NEW DELHI: Farmers in Punjab have begun putting up posters in a bid to stop Bharatiya Janata Party leaders from entering their villages ahead of this month’s general election, in which India’s ruling party is seeking a third consecutive term in power.
Banners reading “Farmers are barred from entering Delhi, BJP is banned from entering villages” refer to a February rally in which entry points to the Indian capital were blocked by police, as thousands of farmers tried to take their protest to the city after failed negotiations with the government.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched from the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, where the country’s agriculture is concentrated, to demand higher income and minimum support prices — guaranteed prices for their crops at government-controlled wholesale markets — which were promised in 2022.
“They stopped farmers from boarding trains and buses. They forced farmers to break their journey to Delhi. If we don’t let farmers come to the national capital, then how can we allow you to come to our village?” Avik Saha, member of the national coordination committee of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha, a coalition of over 40 Indian farmers’ unions, told Arab News.
“If you don’t allow us to come to our capital, just then see what we can do in our village. You close Delhi for us, then the villages are also closed for you. We have put up posters in almost all villages of Punjab.”
The SKM is a part of the alliance that coordinated a protest against laws deregulating the agriculture sector in 2021-22, when tens of thousands of farmers camped out on major highways leading to New Delhi for more than a year. Farmer groups estimate that 750 protesters have lost their lives — either killed in clashes with security forces or due to freezing cold when the rallies took place in winter.
While the government eventually rolled back the controversial legislation, it has yet to fulfill the promise to increase farmers’ incomes.
“Two years ago, they promised in writing that they would legalize laws promising minimum support price for farm produce, take action against those who killed farmers and many other things, but they have not done anything about it since,” Saha said.
“Now we have decided to continue on the democratic path. Since this is the election time and the BJP is expected to win, we are going to villages and to tell people what the real face of the party is, what their real intention is, and how they are anti-people, and how they just use people to stay in power. We are telling people not to vote for the BJP.”
The anti-BJP campaign in Punjab, a state of 28 million people, takes place as India prepares to hold a seven-phase general vote starting on April 19, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a third straight term.
Sarwan Singh Pandher, leader of the All India Kisan Sangarsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella organization representing 250 farmers’ groups, told Arab News they had decided to “question each and every” BJP leader seeking to visit Punjab villages for campaigning.
“If they won’t engage us in talks, then we will protest. This is our strategy. We want to show how undemocratic this party is. Recently, we wanted to march to Delhi to register our protest over the non-fulfillment of the promises made to us in 2022 when we ended the 13-month agitation over the three farm bills. But they stopped our march and created walls, plastered the road to Delhi with nails and created barriers everywhere. The BJP is not honoring the democratic rights of the people and farmers.”
Although it is confined to Punjab for now, farmers’ resentment resonates more widely across India’s huge rural hinterland, where the BJP government has done little to increase living standards.
Punjab contributes nearly two-thirds to the total production of food grains in the country, where 40 percent of people are dependent on agriculture.
“Farmers exert influence in the Punjab society, they have a presence all across. Naturally, the farmers’ no-entry call for BJP leaders in villages will create a buzz across the state and it might have some impact on the ground,” said Prof. Ronki Ram, a political scientist from Punjab University.
“Punjab always throws surprises, and it does not go with the popular national trend. You never know how this anti-BJP sentiment among farmers is going to play out in a crucial northern India state.”
The BJP said it was the farmers’ “democratic right” to protest, but they were not allowed to block the entry of party workers.
“I don’t think that the Election Commission of India and the state administration will permit them to block (us). They can show black flags or protest in a democratic manner, but they can’t stop any kind of gatherings and functions,” Sarwan Singh Channy, BJP spokesperson in Punjab told Arab News.
“It’s not only farmers in the villages, there are other people, too, and everyone has the right to participate in the election process.”
Farmers in Punjab bar India’s ruling party from entering villages ahead of polls
https://arab.news/gx25t
Farmers in Punjab bar India’s ruling party from entering villages ahead of polls
- Voting to begin on April 19 as PM Narendra Modi seeks third straight term
- BJP says farmers have the right to protest, but not to block the electoral process
White House mistakenly shares Yemen war plans with a journalist at The Atlantic
- Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on X the use of Signal to discuss highly sensitive national security issues was “blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief”
- The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing”
WASHINGTON: Top Trump administration officials mistakenly disclosed war plans in a messaging group that included a journalist shortly before the US attacked Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, the White House said on Monday, following a first-hand account by The Atlantic.
Democratic lawmakers swiftly blasted the misstep, saying it was a breach of US national security and a violation of law that must be investigated by Congress.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a report on Monday that he was unexpectedly invited on March 13 to an encrypted chat group on the Signal messaging app called the “Houthi PC small group.” In the group, national security adviser Mike Waltz tasked his deputy Alex Wong with setting up a “tiger team” to coordinate US action against the Houthis.
National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said the chat group appeared to be authentic.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Democratic lawmakers demand investigation into security breach
• Use of Signal app for sensitive info deemed illegal by Democrats
• Defense Secretary Hegseth said to call European allies freeloaders
US President Donald Trump launched an ongoing campaign of large-scale military strikes against Yemen’s Houthis on March 15 over the group’s attacks against Red Sea shipping, and he warned Iran, the Houthis’ main backer, that it needed to immediately halt support for the group.
Hours before those attacks started, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted operational details about the plan in the messaging group, “including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg said. His report omitted the details but Goldberg termed it a “shockingly reckless” use of a Signal chat.
Accounts that appeared to represent Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and senior National Security Council officials were assembled in the chat group, Goldberg wrote.
Joe Kent, Trump’s nominee for National Counterterrorism Center director, was apparently on the Signal chain despite not yet being Senate-confirmed.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he was unaware of the incident. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” Trump said. A White House official said later that an investigation was under way and Trump had been briefed on it.
The NSC’s Hughes said in a statement: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”
Hegseth denied sharing war plans in the group chat.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” he told reporters while on an official trip to Hawaii on Monday.
’EUROPEAN FREE-LOADING’
According to screenshots of the chat reported by The Atlantic, officials in the group debated whether the US should carry out the strikes, and at one point Vance appeared to question whether US allies in Europe, more exposed to shipping disruption in the region, deserved US help.
“@PeteHegseth if you think we should do it let’s go,” a person identified as Vance wrote. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” the person wrote, adding: “Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here.”
A person identified as Hegseth replied: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
The Atlantic reported that the person identified as Vance also raised concerns about the timing of the strikes, and said there was a strong argument in favor of delaying them by a month.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices,” the account wrote, before saying he was willing to support the group’s consensus.
Yemen, Houthi-ally Iran and the European Union’s diplomatic service did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
Under US law, it can be a crime to mishandle, misuse or abuse classified information, though it is unclear whether those provisions might have been breached in this case. Messages that The Atlantic report said were set by Waltz to disappear from the Signal app after a period of time also raise questions about possible violations of federal record-keeping laws.
As part of a Trump administration effort to chase down leaks by officials to journalists unrelated to the Signal group, Gabbard posted on X on March 14 that any “unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
On Tuesday, Gabbard is due to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats to the United States.
Created by the entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike, Signal has gone from an exotic messaging app used by privacy-conscious dissidents to the unofficial whisper network of Washington officialdom.
Democratic lawmakers called the use of the Signal group illegal and demanded an investigation.
“This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence that I have read about in a very, very long time,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said, adding that he would ask Majority Leader John Thune to investigate.
“We’re just finding out about it. But obviously, we’ve got to run it to ground and figure out what went on there. We’ll have a plan,” said Thune, a Republican from South Dakota.
There was no immediate suggestion from the White House that the breach would lead to any staffing changes.
“President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including national security adviser Mike Waltz,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Reuters.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on X the use of Signal to discuss highly sensitive national security issues was “blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief.”
“Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally – that would normally involve a jail sentence,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons said on X.
Trump’s portrait to be taken down at Colorado Capitol after president claimed it was ‘distorted’
- Trump’s Sunday night comments had prompted a steady stream of visitors to pose for photos with the painting before the announcement that it would be taken down
DENVER: A painting of Donald Trump hanging with other presidential portraits at the Colorado state Capitol will be taken down after Trump claimed that his was “purposefully distorted,” according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
House Democrats said in a statement that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the Legislature. Colorado Republicans raised more than $10,000 through a GoFundMe account to commission the oil painting, which was unveiled in 2019.
Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Republican, said that he requested for Trump’s portrait to be taken down and replaced by one “that depicts his contemporary likeness.”
“If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them,” the Democrats said.
The portrait was installed alongside other paintings of US presidents. Before the installation, a prankster placed a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin near the spot intended for Trump.
Initially, people objected to artist Sarah Boardman’s depiction of Trump as “nonconfrontational” and “thoughtful” in the portrait, according to an interview with Colorado Times Recorder from the time.
But in a Sunday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he would prefer no picture at all over the one that hangs in the Colorado Capitol. The Republican lauded a nearby portrait of former President Barack Obama – also by Boardman – saying “he looks wonderful.”
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the state Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote.
The portraits are not the purview of the Colorado governor’s office but the Colorado Building Advisory Committee. The ones up to and including President Jimmy Carter were donated as a collection. The others were donated by political parties or, more recently, paid for by outside fundraising.
The Legislature’s executive committee, made up of both Democratic and Republican leadership, signed a letter directing the removal of Trump’s portrait. Lundeen, the Republican senator who requested it, noted that Grover Cleveland, whose presidential terms were separated like Trump’s, had a portrait from his second term.
Boardman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. In interviews from the time with The Denver Post, Boardman said it was important that her depictions of both Obama and Trump looked apolitical.
“There will always be dissent, so pleasing one group will always inflame another. I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and nonconfrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time,” Boardman told the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019.
Trump’s Sunday night comments had prompted a steady stream of visitors to pose for photos with the painting before the announcement that it would be taken down.
Aaron Howe, visiting from Wyoming on Monday, stood in front of Trump’s portrait, looking down at photos of the president on his phone, then back up at the portrait.
“Honestly he looks a little chubby,” said Howe of the portrait, but “better than I could do.”
“I don’t know anything about the artist,” said Howe, who voted for Trump. “It could be taken one way or the other.”
Kaylee Williamson, an 18-year-old Trump supporter from Arkansas, got a photo with the portrait.
“I think it looks like him. I guess he’s smoother than all the other ones,” she said. “I think it’s fine.”
’Nazis got better treatment,’ judge says of Trump admin deportations
- “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” said Millett, an appointee of former Democratic president Barack Obama
WASHINGTON: A federal judge on Monday sharply criticized the Trump administration’s summary deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, saying “Nazis got better treatment” from the United States during World War II.
President Donald Trump sent two planeloads of Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador on March 15 after invoking an obscure wartime law known as the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
James Boasberg, chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, issued a restraining order that same day temporarily barring the Trump administration from carrying out any further deportation flights under the AEA.
The Justice Department is seeking to have the order lifted and a three-judge US Court of Appeals panel heard oral arguments in the closely watched case on Monday.
Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said the judge’s order “represents an unprecedented and enormous intrusion upon the powers of the executive branch” and “enjoins the president’s exercise of his war and foreign affairs powers.”
Judge Patricia Millett appeared unconvinced and said the lower court judge was not disputing Trump’s presidential authority only the denial of individual court hearings to the deportees.
Attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” said Millett, an appointee of former Democratic president Barack Obama. “They had hearing boards before people were removed.”
“People on those planes on that Saturday had no opportunity to challenge their removal under the AEA,” she said. “Y’all could have picked me up on Saturday and thrown me on a plane thinking I’m a member of Tren de Aragua and given me no chance to protest it.
“Somehow it’s a violation of presidential war powers for me to say, ‘Excuse me, no, I’m not. I’d like a hearing?’“
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, also suggested that court hearings were warranted but appeared more receptive to the arguments that the judge’s order impinged on presidential powers.
The third judge on the panel is an appointee of former Republican president George H.W. Bush.
The AEA, which has previously only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, gives the government vast powers to round up citizens of a “hostile nation” during wartime.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against the deportations, told the appeals court panel that the Trump administration was using the AEA “to try and short circuit immigration proceedings.”
The government would likely immediately resume AEA deportations if the temporary restraining order was lifted, Gelernt said.
“We are talking about people being sent to El Salvador, to one of the worst prisons in the world, incommunicado,” he said. “They’re essentially being disappeared.”
In a 37-page opinion issued on Monday, Boasberg, the district court judge, said that migrants subject to potential deportation under the AEA should be “entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all.”
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Boasberg, even going so far as to call for his impeachment, a remark that drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
The contentious case has raised concerns among legal experts that the Trump administration would potentially ignore the court order, triggering a constitutional crisis.
Ahead of the hearing, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced plans to send three alleged TdA members facing extortion and kidnapping charges to Chile under the AEA.
Blanche said the Justice Department “is taking every step within the bounds of the law to ensure these individuals are promptly sent to Chile to face justice.”
Ethiopian, Eritrean officials accused of war crimes
ADDIS ABABA: Eight survivors of the devastating conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have accused 12 high-ranking Ethiopian and Eritrean civilian and military officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the legal rights group representing them said on Monday.
The Tigray region, bordering Eritrea, endured a war between 2020 and 2022 that claimed up to 600,000 lives, according to some estimates.
The conflict pitted Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebels against federal Ethiopian forces, supported by local militias and the Eritrean army.
Both sides were accused of committing atrocities, with the government sealing off Tigray for most of the war and restricting humanitarian aid to the region.
Eight survivors “have filed a groundbreaking criminal complaint with the German Federal Public Prosecutor, alleging that 12 senior Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials and military officers committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict,” nonprofit Legal Action Worldwide said in a statement.
The Swiss-based organization did not disclose the identities of those accused in the filing, submitted in 2024 but announced last week.
A LAW spokesperson said on Monday they could not “confirm or deny” whether Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed or Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki were mentioned.
The case is being filed in Germany under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of crimes regardless of where they were committed, as they violate international law.
“We are asking the German authorities to open a criminal investigation and to issue arrest warrants for 12 suspects,” Nick Leddy, head of LAW’s strategic litigation department and a former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, told AFP.
He said they would not be naming the suspects as it could “jeopardize the chances of their arrest.”
The identities of the plaintiffs have not been made public either. “I’ve lost two of the most important people in my life in this war: my younger brother and my mom,” LAW quoted one of them as saying.
“The suffering and agony continues.”
“Tigrayans are still dying every day,” they added, saying justice must be brought to those “who orchestrated and engineered these unimaginable crimes.”
Allegations of massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities by all sides marked the two-year conflict. In 2022, a United Nations commission said it had “reasonable grounds to believe that, in several instances, these violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Anna Oehmichen, a lawyer involved in the case, said the “gravity of the crimes in Tigray is dramatic.”
It requires investigation and prosecution.
She said: “To put an end to the ongoing violations of international law and to prevent other heads of state from committing similarly devastating crimes.”
Although a peace agreement was signed in November 2022, around 1 million of the region’s pre-war population of 6 million remain displaced.
In recent weeks, a rift within the TPLF has reignited fears of renewed conflict.
Mozambique leader meets opposition chief to reset relations
MAPUTO: Mozambican President Daniel Chapo met main opposition figure Venancio Mondlane for talks to ease tension following months of violent clashes between protesters and security forces, the president’s office said late on Sunday.
Political turmoil has gripped the nation since October’s disputed general election.
The election, which several international observer missions said was tainted by irregularities, was followed by more than two months of demonstrations and blockades, during which more than 360 people died, according to a local civil society group.
Chapo and Mondlane met in the capital, Maputo, to “discuss solutions to the challenges facing the country,” the presidency said.
“The meeting is part of the ongoing effort to promote national stability and reinforce the commitment to reconciliation,” it said.
Mondlane confirmed the meeting in a social media post, saying it had been aimed at “embarking on a mutual process in answer to the calls and desires of the Mozambican people.”
He said he would soon provide more details of the meeting as well as lay out the next steps.
