and has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000. The deadly attacks have also put 2 million more at risk of starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings and blocked humanitarian aid.
Aid only recently began to enter the besieged territory, although only in limited quantities.
“The suffering of the people is massive due to starvation, and there is limited aid because of the blockade,” Habib said. “A humanitarian crisis must not be used as a transactional tool. Stop this war and open the food blockade in Gaza. We will continue to voice this demand.”
Various scholars and human rights organizations have said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, including Amnesty International and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.
“Zionist Israel’s crimes in Gaza must be held accountable. They must be put on trial and punished for genocide. There is no longer doubt that their crimes constitute genocide,” Muhammad Anshorullah, who heads the executive committee of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group, told Arab News on Saturday. “Netanyahu’s regime must be arrested, tried and punished, just like how the Allied powers arrested, tried and punished Nazi elites through the Nuremberg Trials. There is nothing more urgent globally aside from stopping the genocide in Gaza.”
A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead
- The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out
BERLIN: A small plane crashed into the terrace of a residential building in western Germany on Saturday and two people were killed, police said.
The crash happened in Korschenbroich, near the city of Mönchengladbach and not far from the Dutch border.
The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out. Police said two people died and one of them was probably the plane’s pilot, German news agency dpa reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the other person had been on the plane or on the ground.
Officials had no immediate information on the cause of the crash.
Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials
- Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities
BRUSSELS: A new law in Georgia that from Saturday requires NGOs and media outlets to register as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad is a “serious setback,” for the country, two top EU officials said.
Alongside other laws on broadcasting and grants, “these repressive measures threaten the very survival of Georgia’s democratic foundations and the future of its citizens in a free and open society,” EU diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.
They stressed that the law, which they dubbed a tool “by the Georgian authorities to suppress dissent (and) restrict freedoms,” jeopardized the country’s ambitions of one day joining the European Union.
“Georgia’s Foreign Agents Registration Act marks a serious setback for the country’s democracy,” they said.
Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities.
But NGOs believe it will be used by Georgia’s illiberal and Euroskeptic government to further repression of civil society and the opposition.
The Black Sea nation has been rocked by daily demonstrations since late last year, with protesters decrying what they see as an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russia government.
Tensions escalated in November when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would postpone EU membership talks until 2028.
“The EU is ready to consider the return of Georgia to the EU accession path if the authorities take credible steps to reverse democratic backsliding,” Kallas and Kos said in their statement.
France’s prison population reaches all-time high
- Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population
PARIS: France’s prison population hit a record high on May 1, with 83,681 inmates held in facilities that have a capacity of just 62,570, justice ministry data showed on Saturday.
Over the past year, France’s prison population grew by 6,000 inmates, taking the occupancy rate to 133.7 percent.
The record overcrowding has even seen 23 out of France’s 186 detention facilities operating at more than twice their capacity.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population.
The hard-line minister announced in mid-May a plan to build a high-security prison in French Guiana — an overseas territory situated north of Brazil — for the most “dangerous” criminals, including drug kingpins.
Prison overcrowding is “bad for absolutely everyone,” said Darmanin in late April, citing the “appalling conditions” for prisoners and “the insecurity and violence” faced by prison officers.
A series of coordinated attacks on French prisons in April saw assailants torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults embarrassed the right-leaning government, whose tough-talking ministers — Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau — have vowed to step up the fight against narcotics.
And in late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing detention in high-security prison units in the coming months.
France ranks among the worst countries in Europe for prison overcrowding, placing third behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a Council of Europe study published in June 2024.
